Wilderness Double Edition 27

by David Robbins

  ‘I detect an accusation,’ McNair replied good-naturedly. ‘But as the bard himself put it, drink is a great provider of three important things.’

  ‘What might they be?’

  ‘Nose-painting, sleep and urine. When you get my age, you never get enough of the second and have way too much of the third.’

  ‘And the nose-paint?’

  Shakespeare started to tip the flask to his lips. ‘What is a red nose between friends?’ He took a nice long swig, exhaled in contentment, and again held it out. ‘Brandy, Horatio. I bought some the last time I was at Bent’s. It has a medicinal effect on aching joints.’

  Nate accept the flask and treated himself to a swallow. It had been so long since he had spirits of any kind, he had a fit of coughing.

  ‘My word. First you can’t handle a worm and now you can’t handle your liquor. It must be the worry.’

  Nate concentrated on the line. ‘What do I have to worry about?’

  ‘I saw your youngest and her green Galahad go riding off up the mountain this morning,’ Shakespeare mentioned.

  ‘So? I trust Degamawaku. He has shown himself to be a fine young man.’

  ‘Noticed that, did you? Because the fruit of your loins certainly has. I dare say she regards him as the finest young man who ever drew breath. Her Juliet to his Romeo, as it were.’

  The breeze off the lake stirred Nate’s long hair. A pair of ducks, male and female, winged in over the water and alighted. He scowled. ‘You are getting ahead of yourself. They are friends. Nothing more, nothing less.’

  ‘Less than friendship is not the issue,’ Shakespeare countered. ‘It is the more that concerns us. Some in this valley predict that before the year is out you will acquire a son-in-law.’

  Nate snorted. ‘Some? As in a certain rascal who goes around quoting William Shakespeare because he can’t think of words of his own to use?’

  About to take another swig, McNair colored red and sat up. ‘Base villain! Thou art not honest. Thy food is such as has been belched out by infected lungs.’

  ‘How did food get into this?’

  ‘But peace, good fop,’ Shakespeare said. ‘I won’t hold it against you. I would feel the same if I were in your moccasins.’

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’ Nate thought he saw the line move and tensed to pull on the pole.

  ‘Fibber. The subject is daughters in love and the young men who love them.’

  ‘Cut it out. There has been no talk of love by either. They say they are friends and only friends.’

  ‘And you believe them, tickle brain?’

  ‘Let’s just say I don’t think either of them have any interest in taking it any further at this time,’ Nate replied. ‘If love is on the horizon, so be it, but I will jump that hurdle when it crops up in front of me.’

  ‘Ah.’ Shakespeare tilted the flask, then smacked his lips. ‘I keep forgetting that a large part of parenthood is denial.’

  Nate thought the line jiggled. He almost jerked it but decided to wait. ‘Look. I admit Evelyn is growing up. She is a young woman now, not a little girl. But that does not mean she is ready to take a husband. It could be years yet before she reaches that point.’

  Shakespeare held the flask out again, but Nate shook his head. ‘Very well. If you insist that the boulder about to fall on your head is really a feather, as your best friend and mentor, I will play along with your delusion.’

  The line jumped, and the pole was nearly pulled from Nate’s grasp. Firming his hold, he played the fish, seeking to tire it out as he brought it closer to shore. ‘I’ve hooked a big one!’

  ‘Careful! Don’t give it too much slack,’ Shakespeare cautioned.

  Nate was doing his best to keep the line tight, but the frantic fish was streaking in all different directions. He whipped the pole back and immediately wished he hadn’t; the line stopped moving. He quickly brought the hook in, only to find the worm gone.

  Shakespeare McNair chortled. ‘Maybe you should ask your wife if she wouldn’t rather have chipmunk, after all.’

  Evelyn King had no time to react. The rattlesnake struck as she set eyes on it. She tried to spring aside, but her reflexes were not the equal of the serpent’s. The rattlesnake bit her.

  Evelyn went to scream in terror, then realized the snake had bitten her dress, not her leg. She spun to one side, expecting the rattler to go flying, but instead its body flailed the air in a frenzy. She whipped the other way, with the same result. Only then did she perceive what had happened; its fangs were caught in her dress and would not come loose.

