Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  “For God’s sake, man,” bellowed Richard, his voice cracking high and hard. “Get me out of here!”

  Elizabeth began to move past Nathaniel, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her up short. “Wait,” he said. And then, to Richard: “Where’s your rifle?”

  From the pit where he sprawled, half in, half out, Richard’s voice came loud. “It went off, you heard it. Even if I could reach it I couldn’t reload. It’s at the bottom.”

  Elizabeth pulled away from Nathaniel and walked forward, slowly. The rain was cold but she was flushed from head to foot. Then she reached the edge of the pit, and stopped. “God above,” she whispered, turning to Nathaniel with a hand pressed hard to her chest. “We have to help him.”

  Richard had been running when he went into the pit; he had gone down with one leg outstretched and the other bent, and the first stake had taken him through the fleshy part of the lower leg. The bloody broken end of it thrust up through the fabric of his legging. He craned his head to look up at them, his eyes wild with pain and fear. Elizabeth saw that he had tried to catch himself by flinging out an arm; the second pike had pierced his right hand.

  She felt her stomach slowly clench and then turn in on itself, pushing up. With a hiccup, she turned away and was sick. Nathaniel supported her while she retched. Miserable, Elizabeth turned to him, drawing the back of her hand across her mouth. The focused set of his face calmed her.

  “This is going to be messy,” he said. “But I can’t get him out of there without your help.”

  “Elizabeth!” She looked down at Richard, reluctantly. There was blood, but not so much as she had feared. She watched in amazement as he reached with his free hand inside his shirt. Then he was holding something up toward her, a rumpled piece of paper, sticky with blood and pockmarked with rain, the ink running.

  “Take this,” he gasped.

  “Don’t,” said Nathaniel behind her.

  But it was too late; she had leaned forward and taken it from him. “What is it?”

  Richard threw his head back and his eyes fluttered in the rain, his face transformed by a sickly smile. “Your summons,” he whispered, and fell away into a faint.

  It was a damn shame they couldn’t leave him where he lay, Nathaniel thought, but then he kept this sentiment to himself. Elizabeth was distraught enough; he would need her usual calm good sense to deal with what was to come, and he couldn’t afford to upset her further. She had helped without complaint through the worst of it, pale and thin-mouthed but determined, not wavering until they had deposited Richard, bleeding profusely, onto the stripped cot where Joe had lain.

  “What in the name of God are you doing?” Richard asked when he had roused himself. He was watching Nathaniel pour schnapps onto a piece of muslin.

  “For your hand,” he said tersely. “To clean it out.”

  “Mohawk foolery,” Richard said, yanking his hand away. “Bind it and be done with it.”

  Elizabeth was standing to one side with her arms wrapped around her, one foot jiggling hard. She hadn’t spoken to Richard since he regained consciousness, but to Nathaniel her growing anger was almost palpable.

  “Do it,” she said to Nathaniel. “It might fester otherwise.”

  “You have a degree in medicine now in addition to your other new skills?” Richard interrupted himself with a howl as Nathaniel grabbed his arm and slapped the wet dressing against the gaping wound in his hand. “Goddamn it to hell!” he screamed.

  “Nathaniel just buried a man who had a wound on his hand fester,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps we could do the same for you.”

  “That would suit you very well, would it not?” Todd shot back at her. “Then you could tear up that summons and forget your obligations.”

  “I’ve already torn it up,” Elizabeth said. “And burned the scraps. And I am not obliged to you in any way at all. Although it seems we must tend your wounds out of common courtesy. Not that such a concept would mean anything to you.”

  Nathaniel followed this exchange with some surprise. For the first time since he’d known her, he saw Elizabeth out of her head with anger. Too mad to make sense or see what needed to be done. He tried to catch her eye but she was staring at Todd.

  “We’ll talk about business matters later,” Nathaniel said. “Right now that spike has to come out of your leg.”

  He saw the grudging acceptance of this on Todd’s face. To Elizabeth, Nathaniel said: “I don’t much like the idea of bending down there when he’s got that look on his face. Will you hold my rifle on him?”

