Page 32 of Deja New
FIFTEEN
OCTOBER 1846
HUMBOLT RIVER, NEVADA
Walk or die.
But he couldn’t walk.
So.
He’d known there were risks. Of course he had; he wasn’t born here, but almost five thousand miles away in Belgium. That journey had been fraught with peril and he had despaired of ever seeing land again. More than once he had dropped to his knees:Please help me in Your wise compassion, O Lord, please spare me an ocean grave and in Your mercy, guide me to land.
He had been heard and, at the time, was grateful to have been spared drowning, a bad death surrounded by hundreds of fellow passengers, all gasping and crying and praying, all fighting the sea.
Now he was surrounded by land stretching infinite miles in every direction, and he was alone. The Lord Almighty hadanswered his prayer with a vengeance that, under different circumstances, he would have found amusing.
He supposed he should pray and prepare for death, he supposed he should greet his Maker in as serene a state of mind as possible. Forgiving them—forgiving Lewis Keseberg—would be the Christian thing to do. It would prove John Snyder Hardkoop was worthy of a spot in heaven.
But.
John had spent hours trying to get serene, but every time he closed his eyes to pray, Keseberg was there, telling him to get out and walk, telling him the party in general and Keseberg in particular would not waste their precious, dwindling resources on a seventy-year-old immigrant. (An odd distinction, since Keseberg was himself an immigrant from Germany.) Warning him again when he collapsed beside the stream: Hardkoop would not be allowed to ride and no one would stay with him.
A true Christian would not ascribe sinister motivations behind Keseberg’s exhortations that he rise, that he walk, that he keep going. A good person would assume Keseberg was being encouraging in his blunt way, was trying to save him.
But Keseberg couldn’t hide the relief on his face when John didn’t move. He might as well have scrawled it on his forehead:More for the rest of us if he stays. More for me.*
Now, a day later, after he spent the night shivering and staring at the stars and mentally murdering Lewis Keseberg inseveral satisfying ways, he’d propped himself up beside the stream and contemplated his ruined feet.They’ve burst like overstuffed sausage casings,he thought dispassionately. But here was a blessing at last: The colder he got, the more tired, the more hungry, the more the pain receded.
What didn’t abate was his howling rage at being dismissed as a burden and abandoned. He simply could not get his mind serene. Dogs had been granted more dignified deaths than what he was facing.
He knew there was life beyond death. He knew that, one way or another, John Snyder Hardkoop would continue. And if it was the Lord’s will that he be born again, if another life was his burden or blessing, so be it.
But he would take every care in the next life: He would make himself valuable. Irreplaceable. Someone who would never be abandoned in a vast wilderness and left to die.
And if he ever ran into Lewis Keseberg, he would cheerfully murder the man.
Yes.
He closed his eyes. It would be over soon, surely.
