No, she said, which surprised him. She rarely made such decisive declarations. Usually it was probably not, or I don’t believe so. Look at the map. I’ve marked the presumed locations of the campsites where the party made shelter, the spots where the deaths occurred, even the ones along the pass and beyond. None of them correspond in any way to Weber’s cabin or the ley lines, or influence reaching beyond it.
She indicated a trio of squares near the visitor center— the Donner Party’s campsites. Another set of squares marked a few miles east—the party had separated before getting trapped for the winter. The Donner family itself was at that eastern location.
Mostly, Cormac was amazed that this much information survived about the Donner Party, to be able to mark the deaths on a map.
They’re still making archeological investigations to learn more about what happened. It’s an obsession with some people.
“Peterson?”
Indeed.
“What now?”
I need more information, she said, with an intensity that might have been, if he could say it, obsessive.
Time to hit the books.
The local library was rustic, but honestly so, a small brown building tucked into yet another collection of pine trees—and right next to the sheriff’s department, Cormac noted. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, no reason he ought to draw suspicion. A bunch of kids’ drawings decorated the library windows.
The nice cardigan-wearing woman at the counter smiled briefly at him as he entered and turned back to whatever she was doing. The place was soft and insulated. Safe, which should have been comforting.
First, he found the local newspapers going back to Weber’s death, and read everything he could. He didn’t learn much more than Domingo had told him and what he’d read online. The man didn’t have much family, wasn’t married, and didn’t have kids, which was a small comfort, he supposed. Weber had been a popular guide and ranger. He was an authority on the white-headed woodpecker, a local rarity. People liked him. They’d miss him. And he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d kill himself. There was no reason someone like him should have died so mysteriously—and no reason that he shouldn’t, if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like a lot of libraries in tourist towns, this one had a section of local books about the area. Places like this always had a couple of local authors who collected folklore and stories of regional interest, publishing them in pamphlets just a couple of steps up from homemade. And yes, he found a few by Elton Peterson, the angry historian. He’d written biographies of several of the main figures from the tragedy; an entire book discussing the children who were part of the expedition—as depressing a subject as Cormac could imagine, so he didn’t even crack the cover on that one—and another covering the equipment and survival techniques the members of the party would have used to set up their not-particularly successful camp. As far as Cormac could tell from skimming the work, Peterson hadn’t done much original research—the archeological information in that last book was all done decades ago, and he compiled it from other sources and recycled it into the newer book. He’d talked about a new book in his rant at Domingo. Cormac wondered what could possibly be left to cover.
Amelia took notes. Just in case, she insisted. It was probably most noteworthy that they didn’t find anything new and interesting. The Donner story was tragic, but it wasn’t supernatural.
Next stop was the local historical society, which could be another font of quirky and often useful information in a town like this. What stories were important to the town itself, maybe overshadowed by the notoriety of the Donners? Then again, it might just be a room with lots of black and white pictures of Fourth of July parades of yesteryear. Amelia didn’t want to miss anything, so they looked.
The society had a small cabin at one end of a standard city park, with ball fields and a playground, a few kids playing and people throwing sticks for dogs. It all would have looked innocuous except for a couple of vans and a big SUV parked near the cabin, blocking out half the lot, and a series of traffic cones marking out an area of the grassy lawn nearby. The reason for the presumptuous claim of public space became clear quickly: the nearby cluster of people included a man with a big video camera, another with a mike boom, and a few of the others were wearing historical costumes, cheap nineteenth century pioneer outfits, shirts and trousers, skirts and shawls, floppy hats and sunbonnets.
Somebody was filming something. Cormac wondered if the costumes looked as fake to Amelia as they did to him.
How am I supposed to know if they look real? Those costumes represent an era well before my time, she answered with a huff. You do realize the nineteenth century was a hundred years long, don’t you? She added, But yes, they look fake.
An energetic young man emerg
ed from the back of one of the vans. He had slicked-back dark hair and wore expensive-looking shirt and trousers. Clapping his hands, he started calling out orders. The cameraman and mike operator took positions at one end of the grassy stretch, and the people in costume—actors—straightened skirts and hats and moved toward the other end of the grass, against a backdrop of trees, the one and only place they could be filmed without the modern buildings, roads, wires, and so on, intruding. One of them dropped a half-burned cigarette and stomped it out.
The energetic man must have been the director. Cormac scanned the vans for some kind of production company logo, but they looked like plain white rentals. A few more people were on hand with clipboards, bottles of water, and other odds and ends. Some of the dog walkers wandered over, and one of the women with a clipboard marched over to them. “Move along, folks. We’ve got people working here, we need you to stay out of the way.”
That didn’t really help. This was too interesting to just walk away from.
“Okay, people! This is part one of the Fort Bridger scene, everybody know where we’re at?”
Amelia observed, Fort Bridger is a thousand miles away, in Wyoming. What are these people doing?
Cormac believed they were filming a dramatic reenactment for some kind of documentary.
“All right!” the director checked in with his crew while the actors took up places they’d obviously discussed or rehearsed. “Ready? Action!”
Two of the men in costumes began arguing. “We should continue on the old route! It’s the safest way!”
“No!” said the other. “This new shortcut will be faster! It will shorten our journey by three hundred miles!”
“But we know nothing about the route and we have no guide!” They made expansive gestures and over-enunciated in a way that made Cormac wince.
“How hard can it be?” the second man declared. Cormac couldn’t tell if this was intended to sound as ironic as it did.