  Degamawaku’s chest seemed to explode when the rattlesnake struck. Of all the creatures in the forest, he found it hardest to think fondly of snakes. That Which Is In All Things was also supposed to be in them, but that did not heighten his fondness any. Nor did the death of a kindly Nansusequa woman, bitten while strolling through the woods with her children.

  Now he saw the rattler’s fangs sink into Evelyn and he opened his mouth to cry out, but his vocal cords would not work. He saw her spin, saw the snake thrash, and heard her yell, ‘It can’t let go!’

  Dega found his voice. ‘Stand still!’

  ‘No!’ Evelyn was afraid that if she did, the rattler would continue to flail about and its fangs would pierce her leg.

  ‘Please!’ Dega urged. He reached out to stop her but then stopped himself, afraid he might cause her to trip, with dire consequences. ‘Stand still! I have idea. Trust me!’

  Evelyn slowed in her mad spinning. Either the rattler was tiring or it was dizzy—if snakes could even get dizzy—because it was not struggling as fiercely. She glanced at Dega and was deeply touched by the concern on his handsome face. Reluctantly, against her better judgment, she stood perfectly still except for the heaving of her bosom. The rattler hung limp at her side. ‘Whatever you plan to do,’ she said between gasps for breath, ‘you had better do it quick.’

  Dega dropped to his knees. The snake’s tail still buzzed, but otherwise it was not moving. Until that moment he had not appreciated how big it was. Fully as long as his arm, and as thick around as his wrist, its scales glistened in the sunlight. Its eyes, so different from the eyes of other living things, had that intense baleful glare that had unnerved him as a youth. His skin crawling, Dega slowly reached up and gripped the snake behind its head.

  Instantly, the rattler went into another frenzy. It twisted and tried to coil, the lower half of its body repeatedly hitting Dega. He held on until the snake quieted save for the buzzing of the rattles. Sweat caked him, including his palms, and he hoped he would not lose his grip.

  Evelyn did not move a muscle. She was braced for the sharp sting of the reptile’s fangs, but so far she had been spared. ‘Maybe take my knife and cut the head off,’ she suggested.

  ‘Kill only when must,’ Dega said. ‘That Nansusequa way.’

  ‘Which is fine and dandy,’ Evelyn told him. ‘But I am the one standing here with a snake stuck on my dress.’

  Dega leaned closer. He focused on the fangs and tried to ignore how close he was to Evelyn. Another bout of lightheadedness now might prove harmful to both of them. He slowly turned the snake’s blunt triangular head from side to side, and the cloth its fangs were hooked to move in the corresponding direction. ‘It very stuck.’

  ‘The trick is to unstick it,’ Evelyn said with more irritation than she intended. ‘And the easiest way to do that is cut off the head.’

  ‘Please,’ Dega said. He had never imagined she could be so violent. Among his people, those who habitually harbored violent thoughts were believed to have lost that special inner sense of That Which Is In All Things.

  ‘All right. But this is not doing my nerves any good.’ Evelyn was miffed that he seemed to consider saving the rattler more important than the risk to her life.

  Dega pulled the snake back as far as the dress permitted. The fangs did not give way. He twisted to the right, then twisted to the left, but they were still caught fast. T
hen inspiration came to him. ‘I have idea.’

  ‘I hope it is a good one.’

  ‘It very good,’ Dega said, certain she would like it. ‘I cut dress.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I cut hole in dress. Unstick you and snake. Snake be fine. You be fine.’ Dega beamed.

  ‘My dress won’t be fine,’ Evelyn said in considerable annoyance. ‘It took me over a week to make, too. I would rather not have a hole in it, thank you very much.’

  ‘But we save snake.’ Dega did not understand why she was against it. When given a choice between taking life and sparing it, the People of the Forest always chose the former.

  ‘If you say that one more time I will scream,’ Evelyn said.

  Her comment caused Dega great worry. She must be extremely upset, he reasoned. Somehow he had hurt her feelings. He tried to think of what he could say that would soothe her, but he just did not know enough white words. ‘I sorry you mad.’

