The Darkness You Fear

by Duncan McGeary

  THE DARKNESS YOU FEAR

  Ghosts of the Lost Blue Bucket Mine

  (A Virginia Reed Adventure)

  by

  Duncan McGeary

  Copyright © 2016, 2019 by Duncan McGeary

  Published by

  Amber Cove Publishing

  http://www.ambercovepublishing.com

  PO Box 9605

  Chesapeake, VA 23321

  Cover design by Andy Zeigert

  Editing by Lara Milton

  Book design by Jim Bernheimer

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Visit the author’s website at

  http://www.duncanmcgeary.com/

  First Release: May 2016 by Books of the Living Dead

  Second Release: January 2019 by Amber Cove Publishing

  Dedication and Acknowledgements

  Dedicated to my wife, Linda, who I met in writer’s group and who has always understood my need to write. She has been my amused, bemused muse from the beginning.

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Virginia Reed Gerard, New York City, 1921

  The journey west over the Oregon Trail was especially hard on women and children, who were uprooted, often against their wishes, from all that was familiar and comfortable and taken across the continent to a “Promised Land” that was in reality a raw and uncompromising frontier.

  The Meek Cutoff wagon train is now a distant memory. There are few pioneers left who can retrace their lost meanderings. I have not told this story before now because gold fever forever stalks the souls of men. But perhaps it is finally safe to speak of the Lost Blue Bucket Mine, for there is little chance it will ever be found again.

  If any are tempted to search for it, let this story be a warning.

  Chapter One

  Walla Walla, Oregon Territory, June 1851

  Dearest Frank,

  The land here reminds me of home. Everywhere I look, I see our ranch and I think of you. The high peaks and ponderosa pines, the sandy soil, the lava outcroppings, the quick mountain streams, even the scent of the air is comforting. It is dry on this side of the mountains. But once you cross the Walla Walla River, it becomes the Great Desert, which is familiar, but—even after the joyful time I have spent with you—triggers memories of my family’s ordeal. No one here recognizes me. I am forever grateful to you for the blessing of your name.

  Mr. McKinley has been very helpful, far beyond my expectations. I should be able to finish soon and return to you. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers, dear husband, for what I have learned has been disturbing, much too disturbing to put down on paper. I can almost hear your concern and worry, but I assure you, I am being careful, as promised. I seek only information, not confrontation.

  Your loving wife,

  Virginia

  Virginia folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope. Kyle McKinley’s foreman was heading south across the Columbia River in the next day or two and had promised to make sure the letter made it onto the mail route running between Portland and Sacramento.

  How easy it is to lie to those I love, Virginia thought. She didn’t question the wisdom of it, but regretted the necessity. It was, after all, for her loved ones’ own safety and peace of mind. She was the Canowiki, and with that honor came both powers and responsibilities. She could never completely explain this to Frank, and she didn’t try to anymore. She just told him a story and did what she had to do.

  He probably suspected the truth of her activities, but he also knew that he’d be unable to dissuade her from them, so he tacitly accepted her explanations.

  McKinley would be coming to get her at any moment. The head of the Hudson Bay Company post was uncomfortable in Virginia’s presence, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. Possibly he was unused to being in the company of unaccompanied females her age; he probably presumed she was available. She had lied from the beginning, giving him her maiden name. She wasn’t exactly sure why. On the spur of the moment, she had decided that when doing the business of the Canowiki, she would remain the infamous Virginia Reed, toughened survivor of the Donner Party, rather than Mrs. Frank Whitford, the apparently demure wife of a prosperous rancher.

  In her darkest moments, she suspected herself of using her feminine wiles on the coarse old fur trapper. Other times, she told herself she was pretending to be unattached only because she didn’t want the creatures she was hunting to learn of her new home and husband.

  McKinley’s discomfort hadn’t been because of her reputation, at least not at first. She could tell the moment he realized who she was. One night at dinner, he faltered while telling the story of a group of trappers who had been caught in the mountains the previous winter.

  “It is said that they hae a wee bit of the long pig,” he said to the other men at the table, winking at them as if believing that only the men would understand this phrase. Then he had blanched and cast a glance toward Virginia, who was unable to hide her understanding.

  Since that moment of recognition, the old trapper had been avoiding her.

  McKinley had an Indian mistress, Virginia knew. She didn’t judge. The West was a vast place, and lonely, and most men saw few women of their own class and culture. The old man had been at the Hudson Bay outpost for many years, and for much of that time was one of the few white men in the territory.

  There was a polite knock at the door. “Miss Reed?” The voice carried a heavy Scottish brogue and sounded reluctant.

