Venom (7 page)

The fireplace took some doing.

They inserted the saw into the slits they had cut and sawed until they had the shape. Samuel did most of the sawing. He asked to. It was his cabin and he didn’t think it fair or right that Nate and Shakespeare and Zach were doing most of the work.

Nate smiled and handed him the saw.

While this was going on, the women and the Nansusequas and Chickory went off to gather stones to use in the construction. Evelyn and Dega went one way, Waku and his wife and daughters another, Winona and Blue Water Woman and Emala and Randa yet another.

That left Chickory. He didn’t want to go with the women. He especially didn’t want to go with his mother. He loved her dearly, but she was always telling him what to do and then complaining that he didn’t do it right. He didn’t know the Indians well enough to feel comfortable going with them, and he sensed that Evelyn and Dega wanted to be by themselves. That was fine with him. He went off alone, northwest past the gully and into the trees.

A few days ago he had done some exploring and came across a low hill covered with stones that might do.

Chickory hummed as he walked. He kept his hand on the hilt of the knife Shakespeare McNair had given him. Now there was a strange person, he
reflected. Half the time, he had no idea whatsoever what that white man was talking about. It was all that Bard stuff. Chickory had never heard of the Bard of Avon; he didn’t even know what a Bard was. Or an Avon, for that matter.

It had surprised him, the old man giving him the knife. He’d never imagined white folks could be like Shakespeare and Nate King. The whites back at the plantation had either bossed him around or looked down their noses at him. It was…Chickory thought hard for the right word…it was
refreshing
to meet white people who treated him as if his skin color didn’t matter.

Chickory looked down at himself. His skin might not matter but his size sure did. He was too skinny. All lean muscle and bone. His pa said that he would fill out as he grew, but that could take a while. Chickory wished he would fill out now. He wanted to be big and strong, like his father.

It didn’t help that he had lost a lot of weight when he came down sick at Bent’s Fort. No one could figure out why. One of the men who ran the trading post, Ceran St. Vrain, had pestered him with questions. Had he drank any stagnant water? That was the word St. Vrain used: “stagnant.” Chickory had to ask what it meant and St. Vrain said it meant water that had been standing a long time and maybe smelled funny or was brown or some other unusual color. Had he been stung by mosquitoes? St. Vrain wanted to know. Land sakes, Chickory had been stung by an army of them. Had he been bit by any spiders? Chickory remembered one he found in his blankets when he woke up, but he didn’t recall it biting him unless the spider bit him in his sleep.

The crack of a twig brought Chickory out of himself. He stopped and tightened his hand on the knife. If there was one thing he’d learned about the wilds, it was to be cautious. There were bears and those big cats to watch out for, and Nate King had said there were buffalo in the mountains, too, although not nearly as many as down on the prairie.

The brush rustled and out stepped a doe. She was young and small and took short, timid steps, her ears pricked, her nostrils quivering. She had caught his scent but was unsure where he was.

Chickory grinned. He flapped his arms and said, “Boo!”

The doe’s tail shot up and she fled in great bounding leaps, her legs tucked together. Within moments the vegetation swallowed her.

Chuckling, Chickory walked on. He liked the woods, although they sure were spooky. He hadn’t said anything to anyone, but he was particularly scared of being eaten. He kept having dreams, or rather, nightmares, in which a bear or one of those cats or once a critter McNair had called a wolverine, caught him and ate him. In his nightmares he always screamed and tried to get away as their teeth and their claws bit into him. One night he woke up in a cold sweat, afraid he had cried out in his sleep, but the rest of his family slept blissfully on.

Chickory swallowed the memory. No, sir. Being eaten wasn’t a good way to die. Although, now that he thought about it, he couldn’t think of a way that was good. He liked being alive. The world was a wonderful place, and there was a lot of it he had yet to explore. His folks seemed to take it for granted he would live there the rest of his days, but he had
other ideas. In a few years he was going to leave the mountains and do some traveling. Maybe he would come back, and maybe he wouldn’t.

Chickory hadn’t told his parents. His pa would likely understand, but his ma would blubber.

Presently the pines and spruce and the oaks thinned, and Chickory came out into an open area near the bottom of the hill. Above him flat rocks and jumbled stones were dotted by a few boulders.

Large round stones, Nate King had said, so that’s what Chickory looked for. He started up and glimpsed movement. Something had darted under a rock.

A lizard, maybe, Chickory thought, or possibly one of those chipmunks. It wasn’t long enough to be a snake. He found a rock he reckoned would be suitable and carried it down and deposited it at the bottom and went back up for another. They were heavy, and after half a dozen he stopped and ran his forearm across his sweaty forehead.

