How the snake got down into the fissure hardly mattered. The sight of its distinctive large triangular head and its thick body patterned on the back with dark diamonds bordered by a lighter shade sent a chill rippling through Nate. He imagined he could see the snake’s markings clearly, but of course he couldn’t in the shadowy confines of the crack. He did hear the sibilant hiss of its flicking tongue and a faint rattle as its tail moved along the thin ledge.
“Pa?” Zach asked, having sensed that something was wrong.
Nate made no reply. With a start he realized the thin strip of stone on which the snake was crawling ran right past his face, angling upward toward the rim. Holding himself rigid, his breath catching in his throat, he watched the reptile glide closer.
“Pa? What is it?”
The rattler, head held low, drew abreast of Nate, and he could see its slender tongue testing the air. Its eerie eyes were fixed straight ahead, its scales rippling as it climbed. He kept waiting for the deadly serpent to crawl out of sight so he could relax.
Unexpectedly, just then, with the fine particles of dust suspended in the air, Nate felt an urge to sneeze. The impulse was nearly overwhelming. Yet he dared not let go of the rope to clamp his nose shut or his forearm would brush against the rattlesnake. Nor dared he sneeze, for the rattler might turn on him in the blink of an eye and strike.
In despair Nate bit down hard on his lower lip, his teeth digging deep into his skin. Intense pain seared through him, pain he hoped would suffice to take his mind off sneezing. The tingling in his nose slacked off for a few seconds, which was all the time needed for the rattlesnake to slide into the darkness and be gone.
Unable to control himself any longer, Nate sneezed so loud that more dust swirled off the wall and enveloped his face. He began coughing, which caused the rope to shake violently, and his sweaty hands started to slip. Girding his muscles, he held fast until he could inhale without difficulty.
“Pa?” Zach said, sounding greatly concerned.
“I’m fine,” Nate answered. “Just saw a snake.” He resumed lowering himself down. Reflecting on the close call, he realized there might be many more rattlers in the fissure. Some snakes liked to hole up in cool, quiet places during the heat of the day. Sometimes hundreds or even thousands congregated in a single den. It was possible there were hordes of rattlers somewhere at the bottom, and he worried what would happen if either of them should plummet into the fissure’s depths.
“My left leg is falling asleep,” Zach remarked.
Yet another worry, Nate thought, scowling. If the boy’s circulation was being cut off, there might be internal damage to the leg. He shifted so he could slide down next to his son, and tensed his left arm to bear all of his weight as he tried to squeeze his right arm around Zach. Nothing doing. The walls narrowed at the very spot where Zach was stuck, and it was well they did. On either side was a bit more space, enough so that the boy would have plunged all the way to the bottom had he missed that spot by a matter of inches either way.
“I’m sorry, Pa,” Zach said softly.
“We all have accidents from time to time,” Nate said, and let it go at that. Which struck him as ironic. If he had pulled a harebrained stunt like this on his own father, he would have received a tongue-lashing to beat all tongue-lashings and a whipping that would have left him unable to comfortably sit down for a month. And, truth to tell, if he had never left New York, if he had married someone there and raised a different family, he would probably have acted the same way if his son did something similar.
But living with the Shoshones had changed him. Living as an Indian had altered his perspective on life. Indian parents rarely resorted to physical punishment. Stern words, yes, and discipline that involved extra work or the denial of favorite pastimes, but not spankings or slappings or beatings with a rod. Indian parents regarded incidents like this one as educational. The only way for a child to learn, they believed, was for that child to go out and experience life. If the child committed a foolish act, then the child suffered the consequences and learned never to be so foolish again. Certainly there were risks in allowing children to learn so much for themselves, but the gains outweighed the risks, the gains being that Indian children matured more quickly than their white counterparts, acquiring a practical wisdom that stood them in excellent stead the rest of their lives.
Nate eased lower and attempted to get his arm around Zach’s legs. There wasn’t enough extra room for a finger, let alone his whole arm. Frustrated, he went even lower until he was below his son. Bracing his back against the rear wall for extra support, he put his right palm against the sole of Zach’s left moccasin and pushed.
“Ow!” the boy cried out.
“This will likely hurt a bit,” Nate said, “but it can’t be helped.” Once more he pushed, and felt the wedged leg give slightly.
“Don’t fret about me, Pa,” Zach said through clenched teeth. “Do what you have to.”
Pride swelled Nate’s heart. He pushed harder, working the foot back and forth as much as he was able, and gradually the leg loosened. Dust cascaded onto his face, forcing him to avert his gaze. His left shoulder and his back were hurting, but he paid them no heed. Patiently he continued moving his son’s foot until the leg abruptly slipped free to one side.
