‘‘It’s cursed!’’ Morgan James avowed, answering his unspoken question.
This was getting ridiculous. No matter how strange this plain might seem, here was a watering hole that could refresh the horses and even the other livestock that had been brought on this journey. To pass it by was a sin as far as he was concerned, and Marshall refused to succumb to the superstition that had apparently affected everyone else.
‘‘I am watering my animals!’’ he announced loudly to anyone who would listen. He swung his mount around and rode back to grab the reins of his packhorses. George Johnson looked longingly at the pond and nodded his support, but most of the others pretended they had not heard, and all of them continued on without pause. Emily Smith, that pious shrew, even looked in the opposite direction, away from him, shielding the eyes of her young son from the sight of him dismounting and leading his animals to drink.
He was so angry that his face felt hot and his hands were shaking. It was all he could do not to curse his fellow travelers as they passed by with their poor bedraggled livestock. What was the matter with them? He understood that many people were very religious—living in this hard land made them so, gave them hope that their lives would improve after they were dead—and he, too, had felt the strangeness of this supposedly haunted plain, but for farmers and ranchers to let nebulous fears keep them from practical obligations like the care of their animals was idiotic. No, it was more than idiotic. It was wrong.
He felt proud, defiant, as he watered his horses, but the moment the end of the wagon train passed by— Clinton Haynes on his newly broken black stallion—the temperature seemed to drop, and though Marshall hated to admit it, he was frightened to be left alone here. Fear changed to sadness as a gentle breeze, carrying scents of long ago, tenderly touched his face. In what seemed like an instant but had to have been the culmination of a long, slow process, the sun disappeared behind the hillock, making the muddy water darker. He was filled with a deep, intense melancholy. He had no idea what lay behind these emotions or where they came from, but he sensed that they were of this land, and he urged his horses to drink faster, though he knew they could not understand.
When the animals had had their fill, he pulled them away, tied the reins together and mounted up. He’d considered replenishing one of his canteens, but the water was too muddy for human consumption, and right now he just wanted to get out of here.
He could no longer see the wagon train, but the tracks were easy enough to follow. Besides, twilight was approaching. They had to make camp for the night, so they couldn’t be too far ahead.
Emerging from between the hillocks, he came out on flat ground. There were patterns in the movement of the meadow grass, waves created by the wind that spoke to him on some level and reminded him of things of which he did not want to be reminded.
Dark things.
He had been going west, but now he was going south, and when he swung right to adjust, he suddenly found himself facing north. The horses seemed confused, too, and he maintained a tight rein on his mount as he kept toward the setting sun. The swaying grass seemed more ominous now, the densely packed stalks higher than they should be, the wind patterns creating long black shadows that looked like figures darting left and right.
As the sun went down in the east and night settled over the plain, Marshall realized he was lost. He should have caught up to the wagon train by now, should at least have been able to hear the others or see their campfire. But the only sounds that came to him on the wind were an odd wooden tapping and a persistent whisper that made him think of the voices of the dead.
He considered making camp but was filled with the certainty that if he did so, he would never catch up to the wagon train. He needed to keep on going until he found them again. Though it shamed him to admit it, Caldwell and the others had been right; he’d been wrong. He shouldn’t have stopped to water his horses.
Fortunately, it was a bright night. The moon came out early and was bigger than it had any right to be, bathing the plain in a silvery-blue light. Ahead, on a slight rise, he saw a squarish shape that seemed completely incongruous in this land of flat ground and rounded mounds, and that almost certainly had to be man-made. It definitely did not look like anything they had seen for the past week, and his hope was that it was a building, a settler’s house where he might get some directions and maybe something a little stronger than water to drink. He spurred his horses onward but slowed as he approached the structure. He could see from here that there were no pens or corrals, no animals of any kind. The place not only seemed empty but did not appear to be intended for habitation. Perhaps, he thought, it was a storehouse of some sort.
All three horses were still roped together and, dismounting, he tied the mare to a large rock. The building itself was a mud hut with a sod roof, although as he drew close, Marshall saw that what he’d taken for an exposed wooden beam on the east corner of the structure was actually a length of bone.
Human bone.
He did not believe it at first. Though the moon was large and low, full and brighter than he had ever seen it before, lunar light played tricks with shadows that sunlight never did, and even when his eyes confirmed that the object was indeed a bone, he continued to believe for several moments that it was the bone of an animal. An elk or buffalo that had died in the mud, perhaps. This close, however, he knew it for what it was, and the chill that passed through him made him shiver like a naked woman on a winter night. His instinct told him to turn tail and run, grab the horses and get away from here as quickly as he could, and it took every ounce of courage he had to disobey that impulse.
He forced himself to walk up to the hut and around it. There were no windows and no door, giving further credence to the possibility that this might be some sort of storehouse, and he wondered if there might be food in here, supplies. He understood that even if there were, the stores belonged to someone else, but he and the others on the wagon train were hurting, and he felt no qualms about appropriating some necessities for the trip.
He walked around the small building a second time, in case he’d missed an entrance. It was difficult to see on the far side, where the moonlight didn’t shine, but he felt the walls as he passed by and found nothing but mud and straw. Back at the front of the hut, his eye continued being drawn to that bone. It looked like it was from the leg of an adult, but as far as he could tell there were no corresponding parts of the skeleton anywhere about. Maybe it really had been in the mud used for construction and its presence here was meaningless.
He didn’t really think that, but Marshall would not allow himself to dwell on the subject. All of a sudden, it had become extremely important to him to find out what was inside the hut, and he made his way back to the horses, took his ax from one of the packs and brought it over to the building. The moon was higher now, its light brighter, and he could clearly see what he was doing.