In the trees a pair of birds flitted from branch to branch. One was yellow and the other a dull gray. They alighted and the yellow one broke into marvelous song. Chickory wondered if they might be finches. He wasn’t good with bird names, but there had been finches back at the plantation and these reminded him of a lot of them.

Chickory went on gathering rocks. He would need help getting them all back. He bent and tried to lift one but it was firm in the ground. Prying with his fingertips, he got his fingers underneath, and pulled. The rock rose an inch. Gritting his teeth and flexing, Chickory tried again. This time the rock came off the ground. He raised it to his knees, and stopped.

From under it crawled a snake.

Chickory didn’t understand how a snake could have been under there, as embedded as the rock was. He went to straighten and his breath caught in his throat. The triangle of its head, the pattern of its skin, the segments at the end of the tail—it was a rattlesnake. No sooner did he realize it than the snake coiled and raised baleful eyes in his direction.

Chickory stared back. His ma had told him that the Lord had set mankind over the beasts and that nine times out of ten a person could set a beast to running off just by looking at it.

This must be the tenth time. The rattler stayed where it was.

Chickory didn’t want to get bit. He stood still, his arms starting to hurt from the strain of the heavy rock. The snake went on staring. Its eyes were scary. They weren’t like the eyes of anything Chickory knew. He didn’t like how its tongue kept flicking out at him either. And what a tongue, forked as it was.

Chickory swallowed. He couldn’t hold the rock forever.

The snake stopped rattling. It lowered its head and slowly turned and began to crawl off.

Chickory raised the rock higher—and threw it at the snake. He jumped back as he did, and whooped with glee when the rock thudded down right on the reptile. The head and some of the body poked out from under and it began to hiss and twist and turn. Chickory picked up another big rock and dropped it on top of the flat one.

The rattlesnake went limp.

“Got you, did I?” Chickory gloated. “That’s what you get for spookin’ me.” He kicked at the rocks, but the snake didn’t move. Careful as could be, he slid the rock off. Most of the snake was crushed pulp.

Chickory laughed and smacked his thigh. “I done did it. Killed me a rattlesnake. All by myself.”

Chickory hadn’t had to kill much growing up on the plantation. A few frogs and birds and snakes and that was it.

When his family and the Kings were crossing the prairie his pa had let him shoot game a few times. He would have gotten more, except deer and the like were hard to find and he wasn’t the world’s best shot. Fact was, he was lucky to hit the broadside of a tree from twenty steps away. But he was getting better. Give him time, Nate King had said, and he’d be able to drop a deer at a hundred yards.

Chickory couldn’t wait.

Deep in thought, Chickory carried the gore-spattered rock to his growing pile and was about to set it down when he changed his mind and cast it aside. His mother wouldn’t want no gory rocks in her fireplace. He went back up the hill. Again he thought he saw something dart away.

Chickory came to a hump and couldn’t believe his eyes. Above him were enough flat rocks to make half the fireplace—and rattlesnakes were coiled on a good many of them, sunning themselves. None rose up in alarm or hissed or rattled. Maybe they didn’t realize he was there. He began counting and stopped at eleven. He’d never seen so many rattlers in one place at one time. There were big ones and not so big. All were ugly as sin. It gave him nervous twinges to look at them.

He was lucky he had spotted them. If he hadn’t, he’d have blundered into a nest of fangs and been bit so many times, he’d have been dead before he could turn around.

The smart thing was to get out of there, but Chickory stayed. He was fascinated. Here was another part of why he liked the wilderness so much.

There was always something new, something unexpected, like those buffalo on the plains and that raccoon they caught in their camp and the black bear that came sniffing around one night.

A rattler stirred. Its head rose a few inches and it looked around and then twisted and crawled off the flat rock toward another flat rock that already had a snake on it.

Chickory thought they would fight. He watched in breathless wonder as the first snake reached the second snake and crawled up over it and lay with their bodies touching. That was all. No hissing or rattling or biting or nothing.

“He your friend?” Chickory said out loud.

Another snake near to him raised its head and the tip of its tail moved, rattling lightly.

Chickory put his hand on his knife. The rattlesnake was flicking its tongue but it didn’t bare its fangs or come toward him. After a bit it lost interest and sank back down, coiling so its head was under its body.

Chickory had seen enough. He backed away, glancing behind him and to either side, alert for more serpents.

On the way down he picked up three flat rocks. It was as many as he could carry.

He started for the cabin site.

