Old Bones, page 2
Would the workmen come upstairs? Of course they would. They would have been told to make a final sweep of the house, looking for anything of value and making sure no squatters were living inside. Which meant they’d look everywhere.
He moved into the center corridor of the second floor, walking slowly, examining the walls. These old haciendas often had hidden doorways. And there it was: a recessed bookcase, holding just a handful of wormy books. Its empty state made the seam along its outer edge all the more obvious. He gave a heave on the side of the case with his shoulder, and as he hoped, it pivoted out, exposing a staircase leading upward. He slipped through and carefully turned the bookcase back into place, hoping—expecting—that the workmen would not notice it. Surely they wouldn’t realize the dome held an attic room…would they?
He mounted the steep circular stairs, sending a surprised mouse scurrying away with a squeak. The staircase brought him to a plank ceiling with a trapdoor, which he forced open. The rusty hinges made a loud creaking noise and he paused to listen. The tromping of the men continued downstairs, their laughter suggesting they had heard nothing.
The attic space was small and, surprisingly, still packed with furniture, boxes, armoires, broken mirrors, steamer trunks, an eight-sided poker table, and other bric-a-brac. As Benton pulled himself up and began to move around, a roost of pigeons, living in the belfry atop the dome, flew off with a great beating of wings. There were pieces here with at least some value; this area must have been missed by the movers. Unfortunately, all this stuff meant he could have a longer search. And with the creaky wooden floor, a search might make noise. He’d better wait for the men to leave.
He listened as the voices came up to the second floor. More tromping about and the creeping smell of cigarette smoke. They surely would not find the door.
But they did. He sat up, straining to hear. One of them was exclaiming loudly, and he could hear them heaving on the bookcase and the sliding sound as it pivoted.
His heart suddenly pounding, Benton looked around for a hiding place. There was a large armoire he could hide in—but no, it would likely be opened. He pulled open the lid of a trunk, but it was full of junk. He realized there was no good place to hide. He was trapped.
Now the voices were booming up the stairs. They had not started climbing, apparently egging each other on to see who was going to be first.
There were four of them and one of him. He spied a heavy chest next to the trapdoor. Yes. That’s it. He seized the corner of the chest and shouldered it across the door, making a loud scraping noise.
There was sudden silence from below.
It might not be heavy enough. He pushed another chest over, and piled several heavy pieces of furniture on top. The silence below told him the men could hear everything he was doing. When Benton had piled as much weight as he could on the trapdoor, he sat back and waited.
“Hey!” one of the men called up. “Who’s up there?”
Benton tried not to breathe.
“Who the hell is it?” the man called again. “Come down!”
Silence.
“We’re waiting for ya!”
He held his breath.
“Hey, asshole, if you don’t come right down, we’re going to come up and drag your ass out!”
He heard a muffled thump, then another, as they tried to push open the trapdoor. But with at least two hundred pounds of junk sitting on top, it wasn’t going to move. He listened, his apprehension turning to amusement as he heard the men trying to shoulder the door open. They resorted to more pounding. “Okay, pal, we’re calling the cops!”
You do that, thought Benton. It would take at least half an hour for the police to arrive, maybe more. He might as well use the time to complete his search.
With no more need for quiet, he began tearing open chests, rummaging through old clothes and blankets, pulling out ancient toys and 1940s-era comic books, crumbling board games and old schoolbooks. He pawed through a wormy set of National Geographics, old copies of Life and Stag and Saturday Evening Post and Boy’s Own magazines, along with bundles of newspapers going back almost to Gold Rush days. As he worked, the pounding and threats continued from below, and then the voices went back down the stairs. He saw, from the belfry window, the men coming out into the yard, one apparently trying to get reception for his cell phone.
Benton continued his search, moving rapidly but methodically from one corner of the small attic to the other. It was discouraging, just a lot of rotting junk without even a hint of what he was looking for. Maybe it wasn’t here after all.
