Nine

Certain moments in every man’s life are so remarkably vivid, so profoundly intense, they are never, ever forgotten. Some are tranquil moments, such as the first time he is intimate with a woman or the birth of his first child.

Some are perilous moments, such as a knife fight, or being shot at, or set upon by savage beasts. These are events that call forth a man’s courage, that test his manhood as few others can. In those moments of extreme danger when his life hangs in the balance, he is more totally alive than at any other time. Every one of his senses is at peak performance. His whole mental concentration and personal focus are on the danger at hand, and nothing else. He thinks deeply, feels deeply, lives deeply. If he survives, he reflects on them often, marveling at his deliverance, at the courage he didn’t know he had before he was put to the test.

Nate King looked up into the snarling features of the creature about to slay him and was overcome, not by abject fear, but by a calming courage. The panther was too heavy for him to throw off, especially as weakened and in anguish as he was. His arm holding the tomahawk was pinned under the cat’s paw and he couldn’t lift it. Kicking at the lion would only enrage it further and result in his innards being ripped out by its rear legs.

Nate saw Satan’s wicked teeth lowering toward his jugular. He looked the panther in the eye and girded himself to die as a man should die, bravely and without complaint. There would be no screaming, no pleading, no whining.

No one was there to witness Nate’s death. He had nothing to prove except to himself. The ultimate trial loomed and he accepted it as inevitable.

But at that very instant, the instant the panther’s teeth were about to close on Nate’s soft flesh, Satan suddenly straightened and glanced around. A shriek of pure rage was torn from the cat’s lips and its tail whipped wildly. Then, in a single bound, it cleared Nate and the creek and landed at the edge of the undergrowth, into which it vanished.

Nate was too flabbergasted to move. He didn’t realize he wasn’t breathing until his lungs ached and he had to gulp in air. Dimly, he heard drumming, as of many hoofs. He tried lifting his head for a look but he was too weak to do so. The hoofbeats grew louder and louder, and Nate managed to twist his neck in time to see the best friend he had in all the world vault from the white mare and race toward him.

“Dear Lord! No!” Shakespeare cried, dropping to his knees in the water to prop an arm under Nate’s shoulders. “How bad is it, son?” he asked. “Where did that panther get you?”

Nate was speechless with amazement. He was going to live after all! His time had not yet come! A happiness so acute it brought tears to his eyes gushed up within him and he placed a hand on his mentor’s arm.

Shakespeare, misconstruing, inquired anxiously, “Where does it hurt the worst? I don’t see any blood.”

“I’ll live,” Nate croaked huskily.

“That critter didn’t get its claws into you?” Shakespeare asked in surprise. “You don’t know how glad that makes this old coon. When I spotted you tussling with that thing, I figured you were a goner.” He glanced at Nate’s head, at Nate’s left leg. “Seems to me you’re battered up some, though.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Nate assured him.

The mountain man cracked a grin. “Well, now that you’ve had your yearly bath, what say we get you dried off?” Grunting, he got his other arm under Nate and stood.

“I can walk,” Nate protested.

“Hush. I need the exercise.” Shakespeare carried Nate from the creek and deposited him near the doe. “How thoughtful,” he quipped. “You knew I was coming and wanted to have a meal ready.”

Nate propped himself on his elbows. “How?” he asked.

“How did I find you? You can thank him,” Shakespeare answered, pointing.

Twisting, Nate was shocked to see his black stallion standing with McNair’s pack animals.

“He showed up in my camp all sweaty, about ready to keel over,” Shakespeare explained. “Must have galloped the whole way from your camp to mine. I saddled up pronto, threw my peltries and fixings on the pack horses, and went to find you. Been looking ever since.”

The emotion in the older man’s voice brought a lump to Nate’s throat. He swallowed, coughed, and commented, “You timed it just right.”

“Not on purpose,” Shakespeare admitted. “I found your camp easy enough, and I have to admit it worried me some seeing that dead horse and all that blood everywhere. I yelled and yelled and fired my gun but you never showed so I decided to track you down.” His expression turned grimly serious. “It wasn’t so hard at first. Then I came to that gorge where you took a tumble, and rather than go down in it, I rode all the way around, hoping I’d find where you came out. Sure enough, I did, but your tracks showed there was something wrong. You were walking unsteadily, and in a circle, no less. And now and then I came on the painter’s prints.” Shakespeare glanced at those by the creek. “Never set eyes on tracks so big in all my life.”

“Satan would have finished me if not for you,” Nate said softly.

McNair’s eyebrow arched. “Satan? You’ve named it after that old legend?”

“It’s fitting,” Nate said. His rib acted up again and he had to lie back down. “I’ll tell you the whole story as soon as I feel up to it.”

“What’s the matter?”

Nate explained about his rib. Shakespeare retrieved an old blanket which he cut into wide strips and wrapped tightly around Nate’s chest. Shakespeare also bandaged Nate’s head and applied an herbal paste to the punctured sore.

“I can’t leave you alone for two minutes,” the mountain man complained as he carefully bound the foot. “How in tarnation did you ever wind up tangling with that cat?”

While Shakespeare roasted venison and boiled coffee, Nate related his ordeal, concluding with, “I’m lucky to be alive, but I suppose I should count my blessings. I still have some hides left, and the stallion.” He stared into the fire. “I only wish I hadn’t lost my Hawken.”

