Even in the scant light of the dying torch, Stanton saw Donner redden. “As a matter of fact, I do. I have experience leading the wagon train. People know me—and like me. It’s important to be liked, James—you shouldn’t underestimate that.”
Reed scowled at Donner. “I’d rather be respected than liked.”
Donner gave him a thin, insincere smile. “That’s why you won’t be elected captain. You can’t expect to just step in and boss people around. You have to earn people’s respect—and you haven’t earned it, not yet.”
Reed stopped dead. His head seemed to swell so full with rage that it might burst. “And do you think people respect you? Everyone knows you can’t even stand up to your own wife.”
At this, the rest of the group halted, too. Stanton shifted uncomfortably in the dusty air as he watched George Donner’s face go pale in the darkness until he seemed almost bloodless. He was standing perfectly still, his clublike hands hanging at his sides, towering over James Reed. But Reed stood his ground and, in that moment, seemed the stronger.
Bryant broke the silence and stepped between them. “Gentlemen. It’s late. We’ve all had a shock tonight.”
Stanton realized he’d been holding his breath, though it didn’t seem all that likely Reed and Donner would have come to blows. James Reed had a temper, true, but he was prideful and wouldn’t stoop to brawling. Stanton had noticed the care he took with his appearance, his obsessive cleaning of his fingernails and trimming of his beard, the way he endlessly brushed his coat of dust, despite the fact that within minutes it would be dirty again. And Donner was a blusterer but at his core, too soft, almost spongelike, too dependent on others for his opinions and shape. He was the type to get others to do his dirty work for him.
Still, Stanton didn’t like the tension that lingered in the air, even as Reed stalked off without another word.
Donner shook his head. “Madness,” he murmured. Then he bid them good night and turned off toward the camp.
For a second, as Stanton watched him recede into the darkness, he envied Donner his waiting family, the company of a beautiful woman, sleeping children exhaling their sweet night-breath into the summer air.
Bryant exhaled. “I hope to God someone else steps forward to lead us.”
Stanton nodded toward the departed figures, now lost in the darkness. “Would you choose either one, if you had to?”
“I’d go with Reed before I’d go with Donner. The man’s more of a leader. Though if you really want to know the truth, you’d be my first choice.”
“Me?” Stanton almost laughed. “I don’t think you’ll find anyone to second my nomination. The family men don’t trust me, with no wife or children. Besides, I don’t need the headaches—and I like to mind my own business. If you’re so keen on a leader, why don’t you volunteer yourself?”
Bryant smiled wryly. “You’re not going to talk me out of leaving that easily.”
“You still mean to head out, then?” Stanton asked. “Traveling in a small group with whatever got the boy still at large—it could be dangerous.”
“True.” Bryant tilted his head to one side, as if listening to something in the distance. “You know, it all reminds me of something. An old story I heard a long time ago.”
“Something the Indians told you?”
“No.” Bryant’s smile looked more like a squint. “Something odd that happened to me in my doctoring days. Nearly as wild as a fairy story. If I ever make sense of it, I’ll tell you about it,” he said, turning away already and raising a hand in farewell. “Take care, Stanton. I’ll send word when I can.”
As wild as a fairy story. For some reason, Stanton couldn’t shake the words from his mind.
STANTON ALWAYS SET UP his campsite apart from its neighbors; he liked the nighttime solitude. He could see their wagons through a scrim of trees, tents set up for sleeping, fires still smoldering against the night; could smell the remains of their suppers lingering on the air. But every site he passed was deserted. Fathers had driven their families inside the tents. It was like this when things got bad: Circles got smaller. People wanted to protect their own.
He knew the mangled body of that young boy should be bothering him… and it was. But something else was bothering him, too, persisting like the stench of blood in the air. It was the nagging feeling that something vitally important—some invisible thread—was about to unravel. He’d never liked conflict, but what Donner had said tonight sank in with an uncomfortable clarity. Don’t underestimate the value of being liked, he’d said. Stanton hadn’t gone out of his way to make himself liked; Bryant was his only real ally, and he was leaving.
And the implication that the boy’s murderer could be among them had put Stanton on edge. There were plenty of men in the party who might count violence, even perversion, among their qualities. He thought back to what Bryant had said about how dangerous tendencies could be hidden. Keseberg was rumored to beat that young wife of his when he thought no one was looking, and Stanton believed it. The man was a self-taught shark with cards and forgot nothing—the exact type to hold a grudge, and to act on one.
Then there was the Graves family’s hired hand John Snyder; he bullied the younger teamsters mercilessly, would often get them to hand over their evening’s ration of beer or take his shift as sentry. Unsavory men all, but all brutal in a common, regular way. Hundreds of men just like them had made their way west; thousands, even. Stanton had a hard time picturing any of them as the kind of monster who would mutilate a small boy. That took a special kind of savagery all its own, and it left a tremor in him, a question with no answer.
He knew he wouldn’t sleep.
All that was left of his neglected campfire were a few dying embers. Too late to cook supper but he wasn’t hungry, not after what he’d seen in the field. He’d rather crawl into his bedroll with the last of his whiskey and try to wipe out the vision that wouldn’t go away. He tried to remember where he had hidden the bottle. As he approached his wagon, however, he heard the sound of movement in the shadows. He wasn’t alone.
His hand went to the revolver on his hip just as a figure stepped out of the shadows. Tamsen Donner lowered a shawl from over her head. The sight of her drove through him like a knife. Tamsen Donner was too pretty for her own good.
For anyone’s good.
He pulled his hand back from his holster. “Is there something I can do for you, Mrs. Donner?” He said her name carefully, with purpose.
Her hair was falling out of its upsweep. When was the last time he’d touched a woman’s hair? Back in Springfield, there had been a young widow who worked at the milliner’s on the same street as his shop, a quiet woman who, twice a week, crept up the back stairs to his room over the dry-goods store. The widow’s hair had been a tangle of curls and she’d kept it carefully pinned as though she’d been ashamed of its coarseness, its wildness. Tamsen Donner’s hair was dark and fell like water.
She looked up at his face. “The news is all over camp. My husband was gone and I didn’t know where he’d disappeared to… I suppose I wasn’t thinking straight. But all I could think was that I needed someone—and I thought of you.”
The Donners had other men in their party, he knew: George’s own brother Jacob and a few hired drovers for the oxen. Enough to protect the women and children. But she had come here, leaving her daughters behind to seek comfort from a man who was practically a stranger.
She came closer to him, her shawl shifting so he could see her collarbone and then the tops of her breasts, flawless and white, pressed tight against the neckline of her dress. “I hope you don’t mind my coming to see you.”