And then, at the bottom of a seaman’s chest, under a pile of quilts, he found a metal box. Even before he opened it, he knew this must be it. The box was locked, but a rusted metal rod, slipped through the lock’s loop, leveraged it off. He opened the lid, hands trembling with anticipation. Within lay a bundle of letters tightly bound with string, and tucked next to it was an old journal covered in dark green canvas, much soiled. He slipped out the journal and, holding it with the utmost care, eased it open.
There, on the front page, written in a precise feminine hand, was a brief legend.
He could hardly breathe. This treasure, so sought after, a holy grail of pioneer American history, actually existed. As his limbs trembled with mingled surprise and jubilation, he realized that he hadn’t dared hope it might be true, or that he would be lucky enough to find it. Even as he searched, he’d never really believed it was there. And yet here he was, and he was holding it in his hands.
By pure force of will he overcame his impulse to read on. There would be time for that later, but now he had to get the hell out.
He put the diary back in the box and slipped it into his backpack. He went again to the window. Three of the workmen were still outside, and one, now standing on a broken plinth that had formerly held a statue, was talking vociferously into his phone. The jackass really was calling the cops.
Benton quickly moved the chests off the trapdoor and listened. Where was the fourth? Waiting for him? But he heard nothing and finally yanked up the trapdoor. Nobody. The staircase was empty. He descended the stairs as quietly as possible toward the bookcase door, which was standing open. Creeping past it, he looked one way, then the other. The corridor was empty.
He headed down the hall. Suddenly, the fourth workman burst around a corner, ambushing him.
“There you are, you bastard!” the man roared, swinging his fist into his gut.
Benton, taken by surprise, was knocked to the floor, writhing in pain, trying to suck in air and get his breath back.
“He’s here!” the man yelled triumphantly. “I got him!”
He turned to face Benton, who was struggling to rise, and gave him a hard kick in the ribs. The violence—and the man’s unnecessary gleefulness in employing it—enraged Benton. His backpack had come off when he hit the floor and now he seized it, surging up and swinging it around, the iron box inside whacking the worker upside the head. The man staggered backward, then fell heavily to the floor.
“I’ll kill you!” the man screamed, scrabbling up to his feet. But Benton was already running like hell, backpack in hand. He flew down the stairs, ran toward the back of the mansion, vaulted through an open window, and headed for the overgrowth in the direction of Bear River. The workman was right behind, with the other three also pursuing, but the wiry Benton had spent much of his life hiking in the Sierras and they fell back. He tore through the trees, slid down the embankment, and splashed across the sandbars and channels of the river. At the main channel he held up the backpack and plunged into the water, swimming hard until his feet touched sand on the far side. He climbed out and turned to see the workmen standing on the opposite embankment, shouting threats.
He gave them the finger and then jogged into the woods and made a long loop, crossing the river again way upstream. From there he navigated back to his car with his cell phone GPS, relieved to find his gleaming convertible still hidden. He locked the backpack in the trunk and eased out onto Wild Irish Road. Eight miles down, turning onto the highway, he passed two cop cars, lights flashing, and couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
3
November 20
NORA KELLY STOOD up and stretched, muscles cramped from hours of kneeling in the dirt with trowels, picks, and paintbrushes, excavating the fourth and final room of a prehistoric Pueblo ruin.
“Quitting time,” she said to her field assistant, Jason Salazar.
The man rose from the square meter he was picking away at and slapped the dust from his jeans. Then he took off his cowboy hat, mopped his brow with a handkerchief, and fitted the hat back on: despite the lateness of the season, the temperature still hovered in the upper fifties.
Nora tipped up the canvas water bag hung on the mirror of the Institute’s field truck and took a long swig. The site itself wasn’t much to see, but the views were spectacular. The ancient Pueblo people, she thought, always built with a view in mind. The tiny ruin sat on top of a rise of land at the base of Cerro Pedernal, the flat-topped mountain made famous in the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. It rose majestically behind her, riven by deep canyons, the higher reaches covered in trees. In front of her, the land swept down to a vast plain the Spanish called the Valle de la Piedra Lumbre, the Valley of Shining Stone. On the far side, the red, orange, and yellow buttes of Ghost Ranch did indeed seem to shine in the golden afternoon sunlight.