“I should tell Pa about the snakes,” Chickory said to himself, then shook his head. If he told his pa, his pa would tell his mother, and his mother would forbid him to ever come anywhere near that hill for as
long as he drew breath. She was always doing stuff like that, always spoiling his fun. He decided to keep it a secret. He wouldn’t say a word so he could come back whenever he wanted and watch the snakes. He didn’t consider them much of a threat. They were far from the cabins.

He did wonder where they all came from.

The gully appeared. Chickory hadn’t been down in it, but he planned to go once the cabin was done. He had a lot of exploring to do. The valley was filled with animals and sights worth seeing.

Chickory gazed over his shoulder at a high mountain with a block of white at the top. A glacier, it was called. Shakespeare McNair had told him about it, said it was made all of ice and never melted. Claimed, too, that the Worths should stay away from up there, that it was slippery and covered with cracks that once a person fell in, they never got out. McNair also said that now and then he and his wife and the Kings heard strange roars and howls from some sort of creature. That was what McNair called it: a creature. Not an animal. It sounded like another of McNair’s tall tales to Chickory.

Randa was carrying rocks, too. She set hers down and waited as he brought his over.

“Those are good ones. Where did you get them?”

“Off a ways,” Chickory said, with a jerk of his thumb.

“Are there more? I’ll go with you and bring some back.”

“There aren’t any more.”

“You’re lyin’,” Randa said.

If there was one thing Chickory hated it was to be called a liar—even when he was lying. “What makes you say that?”

“I know you. I know how you talk when you lie. Why won’t you tell me where you got them?”

Chickory hesitated. He would love to tell someone and his sister was pretty good at keeping a secret. “If I do, you have to give me your word you won’t say a word to anybody.”

“You have it,” Randa said.

Chickory gave his account, ending with, “That hill is crawlin’ with them. You want to come, you have to be careful.”

“You need to go tell Mr. King.”

“No. Ma will find out, and you know what she’ll do.”

“You have to,” Randa insisted. “Remember that hunt? This could be what Mr. King was lookin’ for.” She pointed. “There he is right there. Go over and tell him or I’ll do it myself.”

Chickory bit off a sharp reply. He was mad. He’d trusted her and she’d betrayed him. Now he wouldn’t get to go watch the snakes whenever he wanted.

“Do it. Now.”

“Just because you are older than me…” Chickory wheeled and walked over to where Nate King and Shakespeare McNair were working on the fireplace. “I brought some rocks,” he announced.

Without looking up Nate said, “We need a lot. Keep looking.”

“Yes, sir.” Chickory stayed where he was.

“Anything else?” McNair asked.

“I just want to thank you both for bein’ so kind to us, and all. If there is ever somethin’ I can do for you, let me know.”

Nate raised his head and chuckled. “You can find more rocks.”

Chickory nodded and walked back to his sister.
“There. I told him. He said he’d go have a look later, after he’s done with the cabin.”

“You did the right thing,” Randa said. “I’m proud of you.”

The fireplace took four days to build. It took so long because they had to bring the clay they used for the mortar from a quarter of a mile away.

The men did the digging and piled the clay on a travois; Winona and Blue Water Woman took turns riding the horse that pulled it. They mixed the clay with water and dirt and laid the stones and once the mix dried it was as hard as the stones themselves.

The front door posed a problem. They had no boards or planks. They didn’t have a sawmill to make them either. The alternatives were to split logs and spend tedious hours planing and smoothing or go all the way to Bent’s Fort. Shakespeare struck on a temporary solution. They would get boards at Bent’s on their regular supply trek. In the meantime, the Worths had to make do with Shakespeare’s bedroom door. He took it off its hinges and brought it over and hung it himself. While it was wide enough it wasn’t quite long enough; there was a gap of two inches at the top. When Emala asked why Shakespeare didn’t leave the gap at the bottom, he smiled and said, “So every bug in creation can crawl inside and make itself at home?”

“Lordy, no, I wouldn’t like that,” Emala agreed. “A gap at the top is fine by me.”

“We can’t thank you enough for the use of your door,” Samuel said.

“When we go to Bent’s we’ll have a door made
that will fit proper,” Shakespeare promised. “That should be in three weeks or so.”

Samuel patted the wall and beamed. “Our new home,” he said proudly. “Our very own by-God new home.”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Emala said. “He saw us safe all the way here. The least you can do is show respect.”

“I am as thankful as I can be,” Samuel replied. He turned to Shakespeare and shook his hand and then to Nate and shook his. “I don’t have the words to say how much this means.”

