Round 2, Heat 2 - Historical fiction, a seven-year-old boy, an unveiling.

  Relief

In February of 1847, John Denton was rescued by the first relief party to reach the snowbound encampment at what would later be called Donner Lake. On the grueling journey to Sutter’s Fort, he carried a seven-year-old boy in his arms.

When the first relief arrived at Truckee Lake, they thought the encampment had been abandoned. Snow lay eighteen feet deep around them, subsuming the makeshift cabins. When the rescuers shouted, figures appeared, rising up out of the icy drifts like gaunt, dark ghosts on Judgment Day. A woman shouted hoarsely, “Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven?” Her wizened face was slick with tears.

Most of the survivors were too weak to make the hundred-mile trek to Sutter’s Fort over the snow-covered mountains. The rescuers selected the twenty-three strongest to return with them. They were all near death. Many would not live to see California.

John Denton was one of those chosen to make the journey. He was a young man, and he had once been strong, though months of starvation had reduced him to a shadow. He could walk, he said, and that was good enough. He held a small boy in his arms. “His name is Peter,” Denton said, in his soft, Sheffield accent. “His parents, my employers, are dead. I shan’t leave him.”

One of the rescuers offered the boy a small piece of dried beef. He reached up and grasped it, slowly bringing it to his lips. He seemed almost too weak to chew.

“How old is the boy?” the man asked.

“Seven years last month,” said Denton, a hint of pride in his voice.

The boy chewed and swallowed and rested his head against Denton’s chest. He looked all of five years old. Denton held him tighter. His only son. Born to William and Sara Marshall, for whom he had worked as handyman and driver for nearly a decade. William and Sara, now buried nearby in the snow. Sara, the only woman he had ever loved.

“Mister Denton,” Daniel Rhoads, the leader of the rescue party, said. “You’ll have to carry him.”

“I know.”

“A hundred miles.”

“I can’t be bothered with particulars. I’m not leaving the boy.”

“You’ll have to keep up or you’ll be left. You know this?”

“I do.”

“Suit yourself.” 

Rhoads set a pair of makeshift snowshoes in front of him. Denton put Peter down long enough to strap them over his boots, and when he bent to pick the boy up, he almost fell. He waited, with his head down, for the world to right itself, then he gathered Peter in his arms, straightened his back, and said, “Lead on.”

They traveled “Indian style,” with one in the lead, breaking the snowpack and tamping it down, and the others following behind, literally in the leader’s footsteps. It was exhausting work for the person in front, and they traded off, men and women, as each leader weakened. Denton, with his human burden, was spared that responsibility. Peter’s body, clutched against his chest, warmed his core and burned his arms with fatigue, but the boy’s beating heart gave him the strength to press on.

They could still see the lake, and the mounds that marked the snow-covered cabins, when the storm began again. Big flakes, like feathers, easing down from the sky, falling more swiftly with each moment, until all they could see was a thick, white void. Denton could just make out the dark figures of his companions as they wended their way over the mountain. The snow obscured their footprints as he fell farther and farther behind.

“Mister Denton,” Peter said, his voice so soft it was almost drowned by the gentle whoosh of the wind in the pines.

“Yes, Peter?” Denton hefted the boy a little higher against his chest, resting his chin on his head.

“It’s nice here,” Peter said. “So warm. Thank you for bringing me.”

Denton kept walking, biting back tears, as the boy’s body stiffened and went soft in his arms, and all the warmth went out of him.

When he found the others, they had made camp under the branches of a towering pine. They had cut saplings and laid them out to create a kind of platform on the snow. Someone was lighting a fire in the center with kindling the rescuers carried. Noah James, a man Denton hardly knew, approached him and gently took Peter’s cold, stiff body from him. Denton’s legs gave out, and he sat, though his arms were frozen in place as if they still held their precious cargo. He wept.

*

It was still snowing when the sun rose again, and John Denton had not moved. His chin had dropped to his chest and his arms now rested on his knees, but he hadn’t slept. He had turned down the meager rations his fellow travelers had plied him with the night before, though a blanket someone put around his shoulders was still there.

 “John,” It was Rhoads, squatting before him as if talking to a child. “Get up.”

 Denton slowly raised his head, seeing nothing but darkness. “I can’t,” he said.

“I’m sorry about the boy, John. But we have to leave. We can’t lose the day for it.”

“I can’t see,” Denton said. 

Rhoads shouted over his shoulder, “Snow blind!” and turned back to Denton. “We don’t have enough food for another day. You really can’t see?”

“I can’t see. Can’t move, sir. You go.”

Rhoads stood and went to join the others. They spoke in hushed tones. Rhoads came back with another rescuer. “John, we’re going to move you closer to the fire.”

“That’d be lovely,” he said, and they carried him to the center of the sapling platform and laid him on a blanket.

Someone tucked another blanket around him. He heard women weeping.

“Second relief should be by soon,” Rhoads said. “You rest ‘til then.”

“Ta,” said Denton. “I’ll just have a kip. ‘Til then.”

“Good man,” said Rhoads. “Just rest.” 

Denton closed his eyes and listened as their footsteps crunched away through the snow, leaving nothing but silence and the low moan of the gathering wind.

He must have slept, because he awoke, hotter than he had ever been. The fire had died and sunset limned the clouds on the white horizon in an orange glow. He saw this. He could see. He wasn’t sure he could be glad of anything, but his heart felt a shimmer of hope. Then he remembered Peter, and that meager spark went out. 

He heard voices. He thought he heard one call his name, but it was only the wind susurrating through the treetops.

“John,” a woman’s voice now. Soft and familiar.

He was so hot. He shrugged off his heavy coat, wadded it under his head, and stared at the trees sideways. He thought he saw movement. Two dark figures coming closer through the thick white curtain of snow.

“Mr. Denton.” A boy’s voice. Peter’s voice.

Denton squinted his eyes and saw the two approaching were of different statures. Surely one was a child. He closed his eyes, certain he was dreaming, but when he opened them again they were still there, closer now. A woman and a boy. He saw them in glimpses between snow flurries. The woman wore her hair up under a fine bonnet, lovely loose tendrils framing her pretty face. It was Sara.

Denton sat up. “Who’s there?”

“It’s us,” the voices said. “You know who we are.” The boy giggled.

It was indeed Sara and Peter, though not the Sara and Peter he had so recently known. Sara’s face was full and healthy, and Peter’s was round and tinged with mischief. It was them as he had known and loved them lifetimes ago, on their farm in Missouri. 

“Come home, now, John,” Sara said, and she raised her hand, parting the snow and unveiling another world behind her. Green grass studded with wildflowers rolled off to the horizon. The prairie in spring. 

Denton stood on legs that no longer trembled or threatened to give out, and he ran to them. He took them both in his strong young arms, and together, they headed for home.

END