When Winter Comes

by V. A. Shannon

  “Hey! Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you want to know where I’ve been, and what’s happened to me?”

  It was as if all that time between leaving Cincinnati and being here had never existed at all. For a mad moment I thought perhaps I had dreamed it all. This made me feel so peculiar that I had to find a place to sit down in the shade, and take a few deep breaths.

  Eventually, and feeling something more collected, I crossed the courtyard and went in at the servery door. It was a plain room with a half dozen tables and benches to sit at, and a counter at back. Behind the counter was a door, which I guessed led into the kitchen. I sniffed the air for what was cooking, my mouth watering at the thought of what I might eat. Ham and cream gravy with fried potatoes, perhaps, and even a slice or two of apple pie.

  But what a disappointment!—there was no food to be had. For Sutter’s cook had been killed in a knife fight just the night before, and Mr. Sutter was turning folks away, pretty mad to have to do so, I could see.

  I stayed put as the other folks left, and when it was just me and Mr. Sutter, he gave me a quick, angry look.

  “You can vamoose as well, girl; go on, git!”

  I stared at him. It struck me that I hadn’t spoke a word to another living soul for weeks, and I wasn’t sure if I could, now.

  A crafty look come over Mr. Sutter’s face. “You alone, girl?”

  I looked quite blank, wondering why he wanted to know and what I should reply. He grabbed my arm, and hustled me over to the counter. He picked up the coffeepot, and poured out a cup of coffee, and then pointed at it, and then at me.

  “You pour out the coffee and give folks a piece of pie”—pointing at a pie dish that had some sorry remains of something in it—“and I pay you—look—” He held up a coin and mimed again, coffee, pie, coin. “Understand?”

  I nodded, and picked up the coffeepot and poured a cup, and pointed to the pie, acting dumb.

  So there I was, with a corner to sleep in, in exchange for pouring coffee and baking pies. I guess if anyone had known the sort of food I’d cooked previous, those pies would have had a different flavor altogether. Just as well that they did not.

  * * *

  I came down off the mountain and into California to discover that the tale of our sufferings was being churned over by every person who came along: the fur trappers and the loggers from the north, and the travelers that arrived from the East; the Mexicos that came up from the south, and the rag, tag, and bobtail of everyone else in the district who stopped in to trade.

  They’d arrive at Sutter’s and stay a night or two, and sit over their coffee and pie or set themselves down outside with their tobacco, and talk us up a storm.

  All had their own opinion of what had taken place, and none had the slightest understanding of what we suffered. Each tale was more cruel and judging than the last, and there were dreadful jests made, too, that stabbed me to the heart upon hearing them.

  It never occurred to any that the scowling silent Washoe girl pouring their coffee could be an opinionated Cincinnati girl come out of the mountains, and even less that I could be part of that very story that was adding such spice to their biscuits and creamed corn and gravy.

  I soon came to be right thankful that I had taken note of what Mrs. Donner had told Elitha and Leanna, to keep quiet about their time in the mountain. It seemed I was the only one who had the great good sense to keep my mouth shut. Along with all the rest of the folks that crowded the fort, there were newspaper writers, like to a plague of rats, their eyes darting this way and that and noses twitching for a juicy morsel of gossip.

  They were on the lookout for stories of what they called the “Donner Party Angels.” I came to understand that a newspaper with a likeness of any of my friends sold hundreds upon hundreds of copies, but if that likeness was of a pretty girl, to make a man feel sentimental, or a poor orphan child, to make a mother’s eyes fill with tears, why then those hundreds of newspapers turned into thousands, right across the whole country.

  Much as I came to despise these newspaper accounts, nevertheless it is how I found out news of my friends: who survived and who perished in their journey across the mountain.

  All I knew of the Snowshoes party was from Mr. Eddy’s few words: that many of them had perished, noble Mr. Stanton among them, and of Mr. Foster’s behavior. It was a right shock now to read the accounts of their suffering and how they survived.