  “Enter,” Virginia called out. She set the letter on the corner of the table. Like everything in the room, and indeed in the outpost, it was constructed of raw wood. The outsides of the buildings still had bark covering their planks in many places, and no thought had been given to finishing any room or piece of furniture. The long table in the dining room was one giant tree trunk cut down the middle and only roughly planed. Virginia had learned to avoid splinters by wearing her shoes from the moment she woke up in the morning until she was safely in bed at night.

  It was a place constructed by and for men, and she was a woman, a stranger, and an inconvenience.

  McKinley entered, bowing slightly. He was making an effort to look presentable, wearing a formal coat and a beaver hat. Virginia smiled at the irony of it. Beaver pelts were the reason that McKinley and the Hudson Bay C
ompany were in the far West in the first place. Top hats made from beaver pelts were all the fashion back East, though few Westerners bothered with them. How strange that a hat should make the long return journey to sit perched ridiculously on the shaggy head of a grizzled trapper.

  “Mr. Boyd will be leaving for Portland after lunch,” he said.

  “The letter is on the corner of the desk,” Virginia replied.

  McKinley walked over, snatched the letter, and turned to go.

  “Mr. McKinley?”

  He turned back reluctantly.

  “Are you going to provide me with an escort, or must I go by myself?”

  He stood at the doorway as if he wanted to leave, and it was clear that every part of him wanted to deny her request for an escort. But the request wasn’t unreasonable; he couldn’t seem to find a cause to deny it.

  “I’ll accompany ye,” he said. “I cannae spare any of my men.”

  It was a lie. The trappers were spending more and more time in the outpost these days, as the market for beaver pelts was beginning to fail. The prices had dropped so low that it wasn’t worth provisioning an expedition into the mountains. Nor was it safe, not since…

  “The Whitman Mission is still standing?” Virginia asked.

  “Aye, there be a few heathen converts still faithful to the Whitmans’ memory,” McKinley said. “They keep the place up.”

  Virginia hid the exultation she was feeling. She had feared she’d have to mount an expedition into Indian-held lands, but if the Indians were already there, at the place of the tragedy, she could pull them aside and question them.

  “If they are converts, then they aren’t heathens,” she said, keeping up the pretense of a woman so pious that she had traveled hundreds of miles to be sure her deceased relatives were laid to rest with appropriate gravesite services.

  “I cannae understand what ye want, missy,” McKinley said. “There is naught there but a shell of a house and some graves.”

  “I promised my mother,” Virginia said, using the same story she had used to convince her husband of the need for this trip: that Narcissa Whitman was her mother’s cousin, and that her family wanted to see that the poor murdered woman’s grave was properly cared for. Thankfully, Virginia’s mother and husband never talked to each other, so they wouldn’t discover yet another lie. Nor did McKinley have any reason to doubt her.

  “They were buried right and proper, ye needn’t worry,” McKinley groused. “I saw to it myself. Bishop Blanchet came and said all the proper words.”

  “Catholic?” Virginia asked. She frowned as if she didn’t approve. “Nevertheless. I promised.”

  “If ye must,” McKinley said reluctantly. “We best leave if we want to be back by nightfall.”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  McKinley had a buckboard ready. Virginia swallowed her objections. Riding a horse would be quicker and would give her the added advantage of not having to sit next to the trapper and try to carry on a conversation. But she’d seen how McKinley had frowned when she’d arrived astride a mount, as if it were improper behavior for a young woman.

  The road was little more than a dirt track, and the wagon’s wheels bounced over the rocks and shrubs on either side. The fort was on a large plateau above the Walla Walla River, and the few settlers who hadn’t packed up and left after the massacre were in the valley below.

  Virginia and McKinley maintained a strained silence for most of the journey. Virginia was surprised when the trapper finally spoke as they reached the edge of a steep crisscrossing path down to the valley.

  “I met your father once, before I came west,” he said. “At his store in Springfield.”

  “Oh?” Virginia didn’t know what to say. It seemed so unlikely. Yet, now that he spoke of it, she remembered that Hudson Bay had a prominent supply outpost on the Sangamon River.

  “He is a good man,” McKinley continued, haltingly. “I understand that your family survived the ordeal in the Sierra Nevada without…without extreme measures?”

  Extreme measures? Virginia wanted to laugh, but knew it would seem inappropriate. The man had no idea what she had endured, but he was coming uncomfortably close to the real reason she had come to this desolate place. She had sworn to track down the unnatural creatures who had tormented them that winter. It was her duty as the Canowiki to put an end to them.

  She had to give the trapper credit for boldness. Most people couldn’t even bring up the subject of the Donner Party around her. “Indeed,” she said. “We took care of each other.”

