Ada records passing days on a crude calendar she’s fashioned from plain paper and a charcoal pencil. She notes phases of the moon and keeps track of her monthlies, which have resumed like clockwork. A small star indicates the days Riddle visits, twenty-two of thirty-one days in the previous month. Riddle’s visits accentuate Ada’s days, but do not define them. She is satisfied with her own company.
If what Riddle says is true, she’ll often have unexpected visitors and news from the outside world. And she can walk to Sutter’s Fort in two days, although she has yet to do so. When the war is officially over, she might go to San Francisco, look up the Breens and maybe the Reeds. Find Mr. Eddy. See if Edwin Bryant has stayed in the West or ventured home again. Until that time, she won’t have to dress for town, or spend time on her hair; she’s now a Californian and doesn’t care a whit about her dress or her toilette. But it’s too soon, she thinks. Too soon to face the outside world.
Evenings, she reads the Bible. It’s the only book she has. Maybe there are others at Sutter’s she can beg, barter, or borrow. Or maybe she can send for books from San Francisco. But in the whole compendium of the world’s library, Ada never hopes to see the three books that resurfaced over the course of her long journey on the Oregon and California trails: Lansford W. Hastings’s The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California; Virginia Reed’s well-worn copy of The Life and Times of Daniel Boone; and Samuel Kirkham’s English Grammar in Familiar Lectures, Tamsen Donner’s reference book she used to teach children on the trail.
Ada snorts. What I would like to say to you, Mr. Hastings, would make a ruffian run for his life. Mr. Boone, not so much, but I know your tale by heart and am not anxious to read it yet again. As for you, Mr. English Grammar Yourself? D is for Dull. I don’t ever want to see your ridiculous book again.
Ada hasn’t seen Riddle for four days since he rode to Sutter’s. Should’ve been back by now. She sent a list of supplies for him to pick up and money enough to cover the cost of flour, sugar, coffee, and bacon.
When Riddle returns, he plops her goods on the table. “Good news, Miss Ada. Your Breens, they’ve all been rescued.”
Ada notices a hole in the knee of Riddle’s trousers. She wishes she had a clean rag for a patch. “All?” Ada catches her breath.
“Yes, all.”
Ada sits, fumbles with her hands. Bella!
“They’re in San Juan Batista, not far from San Francisco. But there’s also somber news. I’m afraid the Donners didn’t come through.”
“No!” Ada says, her voice shrill. George Donner, the reluctant wagon master. Tamsen Donner, the determined schoolteacher. “Please, God, no!”
“And there’ve been some unsavory reports, Miss Ada. About many who you traveled with.”
Riddle hands Ada a battered copy of the California Star. She scans the first page and puts it aside.
“Do you mean to spare me news about what I already know?”
“What would you know of . . .?”
“More than you would like to know, Mr. Riddle.” It dawns on Ada she doesn’t know Riddle’s Christian name. James? Joseph? John?
Riddle stares at Ada. “Are you saying . . .”
“No, not what you think. I didn’t partake, nor did the Breens. We were the lucky ones—still had boiled hides.” And a dog, she thinks. “But there was feeding off human flesh in other cabins before our rescue. May you never know such desperation, Mr. Riddle. Don’t say as I blame them, though. A family needs to eat.”
She looks away, thinks of Dolan, consumed by acquaintances on the trail. “But of course, as you know, Mr. Dolan had no kin . . .”
“So, no, Mr. Riddle. No newspaper article will shock me on that account.”
Riddle goes out to make a fire, and Ada turns to unpacking. All that keeps her from spilling over into tears is the wonderful news that Bella is alive. Bella would be walking by now, pulling herself up onto Ma Breen’s skirts, and saying her first words: mama, dada, doggie, ball. She would be running soon, and playing with rag dolls.
Ada exhales, closes her eyes. She imagines the toddler’s mass of dark curls, her button nose. The way her arms curled up around Ada’s neck. Her gurgling and babbling. Ada is filled with buoyancy. Bella is the luckiest of all, Ada thinks. She’ll have no memory—none—of our ordeal. Ada and the others are the ones left with memories, many too disturbing, too unsettling, too beastly, to ever dredge up again, tales of tribulation and woe and revulsion and despair that leeched into all of their lives in that horrific year that Isabella Breen spent napping.
Ada’s hands shake as she picks up the newspaper.
A more shocking scene cannot be imagined, than that witnessed by the party of men who went to the relief of the unfortunate emigrants in the California Mountains . . .
Ada slams the paper down. She’s of half a mind not to finish the article, but she can’t help herself.
The bones of those who died and been devoured by the miserable ones that still survived were lying around their tents and cabins . . .
“No!” Ada says. “This is all wrong!” She tosses the newspaper to the ground and stomps on it. She fumes, stomping around the cabin. After her fit, she picks it up again. I must force myself to read every word.
Calculations were coldly made, as they sat gloomily around their campfires, for next and succeeding meals. Various expedients were devised to prevent the dreadful crime of murder, but they finally resolved to kill those who had the least claims to longer existence . . .
“Lies, all of it lies!” Ada screams.
Riddle appears at the door of the cabin, hands charred black.
“What is it, Miss Ada?”
Her hands shake. “This account, it says we devised ways to dispatch one another. Dined on babies! Ate raw flesh! How can they say such a thing?”