Instantly Zach, who had been clinging to the wall with clawed fingers, started to slide down. Nate lunged upward, looping his right arm about Zach’s waist, and arrested the fall. “Hang on tight,” he advised. Then, hugging his son close, he commenced his ascent.
“We’re coming out!” he yelled.
The rope leaped upward of its own accord, hauling him toward the welcome light overhead at twice the speed he could manage on his own. Once or twice his back bumped the wall, and once his elbows were jarred, but the discomfort was a small price to pay for being swiftly pulled to the surface. There he found not only Shakespeare but also Winona and Blue Water Woman had helped to get him out.
“Thanks,” Nate said, rising to his knees and lifting Zach upright. There were tears of gratitude in the boy’s eyes.
“I won’t ever do anything like that again, Pa. I promise.”
“Let’s hope not,” Nate said. “I’d rather wrestle a grizzly than be hemmed in like a pea in a pod.”
Winona stepped up and gave Zach a hug; then she examined his left leg. The boy’s leggin was torn and his skin scraped badly, but there was scant blood and the bone was unbroken. The only comment she made while conducting her examination was, “You must remember to be more careful in the future, my son. Sometimes I think you are as accident-prone as your father.”
In the act of rising, Nate had opened his mouth to deliver a witty retort when he saw Samson standing with head held high and ears erect, staring in the direction of their camp. He twisted, gazing out over the trees, and saw the thin spiral of smoke that indicated the location of their fire. He also heard, faintly on the wind, a series of high-pitched whinnies.
“Something is in our camp!” Shakespeare bellowed, and was off the shelf like a shot, sprinting down the slope with great leaps, a human bighorn in action.
“Bring the rope!” Nate said, and followed his mentor, scooping up the Hawken first. At the base of the hill he could hear the agitated horses clearly, and he prayed a panther wasn’t after them. Or worse, a grizzly. The loss of a pack animal wouldn’t be so bad, but if one of their mounts should be ripped apart they would be forced to turn around and head home.
A glance back showed Winona and Blue Water Woman trying to undo the knots he had made when he tied the rope to the boulder. Good, he reflected. They would be delayed getting to the camp, which should give Shakespeare and him time to deal with whatever was spooking the horses before they got there.
For an old-timer, McNair was incredibly spry when he had to be. Ten yards ahead he darted around an evergreen and jumped over a log.
Nate willed himself to catch up. If a wandering grizzly had struck their camp, it would take both of their rifles to bring the monster down. Single shots hardly ever did the trick. More often than not, a grizzly would be shot seven, eight, nine times and still keep coming, its lungs perforated and its innards shot all to hell, yet still able to tear a man to shreds with a single swipe of its mighty paw.
He glimpsed the end of the trees at the same moment he drew even with McNair. Past the pines on the right were the tethered horses, some prancing in place as if their hoofs were on fire.
“I hope it’s not those Utes,” Shakespeare said.
That hadn’t occurred to Nate. The band was in the area, though, and might have spotted the smoke, a careless oversight on their part that never would have happened if they hadn’t become distracted by Zach’s plight. He lifted the Hawken, ready for a bloody battle, and charged from cover.
Standing next to the rack of drying buffalo strips was the intruder.
Nate and Shakespeare dug in their heels and halted side by side. A whiff of rank odor hit Nate a second later and he scrunched up his nose. His thumb on the hammer uncoiled. Under no circumstances would he shoot, and risk having to take two or three baths a day for six months to erase the even worse foul smell that would ensue.
Sniffing daintily at the meat, a large skunk walked slowly around the rack, then ambled close to the fire. The flames weren’t to its liking, so it shuffled toward the horses. Several tried to pull their picket pins out in their efforts to get away from the brazen creature. Others shook their heads and snorted. The skunk, oblivious to the commotion it was so innocently causing, again changed course, moving toward the forest.
Nate’s eyes widened as he saw it coming his way. Should he run or stay still? He heard Shakespeare whisper to stand fast, so he did. The skunk paused to paw at the earth briefly, then resumed its evening stroll. Suddenly it caught their scent and halted.
Ordinarily a skunk was no threat. Unless afflicted with rabies, skunks either gave humans a wide berth or ignored them entirely. And while nocturnal by nature, they were not averse to coming out before sunset when the whim struck, as this one had done.
Nate could see its dark eyes swiveling from Shakespeare to him and back again. What was it thinking? he wondered, watching it closely. There was no evidence of the telltale ring of drooling saliva common to animals with hydrophobia, so his only worry was the oily, fetid musk contained in glands in the animal’s backside. A grown skunk could spray ten to fifteen feet with astounding accuracy. Often it went for the eyes, since the musk would blind anyone or anything long enough for it to get away. Many an unwary Indian and trapper had found out the hard way just why the lowly skunk was shunned by fierce panthers and savage grizzlies alike.
