Venom
David Thompson
LEISURE BOOKS
NEW YORK CITY
Nate was almost to the corner of the cabin. He stopped and turned. It took a few seconds for what he was seeing to sink in. Water covered much of the ground, inches of it, to within five or six yards of their front door. At first it appeared as if the water was moving, but it wasn’t the water; it was something
in
the water. He took a few steps and the shapes acquired form. “It can’t be,” he blurted.
“You see them, then?”
Nate nodded. Snakes. Rattlesnakes. Hundreds of the things, swimming, crawling, moving aimlessly about as if they had no sense of where they should go. “God in heaven.”
Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane.
And to Beatrice Bean, with the most loving regard.
She was sleek and gorgeous and five feet long.
It was late summer in the Rocky Mountains. The sun blazed in a cloudless sky.
The female lay curled on a flat rock in a gully. The temperature hovered near one hundred degrees. Where most creatures would swelter, she thrived; she soaked up the heat as a sponge soaked up water.
A hawk screeched, causing the female to crawl under a nearby boulder. She didn’t have ears, but she was conscious of the vibrations the hawk’s cry created in the air. They were absorbed through her skin, muscle and bone to her inner ear. For a while she stayed in the relative coolness under the boulder, but she didn’t like the cool as much as the heat and she crawled back out to her rock and curled her body.
The female darted her forked tongue in and out and discovered she was no longer alone. Her tongue picked up scents and carried them to a tiny organ in the back of her mouth and the organ told her what the scent was.
A male, and it was close.
The female raised her head and looked about. Her eyesight wasn’t exceptional. She could see about ten times her body length. Beyond that was murky. But her kind didn’t rely solely on hearing and sight. She had another sense. Between her eyes and her false nostrils were pits that detected the body heat given
off by other creatures. Her pits confirmed what her tongue and her eyes had told her.
Long and thick, the male twined down the side of the gully. His tongue kept flicking. He knew she was there, and he was coming for her. He had caught the special scent she gave off.
The female stayed coiled. He was almost to her when another male appeared. The second male had sensed her, too, and was intent on the same purpose. Both males stopped and swung their heads toward each other. The first male raised his head high. The second did the same. They slithered close and stopped.
The female watched. She had no part in what was to come. She did not get to pick.
Edging forward, the two males raised half their bodies off the ground, as if each was seeking to show that it was taller than its rival. They hissed and flicked their tongues and slowly pressed against each other. Swaying like reeds in a wind, they entwined. The first male tried to push the second male to the ground. The second male slipped free and sought to do the same to the first male.
Neither would relent until it had pinned its rival.
The female had witnessed the ritual many times. When the males were the same size it could go on a long time. She could be patient. She would wait as long as it took.
Eventually the first male won. He was bigger and the bigger males always won, but the smaller males never stopped trying.
The female lay still as the male joined her on the rock. He nudged her with his head, and when she didn’t bare her fangs he crawled up and over and on
top of her. He nudged her a few times. After a while she uncoiled.
The male ran his body along hers and she ran hers along his. When she was ready she lay still and the male slid into position.
The female felt little. To her it was not pleasure but a necessity. She must do it to have young and to give birth to young was one of the foremost drives of her life. When the male was done he lay next to her for a space. Then, with a parting flick and a hiss, he was gone.
The female stayed where she was. She lay soaking up the sun until it was so low in the sky that the gully was plunged in twilight. The heat began to dissipate. She crawled off her rock and around the boulder and down the side of the gully to a cleft. It was not much wider than she was. She crawled into it and along a winding course that brought her to a large underground chamber.
Others of her kind were there. It was their haven, their breeding area, their den. It was where the females gave birth. All of her kind for many leagues around came to the den to winter over. Some winters there were more than others. This past winter there had been the most ever. Many had since dispersed and would gather again when the weather turned cold. Many more remained to roam the gully and the surrounding area. They formed an enormous roiling mass, entwining with one another, each as deadly as any creature could be.
For most of the summer they had lived as they always did, and all was well. Then the intruders came.