“What are friends for?” Nate said.

“That’s just it,” Samuel said, and looked away and coughed. “I ain’t never had friends like you two. Not in all my born days.”

Shakespeare launched into a quote. “I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust; to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot chose, and to eat no fish.”

“He’s saying he was happy to be of service,” Nate translated.

“What was that about fish?” Emala asked. “Don’t you ever eat it?”

“Personally I like fish now and then so long as it doesn’t taste too fishy.”

“How can fish not taste like fish?”

“You have to excuse him,” Nate said. “He often has no idea what he is talking about.”

Shakespeare snorted.

“May I tell you two gentlemen something?” Samuel said earnestly. “There are times when I have no notion of what you are talkin’ about.”

Winona and Blue Water Woman joined them, and Winona said, “Guess what, husband?”

“You want to take me home and ravish me.”

Emala squealed in delight and exclaimed, “Mr. King! The things that come out of your mouth. You are a caution.”

“He thinks he is,” Winona said. “But no, that is not it. We have decided to have a…what do you whites call it?” She puckered her brow. “Now I remember. A housewarming. All of us will bring food tomorrow afternoon to celebrate building the new cabin and to welcome the Worths to our valley. How does that sound?”

“I have ale I’ll bring,” Shakespeare offered.

“So long as you don’t drink too much,” Blue Water Woman said. “Remember how you become when you have had more than one.”

“Remind me.”

“You become frisky.”

“Me?”

“Very frisky.”

Emala squealed once more. “I swear. You folks talk as if you just fell in love.”

Shakespeare clasped Blue Water Woman’s hand and sank to one knee. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.”

“Do you see what I must put up with?” Blue Water Woman said.

“O speak again, bright angel!”

“I think he’s adorable,” Emala gushed.

Blue Water Woman patted the top of McNair’s
head. “You do not have to live with him day in and day out.”

“Ouch,” Shakespeare said.

Nate chuckled and walked toward the lake. Halfway there he acquired a shapely shadow.

“Leaving without your horse?” Winona asked.

Nate held up his encrusted hands. “I need to wash up and then we can go.”

“Any regrets about inviting the Worths to our valley?”

“Why would you ask a thing like that? They’re good people. They’ll make good neighbors.”

“I remember you saying once that this valley was ours and ours alone. Yet you allowed the Nansusequas to stay and now you have allowed the Worths to move here, too.” Winona rose onto the tips of her toes and kissed him on his chin. “You would make a fine
sosoni.
”

“I thought I already was. Your people adopted me into the tribe years ago.”

“I stand corrected,” Winona said, taking his arm. “You are right, though. They are good people. I hope the next family will be just as good.”

“Next?” Nate said, and stopped. “Whoa there, silly goose. The Worths are the last. There will be no more after them.” He’d never intended for anyone other than his family and Shakespeare and Blue Water Woman to settle there. It was to be their haven, their sanctuary, so far into the mountains that they would never be intruded upon.

“So you say,” Winona teased.

“Straight tongue,” Nate said. “From here on out, no one comes through that pass without my say-so.”

“What will you do? Put up a sign?”

Nate hadn’t thought of that but now that he did,
he said, “I’ll have one up by the end of the week. A warning to trespassers to keep out, that this valley is spoken for.”

“It is a big valley.”

Indeed it was. Nate scanned the sun-washed lofty mountains, the ranks of emerald forest, the expanse of blue lake dotted by meandering waterfowl. “A hundred homesteaders could live here comfortably.”

“But you will not let them.”

“I will not.”

“I don’t know, husband,” Winona said uncertainly. “I foresee trouble for us down the road, as you whites would say.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, as us whites would say,” Nate retorted. Sliding his arms around her waist, he kissed her on the forehead. “We have a right to protect our own and this valley is ours. We found it. We claimed it. We settled it. If I could, I would register our claim with the government so that it was legal, but I can’t because there
is
no government. Out here it’s every man, or woman, for him- or herself.”

“White ways have long puzzled me,” Winona confessed. “Your people think of land differently from my people. We do not own it in the way whites like to. In our eyes the land is for everyone to use.”

“Not to whites and not this valley,” Nate stressed. “I grant you we look at it differently. But I can’t let folks come waltzing in here as they please or pretty soon we’ll have a whole settlement and be up to our armpits in people and rules and laws and I won’t have that. Civilization ends at the Mississippi River. I, for one, am glad it does.”

Winona nodded. She had heard all this before.
“How far are you willing to go to keep this valley ours?”

“As far as I need to.”

“You would kill to keep people out?”

