Led to the Slaughter Read online

  Perhaps they mean to kill us all, leaving no witnesses, or perhaps they have a different plan––or none at all, for I suspect the werewolves are leaderless. From the beginning, it has seemed that they are simply taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. There has been no order to who they attack and when, except that they prey on the most helpless.

  Well, I don’t intend to be helpless. They may take me in the end, but I’ll take at least one of them with me. I check the powder in my rifle constantly and replace it whenever it seems clotted. I do not have enough powder to do this with the pistols, so I’m not confident they will fire, but I am confident of this: the first werewolf to attack me or mine will pay the price.

  #

  I feel safer at night inside this awful cabin. I put cups and pans and anything else that might make a clatter just inside the entrance. I’ve tried to talk some of the others into keeping watch as I sleep, though no one is reliable. Still, I must sleep. We remain besieged, but the creatures have not yet dared to attack.

  #

  In the end, they came for us in broad daylight. We emerged from the cabin in the morning, those of us who could still move. I took my usual spot near the entrance and kept watch over my family and friends. Some walked around poking at the ground and peering under bushes as if hoping they would find a cache of food. Others simply sat and soaked up the warmth of the sun.

  When the wolves attacked, they first appeared as a solid, dark wave, rolling toward us over the white and red snow. As they came nearer, the creatures separated and I could make out their individual shapes. Rising to my feet, I began counting, but in my fear and anxiety, I lost track. I tried again, and again lost count. I would guess there were at least twenty.

  The huge red wolf I recognized as Keseberg was in the lead.

  I stood and raised my rifle, waiting. The other inhabitants of my cabin were gone, having rushed inside at the first sight of the wolves. It won’t help, I thought. When I am gone, there will be no one to protect them.

  I was surprisingly calm, and firm in my resolve. I’d been expecting to die like this. I had even thought it might be preferable to death by starvation, as long as I didn’t come back as one of them. If it had just been me, I might have turned the gun on myself, but I had the others to think of.

  Keseberg swung his big head toward me, ordering one of his wolves forward. It began to stalk toward me, approaching as if confident that I wouldn’t fire or that I would be so frightened I would miss.

  I didn’t miss. The werewolf was gathering itself to spring when I fired. I hit it directly in the chest, and it fell to the ground. A second wolf was already leaping at me. I swung the stock of the rifle with all my might and caught it in the side of the head. It rolled away and then rose to its feet, shaking itself and growling.

  The rifle was broken in half, useless. I pulled one of the pistols, but instead of taking aim at my attacker, I aimed at Keseberg and fired. He gave a high-pitched yelp, like a dog that’s been kicked, then limped away, bleeding. His left hind leg looked as if it was barely attached to his body.

  Drawing my other pistol, I turned to face the remaining wolves, but they too were fleeing, tails bobbing behind them as they disappeared amongst the trees.

  A moment later, I found out why. With their keener ears, they’d heard before I did the sound I’d dreamed of for months: shouts, the hearty shouts of healthy men, such as I had not heard in a long while. They had heard my shot and come running.

  “Father?” I cried, searching anxiously for his familiar form.

  A group of men entered the clearing; strong, energetic men, calling out to me excitedly, leading pack mules laden with supplies… with food.

  Trembling, I fell to my knees in the slushy snow, heedless of how it dampened my trousers or of who saw me weeping.

  We were saved.

  CHAPTER 34

  Diary of Virginia Reed, Truckee Lake, February 19, 1847

  I can once again put a date to my entry. It is weeks later than I thought. Time became one frozen moment of misery for so long that it seemed like eternity.

  At first, I was ashamed. I could see the shock and horror in our rescuers’ eyes. They went into the Murphy cabin and emerged white-faced and grim. There was a pit near the cabin where body parts were strewn about, and they found a young boy inside the pit, eating the flesh off a human arm.

  None of them has said anything to us directly, but their attitude toward us changed from one of pity to one of wariness.

  No one in the Reed and Breen cabin resorted to eating human flesh. As this became clear to our rescuers, they regained their sympathy for our small group while retaining their ill-concealed revulsion toward the others.

  It isn’t their fault! I want to tell them. The werewolves had them trapped. The werewolves caused most of this carnage.

  I hold my tongue.

  They would think me mad, like Mother Murphy, who hasn’t stopped babbling since they arrived. When she first emerged from her cabin, she said, “Are you men from California, or are you from heaven?” That was the last coherent thing she said. She raves of monsters, and the men avoid her.

  They are so vital, so quick compared to us. It is as if we were frozen and are only now coming back to life. We move like the broken arms of a dropped clock, in jerks and stops, but the men are kind and help us. The leader of our rescuers is named Ben, and though he is a couple of years older than me, he seems but a boy in his enthusiasm. His chivalry toward me makes me shiver with delight. I must look like a smashed doll, but he treats me as if I am a lady of the royal court.

  When he told me that Father organized this rescue and will be here in a few days, I cried out, “A few days? No!” before I could stop myself.