  Elizabeth’s color flared. “Gladly,” she said, putting out one hand to accept the gun with a small, tight smile.

  “It’s primed, now, so mind you don’t shoot him. Unless you have to.”

  “She can’t manage that piece,” Todd said, his voice hoarse.

  “I can,” Elizabeth said, pulling the rifle up with a jerk, and taking many steps backward to accommodate its length. She went down on one knee to brace it on the boulder that served as Joe’s table, but it was longer than she was, and Nathaniel could see that it was almost more than she could handle. Not that she would ever admit that in front of Todd. They could stop and sort out the musket, or get this over with.

  “Elizabeth,” Nathaniel said. “Keep it aimed on his shoulder, just there.”

  “She wouldn’t shoot me,” Richard said dismissively.

  “She just might if you keep talking at her that way,” Nathaniel noted.

  Elizabeth gave Todd a very grim smile. “I suggest you do not test your hypothesis, Dr. Todd. The results might surprise you.”

  With quick motions of his knife Nathaniel cut the leggings away around the wound. The spike had passed through the muscles of his lower leg and pushed up and out much like an arrow.

  “This is going to hurt like the devil,” he said cheerfully. “Tear up your leg something awful. But we can’t leave it in there.”

  Todd’s stare was direct. In the midst of his thick red-gold beard, still wet and caked now with dirt, his mouth was set straight and thin. “So do it,” he said.

  “Hold her steady there,” Nathaniel said quietly to Elizabeth. “He’s going to holler.”

  “I am perfectly steady,” Elizabeth said. “Let him make all the noise he likes.”

  Nathaniel turned back to Todd and knelt to pin down his foot with a knee. With his left hand he grasped Todd’s thigh to immobilize it. With his right hand he took firm hold of the broken spike.

  Sweat ran into Elizabeth’s eyes. She blinked, and blinked again, looking down the softly gleaming barrel of the long rifle to fix her sights on Richard’s shoulder, as she had been directed. But the muscles in her hands and lower arms and shoulders began to cramp almost immediately, and in spite of all her efforts the rifle sight wavered disconcertingly between Richard’s shoulder and his belly. She thought longingly of the short-barreled musket in her pack, which she had shot a number of times.

  But she mustn’t distract Nathaniel.

  His back was to her. He moved suddenly, and with that movement Richard’s face contorted horribly, his mouth and eyes flying open and his head falling back and then bolting forward. As Nathaniel pulled, Richard’s upper body came up off the cot, his left arm and fist following in an arc aimed squarely at Nathaniel’s temple.

  It happened very slowly, Elizabeth thought later, because she could remember individual moments. Nathaniel’s profile fixed in utter concentration, his fist curled white-knuckled around the bloody shaft. The spurt of blood and its smell, hot in the damp air. The roaring wild anger in Richard’s voice as he threw his weight forward, the blur of his fist as Nathaniel’s head snapped away to the side.

  The recoil slammed into her shoulder and sent her spinning, the rifle dropping out of her hands. In the small space of the shelter the sound of the shot was deafening, echoing on and on. But it was not loud enough to drown Nathaniel’s grunt of surprise as he pitched forward across Richard’s legs. Elizabeth landed on her rear, and inhaling s
harply she drew in some of the cloud of blue gunpowder, the acrid taste filling her mouth immediately with saliva.

  By the time she regained her feet, Nathaniel was already lifting himself off Richard, who scrambled back and away. He pushed with his hands to right himself, shaking his head as if to clear it. Elizabeth stood immobile, unable to talk or even to reach out to him as he turned toward her. There was surprise on his face, and shock, and confusion. Nathaniel looked down at himself and she looked, too, and saw the bullet wound, a round ragged hole on the right side of his chest. That’s where it came out, she thought quite clearly as the bile rose into her throat. I shot Nathaniel in the back, and that’s where the bullet came out.

  He was touching his shirt with one finger, as if he could not believe what he saw. His breath came in great gasps, and when he looked up at her, it was with a face suddenly bluish-white in color, and sagging with pain.

  He sat down heavily on the edge of the cot.

