The Hunger(5)


And besides, whatever else she felt, she knew she could always trust Jory. Her brother had thought George was right for her; she’d been inclined to believe it. Had willed herself to.

Then George came to her with the idea to move to California. It’s the land of opportunity, he’d said after reading books written by settlers who’d made the journey. We’ll be rich beyond our wildest dreams. We can acquire thousands of acres there, far more than we’d ever be able to buy in Illinois. We’ll start our own empire and pass it on to our children. He talked his brother Jacob into going in with him on a huge spread. When she asked about the rumors she’d heard about trouble in California—weren’t there already Mexicans living there? They weren’t going to just hand over their land. And what about this talk of a coming war with Mexico, the way it had been in Texas?—he dismissed her questions. Americans are moving to California in droves, he’d argued. The government wouldn’t let them go there if it were dangerous. He had even pulled out his favorite book, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California, written by Lansford Warren Hastings, a lawyer who had made the journey, to prove it. And though she’d still had many more questions, part of her wanted to feel the same hope he did . . . that maybe things would be better in California.

But so far she was just stuck on an endless journey surrounded only by the people she cared for least. Her husband’s family.

“Good morning, Betsy,” she said as her sister-in-law approached, forcing a smile. Women were always forced to smile. Tamsen had mastered it so well it sometimes frightened her.

“Good morning, Tamsen.” Betsy was a square woman, broad in the shoulders and hips with a doughy middle that a corset couldn’t control. “Did you hear the news? A boy farther up the line went missing.”

Tamsen was not surprised. The wagon train had already suffered misfortune after misfortune: signs, all of them, if you knew how to interpret them. Just last week, she opened a barrel of flour to find it infested with weevils. It had to be thrown out, of course, an expensive loss. The following night, a woman—Philippine Keseberg, young wife to one of the less savory men on the wagon train—had delivered stillborn. Tamsen grimaced, remembering how the darkness of the prairie seemed to enfold the woman’s wailing, trapping it in the air around them.

Then there were the wolves following them; one family lost its entire supply of dried meat to them, and the wolves had even carried off a squealing newborn calf.

And now, a boy was missing.

“The wolves,” Tamsen said. She hadn’t meant to connect the two incidents, but she couldn’t help it.

Betsy’s hand went to her mouth, one of her many affected habits. “But there were other children asleep in the tent,” she said. “Wouldn’t they have woken up . . . ?”

“Who knows?”

Betsy shook her head. “It might have been Indians, of course. I’ve heard stories of Indians taking white children after they’ve attacked settlements . . .”

“Goodness, Betsy, have you even seen an Indian these last twenty miles?”

“Then what happened to that boy?”

Tamsen just shook her head. Terrible things happened to children—and women—all the time, in their own homes, by people you knew, people you thought you could trust. If that wasn’t bad enough, here they were living in close quarters with hundreds of strangers. Odds were that at least one of them was guilty of terrible sin.

But she herself would not fall victim to tragedy, not if she could help it. She had means, limited though they were: charms, talismans, ways to persuade evil to pass by your door.

Unfortunately, however, these were not capable of easing the evil within.

Nearby, a man Tamsen recognized as Charles Stanton was herding cattle with a switch. Younger than George, Stanton had the look of a man who spent his days working hard in the field, not in a shop somewhere. He glanced up and caught Tamsen staring. She looked quickly away.

“The truth is apt to be far worse than we could imagine,” Tamsen said, somewhat enjoying the way Betsy looked at her in shock.

“Where are your girls this morning? I only see three,” Betsy said. Her voice was filled with sudden agitation.

Usually Tamsen had her daughters walk the first half of the day, hoping it would keep them fit and slender. Beauty could be a problem for a girl, but it was one of the few weapons a grown woman had, and she wanted them to preserve theirs if they could. The older girls, Elitha and Leanne, George’s daughters by his second wife, would watch after the younger ones: Frances, Georgia, and Eliza. Today, however, only the teenagers walked ahead, with Frances weaving around them like a frisky calf, full of energy and happy to have both girls’ attention to herself. Betsy’s seven boys and girls were a distance in front of them, heads down, trudging together as mindlessly as oxen.

“There’s nothing to worry about. Georgia and Eliza are in the wagon,” Tamsen said. “They woke with fevers this morning and were fussy. I thought it best to let them rest.”

“Just so, yes. Little ones tire out so easily.”

Sometimes Tamsen was amazed to think that she was a mother. It didn’t feel possible that she and George had been married long enough to produce three children together. Their babies were lovely, the spitting image of herself as a child, thank heavens. Elitha and Leanne, on the other hand, took after their father: big-boned and a little horse-faced.

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