The Vanishing (17 page)

The wagon train had moved through slowly, warily, following a trail that seemed made for the passing of travelers but that Marshall could have sworn had not been in existence only moments previously. They’d been quiet, even the most talkative among them, even the children, and the animals had been subdued as well, as though sensing something amiss. At one point, he thought he’d seen something through the leaves, a squat dark figure darting away from them from bush to bush, and the shape of the figure had gnawed at his brain because he was sure he had seen it somewhere before.

Far more troubling were the whispers, sibilant sounds that came from nowhere and everywhere, that he couldn’t understand but that seemed to be speaking directly to him.

Fortunately, the forest was small, lasting only a league, and once through it they again found themselves amid the ordinary greenery of the surrounding countryside, ensconced among plants they recognized with a bright sun in a clear blue sky above. All was right again.

It was then someone noticed that Emily Smith and her family were gone.

Uriah made everyone stop, and he rode quickly up and back the length of the caravan, counting wagons, looking for Emily and her husband. But it was true. They had not emerged from the forest. No one could quite understand how that was possible. Their wagon had been neither first nor last. It had been in the middle of the procession, but neither the Turners in front of them nor Jed Clayton behind claimed to have seen a thing.

Almost as one, they turned back to look at the wall of peculiar trees that marked the boundary of that mysterious place, and though no one said a thing, Marshall could tell that none of them were eager to retrace their steps and look for the Smiths. But it had to be done, and as much as he hated the woman, Marshall volunteered along with a few other single men and Uriah to undertake the search.

The woods seemed neither as dark nor as eerie as they had before. The noises were gone, as were any glimpses of hidden figures in the foliage. Unfortunately, Emily Smith and her husband were gone, too. They traversed the length of the woods along the same trail they’d traveled, then covered the opposite direction, crosswise, but to no avail. The Smiths, their wagon, their horses and their cow had completely disappeared.

They searched what felt like every square foot of the forest, and after several hours of this, the eight of them emerged from the western end of the strange wood and met up with the rest of the wagon train. None of them had any idea what to do next. They all felt guilty about leaving the Smiths behind, but they had done all they could to find the couple, and no one wanted to remain nearby with the coming of night. The decision was Uriah’s to make, however, and the wagon master said they had to press on. Emily and her husband had food and supplies, and they could always catch up to the train.

If they were still alive.

‘‘God will take care of them,’’ Morgan James announced. ‘‘God will provide.’’

No one responded to that.

It was midafternoon, and the Dark Woods were no longer in sight by the time night fell, but the wagon train pressed on, not stopping before sunset as they usually did, not making camp for the evening until it was nearly midnight and the moon was high overhead.

It was Marshall and George who christened them the Dark Woods, and the name stuck, catching on even with the religious faction. Any agreement ended there, though, and for the remainder of the journey the travelers remained segregated and increasingly hostile to one another, Tyler Hamilton even going so far as to suggest that the ‘‘heathens’’ among them were responsible for the Smiths’ disappearance. Rancorous confrontations had replaced normal conversation, and though no gun or knife fights had broken out, there’d been occasional fisticuffs, and Marshall thought that it was probably only a matter of time before conflicts escalated into violence.

So they parted ways after happening upon the well-worn tracks of the Mormon Trail and connecting with another wagon train a few miles up the route. The religious contingent headed west on the California Trail, claiming God would protect them from the winter, though they had been warned by fellow seekers that Donner Pass was inaccessible. The remainder headed northwest along the Oregon Trail, stopping for a few days of rest at Fort Hall before moving on.

Marshall felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and the truth was that they seemed to make much better time unencumbered by the dead weight that was Morgan James and the other zealots. They reached Oregon just before the change of seasons, and he wintered there, working where and when he could, living in a one-room cabin with George Johnson and an ever-shifting group of hard-drinking not-so-hard-working men who were biding their time until the cold weather ended.

In the spring, he headed south on his own. As much as he appreciated traveling with others and the security it offered should they encounter Indians, he felt much happier by himself. He didn’t have to try and get along with anyone; he didn’t have to worry about offending other people. He could be who he was and go where he wanted without having to compromise.

He still had his horses, and he’d amassed a small grubstake over the winter that, added to what he already had, allowed him a little extra bit of freedom. He had no plan, really. He supposed he would make his way to Sacramento or San Francisco, one of the towns, and talk to people, try to get the lay of the land before deciding where to go from there. George had given him a rough map, copied from a friend who’d copied it from someone else’s hand-drawn directions, and though he had no idea whether it was accurate, it was all he had to go on. He figured it wasn’t any worse than following the sun—his original plan—so he made his way over streams, through valleys, across deserts until he found himself in an area that . . . spoke to him.

There was no other way to put it, and the fact that these rugged foothills made him think of the mud hut and the endless plain and the explosion of flowers— though this region looked
nothing
like any of that— caused him to realize that this was where he’d been heading, this was where he’d been led.

Led by whom, though? God? He didn’t believe in that. He now conceded that there were powers and entities beyond his understanding, but there was no proof that these powers had created men—the way the Bible said—or that they even
cared
about men. There was no indication that these entities were good, either. For all he knew, it was only man’s mortal morality that stood in contrast to the evil of supernatural forces.

Riding the mare, leading the other horses and a pack mule behind, Marshall sauntered slowly through the shallow canyons of the foothills. Winter snow and rain had left the region green and lush, and between the outcroppings of rock and the occasional stands of trees grew oversized bushes with red branches, the likes of which he had never seen. This fertile land was so close to his initial conception of California that he found it hard to believe it was a real place. It was like heaven here, and he took off his hat and smiled into the warm dry sun, grateful to be alive.