Seconds passed. The skunk didn’t move.
Then there was a crashing in the brush and a black form hurtled into the open and stopped between Nate and Shakespeare. Samson no sooner saw the intruder than he lowered his hairy head and vented a warning growl that would have scared any other creature half to death.
Not so the skunk. It chattered like an irate squirrel, stamped its small front paws, raised its hind legs, and arched its bushy tail.
“Move!” Shakespeare shouted.
No prompting was needed. Nate dived to his left, springing as far as he could go. Over his shoulder he saw Samson take a step, and he started to yell, to tell the dog to sit, to stay, but he was too late. The skunk had already spun. From its rear end shot a jet of vile liquid that splashed squarely onto Samson’s brow.
The dog recoiled, blinked, and snorted. Backing away, Samson frantically rubbed a paw across his nose, then rubbed his forehead on the grass. Neither helped. Turning, he vigorously shook his head and wheezed while staggering a few feet.
Prone on the ground, Nate faced the skunk. A healthy one was capable of unleashing five or six shots of musk in swift succession, and he had no desire to be its next target. The intruder, however, had no further interest in them. It was walking to the west with the peculiar rolling gait common to its breed, head and tail held proudly on high, not the least bit concerned about reprisals.
“Damned arrogant critter!” Shakespeare muttered. “Why the Good Lord saw fit to make them, I’ll never know.”
“Maybe they’re supposed to keep the rest of us humble,” Nate quipped, and was immediately sorry he had spoken because he inhaled a few stray tendrils of musk lingering in the air. Coughing and gagging, he stood and moved farther from Samson. The hapless mongrel, meanwhile, had fallen to the ground and was rolling back and forth in a frenzied bid to rid himself of the offending stench.
“Want me to shoot it and put it out of its misery?” Shakespeare asked, wearing a lopsided grin.
“Don’t you dare!” yelped a shrill voice. Zach raced out of the woods to crouch in front of the mongrel. “No one harms my dog! Ever!”
“I was only joshing,” Shakespeare said.
“You weren’t funny,” Zach declared, and tried to stroke Samson’s neck. The dog, ignoring him, wouldn’t stop rolling. “Pa, what are we going to do?”
“Give him a good dunking in the first stream we find.”
Zach leaned forward, his hand outstretched. “We can’t . . .” he began, and gasped, his face contorting into a mask of utter revulsion. Doubling over, he covered his nose and mouth and hacked uncontrollably.
Nate took a breath, held it, and dashed to his son. Grabbing Zach around the waist, he carried the boy to the fire and gently set him down. “You’d better wait a spell before you try to pet him. He’s not fit company for man or beast right at the moment.” Looking up, he saw Winona and Blue Water Woman giving Samson a wide berth.
“What happened?” the latter asked, her eyes twinkling with inner mirth. “Don’t tell us the famous Grizzly Killer was routed by a skunk.”
“If word of this ever gets back to my people,” Winona threw in, “Grizzly Killer will have to change his name to Smells Bad.”
The two women laughed.
Knowing the futility of trying to respond to them, Nate walked to the horses and verified each was still firmly tethered. Next he checked the meat rack to see if any of the strips had been tampered with. All was in order. By the time he got back to the fire, Blue Water Woman was preparing fresh coffee and Winona sat with an arm draped on Zach’s shoulders.
Shakespeare was trying to cheer the boy up. “. . . have days like this, son. Every one of us. It’s the bad days that help us appreciate the good days more. Why, I remember one time your pa and me were out trapping beaver. Danged if he didn’t get himself attacked by a black bear, a grizzly, and a Ute, all on the same day.”
“At least I didn’t get myself caught by a Blackfoot war party like someone I could mention,” Nate interjected.
“Who?” Zach asked.
Shakespeare coughed and quickly went on. “That’s not important. What matters is that you don’t let a little accident now and then get you down in the doldrums.” He rested a hand on the boy’s arm. “This is in thee a nature but infected, a poor unmanly melancholy sprung from change of fortune.”
“What?”
Sadly shaking his head, Nate squatted and picked up a tin cup. “I do wish you’d use common English with him, Shakespeare. He never understands when you warble like the bard.”
“Warbling, is it now?” the mountain man responded a bit testily. He quoted from another play. “When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.”
Nate shrugged. “I never was one much for rhyme and all that. Give me a Cooper novel any day and I’m content.”