  He gave me a strange look and awaited an explanation for my outburst, but when none was forthcoming, he began again. “Miss Reed, you are weak, all of you… ”

  “No,” I interrupted. How could I explain the urgency? “No, we must leave now, now, before… before the accursed snows begin again.”

  “We have brought ample supplies. You must recover your strength before you travel,” Ben said, puzzled by my insistence. They’d been doling out the food slowly, so that none of us could do ourselves harm by eating too much too quickly.

  “I assure you, sir, all of us would rather brave the trip,” I told him grimly.

  “Very well,” he said. “Those of you who are strong enough, we’ll take back. It is still early in the spring, and there is always the chance of another snowstorm, I suppose.”

  I let him think that this was what worried me. No wolves have shown themselves since the rescue party arrived––none but Keseberg. The scarred man stares at me with an intensity that frightens me. He is crippled now, and cannot come after me even though he wants to.

  But that doesn’t stop him from watching me.

  When I was alone, I was fearless. Now, among these strong men, I fear the werewolves will find a way to pluck me from their grasp.

  Ben seemed to think it strange when I asked for a rifle, but he handed me one without a word. Killing Keseberg is very much on my mind, but I can’t murder him in cold blood, nor would the rescuers understand why a thirteen-year-old girl would suddenly shoot an incapacitated man.

  None of us has said anything about werewolves. If none of us had resorted to cannibalism, if the wolves had caused all this, perhaps we would speak, but since some are, in fact, guilty of the crime of which they are accused, we keep silent.

  I have considered the men and women still left alive and tried to guess which of them are werewolves, but have finally accepted that aside from the Donners, Keseberg, and a few of his friends, I can’t tell. Some among us look better fed than the rest, but there is more than one explanation for that.

  I saw Jean Baptiste earlier, talking with some of our rescuers, and wondered when he had returned. He wouldn’t look at me at all, and when I moved toward him, he moved away, keeping his distance.

  I can tell that the
others are already denying what they experienced, already attributing what they saw and heard to the hunger and the cold. But I know the supernatural horrors were real, and I will never forget that fact, no matter how comfortable my future. I will always remember that evil stalks us.

  February 21, 1847

  We have begun our journey to our new home. There are twenty-three of us strong enough to leave. Thirty-three are being left behind to wait for the next rescue party. This is the first count we’ve taken since being trapped by the snows, and there are more survivors than I expected. There were times, deep in the night, when I thought the few people in our cabin were the last humans on Earth.

  Patty and Tommy only made it a few hundred yards uphill before it became clear they couldn’t continue. We stood on the trail trying to decide what to do.

  “I will stay with them,” I said as I saw my mother waver.

  “No, Virginia,” she said with surprising firmness. “You will leave with us; no arguing.”

  One of the men in the relief party overhead us. I think his name was Mr. Glover. “I’ll stay,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to them.”

  Mother still hesitated. I knew what she was asking herself: should she save those children she could, or should we all stay… and perhaps all die?

  “Go, Mother,” Patty said. “If I don’t see you again, do the best you can.”

  I looked at my sister in surprise. She had a resolute look on her face that reminded me of Father.

  “I’ll go with them back to the cabin,” I said.

  “No!” Mother’s was almost shouting, she was so agitated, which was a sign that she was recovering. She wasn’t the ghost of a woman she’d been for the last few weeks. “You are coming with us, Virginia!”

  “I promise I will catch up,” I said. “I promise.”

  Mother stared at me for a moment longer, then nodded. “I will take you at your word, Virginia. Hurry.”

  As we walked back to the cabin, Mr. Glover carrying Tommy, I tried to figure out how to broach the subject of the monsters. The men had seen the wolf tracks and heard several of the survivors talk about attacks, but I don’t think they believed us. They seemed to think we were trying to cover up what we had done.

  “There are wolves in this camp,” I said abruptly.

  Glover looked over at me but didn’t break stride. “Oh?”

  “I assure you, I have seen them. They’re dangerous. They’ve lost their fear of man and have preyed on us.”

  He said nothing. As we neared the cabin, he stopped and looked me in the eye. “I’ll be on the lookout,” he said.

  Mrs. Breen heard us and poked her head out the entrance. “You can’t come in,” she said emphatically.

  “Pardon?” Glover said, perplexed.

  “I won’t let you in!” she shouted. “The food is ours!”

  “Ma’am, I have enough supplies in my pack to feed myself and these two young ones for weeks. Let us in.” He turned to me, eyebrows raised in amazement. I stared back at him. He will never know what it was like. He will never understand why Mrs. Breen said that. But I did.

  “Please believe me, Mister Glover,” I said. “You must stay alert.”

  He nodded, then ducked through the entrance, carrying Tommy. Patty hugged me tightly, then followed them without a word.

  I turned and headed back to join Jimmy, Mother, and the others, carrying my rifle and looking around alertly. Last chance to catch me, I thought. I hope you try.

  There was no sign of the creatures. Perhaps they were planning to follow those of us leaving the camp, hoping to keep us from reaching salvation. Perhaps there was yet to be a final battle. I almost hoped so, because the alternative was that the wolves were staying to finish off those left behind.