  “Jesus Christ Almighty, Elizabeth,” he whispered. He coughed, and there was a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

  She fell to her knees in front of him with her arms wrapped around herself, and rocked toward him, not touching, not daring to touch him.

  “Forgive me,” she said, her eyes fixed on his face. “Forgive me, forgive me.”

  She had forgotten completely about Richard Todd, who had pulled himself into the farthest corner at the head of the cot, his hands pressed against the gaping wounds in his lower leg. The sound of his voice startled her as much as the rifle shot had.

  “You married the wrong man,” he said with a grimace. “But you sure as hell shot the right one.”

  It was enough to bring her up out of her trance. Elizabeth leaned toward Nathaniel, still afraid to touch him. “I forbid you to die,” she said. “I won’t let you.”

  There was no answer, just the desperate sound of his breathing. But his eyes held hers and he blinked, slowly.

  “I need something to bind this leg.”

  “Nathaniel,” Elizabeth said, ignoring Richard. “I will not let you die, do you hear me? But you have to tell me what to do for you.”

  But he could not. She stood and paced the small room, almost tripping over the rifle where it had fallen. She kicked it, and then turned back to Nathaniel. On her knees in front of him, she scrambled madly for a clear thought. His shirt, she thought. Get his shirt off.

  Her hands were trembling so that she could barely manage the ties. When she found that he could not lift his arms, she took his knife and she slit the sleeves and sides, until he sat barechested before her with his head and upper shoulders against the wall, his hair dripping down over his chest.

  It was a simple hole, an angry red hole that could be covered with two fingertips. She looked at it, a handbreadth below his right nipple, and Elizabeth was overcome with panic and terror. Then she pinched the web of flesh between her thumb and finger as hard as she could, willing her vision to clear.

  “It’s not so bad,” Nathaniel whispered when she opened her eyes again. “Missed the ribs, I think.” He coughed again, and a bubble of blood appeared on the wound, bright red.

  “What shall I do?” she asked, trying to modulate her voice. “Can you tell me what to do?” In response, his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped against the wall. Elizabeth put her head to his chest and felt his heartbeat, too fast. Too fast. His breathing, shallow. His skin clammy and cold to the touch.

  She stood to yank the blanket out from under Richard and tucked it around Nathaniel, tight around his shoulders but tented over the bullet hole. She thought of leaning him forward to look at his back, and her stomach rose. Not yet; she couldn’t, not yet.

  Richard was pale, his forehead beaded with sweat.

  “You must tell me what to do,” she said to him. “You must.”

  Blood welled from between the fingers pressed over Richard’s wound. “Give me something to dress this leg of mine first. The muscle is badly torn.”

  “Your leg can wait,” she said. “Tell me what to do for him.”

  Nathaniel gasped, his eyelids fluttering. Elizabeth looked at the blood bubbling from his chest with every breath, at his face, tinged blue with the effort to breathe, and then into Richard Todd’s eyes, filmed with a different kind of pain, long hoarded and treasured. She leaned toward him and brought her eyes within inches of his.

  “Listen to me,” she hissed softly. “You will tell me how to bind this wound. You will do that, and do it clearly and without delay. Because if he dies, then I will gladly sit here and watch you bleed to death. Do you hear me?”

  There was a flicker of something in his eyes. Surprise. Perhaps respect. Richard Todd hesitated while the sound of Nathaniel’s labored breathing punctuated the silence. At length, he nodded.

  Elizabeth had never been so tired in her life, and yet she knew that she dared not sleep. She could not afford to sleep. On either side of the shelter, with the makeshift fire between them, Richard and Nathaniel were alternately dozing or in need of her attentions. It was just hours since the events of the morning, but it felt to her like years.

  She went outside, desperate for fresh air, and sat down for the first time in what seemed to be days. But there was no escaping it; if she closed her eyes it all played itself out in her head again. The feel of the rifle in her hands, the way it had jerked to life as Richard reared up. The sound of Nathaniel’s laborious breathing, louder than any gunshot. It would be with her for the rest of her life. Elizabeth put her head on her knees, willing herself to cry, wanting to scream, to be done with this terrible anger. With a sudden heave, she brought up everything in her stomach, her whole body coated in a cold and sticky sweat. When the retching finally stopped, she raised her head and found the red dog sitting across from her.