  The Snowshoes, with Mr. Eddy and Mr. Foster leading them, had got lost crossing the mountain. So rather than take a week or so to get to help, as we had all expected, it had taken them more than a month.

  The reason they had got lost was very simple: It was that they had abandoned Mr. Stanton, their guide. Mr. Stanton, the best and kindest man who had ever lived, and who had come back through the mountain when he did not need to, in order to bring us food and save us. But yes, the minute he had faltered they’d turned their backs on him and left him to die, utterly alone, and marched off on their way without a backward glance.

  This had left them with the other two guides, the Mexicos, Luis and Salvatore. Did the Snowshoes think, we must look after them at all costs, for they are our salvation? No, indeed. Mr. Foster shot them both dead in cold blood, for the sole purpose of eating their flesh.

  Each newspaper account was more bloodthirsty than the last. I know—who better?—that folks will do anything, anything! when it comes down to live or die. To commit cold-blooded murder to do it must surely be the most evil deed of all; but even then it was committed in such extremity that perhaps I could understand it. But to boast of such depravity! To sell such an account to the newspapers and receive coin for speaking of what was done! That is beyond all my comprehension. And who was the person who boasted of these deeds the most, and saw them written in the newspapers, and received coin in his hand for it?

  Why, Mr. Eddy of course.

  43

  How I escaped attention I do not know. I guess the folks at Sutter’s, and that included the newspaper folks, considered me just a Washoe girl, and never thought to ask how I came to be there; but I wondered that, in all his accounts, Mr. Eddy did not mention my name.

  Perhaps he believed me dead, or wished me so, at least. He knew me to have a sharp and mocking tongue. If the newspapers had found me, I would have called him a liar and made him look a fool, and he wouldn’t want to risk that. For Mr. Eddy was the newspapers’ darling, telling ludicrous tales of his bravery; and I have no doubt that the tales he told grew mightily in the telling, and that for every account I read, in the few newspapers that I came across, there were a dozen more in others. As time went on, Mr. Eddy’s lies and half-truths and exaggerations passed into hard cold fact, and came to be accepted as truth, as far as folks who knew no better were concerned.

  * * *

  About three weeks after I got to Sutter’s Fort, Mr. Fallon arrived. He was a great, rough bear of a man, with a heavy black beard, and a right coarse way of speaking. He was hailed as a hero, and made much of, for it turned out that only a few days after I left our camp, Mr. Fallon had arrived in it. He had it that he had set out to rescue Mr. Keseberg and Mrs. Donner, but I did not believe it. I thought it more likely that he and his fellows, a band of ruffians to be sure, had gone over the mountain in order to plunder what was left of the possessions that folks had left behind them. With them had gone, yet again, Mr. Foster.

  Mr. Foster! I could not believe it. He was the kindest, most loyal of men when we began our journey, but after the death of Mr. Pike, all feeling for friends and family had turned into the most monstrous cruelty; in the end, to murder and cannibalism. Surely he would be the one person who would want to travel as far away from his crimes as he could? Yet he returned to the scene of his suffering again, and then again, as a rabid dog eats its own filth.

  As I write my journal I think I see what drove him to it.

  When I arrived at Sutter’s Fort and stood in the courtyard and thought, for one mad moment, that no time had pass
ed since leaving Cincinnati, and that I had been asleep and dreamed the rest, I found such comfort in the thought that I held it to me. It was a dream, no more. And it was over. I was awake, and at last I could carry on with a normal, everyday sort of life and never think on it again.

  Mrs. Donner had said, “Never speak of what has happened to us.”

  And I added in words of my own. “Never think of it. Ignore it all. Pretend it never happened.”

  I turned my mind away from it then, and after, with the absolute power of my will. Yet still I dreamed of it, night after night; I dream of it still. I wake at dawn to find Jacob lying silently beside me, and I choke with terror, thinking him a corpse. Or wake in the dark with a start, and think to see Mrs. Murphy standing in a corner of the room, staring at me. And I weep for the horror of what I might see if I light the candle.

