Close to NIGHTFALL, Stanton pressed his things. He was prepared to leave Fort Bridger and its lunatics and its insider facts behind. Tying up couldn’t come a second too early. Abruptly, Lewis Keseberg stuck his head inside Stanton’s tent. “Donner needs you to accompany me.” Not such a long time ago, Donner would have come straightforwardly had he needed to talk. Perhaps carried a jug of bourbon to share. Stanton didn’t know when things changed among them, and why. Stanton gazed upward from the blade he was honing, whetstone in his lap. “Would it be able to delay until tomorrow?” “You will need to come. He’s scrutinizing an Indian kid who slithered free and clear.” Keseberg’s decayed teeth shined wetly in obscurity. “Said he was going with Edwin Bryant.” Stanton was on his feet and outside in practically no time. At the outbuilding, a small bunch of men remained in a circle around a thin dim kid, sitting on a bundle of roughage and hung with a grimy pony cover. Just his head was noticeable, his dark hair hanging in messy knot. This must be the Indian aide Bryant had employed prior to withdrawing from Fort Laramie. Stanton had known about him, a Paiute vagrant changed over by evangelists, however hadn’t met him. He appeared to be extremely youthful to be driving men through strange region. “Where’s Edwin?” The words were out before Stanton realized he’d spoken. He just figured out how to hold back from thrusting at the kid when the kid never really shook his head. “He revealed to us that Bryant chose to go on all alone and excused him from administration,” Donner said. Hands covered in his pockets, he paced fretfully, and Stanton could tell that he, as well, discovered that story far-fetched. Reed ventured nearer to the kid, botching his face. “Bryant wouldn’t release you except if you’d effectively made him. Did you attempt to take from him? What was it, kid?” The Indian pushed hair out of his eyes. “I didn’t take nothing, I swear.” “Yet he didn’t excuse you. You lied about that, isn’t that right? You fled. That is no joke,” Reed said. The kid looked down again and mumbled something unintelligible. Reed glanced back at the others. “The lone inquiry that remains is how to manage him.” “We leave him here, obviously,” Donner said, and quit pacing to gaze at Reed. “What else is there to do? We can’t take him with us.” Stanton thought about the wild man in Bridger’s improvised barricade, the crude injuries on his wrists. Could they simply hand the kid over to Jim Bridger? “Why not take him with us?” Keseberg inquired. “Quitter or not, he knows the region and we need an aide. He can lead us to Hastings. That can be his discipline for abandoning a white man in the wild.” It was one of the more sensible musings Stanton had at any point heard out of Keseberg’s mouth. “You can’t make me work for you,” the kid said. “We will not swindle you,” Reed said. In spite of the fact that he and Keseberg disdained one another, it was clear he concurred with the idea. “However, you heard these men: You can’t remain here. You have no place else to go. You’ll accompany us or you can walk right to Fort Laramie.” The kid looked starting with one of his captors then onto the next. Stanton thought briefly that he may hop up and attempt to flee. “You can’t make me go with you. That way—that way is awful. There are awful spirits sitting tight for you ahead. You can’t pass. It isn’t protected.” Bad spirits. Stanton considered messages sent through dreams, of the little charms of packaged sticks and trim he’d seen Tamsen hefting around with her when she thought nobody was watching. At the point when he shouldn’t have been watching.He’d discovered a handbag of dried spices underneath his cushion seven days prior, after the last time they’d been together. At the point when he consumed it, it delivered a stifling smoke, sweet and confounding. Stanton squatted so he could glance the kid in the face. “Pay attention to me. What’s your name?” There was a careful look in his eye. “Thomas.” “Thomas.” That sounded natural; maybe he’d heard the kid’s name at Fort Laramie. “Before anything else, you’ll take me to where you left Edwin Bryant.” The kid hardened, unnerved. “I can’t do that, sir. It was many days from here. I don’t have a clue where he will be.” He wasn’t going to allow wild ponies to drag him back into the wild. That much was self-evident. Donner put a hand on Stanton’s shoulder. “Try not to burn through your time stressing over Bryant. He’ll be good. He thinks about Indians and their methodologies. He has the best potential for success of making due out in those mountains, better than most of us.” Stanton stood, contorting away from Donner’s hand. “Edwin is out there without anyone else, no doubt lost. We can’t simply abandon him.” “He left us, don’t you recall, when he took off riding a horse?” Donner said. “It appears to me he settled on his decision as of now. I have more than one solitary man to stress over, Stanton. There are 88 individuals in this cart party, every one of them relying upon me. You can take off to search for Bryant assuming you need, Stanton, however the Indian is remaining with us.” Stanton knew, where it counts, that Donner was correct. Regardless of whether he figured out how to gather together an inquiry party, the cart train couldn’t stand to pause. They’d lost such a large number of days as of now. Also, there’d been no letter from Bryant. Nothing by any stretch of the imagination. He considered Mary Graves scrambling in reverse in the soil, the buck of his gun as he fired her aggressor, what would’ve occurred in the event that he wasn’t there.