  “You,” she said flatly.

  It thumped its tail twice and then went down to the ground. The dog observed her calmly. There was still the smell of skunk about it, and Elizabeth could see burrs caught in the tangled deep red coat.

  “I’ll have to go for help, you know.” Saying it out loud made it real, and she was overcome with fear at the idea. But there was no other way. They could not stay here; she could not nurse them and hunt for them and keep them and herself alive. She needed to get them out, and neither of them could walk. It would be weeks, she thought, in Nathaniel’s case. If ever.

  She jumped up, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, and the dog rose, too.

  “I have to find my way back to Robbie’s, and there’s no time to waste,” she said. The dog thumped its tail in agreement.

  Nathaniel was propped against the wall of the shelter on a bed of blankets and balsam branches. She had tried stretching him out, but his breathing was least labored when he sat upright. Now he opened his eyes and looked at her steadily. His color was very bad, but she smiled at him, and brushed his hair away from his face.

  “I suppose I will never live this down,” she whispered.

  He caught her hand and squeezed it tight. On the other side of the fire, Richard was awake and listening, but there was nothing she could do about that.

  “Listen, Nathaniel,” she said, leaning toward him. “I’ve filled the big kettle and the bucket with water, you can reach them, right here. Are you listening?” When she had his attention, she pointed it all out. The dried meat and beans, the ammunition and his rifle and knife. Richard’s weapons as well, all within Nathaniel’s reach and out of Richard’s, at least until he was well enough to move. There were enough provisions to hold them both for three days; four, perhaps.

  She dared not look at him, and so she glanced up at the roof and the hole he had torn in it on that evening they first came across Joe. Could it have been less than two days? “I’ve brought in Joe’s woodpile, all of it. Richard will have to manage the fire, but I expect he’ll be able to. You must stay warm.”

  Nathaniel squeezed her hand again. “Elizabeth.”

  She turned her face to him.

 
“It was an accident,” he said. “Don’t tear yourself up so.”

  She shook her head, hard. “There’s perhaps five hours or so of light today to walk by. I could be to Robbie’s by the day after tomorrow, in the morning.”

  “Take the compass,” he said, and began to cough. He crossed his arms over his chest and the pain shook him. Elizabeth waited until it had passed.

  “I’ve got the compass, and food enough,” she said. “And I remember the way, I’m sure I do.”

  The muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed. “It’s faster,” he said, “if you skirt the swamp.”

  Elizabeth hesitated, and then set her face in what she hoped were calm lines.

  “Yes, all right. The swamp at the outflow of Little Bear?” Between them, they worked through the route until she could recite it to his satisfaction.

  Nathaniel squeezed her hand. “The musket,” he said. “Load it with shot. Keep it primed.”

  Elizabeth shuddered at the thought of ever firing another gun, but she nodded.

  “Watch—” He coughed, his face contorting. “Overhead.” For panthers in the trees, she thought. The skin across her shoulders rose in goose bumps.

  On the other side of the fire, there was a shifting. Elizabeth did her best to ignore Richard, but she could see Nathaniel’s attention focusing on him. She put her hand on his cheek and turned his face back to her own.

  “Richard says the bullet seems to have done minimal damage,” she told him. “If you stay still, and warm, and fed, the wound will close itself and you will heal. If you don’t—”

  His half grin closed like a fist around her heart. “Boots. I’m not that easy to get rid of.”

  She leaned toward him. There was the taste of blood on his mouth, bright and coppery. “As if I’d let you get away,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Elizabeth sat with him while he drifted off, holding his hand. For the first time since she’d known him, his fingers were colder than her own. She studied him, the joint of the thumb, the scars, the hard places on his palm, the short, blunt nails that he was constantly cleaning with his knife. Elizabeth wet the corner of her kerchief in the water kettle and wiped Nathaniel’s hands clean of the dirt of Joe’s grave, and of his own blood. Then she stood, and walked over to Richard. He looked up at her, his face impassive.