October skies

He looked down at her and knew she was going to be dead very soon. Preston would be none the wiser if he took his pleasure with her first.

He reached out and grasped the edge of the thick blankets, slowly pulling them down to reveal her pale woollen dress.

There’s no harm. I’m just playing, is all.

He pushed the blankets down to her booted feet, and then his trembling, excited hand wandered back up to the top-most button of her dress, just beneath her chin, and was working it open when he felt a chilled draught that sent the oil lamp beside her head guttering and spitting.

It went out.

‘Who is that?’ Vander snarled angrily, quickly withdrawing his hand.

There was no answer. It was probably Mrs Zimmerman, he decided, having forgotten something. He reached for the box of matches beside the glowing wick of the lamp and shuddered from the chill as he fumbled for a match.

‘You’ve let too much cold in,’ he snapped irritably as he struck the match. It flared brightly for a second, throwing the snug shelter into sharp relief. He turned to scowl towards Mrs Zimmerman, only to find himself staring at two dark holes for eyes.

The match flickered out.

CHAPTER 59

1 November, 1856

Ben heard the very first scream from the other camp only a short while after he’d noticed the grey light of dawn stealing into the womb-like shelter. The scream was shrill and feminine and followed shortly after by the cry of several children.

He grabbed his gun, already carefully loaded and ready to fire — something he’d done quietly last night whilst the other two slept. His head throbbed from weariness, not certain whether he’d actually managed any sleep last night or not, since climbing back inside after his encounter with Vander.

Another piercing scream shook away the last of the fatigue. He wrapped his poncho around his head and shoulders and struggled to push the snow away from his opening, like some small rodent emerging from its burrow.

Clambering to his feet outside, he noticed the wrapped-up heads of several others emerging, pushing aside drifts of fresh snow as the screaming continued. The six Paiute had already climbed out of the shelter they had made, their blades drawn. Keats squeezed out of the shelter and joined them.

‘What the hell’s goin’ on?’ he muttered irritably.

‘Coming from their side,’ replied Ben.

Ben took a step up a drift of snow, gaining just a few inches’ height as it squeaked and compacted beneath him. He craned his neck to look towards where the screaming was coming from. There was plenty of activity on the other side; a milling crowd of men, woman and children, agitated, pacing, praying.

‘Something’s happened over there,’ uttered Ben.

Keats called out to Broken Wing. The Shoshone nodded. He turned around to look for the others — McIntyre, Weyland, Hussein, Bowen. ‘All of you, come with me and bring your guns,’ Keats barked loudly.

They converged as they rounded the smooth nodules of white that marked the oxen boneyard below, then spread out warily as they drew closer, guns cocked and ready, but, under Keats’s instruction, barrels aimed downward.

Ben could hear no more screaming as they drew nearer. Instead there was a keening moan from several women, rocking back and forth on their knees, and amongst the others the frantic, whispered rattle of prayer. Above them, he had noticed from the far side of the clearing, was what he presumed was a shank of meat, suspended from a tree to keep it from scavenging animals.

Keats led them forward, stepping through them. ‘What’s goin’ on?’ he barked out loud. None of them seemed to notice Keats or the others, their attention directed towards the carcass dangling above them.

As they drew closer, Ben’s eyes made sense of the gently swinging object.

‘Oh my God,’ he whispered.

He recognised the man, despite some disfiguration of the face and dried blood caked around his mouth — it was Eric Vander. His naked body suspended from a noose strung up to the overhanging bare branch of a large dogwood tree. The body swung with the creak of the rope, twenty feet off the ground. A blade had worked on his bowels and, beneath the tangled string of intestinal cord that dangled down from his gut, almost to the ground, lay a small pool of blood and offal, frozen solid during the night.

‘Oh, God, help us,’ muttered McIntyre, his voice muffled through the woollen scarf wrapped around his head.

Ben could see a blade had also been at work on the man’s groin. His genitals had been removed. Looking up at Vander’s face, he realised where they’d been placed.

‘For Christ’s sake, someone cut him down!’ Keats shouted angrily at the muttering, praying crowd.

Mr Zimmerman emerged and climbed up into the tree, his boots slipping perilously on the frosted branch that stretched a couple of dozen feet over the clearing from the forest’s edge.