“James Fenimore Cooper,” Shakespeare spat, and reverted to the trapper vernacular. “That long-winded varmint! He’s more in love with words than he is with life. Old William S., on the other hand, was a man who knew people. Knew the way they think, knew the way they act. He saw right through them and wrote the truth. Cooper? He’s a literary flash in the pan compared to William S.”
“I’ve read all of Cooper’s books and I don’t recollect coming across a lie in any of them,” Nate countered. As with many of the free trappers, reading was one of his favorite pastimes, especially during the long winter months when the cold and the snow drove everyone indoors. A good book helped pass the hours pleasurably. Naturally, every trapper had an author he liked more than other writers, and heated arguments over the merits of each often arose. Some, like McNair, were partial to Shakespeare, although none had gone to the trouble he had to memorize all of a dozen plays. Some preferred Byron, some Scott. A few would read the Bible and nothing else. Nate often thought that many of the good citizens back in the States, who tended to view trappers as illiterate savages little better than the Indians those citizens despised so much, would have been shocked to learn the truth.
Leaning back against his saddle, he sipped his coffee and contentedly watched Winona and Zach talking in low tones. The boy was happier, and under Winona’s influence he would soon be his old indomitable self. Children were like that. They bounced back from hard times faster than adults, maybe because they weren’t so set in their ways and could take things more in stride. Children were like saplings, bending whichever way the wind blew but seldom breaking. Adults were like trees in their prime, able to bend, but more likely to snap if the wind blew too strong.
He thought about the events of the day—the run-in with the old buffalo, the incident at the fissure, and lastly the encounter with the roving skunk—and grinned. Life in the wilderness was rarely dull. Seldom did a day go by when something unusual didn’t occur. It was just one of many fascinating aspects about the wilderness that had so appealed to him when he first ventured west. Unlike city life, where a person suffocated under the drudgery of a daily routine, where each day was almost an exact duplicate of the one before, life in the Rockies was an unending series of adventures big and small. A person felt alive in the wild.
Shakespeare, who had been gazing to the south while drinking coffee, now stood and came around to Nate and knelt.
“Come to declare a truce?” Nate asked, and grinned.
“No,” McNair said, shaking his head. He stared into the fire and spoke so quietly his lips barely moved. “Didn’t it strike you as strange that our horses got so worked up over a skunk?”
“Not really,” Nate said, wondering what his friend was getting at. “The critter must have wandered around the camp for a while before we got back. They didn’t like its scent, is all.”
“I thought so too until a minute ago,” Shakespeare said. “Then I saw our other visitor.”
“What other visitor?” Nate asked, sitting up so abruptly he spilled some coffee onto his lap.
“Take a gander at the trees south of us. Be casual about it so you don’t spook him.”
Placing the cup down, Nate stretched and shifted so he could scan the forest. He half expected to see a Ute lying in ambush, but for half a minute he saw no one. Then, as his brain sifted the random patterns of lengthening shadows and dying patches of sunlight, he saw a vague shape lying on the thick low limb of a spruce tree. It took a moment for the outline to become clear, and he whistled softly. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
“It must have been sneaking up on the horses when they picked up its scent,” Shakespeare guessed. “It was the cause of the ruckus we heard when we were up on the hill. That skunk just happened to show up when we did.”
“We can’t let it sit there until dark,” Nate said. “First chance it gets, it’ll try for our stock.”
“Do you want to do the honors or should I?”
“My rifle is handy,” Nate said, picking up his Hawken. The women and Zach were watching him, puzzled. He cocked the hammer, then rose into a crouch. “Too bad we can’t use any more meat,” he mentioned.
“I know,” Shakespeare said. “Panther meat is the best there is.”
Nate pivoted on his heels, pressed the stock to his right shoulder, and aimed at the limb on which the powerful predator crouched. Steadying the barrel, he lightly touched the trigger, took a breath, and squeezed.
At the loud retort a tawny panther leaped clear of the limb and alighted on all fours in a crouch, its tail waving wildly, its ears flattened in anger. A feral snarl rumbled from its throat. For a moment it seemed about to attack, but the moment passed and the big cat spun and bounded into the forest, blending into the shadows with a skill not even the most seasoned Indian warrior could hope to match.
It all happened so rapidly that none of them got more than a glimpse of the magnificent animal. Nate slowly lowered his rifle and listened in vain for sounds of the creature’s passage through the underbrush.
At length Zach laughed and said, “We sure are seeing a lot of critters on this trip. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll see a grizzly soon.”
“Bite your tongue, son,” Nate said. “We’re supposed to have fun on this trip, not fight for our lives every step of the way. I’ll be happy if we don’t tangle with anything else from here on out.”
Little did he know what lay in store for them.