Her Last Hope

by littlejoefan

The sky was white with snow, tinged with blue. As I rode along I could feel the cold enter into the very soul of me. I had slowed Cochise from a canter to a leisurely trot as we approached the forest which loomed up before us.

It was Christmas Eve. Hop Sing was cooking and complaining, Pa was out collecting firewood and Adam and Hoss were caring for the horses and cleaning the barn. It was my job to ride to town to pick up a last batch of supplies and collect the mail before tomorrow. I rather thought I had got the worst of it. The temperature was barely at zero and the winter wind cut through wool and leather like a knife. 

As we entered the trees, a silence fell, not a bird sang, not an animal rustled. Everywhere was covered in a heavy blanket of snow. I was overcome with a feeling of weariness and bleakness. I looked behind me and caught sight of something that I had not seen before. Suddenly Cooch shied. There was a shape in front of me on the ground but all I could see was one gloved hand. The body had obviously been there for some time for it was half covered in snow and I may well have ridden past it without even noticing it.  I quickly dismounted, scraped off the snow, and discovered the emaciated girl.

She was painfully thin, her clothes were almost in rags and she was so cold it nearly hurt to touch her. She was unconscious so I tried to rouse her.

“Miss?” I said, chafing and tapping at her hands and face. “Miss? Wake up!”

At first I thought she was dead but I could feel a pulse so I hauled her onto  the saddle in front of me, covered her in my coat and rode home as fast as Cochise could manage.

*

“Bring her in here,” Pa ordered as I ran in the front door, the girl in my arms. “Good God, she’s like ice! Hoss, stoke up that fire! We need as much heat as possible!”

The provisions remained uncollected, the mail would have to wait. We had to co-ordinate our forces so our strange visitor would survive.

We had no smelling salts so we tried to warm up her up with brandy. We almost enveloped her in blankets, chafed, rubbed, talked and tapped until she came round.

She was a plain girl, about twenty years old, with auburn thick hair. She groaned and tried to sit up.

“Steady, there!” Pa cried. “Easy.”

“My family!”

“Where is your family, honey?”

“Where am I?”

“My son found you in the snow. He brought you home. You were half dead. You’re on the Ponderosa. Nevada Territory.”

I don’t know if she processed the information but she looked frightened and confused.

“My family!” she repeated and burst into tears.

“Where is your family, honey?” Pa asked gently.

“I left them…We were so hungry….I am so hungry.”

“Hoss, ask Hop Sing to heat some soup.”

After she had eaten she sat by the fire in her blankets and sobbed wearily. Pa put his arm around her and she leaned into his chest, her fingers flexing into his back. Eventually he sat her on the armchair and she became calmer, staring into the flickering fire. She glanced at the tree.

“It’s….Christmas?”

“Yes, child. Tomorrow.”

“We’ve lost time.”

Her name was Harriet Simpson. They had followed the train from Missouri and had been traveling for seven months. Weeks earlier they had become separated from the others and had wandered, disoriented and lost, for many days. 

“Our animals began to die,” she continued sorrowfully. “The Indians shot and stole most of the ones that survived. They stayed near us for a couple of days until the snows truly came. We were climbing but we were snowed in. The drifts came up to our chests and the little ones couldn’t go on any more. So Pa, Jake and Mr Bryant opted to go on.” She started to shiver again, though she was fully warmed. “Jake didn’t come back.”

“Jake’s your brother?” I asked.

She nodded and wept for a while.

“The blizzards have been bad,” said Hoss. “But were you delayed? If you started in May you should’ve been well clear of the mountains before the snows came. You should be in California by now.”

She ground her teeth. “That blasted man!” she cried. “That damn blasted man! May he rot in hell!”

Pa chose to ignore the bad language. “What man?”

“When we were in Fort Bridger Pa met a man who said there was a more direct route. Some of the families wanted to try it but Ma and me and all the kids were against it. But Pa was convinced. He said it was a smoother trip, that it would cut hundreds of miles off the journey. But I don’t know, Ma and me had a bad feeling about it.” She paused and licked her lips nervously.  “But even we didn’t think he was leading us into a desert!  We lost a lot of our animals and wagons and it took us weeks and weeks. We nearly died.” 

“How you must have suffered!” Adam said.

“Can you blame us for hating him? He said he’d lead us but he never did. He left letters nailed to trees. Everything he told us was a lie. By the time we rejoined the trail everyone else was a month ahead of us.”

She told of the disintegration of the groups, the rows, the raids, the constant push to reach the Sierra before the snows came.  The small train broke up, each family group distrustful of the others. By the time they reached the mountains the snow had begun to fall and they had lost most of their animals to Indian raids or starvation.

“We tried to go further, but we were so weak and it was so steep. We were out of food and the animals began to die. So we stacked them and ate them. We took shelter in huts by a lake, but there were so many raids! And then the day came…” She was finished and could not go on for some time. It was obvious she was in a lot of pain. “I think my family is dead.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. “Where are they, Harriet?”

“There was a raid,” she gasped. “Yesterday, I think. I’ve been walking so long I’ve lost sense of time. All our animals were gone, we were eating bones and oxhide. So we had nothing. We all started running. I ran and ran until I fell. I tried to go back but got lost. So I just walked.”

I think it was then when we realized she was lucky to be alive. The odds against her surviving were a hundred to one. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Any later and she would have died from exposure. She understood.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?”

None of us answered. “We must try to find the site,” said Pa. “There are some old cabins by Washoe lake.”

Hoss and Adam were already reaching for their hats and coats.

“I was a long way east of there.”

“She obviously headed that way. That’s the only place I can think of in this area.”

*

We left her to recover under Hop Sing’s care and formed a small unit of men to find out what had happened to her family. We knew what we were expecting as we rode along on that snowy Christmas Eve. But not one of us came away without an unshed tear.

She was right, of course. Not one of her family had survived. We found the frozen corpses covered in snow. What was hardest to witness were the children, of whom there were many. She had five sisters and brothers and four cousins. Some of the children had made it into the nearby woods only to be slaughtered in their turn.

I looked away and cursed myself for I felt tears pricking at my eyes. Fortunately it was snowing so hard no-one noticed and I saw the strange, grim expressions on my family’s faces. They were struggling themselves. 

“Why?” I managed to say after a long silence. “Why, in God’s name? They were children!”

“I don’t know, Joe,” said Pa.

“They’re evil!”

“The Paiutes are as capable of evil as the white man, unfortunately.”

“How the devil are we going to tell Harriet?” Adam cleared his throat and his voice became firmer.

“She already knows. Deep down, she knows.”

We could not even bury them as the ground was frozen solid. We travelled back and even the men were silent. As soon as Harriet saw our faces, she turned and went upstairs. We later heard her wails.

“Why me?”she wept. “My parents, my little sisters and brothers! Everyone! Why am I the only one to survive?”

We did not know what to say. I heard Pa murmuring to her. “God chose you to survive, child.”

“I should have stayed behind, looked after the others…”

“And you would be dead.”

We remonstrated with him. “Pa – “

“No, he’s right. I…I…must try to be brave.”

Trembling, with tears pouring down her face, she looked up at the huge Christmas tree, dazzled as the firelight caught on the ornaments. “I’m sorry I spoiled  your Christmas.”

“You didn’t. You made it. You believe in God, don’t you, Harriet?”

“Of course.”

“He told us to love one another, to love our neighbor as we would love ourselves. He sent his only son down to us and what better way can we honor him than by hoping you’ll let us extend our love to you?”

I smiled. “We’ll look after her, won’t we, Pa?”

“We sure will, son.”

The End

Author’s Note

This story is partially and very loosely based on the Donner Party.