  “Good,” McKinley said, relaxing slightly as if hearing the truth in her words. They went the rest of the way in a silence that was, for some reason, less strained than before.

  What would he say if he really knew the truth? she wondered.

  Though it had been less than four years since the massacre, the Whitman mission building sagged to one side. There was smoke coming out of the chimney, so it was clearly occupied. Several Indians dressed in white man’s clothing emerged to watch them: three old men, an old woman, and one younger woman about Virginia’s age, eighteen or so. Virginia’s heart skipped a beat. For a moment, she thought she was looking at her friend, Feather.

  For her part, the Indian girl seemed equally surprised. She stared at Virginia until she was nudged by the old woman. The girl turned her eyes away, blushing.

  McKinley hopped off the wagon and tied the horse to a post, then came around and helped Virginia down. She was dressed in a properly somber black dress with white trimmings, demure and a little old-fashioned. Virginia couldn’t wait to leave this place and put on her trousers, shirt, and slouch hat and ride the trails free of encumbrances.

  “This way, missy,” McKinley said, pointing to the back of the mission. “Unless you need to stop and rest?”

  “Thank you, Mr. McKinley,” she said. “You go on. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  He didn’t stick around, embarrassed that she was turning toward the outhouse on the other side of the mission. As soon as he was out of sight, Virginia strode toward the Indian converts.

  The young woman backed up, her fist pressed against her mouth, her eyes wide. Her older companions surrounded her protectively.

  “You recognize who I am, don’t you?” Virginia said.

  “You are the Canowiki,” the girl said. Her voice was a whisper.

  One of the male elders spoke to the girl sharply in their language, and she answered, and in among the foreign words, Virginia heard “Canowiki.” After what she presumed was the girl’s explanation, the older Indians stiffened and began eyeing Virginia more seriously than before.

  “My father was Miwok,” the girl said. “He told us about you before he brought our family here.”

  Virginia couldn’t believe her luck. Not only did at least some of these Indians speak English, but they also understood who and what she was.

  “Who did this? Who killed all these people?” she asked.

  “It was the Skinwalkers,” the older Indian woman spoke up. “But we cannot say that, because they will not believe us, and because…because we are Christian now.”

  “Where do I find them?” Virginia demanded.

  The old man glared at her. He spoke in his own language, and the girl translated. “Grandfather says you should be knowing of this. They live among you, not among our kind.”

  Virginia was taken aback. She had talked to everyone at the Hudson Bay outpost. There had been no hint of anything unnatural.

  The old man continued speaking and waved at the Blue Mountains to the east of where they were standing.

  “The Skinwalkers are in the mountains now,” the girl translated. “Killing everything. We dare not leave the mission.”

  Virginia nodded. She looked the old man in the eyes. “They will soon kill no longer,” she said.

  “Miss Reed?” McKinley came back around the front of the mission. “Are ye all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. McKinley,” Virginia said, reach
ing out and clasping the Indian girl’s hands. “I was just blessing these fine people for all they have done.”

  McKinley eyed the Indians doubtfully. “Fine, fine. But we do need to get back to the fort as soon as possible, so…” He motioned vaguely toward the graveyard.

  ***

  They returned to the Hudson Bay outpost in even deeper silence than before. McKinley had watched as Virginia said prayers over the graves. The prayers were heartfelt, if perhaps not “proper,” because she had no idea what she was doing. She had been a good Methodist before leaving Springfield, which meant saying her nightly prayers and going to church and going through the motions. But she hadn’t been back to church since arriving in California.

  The somber silence was appropriate, however. Thirteen people had died at the Whitman Mission, and others had been captured and held by the Cayuse. Some had not survived that ordeal.

  The Indians were blamed, of course. When they were attacked, the tribes had retaliated, which only seemed to confirm their guilt.

  But Virginia now knew better.

  She left the outpost early the next morning, alone, over McKinley’s strenuous objections. The old man had finally warmed up to her, apparently.

  “Ye cannae go alone, missy,” he said. “The Indians are still riled up.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. She wasn’t trying to keep up her ladylike pretense any longer. She’d emerged from her quarters in trousers and boots, her blonde hair tied back under her slouch hat, wearing a long coat that fell to her knees. She’d resisted the urge to put on her sidearm as well, but kept it ready in one of her saddlebags.

  McKinley watched her ride out the gate, his mouth open in surprise. She waved at him cheerily. As soon as she was out of sight, she turned toward the Blue Mountains.

  ***

  There were three of them. They were drifting in and out of human form, drunk and naked one moment, hairy and snarling the next.

  Good, Virginia thought, watching from the shadows. Werewolves can’t handle their liquor. Let them get good and drunk. The creatures couldn’t see her or smell her, as they would have any other human. She was the Canowiki.