It was early the next morning that he rode into an oak forest so beautiful it looked like a painting. He traveled along at a good clip, feeling unaccountably happy and energetic. He was still filled with the certainty that this area was his destination, this was where he belonged, and he left George’s secondhand map folded in his saddlebag, navigating on instinct.

He had stopped to water the horses at a small brook when he thought he saw movement through the trees. Quickly but quietly, he grabbed his rifle. The dried elk he’d brought with him from Oregon had run out over a week ago, and other than a rabbit he’d caught two days back and a puny trout he’d speared in a stream higher up, he’d had no meat whatsoever. He’d been living on berries and biscuits and booze, and the thought that he might be able to bring down a buck or even a boar made him salivate and caused his stomach to rumble.

He approached slowly, cautiously, careful not to step on any dried leaves or twigs, not wanting to frighten the animal off. There was definitely something moving in a clearing up ahead—more than one, if he wasn’t mistaken—and he could hear the muffled noises that the creatures were making.

Only . . .

Only the noises sounded like human voices.

Frowning, Marshall increased his pace, still moving quietly, until he reached the edge of the clearing. Ducking down behind a wall of brush, he peeked out through the leaves.

In the center of the meadow were two women, both completely naked and both kneeling in a patch of mud, posteriors up, each exposing her sex like an animal in heat. The one on the right, he saw now, was pissing, a yellow stream arcing behind her.

What was going on? The women obviously hadn’t seen him, and he remained hidden behind the branches and bushes, sickened yet fascinated. The pissing woman started shouting something that sounded like a poem or a rhyme, and the small hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickled.

Witchcraft,
he thought, and though he had never believed in such mumbo jumbo, he had seen too much on the trail to completely discount anything. In fact, such an explanation seemed to him to be the only logical one. There was something ritualistic about the women’s behavior, something that made him think they were appealing to a higher power or attempting to invoke unseen energies.

Now the other one was pissing, her stream shooting in a different direction. The first woman had placed her face in the mud, rubbing her cheeks in it, and Marshall grimaced in disgust as he realized how that dirt had probably gotten wet.

‘‘Jack be nimble!’’ the second woman chanted. ‘‘Jack be quick! Take me with your dirty prick!’’

He could hear her clearly, and there seemed to be desperation in her voice as well as determination. She was shouting to be heard, but by what or whom he could not guess. Involuntarily, he looked behind him, checking to make sure he was alone.

He was.

‘‘They’re not coming!’’ the first woman sobbed, bringing her head up.

‘‘It doesn’t happen every time,’’ the other woman said consolingly. She pressed her own cheeks into the mud, as though resolved to complete the ritual no matter what.

‘‘But I want a baby!’’

A baby?
Puzzlement changed into complete confusion, and Marshall emerged from the bushes, determined to discover what exactly was going on. ‘‘Hey!’’ he called out.

The women, startled and panicked, took one look at him and ran away screaming, dashing muddy and barefoot over the rough ground into the trees on the other side of the clearing. They did not stop to pick up their clothes because there were no clothes to pick up. They had arrived here naked, they ran away naked, and he thought that this was probably their natural state of dress. They were both fair of skin, but Marshall wondered if perhaps they weren’t some new sort of savage indigenous to California. Not Indian or African but something new.

They’d spoken English, though.

There was no good explanation for what he had seen, nothing he could imagine that made any sense whatsoever. He considered following the women, but after all he’d experienced on the journey here, he thought that to do so might be dangerous. He was afraid of where they might lead him, and he quickly backtracked through the trees, retrieved his horses and deliberately set off in the opposite direction.

He hadn’t known what to expect when he’d left Missouri for California, but there was no way he could have predicted any of the events that had befallen him. Marshall felt better, though, for having come. His health had improved greatly, and even the hardships of the trail had not diminished the positive physical effects of leaving the bottom lands and heading west. He had a new lease on life, and if that meant occasional encounters with things he could not explain, then so be it.

He rode south over a series of hills until he came to a well-worn rut that turned out to be a trail. Changing directions, he followed it until he saw signs of human encampment. There was an enclosed colony up ahead, and he wondered if it was Sutter’s Fort. According to his map, that was still a day away, but the map had been wrong about almost everything so far, and he could think of nothing this could be
except
the fort.

Still, he approached slowly, unsure if he would be greeted as friend or foe.

He and his horses were spotted several yards away, and a sentry’s shout asked him to identify himself.

‘‘James W. Marshall!’’ he called out. ‘‘From Missouri!’’

He was waved on and made his way into the fort, where he was greeted warmly by men and women alike. Dismounting, he shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before leading his animals to the stable next to the smithy. As he was instructing the stableboy on the care and feeding of his horses and his mule, Marshall was accosted by a rather stern-looking man dressed in black. ‘‘Do you by any chance do carpentry?’’ the man asked.

‘‘I’ve been known to,’’ Marshall allowed.

‘‘We could use some help around the fort.’’

‘‘If you’re offering me work,’’ Marshall said, ‘‘I’ll take it.’’

The man held out his hand. ‘‘The name’s Sutter,’’ he said. ‘‘John Sutter.’’

Twelve

Andrew Bledsoe drove west on the interstate, ignoring the exaggeratedly loud conversation being conducted for his benefit in the rear of the van.

‘‘Max’s family has a DVD player.’’

‘‘Shelley’s has
two.
One in the front seat for her mom and one in the back for her.’’

‘‘It sure makes trips a lot less boring.’’

The talk went on in this way for several more miles, but when Andrew didn’t take the bait, Johnny asked him directly: ‘‘Dad, how come we can’t get a DVD player for the van?’’

‘‘Because.’’

‘‘Because why? Because we can’t afford it?’’

‘‘That’s right,’’ he lied.