He hefted the ax and swung it hard against the wall. The mud was thick, and while he didn’t break through it, some of the hardened dirt crumbled. Marshall continued to swing, and by degrees the chip in the wall grew deeper, larger in circumference, until finally, in a single burst, it collapsed before him, creating an opening big enough for him to crawl through.
James Marshall was not a timid soul. No man alive could say that he lacked for courage. Yet he was afraid to poke his head through that hole in the wall, afraid to look into that darkness, afraid of what he might see. He backed away, retreating to the spot where he’d tied the horses, and with trembling fingers withdrew a match and a candle from one of the packs. Taking a deep breath, girding himself for whatever he should find, he lit the candle and, crouching down, still holding his ax, climbed through the opening he had made.
The flame of the candle combined with the moonlight streaming through the hole in the wall, illuminating nearly all of the space within. The hut was devoid of furniture, its single low-ceilinged room empty of everything save a large leather bag filled with human bones. The open bag sat in the far corner, framed by its own oversized shadow, its contents spilling onto the surrounding floor. He was afraid of that bag, frightened the same way he would be by a ghost or a demon, although such a reaction made no logical sense. In his mind was the notion that the sack was alive, an independent entity, that it did not belong to anyone, had not been made by anyone, that it had always been here and had seduced people into killing each other and depositing the bones of their conquered victims.
A small bone fell, clattering against the others on the hard dirt floor, and Marshall jumped, hitting his head on the low ceiling, clods of dirt crumbling into his hair. He was instantly ready to flee, but no further movement followed, and though his muscles remained coiled and tense, he decided that the bone had fallen naturally, as a result of being precariously balanced. He kept his eye on the bag, however, and as he did so a cold wind blew out the flame of his candle.
Only the wind did not come into the hut through the hole leading outside.
It came from the corner.
The interior was darker now by half. The bag seemed as black as its shadow, which had grown to engulf a third of the room, and the bones seemed to glow in the diffuse bluish light of the moon.
His perception of the sack shifted. No longer did it seem like the repository of vanquished enemies’ bones. Instead, it seemed like the source of those bones, and in his mind he imagined them bubbling up from its depths like water from a spring then overflowing onto the floor.
Cold wind came again from the corner, pressing fetid air against his face, its force so strong that it pushed him back, causing him to trip and fall.
More bones dropped to the floor, their sound almost musical.
The wagon train had been right to move quickly through this land, and it was his own fault that he’d been seduced by the water and led into this trap. Marshall had never before been so frightened, and if he were allowed to live through this ordeal, he vowed to become a changed man. He attempted to stand, and once again a powerful wind blew from the corner (
the bag?
) and knocked him down. This time, the force felt less like propelled air and more like invisible skeletal fingers.
He took a deep breath before trying to get up. And then . . .
. . . it was morning.
It seemed to happen in an instant, the shift from night to day, but he knew that such a thing was impossible. Turning to look over his shoulder, he saw only harsh whiteness through the hole in the wall that led outside, the sun so bright after the dimness of night that it blurred his vision and made his eyes water. Standing up, he saw that although the bag was fully illuminated, its umbra frame gone, it had lost none of its threatening malevolence. A stray ray of sunshine highlighted a curved rib.
Marshall wondered if he had somehow been mesmerized. Although by what? The room? The walls? The bag? There was nothing here that could conceivably have put him in a trance. He had no memory of sleep, however, and no sense that time had passed. He had not even changed position while the shift occurred. The only difference he noted was a newfound belief—no, a
certainty
—that there were riches in California, treasures, unfound gold that was there for the taking. Such an idea was absurd to all but the most feebleminded. Whoever heard of an ordinary citizen finding gold? Or keeping it, for that matter. That was the province of governments and potentates. Nevertheless, the concept was embedded in his mind, impossible to ignore. When had the notion occurred to him, though? Or
had
it occurred to him? It did not feel like his own thought, and he considered that it might have been imposed on him through mesmerism or some other type of mind control.
He looked again at the sack of bones.
There was no wind blowing from the corner as he turned and ducked through the opening in the wall, exiting the way he had entered.
Outside, the plain was filled with multicolored flowers. They had sprung up in the meadow overnight and coveredeverything, even the hut, a rainbow of blossoms so thick that it was as though a blanket had been laid over the land. Marshall stared with wonder at the remarkable scene before him, overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of the earth, aware for perhaps the first time, in a very profound way, of how little he and everyone else in this country actually knew of the world in which they lived. Outside of the cities and towns, in the vast open wilderness that comprised the bulk of the United States and its territories, were secrets undiscovered, wonders both dark and light that had yet to be experienced by civilized man.
A path wound through the flowers, a clearly defined trail that began at the hut and led West, away from the rising sun. At the bottom of the hillock, his horses, all of them, were peacefully nibbling at the flowers, seemingly content.
The feeling he’d had over the past several days that he was being watched, that sense that
others
were monitoring his progress, was gone. The menace that had hung over the plain was gone as well, buried perhaps under the flowers, and Marshall felt lighter, freer and more optimistic than he had since the beginning of this journey.
He gave the mud hut one last look, shivering as he saw the blackness within the jagged opening and thought of that leather bag filled with bones. He started down the gentle slope toward the horses. Would he tell anyone else what he had found? Would he describe to them the fearful darkness of the structure’s windowless interior? Or would he pretend that none of it had happened?
He did not know. He would face that when he came to it.
Marshall reached the horses, untied the mare and mounted up. He glanced one final time at the small building atop the hillock, its squareness rounded by the soft layer of flowers that draped over its walls and roof, its muddy brownness hidden by the rainbow of blossoms, and started down the trail, following where it led.