The bowie knife slowly carved off a long strip. “And that little one you’ve uncovered up there—Samantha—what’s going to happen to her?”

“First, we have to make one hundred percent sure it really is her. And then, as I said, she’ll be given a proper burial.”

Another strip came off. “And why weren’t they given a proper Christian burial back then? Why were the bones left lying around?”

There was a silence. Nora glanced at Clive.

“I can answer that question,” Clive said. “When a member of the relief team reached the Lost Camp in the spring of 1847, the snow was still twenty feet deep. You couldn’t bury anyone in those conditions. And there was no way to haul out the remains. It was all the man could do to rescue the one survivor, Chears.”

“Why didn’t they come back later and bury them?”

“This was exceedingly remote country at that time. One reason might have been superstition—a fear of lingering evil, perhaps, or revulsion at what happened. The rescuers saw scenes of appalling horror at the camps, and the newspapers sensationalized it to the hilt. That deterred others from coming up here after the snows melted.”

“And so the bones were left unburied for one hundred and seventy-five years.”

“That’s unfortunately correct.”

Another long strip curled off and landed at Peel’s feet. “So this rescuer—what did he find when he got up here?”

“Josiah Best was his name. He never left a written record of what he found. However, he did mention it—briefly—to a couple of people after bringing Chears back to the main camp at Truckee Lake. After that, he apparently never spoke of it again, nor did he make note of the location—which is why the camp was lost these many years.”

“What exactly did he see, this Best?”

At this, Burleson broke in. “Jack, are these questions really necessary? It’s been a long day.”

“We’re up here because of the Lost Camp, and I’d like to know what’s going on. There’s no reason to be hiding anything from us—but when I was up earlier, there they were, hiding the body of Samantha Carville from me.”

“Just a minute,” Nora said. “Nobody was hiding anything. Covering an excavation is standard procedure.”

“There’s nothing secret,” Clive said. “The problem with Best’s account is, as I said, he didn’t write it down. All we have are secondhand reports, which were later collected by a newspaper reporter and written up as if in the first person. The oral reports of what Best originally said have been lost, which makes the reporter’s article a thirdhand conflation. There’s no way to know how accurate it is—or how embellished.”

Peel stared at him. “So what did it say?”

“The newspaper account? You want me to read it?”

“Yes,” Peel said.

Clive got up and went over to his tent, then returned a moment later with a notebook. He turned on his headlamp, opened the notebook, cleared his throat, and began to read.

The Lost Camp was the most appalling spectacle ever to greet my eyes. A crude shelter had been erected from wagon boards, almost entirely buried in snow, with an entrance like a hole, trampled and stained with human blood. Bones lay scattered around as so much trash. Inside the hut was an iron kettle setting on a dead fire, containing a foot and a head split from top to bottom. The face was unrecognizable. In one corner of the shelter a scalp had been flung, a mass of black hair tied in a bun, which I took to mean the remains of the poor soul in the pot were of a woman. In another corner were two corpses. Mr. Chears was outside, heedless of the elements and singing to himself. He was fashioning something out of pieces of bone, but did not object when I raised him to his feet and tied on snowshoes for the journey out. He never to my knowledge spoke a word of sense while I was there or after. It looked as if the devil himself had unleashed hell upon that bloody ground. I never in my life witnessed such a dreadful thing and I pray never to see the like of it again.

A horrified silence fell on the group. Nora wished Peel had not pushed for this grisly passage to be read, but it seemed Clive had done the best he could under the circumstances.

At last, Peel spoke again, his voice quiet. “Why isn’t there a clergyman up here? To oversee the handling of these remains?”

“Once we’ve confirmed the identities back in the lab,” Nora said, “we’ll involve clergy. As I said, the remains will be interred with the appropriate religious rites, according to the wishes of their descendants. Or in the case where there are no descendants, the State of California will make the reburial decisions.”

“After 9/11,” said Peel, “they had clergy on call for whenever human remains were found. But here, it seems to me you scientists are digging these folks up with no respect or consideration of their immortal souls.”

“Jack,” said Burleson sharply. “I was very clear with everyone what we were going to be doing up here. It’s a little late to be registering objections.”

Peel turned to him. “I didn’t realize it involved this.”

“That should have been obvious,” said Burleson angrily.

“I’m sympathetic to Jack’s sentiments,” said Nora, intervening. “And as I said, we plan to involve clergy. But not until we’ve finished. This area is too difficult, logistically, to bring in anyone. We don’t even know the faith of most of these victims—whether Protestant or Catholic, or perhaps Jewish.”

“You’re messing around with some powerful stuff,” said Peel. “And you can sugarcoat it all you want, but it sounds an awful lot like desecration to me. The consumption of human flesh, that talk of hell on earth, the people going mad, the bodies unburied. This is the devil’s playground. Ever since I got here, I’ve had a bad feeling about this godless place. And nothing any of you all have said—or done—has made it go away.”

Nora’s feeling of apprehension rose. She’d never considered such serious objections might be raised. “I realize the details are disturbing,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “As archaeologists, we’re only trying to understand what happened. We’re not desecrating anything.”

Jack Peel stood up. “This isn’t right.”

Clive suddenly spoke again. “As a descendant of one of the Donner Party families,” he said, voice rising in anger, “I resent your attitude. I want to know the truth, all of it, even the worst. Voltaire once said, ‘To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.’ And that’s the way we can best serve these people’s memories—by learning their stories. I’m not going to let some Bible-thumping wrangler tell me what’s right and what isn’t.”

Peel stared at him for a long moment. Then he slowly holstered his bowie knife, tossed his stick into the fire, and turned and walked off into the night.

Burleson turned to Clive. “I’m sorry. I had no inkling of this. I can’t have this kind of disruption on my team. I’ll replace Peel.”

“Let’s not do anything hasty,” said Nora. “Let’s see how things stand in the morning.”