October Skies (12 page)

Not for the first time, Ben found himself wondering if the old guide had lost his way in the dark, and led them up a dead end.

He led his two ponies, the first bearing his personal things, the second his medicine box and several sacks of cornmeal and oats. He didn’t trust their footing now to ride, instead choosing to feel his way forward through the three or four inches of snow to the uneven and rutted ground.

Keats likewise was on foot ahead, pulling his animal behind him with a vicious determination.

Have you bloody well lost us, Mr Keats? He wanted to call out. This trail of his seemed to be little more than a narrow artery of steeply ascending ground on which the trees had mutually elected not to grow. It certainly didn’t feel like wagons had worn a path this way . . . ever.

Beside him, an ox lost its footing and stumbled, causing the beast behind it to step to the side, pulling the conestoga askew. It slid in the trampled mush and thudded into a sapling, splintering its trunk and sending a shower of snow down on the canvas. The oxen, and the man leading them, struggled to get the wagon on the move again, up the incline. Behind them, well . . . he could barely see the glow of the oil lamp of another man leading his team of oxen, through the thick veil of feathery snowflakes. The train was halted.

Ben looked uphill towards Keats. The old man was pressing on regardless.

‘Keats!’ he called out. ‘Hey, Mr Keats!’

The guide glanced back, quickly noting the temporary snarl-up. He gestured forward, and said something that Ben failed to understand. Then he carried on, leading the other wagons with him uphill, until Ben could barely see the faint bobbing glow of the lamp swinging from the back of the rearmost wagon.

He wondered whether to hurry forward to catch them up, or remain with the wagon here, still struggling with the weary team of oxen.

‘Keats!’ he called out again, but his voice bounced back off the trees either side, and was quickly smothered by the heavy descending blanket of swirling snow.

‘Are the others not waiting?’ called the man with the wagon, one of the Mormons.

‘It seems not, Mr Larkin.’

‘What? They can’t leave us all here.’

‘Let me run ahead. He may not understand you’ve stopped.’ Ben tied his leading pony to Larkin’s wagon, and then trotted forward, stumbling as he tried to catch up. As he made his way ahead, the lamp at the front of the wagon behind him grew faint, and within a dozen more faltering steps he found himself alone in complete darkness, and wary that not being able to see anything he might veer away from the grooves in the snow and become lost in the pitch-black wilderness.

‘Dammit,’ he whispered.

‘Keats!’ he called out, stepping quickly forward through snow that was ankle deep.

Up ahead, he saw the reassuring faint glow of light from the rear wagon, and puffed with relief.

As he approached, he sensed the incline of the ground lessening, each step growing easier. The light burned more clearly, surrounded by a bloom of illuminated tumbling flakes. The wagon had stopped, and beside it he saw the shadowy outline of several people.

Oh, what now? Another mishap?

He drew closer and recognised the outline of Keats and his Indian, Broken Wing. They were talking with others, the men from the wagons, gathered together in some sort of impromptu meeting.

‘. . . up ahead. Not far,’ Keats was saying.

Ben joined them. ‘What’s not far? The pass?’

‘Nope,’ Keats shook his head sombrely. ‘Ain’t gonna make the pass now.’ He looked up at the dark sky, and squinted at the thick flakes settling on his face. He brushed them irritably away. ‘No way we gonna get through that now. Broken Wing found us a space big enough we can camp up in for tonight.’

‘We’re stopping?’

He nodded. ‘We’re stopping.’ He spat into the snow. ‘Can’t see for crap in this, anyhow. We’ll see what kind of a mess we’re in in the morning.’ He turned to the men gathered around. ‘Follow Broken Wing. It’s just up ahead.’

As the men moved off to return to their wagons he stepped towards Ben.

‘You head back down the hill, Lambert, and tell the others there’s a big clearing up ahead, and we’re makin’ camp there right now.’

Ben nodded. ‘I suppose this is it, then?’

