California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) by Daniel Knapp Read Free Book Online Page A

was numb. He
stared at the handle protruding from Snyder's flannel shirt. Steady, rhythmic
surges of blood pumped out and around the hilt. Reed never saw the third blow.
It smashed down full on his skull and drove him to his knees. Through the
streaming blood, the spreading numbness in his shoulder, and the pain that
filled his head, Reed saw Snyder suddenly stop moving and turn ashen. Dumbly,
Reed looked at the knife in his hands. It had pulled free when he went down.
    The left side of Snyder's shirt was
soaked in a darkening red. He felt the strange sensation of liquid filling
slowly in the hollow of his left lung. He turned, walked a few steps up the
hill, and fell, bubbled blood spilling from his mouth.
    Reed was on one knee now. His
stepdaughter and his wife, recovered from her fainting but trembling visibly,
held handkerchiefs to the deep wounds on his scalp. He broke free of them,
tears rolling down his cheeks, and staggered to where one of the men cradled
Snyder's head in his arms. "Oh, God," Reed sobbed. "I never
meant for anything like this to happen."
    Snyder
tried to raise one arm unsuccessfully. He coughed, burbling up more blood.
"I'm to blame for all of it," he wheezed. "I don't know what
came over..."
    They buried Snyder in a shroud between
two planks to frustrate burrowing animals who might pick up the scent of death.
Most of the afternoon, while Reed sat apart with his family, two factions
argued over shooting him here or waiting and bringing him to trial in
California. Lewis Keseberg, still bitter about the tongue-lashing Reed had
given him over Elizabeth, exhorted them to hang him immediately from a propped
up ox-yoke. In the end, they banished Reed from the train. They allowed him his
badly deteriorated mare, but no gun and no food. After he left, Elizabeth
borrowed a horse, and under the pretext of taking a last message to Reed from
his ailing wife, saw to it that he at least had an even chance against whatever
waited for him ahead. Tucked inside her undergarments was an 1836-model
Patterson Colt revolver Milt Elliott had stashed in a saddlebag on a happier
evening back on the trail to Fort Bridger.
    They caught up with the Donners a few
days later and learned that Reed had stopped for a night with them, then
journeyed on with one of the drivers. Reed had left word he planned to send
back provisions if he reached California.
    Elizabeth was mildly heartened to join
the first section of the train again. But her modest rise in spirits was
short-lived. Within minutes of arriving at the Donners' camp, she saw a
forbidding sight. Dizzying waves of heat rose from the dry sandy country that
stretched on either side of the dwindling river, but the sensation she felt was
that of walking into an icehouse. Off to the side of the wagons, flies swarmed
around the almost bare bones of a member of the Hastings group. Just a few
weeks earlier, he had been killed by an arrow. Buried, he had been unearthed by
Digger Indians, stripped of his clothing, and left there to rot. Wolves and
coyotes had done the rest.
    It seemed to Elizabeth that Snyder's
ghost haunted the members of the party now. Another wagon broke down and had to
be abandoned. The Diggers swept in early one morning and drove off more horses.
Grass for the surviving cattle grew scant as they plodded southwest. Almost to
the sink of the Mary's, they camped one night in a spot where there was no
grass at all. The cattle scattered to find food. Again the Indians drove them
off, eighteen of them, including a precious dairy cow. By the time the party
reached the sink itself, the heat and the savages had robbed them of almost a
hundred head.
    On October 13 they set out across the
last stretch of pure desert between the Mary's and the Truckee River. The
combined oxen and cow teams pulling the remaining wagons were half-starved.
They pushed on through the day and most of the night, resting only long enough
to gain a little strength. Water from hot springs kept them from