Venom

by David Thompson

  “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.

  Chapter Seven

  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 wo
lves. 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?”