  ‘I’m not mad,’ Evelyn responded, although if she wasn’t, it was a close thing. ‘I just want to be shed of my new appendage.’

  ‘That why cut dress.’

  ‘Is there no other way?’

  ‘I not think of one,’ Dega admitted. He wished he could. He sought to soothe her by stressing, ‘It just dress.’

  ‘You did hear me say I made it? And that it took over a week? Yet you still want to cut it?’

  The disappointment in her voice caused Dega to shrivel inside. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Then go ahead.’

  Working swiftly, Dega cut a square around the rattlesnake’s head. The moment he separated the rattler and the square from the dress, he placed the snake on the ground and his right foot on top of it behind the head, pinning it so it could not bite him as he gingerly pried the fabric from its fangs with the tip of the knife blade.

  With a parting angry hiss, the serpent slithered off into the rocks.

  ‘You safe now,’ Dega said proudly.

  Evelyn went to thank him, and stiffened. They had been so preoccupied with the rattler that they had forgotten about her horse.

  It, too, was gone.

  Eight

  Ranks of lodgepole pines rose tall and somber on all sides. In places the boles were so close together that Evelyn brushed her shoulders against them. Not much sunlight penetrated, with the result that the forest floor was shrouded in perpetual shadow. As a little girl she always thought lodgepole woods were spooky, and she had not changed her opinion.

  Evelyn held her Hawken level at her waist, thankful she had her weapons. That was her one consolation in this whole mess. Without weapons they would be a lot worse off.

  Evelyn remembered her father reading to her from a book once. She couldn’t recollect the name of the writer, but he had gone on about how the wilderness was paradise, and about how the ideal state of the world, as he called it, was for all things to be as natural. She particularly recalled a page where he gushed on about walking as one with the animals and at peace with all creation. He wrote a scene where bears and deer and squirrels and snakes and everything else intermingled in peaceful rapture.

  The man was an idiot.

  The wilderness was not anything like that. Meat-eaters and plant-eaters did not walk paw-in-hoof through cathedral forests, smiling fang and tooth at one another.

  In the real world, in the wilderness Evelyn knew, the meat-eaters ate the plant-eaters. Mountain lions did not frolic with bucks and does. Roving wolves that came on fawns lying in the high grass did not give them an affectionate lick. Bears were not friends with fish. In the real world, meat-eaters were always on the lookout to pounce on the unwary and rip them with claw and fang.

  The notion that all things could get along as if they were brothers and sisters was ridiculous. Animals killed other animals to survive. From the biggest to the littlest, they killed. Birds ate bugs and worms and were in turn eaten by snakes and bobcats and the like. Everything from chipmunks on up to elk were food for something else. There was no brotherly love among the creatures of the woodland and the prairie.

  The natural state was not heaven. The natural state was kill or be killed.

  Evelyn had learned that bitter lesson almost before she could walk. The wilds were filled with peril, and death awaited those who ignored the dangers. She had hated that fact. For years it had colored her outlook toward the wilderness, and been a factor in her early preference for civilization over the wild.

  It never struck her as fair or right that her life had to constantly be in danger. What sort of existence was that? To be born only to live in constant fear of becoming dead? To her it had seemed too stupid for words.

  Only later in life did it occur to her that there was a certain fairness in that the law of survival applied to all creatures, not just her. It was not as if she had been singled out. All living things, every moment they were alive, lived under the hovering blade of the guillotine of death.

  It still made no sense, but that was life.

  Human beings, however, had found out how to buck the odds. They found a way to delay the descent of the guillotine. They had developed weapons.

  Evelyn would be the first to admit that without her rifle and pistols and knife, she would be as helpless as a baby bird or that fawn in the high grass. Her weapons enabled her to stay alive. Only her weapons could keep the predators at bay.

  ‘What you thinking?’ Dega unexpectedly asked.

  The question so startled her that Evelyn nearly jumped. She glanced over her shoulder. He looked as downcast as she had ever seen him. ‘Sorry. I do that a lot. Some people say I think too much.’