As she walked over to their worktable, she saw a distant corkscrew of dust approaching on the old uranium-mine road that led to the site.
Salazar came up beside her. “Wonder who that is?”
“No idea.”
They began packing up their tools and putting them in the prefab storage shed set up next to the site. After a while the vehicle itself appeared, creeping slowly over a rise. They both paused and watched it approach, driven cautiously over the rough dirt road. It was some kind of classic car, Nora could see. It eased up next to the Institute’s field truck and waited a few moments for the cloud of dust to roll over it and settle. Then the door opened and a tall, lanky man appeared. A shock of black hair hung down across a bony but fine-looking face, intense blue eyes squinting around. He was dressed in the ugliest paisley shirt Nora had ever seen, all swirls of purple and orange. He appeared to be in his late thirties, a few years older than she.
“Lost?” Nora asked.
His gaze settled on her. “Not if you’re Dr. Nora Kelly.”
“I am.”
“Sorry to arrive unannounced. My name is Clive Benton.” He pulled a backpack from the car, came forward, then extended his hand, giving hers a quick shake. “Really, I should have called, but…” He seemed to hesitate. “Well, the Institute said you were out here, and it seems there’s no cell reception, and then I was worried I couldn’t describe the whole thing properly on the phone anyway—”
Nora gently interrupted the nervous rush of words. “Come sit down and have a cup of cocoa.” She led him to the worktable under the shade, where a thermos sat with some plastic cups.
Benton perched on the edge of a chair.
“What kind of car is that?” Nora asked, trying to put the fellow at ease.
“It’s a ’64 Ford Futura,” he said, brightening. “I restored it myself.”
“Not a great car for that road.”
“No,” he said. “But what I have to tell you can’t wait.”
Nora took a seat across the table from him. “What’s on your mind?”
Benton glanced at Jason Salazar. “Um, what I’m about to say is confidential.”
“Jason’s a curatorial assistant at the Institute, and I can vouch for his discretion,” Nora said. “A lot of what we do as archaeologists is confidential, so you needn’t be concerned.”
Benton nodded, his black hair ruffling in the breeze. He remained a bit flustered, as if not knowing where to start. Finally he reached down, opened the backpack, and pulled out a plastic Ziploc bag. He opened it and removed an old, tissue-wrapped volume, which he laid reverently on the table between them, unfolding the tissue with delicate fingers.
“The original journal,” he said, “of Tamzene Donner.”
Nora stared at the book blankly. The name meant nothing to her. “Who?”
“Tamzene Donner.” He looked sideways at her and Salazar. “You know, the wife of George Donner, who led the Donner Party? The emigrants who got trapped in winter snows in the Sierras and were forced to resort to cannibalism?”
“Oh. Those Donners,” Nora said. “So I take it this journal is of historical significance?” She wondered where this was going.
“Incalculable significance.”
This pronouncement was followed by a brief silence.
“Maybe I’d better give you some background,” Benton said. “I’m an independent historian specializing in nineteenth-century westward expansion. I also happen to be a distant descendant of some of the Donner Party survivors: a family named Breen. But that’s not important. I’ve been researching the tragedy for years. Anyway, one of the few things the Donner survivors agreed on was that Tamzene Donner kept a journal, in which she recorded every detail of the journey. Historians have long speculated one of the survivors must have preserved and carried out her journal, but it’s never been found—until now.” He made a rather dramatic gesture at the stained and frayed book on the table. “Go ahead—open it up.”
With the utmost delicacy, Nora reached forward and opened it to the title page.
“You see what she wrote? Tamzene Donner, My Journal, October 12, 1846 to…Note that there’s no end date, because she died of starvation and then—” he paused and cleared his throat— “was eaten by a man named Keseberg.”