“Land sakes, it’s pretty,” Emala Worth declared. She sat astride a mare on a ridge overlooking a valley as beautiful as anything. Miles-high peaks, some crowned by ivory mantles of snow, bastioned the valley from the outside world. Thick woods covered the lower slopes and green grass covered the valley floor. The topaz blue of a pristine lake gleamed bright in the sunlight. “Isn’t it, Samuel?”
Samuel Worth grunted. They had taken forever to cross the prairie and come deep into the mountains, and now that they had finally arrived, he didn’t see much difference between the valley and the savage wilderness they had spent weeks penetrating.
“Nothin’ to say?” Emala goaded. “You’re the one wanted this. You’re the one had his heart set on livin’ free.”
“Don’t start,” Samuel warned. A big man, he wore a homespun shirt she had made and pants bought with money given him by his new friend Nate King. Samuel shifted in his saddle and said to his benefactor, “So you say this valley is named after you?”
“King Valley,” Nate confirmed. He was as big as Samuel but broader at the shoulders. His attire consisted of buckskins and moccasins and an eagle feather tied in his hair. A powder horn, ammo pouch and possibles bag crisscrossed his chest. In the crook of his elbow rested a Hawken rifle and around his
waist was a virtual armory: two flintlock pistols, a Bowie knife and a tomahawk. “Shakespeare, here, started calling it that, and the handle stuck.”
The man Nate referred to was a fellow mountain man, Nate’s mentor and best friend in all creation, Shakespeare McNair. McNair was similarly attired and armed but had white hair to Nate’s black. “That I did, hoss. I could just as well have called it Nate’s Slice of Heaven.” He chuckled and quoted his namesake. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
“I can’t get over how funny you talk,” Emala said. “Half the time I can’t understand you.”
Nate laughed. “Don’t feel bad. No one else can understand him either.”
Shakespeare harrumphed and resorted to the Bard again. “Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtesan.”
“Now see,” Emala said. “Who talks like that?”
“You have to forgive him,” Nate said. “He’s getting on in years and sometimes the aged become touched in the head.”
“Aged?”
Shakespeare squawked, and looked fit to burst a blood vessel. “I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.”
Samuel had noticed brown structures along the lakeshore. “Which cabins do you all live in?”
Nate answered him. “I live on the west side of the lake, my son and his wife on the north shore. The cabin to the south is Shakespeare’s. Waku and his family live to the east.”
Samuel glanced behind him at the family in question, five Nansusequa Indians who had fled across the Mississippi River when the rest of their tribe was
wiped out and their village destroyed by whites who wanted their land. They had been living in King Valley for some time now.
Chickory Worth, Samuel’s son, kneed his mount forward. “Where will we have our cabin, Mr. King?”
Nate studied the boy. Chickory had recently come down sick with a high fever and the chills. For ten days the fourteen-year-old hovered near death at Bent’s Fort. Nate had been returning alone from a trip to the geyser country and been surprised to find McNair and his daughter and the Worths and the Nansuseqas all there, waiting for Chickory to recover. Like the rest, he had been stumped by the boy’s illness. No one could say what brought it on. “Wherever your ma and pa would like,” he said. “How are you feeling, by the way?”
“Fine as can be,” Chickory said.
Two other members of their party—Nate’s daughter, Evelyn, and Chickory’s older sister, Randa—brought their horses up next to Nate’s.
“Why have we stopped, Pa?” Evelyn asked. “I can’t wait to get home. After what we’ve been through, I don’t know as how I’ll ever leave here again.”
Nate smothered a grin. This was the same girl who once wanted to forsake the mountains and live in a city. “Lead the way,” he said. He couldn’t wait to get home either. He dearly missed his wife.
The trail wound through ranks of tall fir and shadowed spruce and pine. Squirrels scampered in the high branches. Jays squawked raucously. Finches warbled and sparrows chirped. Twice startled deer bounded away with their tails up and once a cow elk and her well-grown calf went crashing off through the brush.
Nate breathed deep of the clear mountain air.
This was his home, his haven, as near to paradise on earth as he’d ever found. He loved it here and intended to stay the rest of his days.
In half an hour they emerged from the forest near the Nansusequa lodge.
Nate bid his friends good-bye and continued along the south shore to Shakespeare’s cabin. McNair invited the Worths in, and they agreed. As Emala put it, “I can dearly use some rest from all this ridin’. My backside wasn’t made for sittin’ a horse.”
That left Nate and Evelyn free to make the short ride to their own cabin, where he wearily drew rein.
Inside, Winona King was baking when she heard them ride up. She took off the apron her husband had bought her in St. Louis and hurried out.
Nate swung down and turned just as the cabin door opened. Warmth flooded his chest, as if his heart were on fire. He drank in the sight of her shimmering ink-black hair and the beaded buckskin dress that accented the beauty of the body it clothed, a body he knew as well as he knew his own. “Winona,” he said softly, and spread his big arms.
Winona melted into them and hugged him close. “Husband,” she said simply.
Nate sniffed her hair, savoring the scent. He felt whole again.
“I have missed you,” Winona said.
“And I you.”
“Was there any trouble?”
“No more than usual,” Nate hedged. Later he would tell her about the scalp hunters who nearly slew their daughter and the hostiles who had tried to take his own life.
Evelyn climbed down and let her reins dangle. “You two can stand there forever, but I want a bath
and a hot meal and good night’s sleep.” She started toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Winona asked.
“You know the rules,” Nate said. “Your animal comes first. Strip your saddle and put him in the corral and then we’ll fill the basin.”
“Aw, Pa.” Evelyn had hankered for a bath for days now.
“You heard your father,” Winona said.
Evelyn snatched the reins and led her horse around to the corral. She was mildly annoyed. Here she was, sixteen years old, and her parents treated her as if she were ten. She thought about her recent trip to the prairie with the Nansusequas, and felt herself blush. Thank goodness her folks didn’t know about Dega and her. She imagined they would be upset, her kissing a boy.
Evelyn closed her eyes, remembering. Oh, those kisses. She never experienced anything like them. They had left her breathless, they were so potent. She couldn’t get enough.
Evelyn opened her eyes and giggled. She was in love, in honest-to-God love. She’d never expected anything like this to happen to her. Oh, sure, women fell in love all the time. But somehow she’d always thought she would be different. Grinning at the memory of those wonderful kisses, she leaned her rifle against a post, opened the gate, and ushered her horse into the corral. She undid the cinch and took off the saddle and threw it over the top rail. She did the same with the saddle blanket, then removed the bridle. She patted the horse and went out and closed the gate. She turned to reclaim her rifle, and froze.
A rattlesnake was almost at her feet.
“Younguns,” Nate said as his daughter led her horse around the corner. “You would think she’d know better by now.”
“Blue Flower is not a child anymore, husband,” Winona said in her impeccable English, using their daughter’s Shoshone name. “She is almost a woman.”
“The ‘almost’ is the important part,” Nate said. “I’d as soon she stayed as she is for five or six years yet.”
“We have both seen how she looks at Dega. It would not surprise me if she agrees to be his wife.”
Nate was genuinely shocked. “She’s not old enough for that. Not by a long shot.”
“Girls in some tribes marry even younger,” Winona reminded him. “So do many whites.”
“I don’t much care what everyone else does,” Nate grumbled. He never had patterned his behavior by how others acted.
Winona put her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “I understand this upsets you. It would upset me, too, were it not, as you whites would say, the natural order of things.”
“I should have a talk with Dega. Find out what his intentions are.”
“You will do no such thing,” Winona cautioned. “It would embarrass her. Did my father ask you your intentions before we went out at night to stand under a blanket?”
Nate grinned at the recollection. “I’ve never been so fond of a blanket in my life.”
“You are avoiding the issue.”
“What’s embarrassing,” Nate said, “is that you speak my tongue better than I do. I hardly ever use the word ‘issue.’ Or ‘avoid,’ for that matter.”
“You do not fool me, Nathaniel King.”
“Whenever you get formal I know I’m in trouble.”
Winona kissed him on his chin. “You may not use those words, but you know them. You are a reader. We have more books in our cabin than anyone in the Rockies.”
“Twenty-seven isn’t a lot.”
“Shakespeare has only one.”
“Yes, and he’s been reading it for thirty years. No wonder he has the darn thing memorized.”