“I’m afraid that’s not all, Miss Ada. The most distressing news is about a lone German . . .”
“What German?”
“The last one to be rescued.”
“Keseberg?”
“I think that’s it.”
“I hated him. He mistreated his wife, and that’s not all . . .”
“No, not all, indeed. I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“There’s speculation he killed two children, and perhaps Mrs. Donner herself.”
Ada turns white. “Mrs. Donner? And what children?”
“If I remember correctly, it was the sons of two men on the last relief. Men in your party who returned for family.”
Ada thinks back to who was left at the lake camp when she started for the Sierra Divide and who would have come back to rescue family members. “Mr. Foster? Mr. Eddy?”
“Could have been their names.”
“Oh, God,” Ada gasps. “Not Jimmy!” She turns away, wipes her eyes.
Riddle moves closer. “I’m sorry I’ve brought you this news, Miss Ada.”
Ada’s brows furrow, and she blinks back tears. “I should have taken Jimmy! I blame myself for this! Why Jimmy? Why not me?”
Ada takes an empty mug from the counter and throws it against the cabin wall. It bounces off with a ping and lands by her feet. She bends to pick it up and sinks to her knees. Dry sobs wrack her body.
“Miss Ada.” Riddle squats and puts his arm around her shaking shoulders. “You cannot blame yourself.”
Ada moans. “But I can! I had the chance to bring Jimmy out, and I was overruled. I should have insisted. His mother was my friend, and she died in my lap. And she had already lost her daughter two days before. Now Mr. Eddy has no one—no one at all—to call family.”
Riddle bounces on his haunches. “Shh, now, Miss Ada. There’s nothing to be done.”
They remain silent.
“But, wait,” he says. “Maybe there is something you can do.”
“Whatever could that be?” Ada looks up, her eyes rheumy. “I can’t bring Miz Eddy back, or the babies.”
“No. But you were there, Miss Ada. An eyewitness. It’s up to you—you and the others—to set the record straight about your troubles. The news is by now out of hand.” Riddle bites his lower lip.
“Lies, I tell you. Damn lies, all of them,” Ada snuffles. A full minute passes before Ada raises her eyes to meet Riddle’s. “Maybe I can do what Miz Donner did—write my own account of the journey. Miz Donner was always writing stories to send back East somewhere.” Ada wipes her nose again on her sleeve. “Do you think I should write . . .?”
“Yes, Miss Ada. I think that best,” Riddle says. “Set the record straight.”
“I’ll do it, and straightaway.”
But Ada puts it off, and puts it off again. Days go by. She is plagued by unsavory details. How to write it all? Where to even begin?
She’s standing near Eleanor Eddy at Independence Rock when George Donner announces the decision to take the Hastings Cutoff. She’s slogging across Great Salt Desert and gulping water from Eleanor’s bucket at Pilot Peak. She’s cradling Eleanor’s face slack as she dies in Ada’s lap. Every time she thinks of Eleanor or Margaret or James Eddy, her eyes tear up. One day as she’s rinsing out her tin cup in the creek, she hears Eleanor Eddy’s voice. Can’t count on tomorrow.
Little Western Courier, Noblesville, Indiana
To Whom It Does Concern:
I have, through direct experience in these matters, come across the vast plains with the George Donner and James Reed party and have arrived at the coast of the Pacific after an arduous journey spanning almost a year. There have been many accounts of our travails and perils, all expounded at great expense to the men and women who traveled with our party, many of whom did not survive.
Ada puts down her pen. The Donners. Mr. Stanton. Dolan. Eleanor and Margaret and Jimmy. She counts them, more than forty in all, plus the two Miwoks who came in with Stanton.
Ada crosses out the last sentence. Can’t be sentimental. Just the facts. She bends her head over the blotted paper.
Our expedition took us across the vast Unorganized Territory and through the Wasatch Mountains southwest of Bridger’s Fort, where we took an alternate route.
Ada rubs her eyes. Damn you, Lansford Hastings, she thinks. She resumes writing.
Not long after we departed from the established route, we encountered the Great Salt Desert and every woe known to man or beast. The chain of failures that followed belies description.
Our wintering over at the foot of the Sierra Mountains begs explanation and consideration, not sensationalized accounts that some think make for salacious reading. Here is what I will tell you. Some people did what they needed to do to survive. Others survived by the grace of God or sheer luck. Ask yourselves what you would have done.
You might say it would have been better to stay in Noblesville. My answer to you is this: yes and no. Yes, we would have been spared the rigors and horrors of the overland journey. No, if we had not risked at all, we would not now be here in the land of plenty eating grapes.
Sincerely,
Miss Ada Vik (now Weeks)
Near Sutter’s Fort, Alta California
P. S. You may also enter the following obituary:
Departed this life on May 31, 1846, in Indian Country enroute to California, Mr and Mrs Augustus Vik, ages 51 and 49, formerly of Alesund, Norway, and Noblesville, Indiana, lately owners and operators of Vik’s Undertaking Parlor (corner of Logan and Anderson streets) from 1841 until their demise. Let those who read this notice bear with humble submission to the Will of God as it relates to their untimely end.
Ada re-copies the letter without mistakes and lets it dry. Before she folds it, she adds one more sentence.
P. P. S. Here is one dollar to cover costs associated with placing this announcement, &c.
AW
She is down to two dollars in coin.