  I thought of defying Mother and turning back, but she had been adamant, which was unlike her, and I knew that if I disobeyed her, the thread of trust between us––which had long been frayed––would finally and irrevocably be broken.

  February 23, 1847

  I caught up to the others quickly. Our group can only move as fast as the slowest among us. We are so close to freedom! Just a few more days and we will be out of the mountains. But the clouds once again grow dark. I fear we will not make it. Another storm is coming.

  All this time, I’ve secretly believed we were condemned, though I’ve been unwilling to admit it to myself. Now, so close to freedom, I seem to have lost my courage. Our bad luck is following us. We ran out of supplies on the third day, but our rescuers are confident. They say there is a cache of food and supplies a short distance away.

  February 24, 1847

  The food cache is missing, and the supplies are strewn about the clearing. What hasn’t been spoiled has been defecated on or stomped into the dirt.

  “What kind of animal would do this?” one of the men wondered out loud, though there are wolf tracks all over.

  Those of us from Truckee Lake looked at each other uneasily. We know what kind of creatures would do such a thing.

  Regrettably, I fear our rescuers are about to find out what it is like to go hungry. The next food station is four days away. It is snowing. The men of the rescue party look around in dismay but talk confidently of the future. Those they have rescued simply put our heads down, hunch our shoulders, and trudge forward. No one has suggested we go back. I think we would rather die.

  We managed to start a fire. It is colder than I can remember, even in the depths of winter, even during Mother’s and my aborted escape attempt, when we’d been without shelter or fire. The Fates aren’t done with us yet. Why fortune favors the foul creatures that stalk us, I cannot understand. Perhaps that which is wild––the mountains and forests––aids those that are wild against the civilized and humane.

  In the middle of the night, I heard someone shouting. I woke to find the men dashing about the camp, and I grabbed my rifle and sat up, certain we were being attacked. There was an unusual odor in the air; or rather, it was a familiar odor, but one I’d never expected to smell again: burning human flesh.

  I saw one of the men dragging the youngest Breen girl away from the fire. She had put her feet near the fire to warm them and fallen asleep, and her feet were so frostbitten that she had not felt her toes burning in the coals.

  The men from California are starting to draw away from us, as if we are cursed. Who can blame them? I see their expressions of alarm and concern, and, yes, fear.

  On the third day without food, one of the older boys crept up to one man’s buckskin jacket and began snipping off the fringe. The rescuers watched in shock as the boy carefully handed out the buckskin strips to the other children, who began to gnaw on the leather.

  You have no idea, I thought as I saw the men recoil. You will never understand, unless you have endured what we have.

  #

  That afternoon, we crossed the summit and started down the other side of the mountains.

  On the fourth day, we found Jody Denton dead in his bedroll. He’d seemed one of the strongest among us, but as we packed up to leave, we realized he hadn’t moved. We left him there, unburied, covered by his blankets.

  We arrived at the next supply cache on the fifth day. It had been better concealed and everything was intact, including the food, but it was too late for little Ada Fitzsimmons, who died soon after being fed a morsel or two.

  We each ate a small amount, our rescuers insisting that we take it easy. They ate heartily, however. I didn’t resent them for it. They are right to keep up their strength.

  We left the rest of the supplies for other relief parties, concealing the food as best we could without hiding it completely. As we walked away, I saw that Mrs. Fitzsimmons was carrying her dead baby. One of the rescuers started to speak to her, but I shook my head at him and he fell silent.

  Again, it seems our saviors don’t know whether to shun us or coddle us.

  We descended the slopes all morning, never complaining, for we knew the end of our t
ravails was near. That knowledge gave us strength.

  All at once, I heard a familiar voice: a loud, confident voice, drifting up from the slopes below.

  My mother cried out and sank to her knees in the snow, sobbing. Father came over the rise, striding confidently like a hero of old, grinning like I’d never seen before. He swept me up in his arms, and I suddenly felt small. All my heavy burdens dropped away, and for a moment, I was his little girl once more. Jimmy grabbed his legs, crying out “Father! Father!” over and over, and then it was his turn to be swept up in Father’s embrace.

  Father set him down gently and took my face between his hands. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  He went to Mother then, knelt at her side, and enfolded her in his arms.

  February 28, 1847

  Father has gone with the rescue party to get Patty and Tommy, but my ordeal is over.

  We reached Sutter’s Fort without further incident. This afternoon, I was sitting on a log in the sun, almost afraid to believe that what I was seeing was real: happy, healthy men and women bustling about their business; children laughing and playing. I didn’t want to move, I felt so serene.

  Ben, the young man who first greeted me at Truckee Lake, approached me shyly.

  I smiled at him so broadly that I must have looked like a fool.

  He stammered for a while, and had to repeat himself three or four times before I understood what he was saying.

  He was asking me to marry him.

  I looked down at my soiled and tattered dress. I knew I must still look like an abandoned rag doll. If ever I’d begun to have womanly curves, they are long gone now. It suddenly occurred to me that I had turned fourteen in the last month, but it had seemed so unimportant.