  I write my journal knowing my words to be true. But even as I write them I do not believe them. I say to myself, “It cannot possibly have been as cold as I remember it! It cannot have been so desperate, surely?” And I ask myself, “Why did we do this thing, why did we not do that?”

  I long to go back, and make it come right in the end. But I cannot turn back the clock, and save those who died, no matter how many times I do so in my imagination.

  I am sure that all of us who came out of the mountain have suffered so—all of us close to madness in one way or another. Perhaps different folks deal with it in different ways; I by waking in the small hours, night after night, year after year, to count how many sacks of flour I have and how many of beans.

  Perhaps something of this was true for Mr. Foster. Maybe he thought that by traveling back through the snow yet again, and looking once more upon the poor little cabins, the remnants of our cooking fires, and the sad little bits of belongings that were abandoned there, the outcome would somehow be different, and he would find some peace.

  Did it help Mr. Eddy to recount it, over and over? And Jean Trudeau, the lad who stayed with Mrs. Donner? For he is the same; one story follows another in the newspapers, and each contradicts the last. Even the children who were too small to remember much at all, why, they too have accounts written up. I wonder, have these children grown up in the shadow of their parents’ obsession and grief? Why else would these children bear that same terrible burden on their shoulders?

  I stayed as far away from Mr. Fallon as I could, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. I wondered what he knew of me. And I longed to know what had befallen Mr. Keseberg. I was soon to find out.

  Next morning when I walked into the servery carrying the coffeepot in one hand and a dish of ham and grits in the other, it was to find a mess of folks talking most excited, waving newspapers round in the air and passing them from hand to hand. Mr. Fallon was in the center of this little group, holding forth to all who would listen. I was sickened to my stomach by what I heard. His words were read from the newspaper and shouted round the room, and as he listened, he nodded. “Aye,” he said, “that is true, and that is what I saw.”

  For set out that day in the California Star newspaper was what was said to be his journal, that he wrote up while he was traveling to our camp and when he was there. It could not possibly have been true. Mr. Fallon was an uneducated villain of a man who could not write even his own name, and the thought of him sitting down with pen and paper to write up this account was beyond belief. Yet here were his very words, or so the newspaper would have us believe.

  It said that he had arrived in the camp to find Mr. Keseberg sat gloating over a pot full of innards, and swearing up and down, with a ghastly smile of good cheer, that such food was so delicious he would rather eat it a thousand times than any other good meat; and that the meat was taken from the body of Mrs. Donner.

  A further account of Mr. Fallon’s actions was read out, and to cheers from his fellows and much slapping on the back he agreed with all: that he had tortured Mr. Keseberg.

  He threatened to leave him behind to die. Next, that he would kill him there and then. One time he set upon him with his bare hands round his throat. He poured water over his head, while a fellow held him down on the ground so that Mr. Keseberg was close to drowning; and he half-strangled him with a rope at another. Two days passed in this way, with Mr. Keseberg begging for his life, pissing himself for fear, and crying in the most abject misery.

  All this was done in order to force Mr. Keseberg to reveal where money was buried and to aid Mr. Fallon in his search for jewels and the rest. Mr. Fallon eventually forced Mr. Keseberg to strip naked, and searched his clothes. Here he had found a good sum of money, and had pocketed it, to bring it back, he said, to the children of those that Mr. Keseberg had robbed.

  I knew that this was Mr. Keseberg’s own money—the money he had brought with him to purchase his land and set up his vineyard. This man had stolen it, and left Mr. Keseberg destitute. And I did not believe for one moment that it had ever got farther than Mr. Fallon’s own pocket.

  Every word was greeted with whoops and hollers and shouts of encouragement. For the California Star had also published yet another account—this by Mr. Eddy. And Mr. Eddy’s account had made out Mr. Keseberg to be such a monster that his torture at Mr. Fallon’s hand was felt to be justified.