“Wasn’t Keseberg also accused of murdering her in order to eat her?” Salazar interjected.
Benton turned in mild surprise. “Yes, that’s right. You seem familiar with the story.”
Salazar shrugged. “They taught the Donner tale in history class at Goleta High. I found it intriguing.” He gave a quick smile. “Who wouldn’t?”
Nora agreed. “But where do I come in?”
“Well, I’m here to ask you something.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
Instead of answering, Benton paused. “First of all, you’ve directed several archaeological digs in the Sierra Nevada. You know those mountains.”
“To a certain extent.”
“You’re a top field archaeologist who also has experience with sites where cannibalism occurred, including Quivira—a cliff dwelling you found in Utah.”
“True.”
“And you have the legitimacy and backing of the Institute.”
Nora leaned back. “I’m starting to have the feeling I’m being interviewed for a job.”
“You’ve already got the job—if you want it. You’re the ideal person for what I have in mind.”
“Which is?” All this dancing around was starting to get on Nora’s nerves.
“I have to ask for your word of honor that—for the present at least—nothing I say will go beyond us.”
“Isn’t that a bit dramatic?”
“I’m sorry,” Benton said hastily, nervousness returning. “I know how this must sound, but once you hear what I have to tell, you’ll understand why I want to keep it under wraps. It’s a long story…and, I warn you, a disturbing one.”
Nora checked her watch. It was not yet four thirty. They still had half an hour of sunlight left and it was pleasant out there in the desert. With a faint smile she crossed her arms. Despite herself, she was intrigued by the man’s earnestness. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
Clive Benton took a deep breath, placed his hands on his knees, and began to speak slowly, in measured tones. It was clearly a story he knew by heart.
4
I FIRST HEARD the story of the Donner Party as a young boy growing up outside San Francisco,” Benton began. “I mentioned to you that my family—my mother’s family—are collateral descendants of the Breen family, who were part of the Donner group. My mother told me the story as a child and I was hooked. It led me into historical studies and eventually a PhD from Stanford.
“The Donner catastrophe was one of the greatest calamities of the westward migration. Here was a group of emigrants who set out to civilize an untamed land—California—but in the process ended up reduced to unspeakable barbarity. It was the American Dream turned inside out.
“The two main characters in the drama were George Donner and his wife, Tamzene. George was a big man with a hunger for land. All his life, he wanted more of it—for farming. His wife was a schoolmarm. She was small and slender, with the manners and education of a lady. But underneath was a woman with an ironbound sense of right and wrong. The two had three daughters together, and George had two other daughters from a previous marriage.
“In 1846, California was still part of Mexico. But war was brewing, and everyone expected the U.S. would soon grab the territory. Donner saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, and get his hands on some of that rich new land. He was a good talker and he drew his brother, Jacob, and Jacob’s family into his vision.
“George, Tamzene, and their five young daughters left Independence, Missouri, in the spring of 1846, with a large group of other emigrants. These were not ragtag settlers: they had money. This was a caravan of well-heeled, even wealthy, pioneers stocked with the best of everything. Tamzene planned to start a ladies’ school and had brought books, school supplies, slates and chalk, religious pamphlets and Bibles, even oil and watercolor paints. George had loaded a wagon with bolts of velvet, silks, and satins to sell at high profit to the Californios. Some people carried sums of money with them. A man named Jacob Wolfinger, for example, carried a lockbox containing gold with which he intended to buy land, build a house, and start a business.
“The fact is, aside from their wealth, this was pretty much a normal emigrant wagon train heading west. It would have been forgotten to history except for one thing: a fateful decision they made along the trail. In Wyoming, Donner and the others decided to take a shortcut. It was called the Hastings Cutoff, which was being talked up at the time by a promoter named Lansford Hastings. Donner and about ninety souls voted to take the cutoff. The rest of the emigrant train voted to continue on the regular route.