Keats shrugged. ‘Snow’s come real early. Might just be a warning, an’ it’ll melt off in a day.’

‘Or?’

‘Might be the winter’s gone an’ beat us to the mountains. I’ll see better in the mornin’.’

 

It seems Keats was right. We should have left that crippled wagon behind and moved with greater haste.

Now with the morning I can see what sort of a predicament we are in. To my inexperienced eye, this doesn’t look like snow that will melt away under a few hours of sunshine.

 

Ben looked up from his journal and out through the open canvas flap. The pale morning sun was a pitifully weak glowing disc in the white sky. The forest surrounding the clearing was uniformly white, the tall Douglas firs and spruces each bearing their own thick burden of snow. Against many of the wagons thick powdery drifts had piled up, almost completely burying their wheels.

Last night, as the snow came down in gusting diagonal streaks - enormous flakes the size of a child’s fist - Ben had hurriedly tried to improvise a bivouac. It was too dark to hack branches from the trees around the clearing. The best he could manage was to roll himself up snugly in his poncho, inside his bedroll and canvas tarp, moisture-sealed with linseed oil, and shelter beneath the trap of Mr McIntyre’s conestoga, whilst his two ponies shivered together out in the open. But McIntyre wouldn’t have it when he heard Ben shuffling around beneath their cart and insisted he come in with them for the night.

The otherwise uncomfortable squirming of fidgeting children was pleasantly comforting and, more importantly, warm. The McIntyres were kind to have offered him a space, but with three children in the back of the wagon, the arrangement could only be for the one night.

There was a stirring in the wagon and a chorus of croaky ‘good mornings’ exchanged, amidst plumes of condensation. Outside, Ben could see there was already a flurry of activity. Keats was already up and taking note of the downfall. His flinty old face, normally frozen into its one and only expression of tired sufferance, was now drawn into a stretched scowl of concern. Ben watched him talking quietly with Broken Wing, both looking up repeatedly at the featureless white sky. Other people were rising, emerging from their wagons, pushing cascades of snow off their laden canopies, dropping out of the back into knee-deep drifts and yelping with surprise.

Keats nodded firmly, the discussion with Broken Wing concluded and a decision made. ‘Goddamned snow’s here now!’ he bellowed angrily. His voice echoed back off the trees a moment later. ‘There’ll be no going anywhere now!’ He stamped snow off his boots and deerskin britches. ‘Damn it!’

Ben put away his writing things.

‘C’mon! Everyone up! We’ve got work to do!’ Keats was barking out orders to everyone, his people and Preston’s, to get up, to get to work.

‘That’s it! C’mon! Everybody up! Your wagons ain’t wagons no more. They gotta be turned into winter shelters!’

Ben thanked Mr and Mrs McIntyre for taking him in last night. Considering how deep the snow was, he realised he would have had to dig himself out - if he hadn’t frozen to death in his sleep. McIntyre was already sorting through his tools. Mrs McIntyre flashed him a smile. ‘Well now, we’re all in this together, Mr Lambert, aren’t we?’

‘Everyone up! C’mon! There’s work to do! Plenty of it!’ Keats’s voice echoed around the clearing. ‘Get up and grab your tools!’

Ben disentangled himself from the splayed limbs of the still-sleeping children and climbed out through the canvas opening, shuddering as a blast of freezing air enveloped him - a contrast to the warm fug of body heat built up in the McIntyres’ wagon overnight.

He dropped off the trap, knee-deep into the snow, and found himself wincing at the bright, upward-reflected glare all around him. Looking around, he hadn’t realised how big the clearing was. Last night, the wagons had limped into this place after dark, with snow reducing visibility to just a few dozen yards. There had appeared to be space enough to spread out off the track and corral the oxen together, and so they had, expecting that with first light, they would hitch up again and be moving on.

Ben watched as men obediently stirred from every wagon - Preston’s people as well as Keats’s - each brandishing a saw or an axe. They waded through the snow towards Keats. He saw the tall, slender frame of Preston amongst them, almost a head taller than most of the stocky men of his church.