  Mr. Eddy had given an account of his own arrival in our camp with Mr. Foster, the day after the deaths of poor little James and George. Did it tell of our hideous suffering, and the way in which Mr. Foster deserted his kindly mother-in-law and left her to die, alone but for the kindness and mercy of Mr. Keseberg? Did it tell the tale of how the little Donner girls were left in Mr. Keseberg’s charge, when the men supposed to rescue them had abandoned them?

  It did not. Rather, it said in plain black print that Mr. Keseberg “took a child of about four years of age in bed with him, and devoured the whole before morning; and the next day ate another about the same age before noon.”

  These words were what Mr. Fallon repeated to the room now. It was evident that he had learned them by heart.

  At this, a great roar went up. The call for coffee was forgot, and whisky demanded instead. Someone shouted out that Mr. Keseberg was in charge of Mr. Sutter’s riverboat, and would be here himself in just a few days’ time, and then they should set upon him once more and get the truth from him! That he should have been hanged for what he did! And if the law wouldn’t do it, why, they would do it themselves! And more whisky was drunk, and then more again.

  * * *

  If I had been afraid of discovery before, why, my fears then were nothing to what I imagined now. I thought of Mr. Keseberg arriving, to be set upon by this pack of animals and dragged into the courtyard and murdered in front of me.

  One glance between us and I would be discovered. It took no imagination to see how my part in this story would sound; that we bedded together, rutting like animals in the filthy darkness of that cabin alongside the dead bodies of our companions. How we indulged in our gruesome feasting, gnawing on the bones of dead infants and surrounded by the skulls of dead children.

  I flew out of the servery, and ran to my bed and crouched there, panting like a cornered animal, thinking to collect my things and run away; but where could I go? How would I live? For I was in trouble, the kind of trouble that could not be concealed from the world for many weeks longer.

  My fear gave way to the blackest despair, such that I thought it would be easier to walk myself into the river than live another day in such misery.

  44

  The very next day, Jacob came in to trade.

  If I was writing one of the dime novels that old Peabody sells in the mercantile, and that I sometimes read in the evenings, when the children are asleep and Jacob is in his study scratching away at his accounts (and which I don’t precisely hide from my husband, but I don’t exactly wave about beneath his nose, neither, for he would tease me for reading such trash), I would write that our eyes met and I fell into a swoon, and that he took but one look at me and was instantly, and hopelessly, in love with me th
at minute.

  It was not at all the case. I noticed him because he was trying to trade with the Indians, half in English and half in German, and making a poor fist of it altogether. Since I spoke something of their language and German, too, it seemed natural for me to lose patience with his stuttering speech and sort out the matter for him.

  I don’t know who was the more surprised, Mr. Sutter at hearing a silent Indian girl speaking German—and then English, with an unmistakable Cincinnati twang— or Jacob, when he looked at me proper, with my green eyes and my height, and my hair. I’d left off braiding it with oil, so it wasn’t black at all, but just a plainish light brown. Jacob knew me straight out for a white girl, and not Washoe at all. I could have bitten out my tongue for being so foolish. A silent Washoe girl working in the servery was more or less invisible, but now I had made such a mistake that I had put myself in the gravest danger.

  I have never ceased to wonder what made me do it, when I had been so very careful and was so very frightened. I can reach only one conclusion. That I knew, the instant I clapped eyes upon him, that I could trust him.

  He was a deal older than me, a widower, with two grown sons joined up into the Navy. A short, stout man with graying hair, not well featured at all and not sharp-dressed or flash with his gold. But I could see he was a kind man, and dealt honestly with all, and well respected. We had a few conversations here and there, and even in my misery and terror, we made each other laugh.

  Jacob left Sutter’s after two days, to travel into the mountains to sort out some business to do with felling the oak trees that grew in great abundance on the western foothills. On his return he stepped in to see me. I heaped his plate with beef stew and greens and a slice or two of corn bread, and brought him a good helping of applesauce with a piece of buttered pound cake, and kept an eye on him as he ate. When he had finished, and sat back in his chair, searching his pockets for his pipe and tobacco, I took across two cups of coffee and sat down with him.