Nate shrugged. “Like I said, dear heart, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“You are being evasive.”

“I’m being honest. No, I don’t want to kill. But I will keep this valley ours no matter what it takes.”

“There is much more wilderness, you know,” Winona mentioned. “Many thousands of your miles. Enough for everyone.”

Nate placed his chin on the top of her head and gazed at a pair of geese out on the lake. “I wish you were right. But you don’t know my people like I do. They are never happy with what they have. They always have to have more. They’ve pushed from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and have so overrun the land that it won’t be long before they push past it. It will be like a dam bursting. Whites will spill across the prairie and into these mountains until there will barely be breathing space.”

“You exaggerate, surely.”

Nate drew back and looked into her eyes. “I wish I did. I wish I could make you see. Trust me on this. A time will come, maybe in our lifetimes, when my people will want all this land for their own.”

“And what of my people? What of the other tribes?”

“My people will do to them as they did to the tribes back East. They’ll exterminate them or make them live where the tribes do not want to live.”

Winona did not hide how troubled she was. “You have rarely been wrong about anything, but I hope you are wrong about this. For if what you say is true, blood will be spilled.”

“There will be blood,” Nate agreed. He hugged her close and she clasped him tighter and they stood a while with the sun warm on their faces and the breeze in their hair and a robin warbling in the woods.

That night Nate lay on his back in their bed with Winona’s cheek on his chest and was unable to get to sleep. He was troubled by their talk. He had a feeling, a sense he could not account for, of trouble looming on their horizon. He tried to blame it on nerves, but he knew better. Life was what it was, at times peaceful and wonderful and at times violent and savage. They could ward off the ugly aspects but they couldn’t hold those aspects at bay indefinitely. Life wouldn’t let them. When people least expected, life slammed them to the ground and ripped at them with claws of strife and misery.

There was a passage in the Bible that Nate had always liked, about how God sent his rain on the just and the unjust. Which was as it should be, Nate supposed, but not much comfort to those being rained on. Because it wasn’t just rain. It was death and disease and hurt and slaughter and the many sorrows the human soul had to endure.

Nate stared at the ceiling. If he lived to be a hundred, he doubted he would savvy why people had to suffer. The best he could do was protect his family so they suffered as little as possible.

With that in mind, he dozed off.

The next morning dawned clear. The lake was a brilliant blue in a world of lush green. Nate dipped their bucket in to fill it and saw fish swim by. When he got back to the cabin Winona was busy making food for the get-together.

Everyone had agreed to meet at the Worth cabin shortly after the sun was at its zenith. The food would be set out, and they would talk and play games and have fun until late into the night. Nate was looking forward to it. So when he stepped outside shortly before noon and saw the western sky, he scowled.

A dark cloud bank blotted out the horizon, a thunderhead rent by flashes of lightning. As yet it was too distant to hear the thunder. But in a while it would be upon them. He went back in and informed his wife.

“I hope it passes over quickly,” Winona said.

So did Nate. Otherwise it would spoil their plans. He went back out and made sure the corral gate was secure and brought in all his tools so they wouldn’t get wet and rust. As he was carrying his ax in he heard the first far-off rumble and smelled moisture in the air. It wouldn’t be long.

The first drops were big and cold. They hit like gunshots on the roof. The wind picked up and churned the surface of the lake with wavelets. Lightning crashed and thunder boomed, and the dark sky opened up and unleashed a deluge. The rain fell in sheets. It was so heavy that Nate, standing at his window, couldn’t see the chicken coop or the woodshed only a dozen yards out.

Winona came to his side and peered into the torrent. “Please do not last long,” she said to the heavens.

A cannonade of thunder shook their cabin. Evelyn came out of her room and took one look and said, “This better not keep me from seeing Dega.”

“Oh?” Nate said.

Evelyn blushed.

The storm lasted more than an hour. It rained so
hard that at its peak the ground was inches deep in water. Gradually the downpour tapered to a sprinkle and ended entirely. The sky turned from black to gray and then to blue. In its wake it left pools and puddles and mud and muck.

Nate was still at the window, Winona at the counter placing a pie she had baked in a basket. “It’s a mess out there,” he said. “I should go tell everyone to hold off a couple of hours. Give things time to dry out.”

Evelyn jumped up from a chair by the table. “Let me, Pa. I’m tired of being cooped up.”

“Is that the only reason?”

Evelyn blushed again. “Of course.”

“You’ll have to ride careful. The ground is slippery.”

“I will. Don’t worry,” Evelyn said. “Nothing will happen.”