“That reminds me,” Shakespeare said. Hustling to the far side of one of his pack horses, he was busy for a few moments. He returned proudly bearing a familiar rifle.

“You found it?” Nate blurted, half rising in his excitement.

“That I did, son,” Shakespeare said, handing the Hawken over. “Spotted it from the top of that gorge. Had a hell of a time climbing down, I don’t mind saying. Without my rope I never could have gotten to it.”

Nate fondly clasped the rifle in his lap and stroked it as he might his wife’s hair. “Thought I’d never see you again!”

“We can get attached to those things, can’t we?” McNair chuckled, squatting beside the bubbling pot. “Here. How about if we warm your insides a mite?” The coffee was perfectly delicious. Nate savored the first cup, sipping the potent brew and rolling it on his tongue. In a short time the venison was done and he ate with cheerful relish. The meat he had eaten earlier had only whetted his appetite. He was famished, as he demonstrated by gorging on half a haunch. When his stomach was full to bursting, he wiped his greasy hands on his leggings and settled back wearing a smile of supreme contentment. “Life doesn’t get much better than this,” he mentioned.

Shakespeare nodded. “We’ll let you rest up tonight. Tomorrow is soon enough to go after your plews.” He bobbed his head at his pack horses. “From what you’ve told me, I figure we should be able to pack them all onto my animals.”

“If we can’t, I’ll tie the rest on the stallion,” Nate suggested without thinking.

“And then what?” Shakespeare snickered. “Walk all the way back to your cabin with your leg in the shape it’s in? You’ll have to have it amputated if you try a featherbrained stunt like that.”

“I won’t leave any of my hides behind,” Nate insisted. “Quit fretting. You won’t have to. We can always rig a travois if there are too many.”

Nate hadn’t thought of that. Indians used travoises all the time to transport their lodges, personal possessions, even their small children. The contrivances were ingenuously simple. First a pair of long poles were tied crosswise behind a horse’s head. Next, behind the animal’s rump, a pair of crosspieces were lashed a couple of yards apart. A latticework of thin but sturdy branches and buffalo tendon was constructed, forming an ideal platform on which to carry anything under the sun. “Good idea,” he said.

“I like to have one at least once a month. Keeps me on my toes.”

Somewhere in the forest a twig snapped. At the sound Nate sat up as if hurled from the ground by the grass itself. He cocked and pointed his rifle at the trees. Eyes narrowed, he raked the woods, his finger nervously rubbing the trigger.

“A bit jittery, aren’t you?” Shakespeare commented. “It could be the panther.”

“It could be a chipmunk.”

Slowly Nate lowered the Hawken and with marked reluctance let down the hammer. “We can’t be too cautious where Satan is concerned.”

“This panther really has you spooked, doesn’t it?”

“If you’d been through what I’ve been through, it would have you spooked too.”

“I suppose,” Shakespeare said, pressing his tin cup to his lips. Over the rim he studied his young companion closely. “I knew a free trapper once who let himself get spooked by a glutton,” he remarked as he put the cup down.

“Oh?” Nate responded absently. A glutton, as he well knew, was a common nickname for the wolverine.

“Yep. He had himself a nice little dugout in Flathead country and had done real well raising beaver that year. One day he came home and found that something had broken in and made a mess of his fixings. The tracks told him it had been a wolverine. He was mad enough to spit nails, but he didn’t think much else of it at the time because it’s not out of the ordinary for a curious critter to make itself at home in a lodge or cabin or whatever.” Shakespeare paused. “Then one day he came home again and found the same thing had happened.”

“What did he do?”

“What you or I would have done. He set traps around his dugout and baited them with fresh meat. Damned if the glutton didn’t swipe the bait without being caught.” Shakespeare poured more coffee for both of them. “That wolverine grew fond of the trapper’s place and came around every chance it got. Scared off some of his horses, ate every scrap of food it could find, and had the annoying habit of biting holes in his buckskins and blankets.”

“Didn’t he get a shot at it?” Nate wondered, now interested in the outcome.

“He tried. Mercy, how he tried. He became outright obsessed with rubbing that glutton out. Stopped trapping entirely. Hardly ever hunted. All he could think about was that furry varmint and how to go about killing it.”

“Did he, finally?”

“No one ever knew. Came a time when a bunch of us stopped at his dugout to see him and he wasn’t home. From the evidence, we guessed he hadn’t been there in ages.” Shakespeare took a swallow. “But we found plenty of wolverine sign.”

Nate supported himself on an elbow. “You never tell one of these yarns unless you’re trying to get a point across. Are you saying that I’m acting the same way toward Satan as your friend did toward the glutton?”

“Let’s just say my yarn, as you call it, could be taken as a warning.”

“You wasted your breath. I’m not about to go crazy on you over an ornery panther.”

“I hope not.”

Nate laughed and forgot about the matter until later that night when Shakespeare was snoring on the other side of the fire and sleep eluded him. He gazed thoughtfully at the star-dotted canopy overhead. No matter how hard he tried, and he was trying, he couldn’t put the mountain lion from his mind. Over and over again he relived that last attack, relived being knocked onto his back in the creek and staring up into the cat’s bestial features as its fangs dropped to his neck.

Why couldn’t he shake the memory? