Venom (4 page)

“I think a rattlesnake just crawled up my leg,” Shakespeare McNair remarked.

Nate was looking under a rock. “You’re not half as humorous as you think you are.” They had scoured most of the south shore and not come across a snake of any kind. He and McNair were near the grass, Winona and Blue Water Woman were over by the lake. They had been hunting for an hour now and would soon be at the east end.

“You think I jest, Horatio?” Shakespeare gave his right leg a vigorous shake and then bent as if to check if anything had fallen out. “I reckon you’re right.”

“Is this your way of saying my idea was a waste of time?”

“Not at all. Just last night I looked out my window and saw six rattlesnakes roll themselves into hoops and have a contest to see which of them could roll the farthest.”

“You are a strange man.”

Shakespeare put a hand to his chest as might an actor in a play. “I am giddy,” he quoted. “Expectation whirls me around. The imaginary relish is so sweet that it enchants my sense.”

“You have some?” Nate said.

About to go on, Shakespeare cocked his head. “Eh? I have some what? Snakes?”

“Sense.”

“Oh my. A palpable hit. Yes, that is worthy of my
illustrious wife, who delights in sinking her verbal claws into my innocent flesh.”

“Anyone would,” Nate said.

“Ouch. Twice pricked,” Shakespeare said indignantly. “I never realized how grumpy snake hunting makes some people.”

Nate came to an old log and rolled it over. Nothing was under it. “I’m surprised we haven’t found any.”

“It could be there aren’t any to be found. Or it could be they heard about your hunt and are lying up in fear somewhere.”

“There must be a den,” Nate said.

“Figured that out, did you?”

“Have you ever seen one? As old as you are, I bet you have.”

“As old as…” Shakespeare stopped and puffed out his cheeks. “Were I a mongoose, I would bite you. I have never seen a snake den, no. I did have a friend who did, during the beaver days. His name was Franklyn. He kept seeing garter snakes go down this hole. His curiosity got the better of him and he dug at the hole until he found out why the garters were going down it.”

Nate waited.

“According to Franklyn, he found a huge ball of them. Must have been hundreds. This was in the fall when they hole up for the cold weather.”

“Hundreds?” Nate said.

“So Franklyn claimed. I had no cause to doubt him. He was a good man. Had a wife and a little one back home. Thought he’d save enough trapping beaver to give them a boost up in life.”

“Was he good at it?” Nate had known men who tried their best but never were any good at skinning and curing.

“Very good, yes. He had about two thousand dollars on him the day the Blackfeet got him. Me and some others tracked them and found Franklyn in a clearing in the woods. They had staked him out and amused themselves chopping off his fingers and toes and ears. They’d cut his belly, too, and his guts were hanging out. He begged one of us to put him out of his misery.”

“Let me guess. You did.”

Shakespeare shrugged. “I never could stand to see anyone suffer. I made sure the money got to his family along with a note saying how he always talked about how much he cared for them.” His features saddened. “The wife wrote me back. Thanked me for being so considerate and asked if I was in the market for a woman.”

“She didn’t.”

“Not out plain, but it was there between the lines. Can’t blame her, I guess. It would be hard raising children alone.”

Nate stopped and placed his hands on his hips and surveyed the stretch of shore they had covered. “I reckon I was worried over nothing. There aren’t all that many rattlesnakes around, after all.”

“Better safe than bit.”

“You’re standing up for me? I figured you would poke fun from now until Christmas.”

“Let’s further think of this,” Shakespeare quoted. “Weigh what convenience both of time and means may fit us to our shape if this should fail, and our drift look through our bad performance.”

Nate shook his head. “I’ve put everyone to a lot of bother for nothing. It was coincidence, nothing more, those rattlers appearing so close together.”

“If it had been two grizzlies or two mountain lions you’d have the same cause for concern.”

“You can come right out and say when I’m wrong. I’m a grown man. I can take it.”

“Oh, all right.” Shakespeare quoted the Bard, “In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men.” He chuckled. “How’s that?”

“You call that being hard on me?”

“Later I’ll beat you with a switch if it will make you feel better.”

“I’ve inconvenienced everyone.”

Shakespeare put his hand to his chest again. “A true knight, not yet mature, yet matchless, firm in word, speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue, not soon provoked nor being provoked, soon calmed. His heart and hand both open and both free.”

“I’m no saint,” Nate said gruffly.

“You’re human. We all are. And as humans go, you are one of the few I have admired with all that I am.”

“Why are you talking like this?”

“You never know,” Shakespeare said.

Nate had a thought that troubled him. “This has something to do with your age, doesn’t it? All you’ve done lately is talk about how old you are and how you don’t feel as spry as you used to.”

“I don’t.”

“Good God. You’re over eighty. How spry do you think you should be?”

Shakespeare placed his hand on Nate’s shoulder and said earnestly, “I’m preparing you, is all.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“No.”

“You sick?”

“No.”

“Have a disease of some kind?”

“No.”

“Then why, for God sake?”

“I’m old, Nate.
Very
old. You keep denying how old I am. You tell me I’ll last a good long while, but there are no guarantees. So I am saying now what I might not be able to say tomorrow or the next day.”

“It might not happen for years yet.”

Shakespeare shook his head. “I look at myself in the mirror every day and I know what I see.” He sighed and raised his face to the vault of sky, then gazed at the lake. “I have no complaints. I’ve had a good life.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous. You act as if you have one foot in the grave when you’ve just admitted that you are as healthy as can be.”

“Why doesn’t anyone listen anymore?” Shakespeare said sadly. “My wife is denying my age just like you.”

“I’ll have Blue Water Woman and you over for supper tomorrow night and we’ll talk some more.”

“We’ll be happy to come over, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be the topic. What I’ve just said to you goes no further than right here.”

Nate grinned. “You just don’t want Blue Water Woman upset with you.”

“No. I don’t want her upset, period. I love that woman, and talking about me dying would hurt her.”

“You have my word,” Nate said.

Winona looked up and saw her husband and McNair talking. “I thought we were hunting for snakes. Look at those two.”

Blue Water Woman was using the butt of her rifle to move a large rock. “I hope it is not what I think it is.”

Winona arched an eyebrow in a silent question.

“Shakespeare has been going on again about how no one lives forever,” Blue Water Woman revealed. “He says he has a feeling, a premonition, that he isn’t long for this world.”

“Men can be so silly,” Winona said. When her friend didn’t respond, she said softly, “Blue Water Woman?”

Blue Water Woman turned. Her eyes were misting. “I am worried, Winona. It is all he talks about anymore. At first I thought it was his age. His joints hurt and he cannot get around as well.”

“He gets around better than men half his age.”

“You know that and I know that, but he says he is not the man he used to be. The other day he talked about how when he was younger he could swim a lake this size. Now he says he would be lucky to make it halfway across.”

“Everyone grows old. It is part of life.”

“It is part of dying,” Blue Water Woman said. She walked to a boulder and sat. She rested the stock of her rifle on the ground and gripped the barrel in both hands and leaned on it. “In all the winters we have been together, I have never seen Carcajou like this.”

Carcajou, as Winona knew, was a nickname given to Shakespeare in his younger days, before he discovered the Bard. It was French for “wolverine.” Shakespeare never talked about how he got the name, not even to his wife.

“I tease him about it and he doesn’t tease back,” Blue Water Woman was saying. “That in itself
worries me. It is as if a part of him has given up on living.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating a little?”

“No.”

Winona sat on another boulder and placed her Hawken across her lap. “I have good ears if you want to talk about it.”

“I know you do,” Blue Water Woman said. “You are the best friend I have ever had.” She bit her lower lip. “What I am afraid of is that Shakespeare is right. I could not live without him.”

“We are getting ahead of ourselves,” Winona cautioned. “When he shows more signs of his age than he has, then we should be concerned.”

Blue Water Woman nodded bleakly.

“My people have a medicine we use in old age. We learned it from the Nez Percé. It is the seed of what the whites call the wild peony plant. You can chew it or drink it in a tea.” Winona grinned. “Shakespeare need not know what the tea is for.”

“You are a devious woman.”

“Women have to be devious dealing with men. Men do not think as we do. They do not listen when we give them advice. They can be stubborn. And they have their pride.”

“You do not need to tell me about pride. Shakespeare has enough for ten men.”

“Men are like foals,” Winona said. “They must be led. If we have to, we must trick them into thinking an idea is theirs when it is ours. When they balk, we must be patient, as we would with a foal, and coax and flatter them.”

“Shakespeare does not take well to flattery,” Blue Water Woman said. “He is too intelligent. He sees right through it.”

“The same with Nate…most of the time,” Winona said. “He is smarter than he gives himself credit for.” She gazed over at the two men. They had stopped talking and were coming toward them. “Remember my offer of the tea.”

“My people have a tonic, too…” Blue Water Woman said, and got no further. “Husband,” she said, smiling at McNair. “We thought maybe you had stopped hunting.”

“We thought the same about you.” Shakespeare kissed her on the temple. “Saw you sitting over here. You must expect the rattlesnakes to crawl up and say, ‘Here I am.’”

“We had one do that. Then it stuck its tongue out at us and crawled off laughing.”

Winona linked her arm with Nate’s. “Why so quiet? Something bothering you?”

“This hunt has turned into a waste of time. We should go see how Waku and his family are doing.”

Waku and his family—and one other—were seated in the shade of a large spruce at the east end of the lake. The one other raised her arm and happily waved as Nate and the others approached.

“Do my eyes deceive me or is that fair young Evelyn sitting next to fair young Dega?” Shakespeare said.

“Evelyn offered to help them hunt,” Nate detailed. “She told us it was the neighborly thing to do.”

“Did she, now?” Shakespeare chuckled and nudged Winona with an elbow. “I trust I’ll be invited to the wedding?”

“Husband,” Blue Water Woman said.

Waku and his family hadn’t found a single rattlesnake, Evelyn reported. Her arm was so close to Dega’s that when she moved, she brushed against him.

Shakespeare turned and whispered in his wife’s ear, “Isn’t she the little hussy?”

“Husband,”
Blue Water Woman said.

Along about then Zach arrived. He told them of the snake that nearly bit Lou.

“But you killed it?” Nate said.

“It couldn’t be any more dead, Pa.”

Nate nodded and faced the rest. “I owe all of you an apology. We spent all this time looking, and for what? One measly rattlesnake.”

“You did what you thought was right,” Winona complimented him.

Shakespeare said, “I was hankering to stroll around in the hot sun anyway. I haven’t sweated near enough this summer.”

Blue Water Woman rolled her eyes.

Nate held his Hawken in his left hand and hooked his right thumb in his belt. “It wasn’t a complete waste of our time. We know we don’t have to worry about the rattlers. There are hardly any around.”

In the gully to the northwest, in the underground chamber, the female who had recently mated was entwined in a writhing mass of sinuous forms. Other females had recently given birth and hundreds of little ones were exploring the den. In her dim way the female realized that never before had there been so many of them.

So very, very many.

In the days that followed, the rattlesnakes were largely forgotten. The folks in King Valley were busy with other things.

Nate asked the Worths to pick a site for their cabin. He rode with them around the lake, pointing out spots he thought were good, but he left the decision up to them. They made a complete circuit and when they were back where they started he drew rein and said, “Well?”

Samuel liked an area on the north shore midway between Zach and Lou’s cabin and the Nansusequa lodge. It was flat and well back from the lake and in the shadow of tall spruce. He mentioned it, and Emala shook her head.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“For one thing, I’d rather be closer to Winona. I like her. She’s a fine lady and my friend.”

“You can ride over to see her every day.”

Emala fluttered her cheeks. “I’m not fond of sittin’ a horse, thank you very much. Horses scare me. And plump as I am, it’s a bother to climb on. I always have to ask you to help.”

“I don’t mind.”

“That’s not the point. I’d rather live where I can walk to Winona’s cabin. It’s more dignified.”

Samuel surveyed the shore. “That means it would have to be between Nate’s cabin and his son’s or between Nate’s and Mr. McNair’s.”

“How come you only mentioned the men?”

“What?”

“They have wives. You didn’t mention Winona or Blue Water Woman or that darling little Louisa. Did you forget them?” It had been Emala’s experience that men
did
tend to forget their womenfolk and needed to be constantly reminded of the love and devotion their women showed them.

“Good God.”

“Don’t blaspheme.”

“I didn’t forget them. I just didn’t think to say them.”

“That’s the same thing.” Emala put her hands on her hips. “You men. That we put up with you is a wonderment.”

Samuel sighed and tilted his head back and stared at the sky.

“What are you doin’?”

“Countin’ to ten.”

“Don’t you start with me, Samuel Worth. Let’s walk along the lake and maybe I’ll find a spot I like.”

So that’s what they did. They walked north. Samuel pointed out a suitable spot. Emala said it was too near the water.

“What’s bad about that?” Samuel asked.

“Didn’t you hear Winona? Sometimes it rains so hard the water rises. We don’t want our home where it can be flooded.”

Further on Samuel noticed a shaded spot near the trees.

“Too close to the woods,” Emala said. “I could be out hangin’ laundry and one of those big brown bears could jump out and gobble me up.”

“Nate says there aren’t any grizzlies in his valley. There was one, but he had to shoot it.”

“It doesn’t have to a grizzly that gobbles me. It could be a black bear. Or one of those tawny cats. Or a pack of wolves. Winona says sometimes at night you can hear them howlin’ up on the mountain.”

“They don’t attack people all that often,” Samuel had been told.

“I don’t care. I won’t be gobbled. I didn’t come into this world to end up as some animal’s supper. We’ll have to find another spot.”

Samuel stopped suggesting. They came to the northwest corner of the lake and Emala stopped to catch her breath. She saw where a giant pine cast a giant shadow and she went over to sit in the shade. A thicket fringed the woods to the right of the pine. To the left, a long stone’s throw off, was what appeared to be a gully. “This is nice here.”

Samuel scratched his head. “You said you didn’t want a spot near the trees. This is closer than the place I picked.”

“But it’s nicer. There’s all this shade. And it won’t be easy for critters to sneak up on me with that thicket yonder.”

“It’s flat enough,” Samuel said, and walked back and forth, examining the ground. He stared at the timbered slopes above and then at the lake. “It sure is pretty.”

“It’s near Winona, too.” To Emala that counted for more. She liked to be around people. She liked to talk and laugh and sing. Samuel didn’t. Back when they were slaves, he would as soon sit around their shack than gather at the fire with the other slaves and socialize. He stayed too much inside himself. She’d told him that a million times, but he stayed there anyway.

“All right. I’ll go get Nate.”

“Hold up. You’re not leavin’ me here alone.” Emala heaved up off the ground. “Who knows what’s lurkin’ about?”

“You need to get over your fear,” Samuel advised. “Otherwise you won’t ever enjoy livin’ here.”

Emala regarded the towering peaks. She regarded the dark, somber forest and the high grass that could hide just about anything. “I can’t help it. It’s scary, and that’s no lie.”

“No more so than back at the plantation.”

“What are you talkin’ about? We didn’t have bears out in the fields. We surely didn’t have no wolves. And there weren’t red men runnin’ around wantin’ to—what did Nate King call it?”

“Count coup.”

“That’s it. What is a coup, anyhow?”

“I didn’t ask. But I don’t think it’s a thing. I think it’s like hunters who shoot animals and put their heads on the walls.”

“Whatever it is, it’s not nice, and we didn’t have none of it back home. So you can’t blame—”

“No,” Samuel said.

“No what?”

“The plantation was never ours. It wasn’t our home. It was where we were forced to live, where we were treated the same as the horses and cows and sheep.” Samuel gestured at the broad expanse of valley. “
This
is our home.”

The sun was warm on Emala’s face. She watched several geese come in for a graceful landing. A yellow and black butterfly fluttered past. Finches took wing, chirping gaily. “I guess it does have its nice parts.” She took Samuel’s hand. “I’ll do the best I can, but it still scares me.”

“I won’t ever let anything happen to you.”

They walked a ways and Samuel said, “I want to thank you, Emala.”

“For what?”

“For stickin’ with me through all of this. You’ve had to put up with a lot.”

“Well, of course I’d stick with you. You’re my husband. A wife is supposed to stick by her man, even when he’s wrong.”

“You think it’s wrong we ran away? You think it’s wrong I wanted a new life for us? A better life?”

Emala knew how important it was to him. More important than it was to her. She had been born a slave and never knew anything else. She had been used to that life. This idea of freedom, of doing what she wanted when she wanted, was almost as scary as the wilderness. “You weren’t wrong,” she said so as not to upset him.

Nate was at his new forge. He had built it several months ago out of rocks he collected along the lake. Nate had mixed the mortar, too, using clay and dirt and water. Shakespeare had offered to help and then sat and sipped blackberry juice Winona had made and kept pointing out that this or that stone wasn’t set right and there were gaps in the mortar. It wasn’t fancy, but it was the next best thing to having a blacksmith handy.

Nate built it mainly to shoe their horses. Not just his, but everyone else’s in the valley. It didn’t matter much to Winona or Blue Water Woman since the Shoshones and the Flatheads never shod their horses. Or to Shakespeare, who shod his mare only when he expected to ride long distances. It mattered
to Nate, though. A lot of hard riding wore a horse’s hooves down and could cause the animal a lot of pain. Shoes spared them from suffering.