‘Gentlemen, join us here in the centre!’ Preston’s voice boomed across the clearing. ‘With your tools, if you please!’

Ben made his way towards Keats. Broken Wing stood silently beside him, his head covered with a red woollen cap.

‘Good morning,’ said Ben.

‘What’s good about it?’ spat Keats angrily.

Men gathered about him. Preston pushed his way through them. ‘Mr Keats, it appears then that the weather has let us down.’

‘You could say that,’ the old guide replied dryly.

‘Will this lot melt, do you think?’

Keats shook his head. ‘Nope. This ain’t a warning of winter . . . this is it for real. It just arrived last night, and ain’t goin’ nowhere till spring.’

‘Could we not at least try for your pass?’ asked Preston.

‘Too goddamn steep. You want the ground clear, dry an’ hard. An’ sure as hell it ain’t any of those right now.’

‘So you’re saying we’re stuck here?’

‘Unless we leave here on foot.’

Preston shook his head. ‘No . . . no, that would be impossible. These wagons contain all my people have. Everything. ’

Keats nodded. ‘They’d lose it all, that’s for sure. Anyway, you’d be a fool tryin’ to make it out on foot through the winter. Not even Indians an’ trappers’ll do that if they can help.’ Keats nodded to the people emerging from their wagons. ‘An’ you got women and little ’uns to worry ’bout.’

Preston nodded contritely. Ben sensed there was an unspoken apology in the subtle tip of his head. ‘You are a man I presume who has experienced a winter in the wilderness.’

Keats snorted sarcastically. ‘Reckon a few.’

‘Then I shall bow to your greater experience. What are we to do?’

The old man sucked a lungful of chilled air in through his bulbous, pockmarked nose. Ben suspected that deep down, the guide was probably savouring a moment of schadenfreude at Preston’s expense.

‘Well, if we’d left that lame wagon, we’d have made it through. But I reckon winter’s here now. So . . . best we can do, Preston, is think about turnin’ this space in the woods into a winterin’ camp. That means you gotta turn those wagons of yours into shelters.’

There was a ripple of consternation amongst the men nearby.

‘Yeah, that’s right. You’re gonna break ’em up for lumber that you can use to build—’

‘I can’t do that!’ called out one of the Mormon men. ‘My wagon cost me the best part of fifty dollars!’

Other voices murmured in agreement.

‘Should we not just wait for this snow to clear?’ asked another.

Keats shook his head. ‘Like I already said, this ain’t clearing till March.’

‘Would the wagons not be shelter enough?’

Keats looked at Broken Wing and repeated something in an Indian tongue. The Indian snorted with dry amusement.

‘Gonna get a lot colder than last night. You gonna have to build yourselves proper winter-overs.’

Several more voices amongst the gathered men - now numbering about forty - were raised in concern. Ben noticed none of them, neither Preston’s men nor Keats’s party, were happy with the idea of admitting defeat so readily.

‘Quiet there!’ barked Preston.

There was silence.

‘Mr Keats knows better than anyone here what winter in these mountains will bring.’ Preston looked around at the men. ‘We shall take his very good advice, and be thankful to God that he sent this man along with us.’

Preston turned back to Keats. ‘Not a one of us has had to build a winter shelter in haste from a wagon. How do you suggest we proceed?’

‘You gotta build yourself a sturdy frame from the lumber, to start,’ Keats replied without a beat. ‘Gotta be a good goddamn frame too; there’s plenty of snow gonna drift up, and that weighs some.’ He pointed to the nearest conestoga. ‘Good solid planks there along the length of the trap will do fine. The canvas goes over the frame, then you gotta cut yourself as much pine as you can for warmth - pile it on top of the canvas, thick as you can. The snow that’ll gather on top of that will keep you warmer still.’

Preston nodded.

‘Frame’s gotta be strong, though,’ said Keats. ‘Gonna be your home for near on six months, I’d say.’