Winona laughed and kissed him again, on the cheek. “Have I told you today how much I love you?”
“I have two cheeks.”
Winona kissed him on the other. “But you are still avoiding the issue. You think that by talking about something else I will not notice, but I do.”
“You’re female.”
“What does that mean?”
“Women notice everything. It’s why men get in so much trouble.”
“Men get in trouble because they are men.” Winona kissed him full on his lips. “Now back to Evelyn. We both know how she feels about Dega. We see it in her eyes when she looks at him and hear it in her voice when she talks about him.”
“Could be it won’t last,” Nate said hopefully. “Could be I’ll be an old man before she thinks about taking a husband.”
Winona tilted her head skyward and pointed. “Look there!” she cried.
All Nate saw was blue, save for a puffy pillow of a cloud off in the distance. “What did you see?”
“A flying cow.”
Nate couldn’t help himself. He cackled, then forced
a sober expression and said, “I take it that was your notion of a hint.”
“Was I too subtle?”
“My God, the words you use. Have you been reading my books when I’m not around?”
“Ne tsaawesunga baide suwai Degamawaku,”
Winona said in Shoshone.
Nate struggled to recollect what
tsaawesunga
meant. “You do? You really feel good about Evelyn and Dega being together?”
“He is a good boy. Good in heart and good in mind. She has chosen as I chose you.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Nate said. “After all these years you’re telling me you became my wife because you thought I have a good heart?”
“I do not think you do. I know you do. You have the best heart of all the men I have ever met, red or white.”
“Shakespeare has a good heart.”
“It belongs to Blue Water Woman. And he is old enough to be my grandfather. I wanted a slightly younger man for my husband.”
“
Slightly
younger? Why, you wench, you.” Nate patted her posterior. “Let me put my horse in the corral and I’ll show you who is old.”
“In broad daylight? With our daughter in the cabin?”
Nate glanced up. “Where is she, anyhow? She should have been back by now.”
“Maybe she is brushing her horse.”
“Without being told?” Nate scoffed. He kissed Winona and tugged on the reins and made for the side of their cabin. “I’d better check on her.”
“I will fix a meal. If she has gone off to see Dega, don’t be mad. Young love does foolish things.”
Nate walked faster. He was willing to admit that Winona had a point, but he still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of his daughter being interested in a man, no matter how good the man’s heart might be. She was his little girl. She would always be his little girl. He saw her standing at the corral gate, and smiled. “There you are. We were wondering where you got to.”
Evelyn didn’t respond or move.
“What the devil has gotten into…” Nate began, and felt a chill ripple down his spine when a blunt triangular head rose a few inches off the ground. He snapped his Hawken to his shoulder and thumbed back the hammer but didn’t shoot. At that angle the slug might go through the snake and hit Evelyn in the leg. Slowly circling, he said quietly, “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll take care of our visitor.”
“Don’t kill it, Pa.”
Nate stopped. “Why in blazes not? It’s a rattler. One less won’t be missed.” He had seen two or three since summer began. One morning he nearly stepped on one on his way to the chicken coop to collect eggs; he had chopped off its head with his ax.
“It hasn’t tried to bite me.” Evelyn didn’t like snakes all that much, but she didn’t like to kill at all.
“It’s a
rattler,
” Nate said again.
“So? If it’s not bothering us, why must you kill it? It has as much right to live as we do.”
“Where do you get those strange notions of yours?” Nate took another step and had the shot he wanted.
“Please, Pa.”
“What if it sticks around and bites my horse or your horse or your mother?” Nate was glad Winona
hadn’t heard him mention her last. He would be in for no end of barbed tongue.
“You don’t know that it will. You just want an excuse to shoot it.”
Nate lowered the Hawken. “That was harsh. I don’t go around killing for the sake of killing things. I only do it when it’s necessary.”
“Is it truly necessary now?”
Nate scowled. She had him. The snake wasn’t hissing or rattling or doing anything except stare at her. “All right. Shoo it off. But if you get bit, don’t come crying to me.”
Evelyn took hold of her rifle and bent and poked at the rattler. Instantly, it reared and its tail buzzed. She poked at it again and it retreated, whipping its body from side to side.