  Degamawaku did not understand why she apologized. Among the Nansusequa thinking was encouraged. It was by the harmony of thought that life was kept in balance. ‘You still mad at horses?’

  Evelyn grew prickly just thinking about them. ‘I sure as blazes am. They know not to do that, but they did it anyway.’

  ‘How know?’ Dega asked.

  ‘My pa brought them up, broke them to saddle, trained them. He spends hours breaking them of their skittishness.’

  Thankful she was talking again, Dega prompted her with, ‘How he do that?’

  ‘Oh, there are various ways. He will shake a blanket near their legs, or fire a gun near them so they get used to the sound, or he will shake an old rattler tail he has.’

  ‘That make horses brave?’

  Evelyn’s mouth curled in a smile. ‘All except the rattler’s tail seem to do some good. Horses never shake their fear of snakes no matter how hard he tries.’

  ‘Then why be mad?’ Dega inquired. He hoped he was not overstepping himself. Whites were so different from the People of the Forest that he did not know what was permissible to say.

  Evelyn laughed. ‘I am more mad at me than I am at them,’ she confessed. ‘It was my fault they ran off. If I had tied them like my pa always keeps reminding me to do, we wouldn’t be following them right now, we would be riding them.’

  ‘You blame you?’ This was an insight Dega had not foreseen.

  ‘Who else would I blame? You can’t blame a horse for being a horse. If it sounded like I did, I was only complaining to hear myself talk.’

  Dega laboriously pieced together her meaning. ‘You say mean words about horses to hear yourself say mean words?’

  ‘Pretty much, yes.’

  ‘Ah.’ Dega sought the logic in that, but it eluded him.

  ‘Don’t you like to let off steam when you are mad?’

  ‘Sorry? What is steam?’ Dega was proud of himself for using is instead of be.

  ‘That was a figure of speech,’ Evelyn said with her gaze glued to the forest floor and the hoof-prints she was tracking. ‘It means to air your lungs. To get all the anger out of your system by letting it loose on the wind.’

  ‘There anger in you?’

  Something in his tone made Evelyn look at him. ‘Everyone has anger in them at one time or another. Everyone gets mad.’

  Degamawaku admir
ed a shaft of sunlight that had pierced the canopy, glittering with dust motes. ‘Nansusequa teach anger bad. Teach get mad bad.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That you never get mad or angry? That is not true and you know it. You told me yourself how mad you were when you saw your village attacked. You said you were so mad, you wanted to kill every white there.’ Shaking her head, Evelyn said, ‘Don’t pretend to be something you are not and never can be. We all have feelings and they will not be denied.’

  Images of the slaughter of his people filtered through Dega’s memory. He felt, once again, the hurt and the sickness and, yes, the fury that had coursed through his veins. ‘You think not get mad be wrong?’

  ‘There is no right or wrong to being mad. It

  just happens,’ Evelyn said. ‘It is like breathing. You do it without thinking about it.’

  Dega did not agree. ‘To be mad not right,’ he firmly declared.

  ‘Well then, I sure am wrong a lot,’ Evelyn said, and laughed. ‘My brother is to blame for most of it, but I reckon I do have the King temper.’

  ‘Your brother Zach?’

  ‘I only have the one, and he is more than enough. His blamed teasing has made me mad more times than there are stars in the night sky. I try not to let him get my goat, but what can you do? Brothers and sisters spat a lot. It comes naturally.’

  ‘You have goat?’

  Evelyn’s merriment tinkled to the tops of the lodgepoles. ‘Land sakes, no. That was another expression. When we say someone is getting our goat, it means they make us angry.’

  Dega began to despair of ever speaking her language. According to his father, the white tongue had more words than that of the Nansusequa. And as he was discovering first hand, many of those words had more than one meaning. Then there were the strange combinations in which whites used them. It was all so bewildering. He mentioned that.

  ‘I suppose the white tongue is a mouthful. But so is Shoshone and your own language. I try my best, but I get them wrong all the time.’

  ‘Do you mind brother get your goat?’ Dega wondered.