The forge had a small bellows and an anvil, ordered out of a catalog at Bent’s Fort. Ceran St. Vrain had sent word to Nate when they arrived and Nate had rigged an extrastrong travois to a packhorse to haul them back.

Now, standing under a plank roof supported by four thick poles, a precaution on Nate’s part to protect his equipment from rain and snow, he picked up metal tongs and was about to grip a bar of wrought iron when Samuel and Emala appeared. They had been gone almost an hour and were walking hand in hand, the first instance Nate could recall them doing that. He walked hand in hand with Winona all the time. So did McNair with Blue Water Woman. As Shakespeare once joked, “We’re natural-born romantic cusses.”

“I hope we’re not interruptin’,” Samuel said.

Nate set down the tongs and came around the forge. “Not at all. What did you decide?”

Emala fanned her neck with her hand. “Land sakes, it’s powerful hot under here. It’s like standin’ on the sun.”

“The forge has to be hot or the metal won’t melt,” Nate said.

“We found us a spot,” Emala told him. “We’d like for you to come have a look-see and tell us what you think.”

Nate undid his apron and set it aside. He took his Hawken from where he had propped it. “Show me.”

They headed north along the lake. Nate held his Hawken with the barrel across his shoulder, his hand on the stock.

Emala nodded at the rifle. “You don’t go anywhere without that, do you, Mr. King?”

“It’s Nate, remember? And no, not if I care to go on breathing.”

“Those things are too heavy for me. My arms get tired. I’d rather go without.”

“You get used to it.”

Emala regarded the wooded slopes high above. “I wonder if I’ll ever get used to any of this.”

“It’s our home,” Samuel said.

“So you keep remindin’ me. But not yet it ain’t. Not until I have my very own cabin. Which reminds me, how’s that goin’ to work, exactly, Mr. King? I mean, Nate?”

“We will all pitch in and help build it,” Nate explained. “Raising a cabin, it’s called.”

“I never been to one of those.”

Nate noticed a pair of doves in flight. He had always liked doves. His uncle once told him that when they mated it was for life. If one or the other died, the survivor never took another. He never did learn whether that was true.

“Mr. King?”

Nate glanced over. Samuel was studying him, his brow furrowed. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve been meanin’ to ask you somethin’ and I suppose now is as good a time as any.”

“Ask away,” Nate said.

Emala had an inkling what her husband was curious about. They’d talked about it just the night before. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Samuel asked.

“People put out a hand to help, you should accept it and that should be that,” Emala said.

Nate asked, “What is this about?”

“You. Your wife. Your family. Your friends,” Samuel ran off a list. “But mostly you and your wife.”

“What did we do?”

“That’s just it,” Samuel said. “What
haven’t
you done? From the moment we met you, you folks have treated us kindly and gone out of your way to do us favors.”

“For which we’re grateful as can be,” Emala said.

“That we are,” Samuel concurred. “When we first met you all we had was the clothes on our backs, and you bought us new clothes and gave us guns and protected us all the way here.”

“Your point?” Nate was unsure what they were leading up to.

“My point is a question,” Samuel said. “What I would like to know is
why.
Why did you and your wife do all those things? And why are you still goin’ out of your way to help us?”

“Because you needed our help then, and you need our help now,” Nate answered.

“But we were strangers. More than that, we’re black and you’re white. We’re used to whites lookin’ down their noses at us, not treatin’ us as equals. I thought you were up to somethin’ but you weren’t. You were just bein’ you.”

“I was being me when I took Winona for my wife. You might have noticed that she’s not white, either.”

“So skin means honest-to-God nothin’ to you?”

“It’s not a person’s color, it’s the person inside,” Nate said. “Winona isn’t white, but she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. I love her more than I love anything.”

Nothing more was said until they came to the spot Emala had picked. Nate walked in a circle and said, “There’s plenty of flat ground for a good-size cabin,
and you’re close enough to the lake that it won’t be too much of a chore fetching water.”

“What about that?” Emala nodded toward the gully. “Do we need to worry it will flood if it rains heavy?”

Nate shook his head. “Even if it does, your cabin will be far enough away to be safe.” He smiled and nodded. “I think you’ve chosen a fine spot for your new home. You shouldn’t have any problems at all.”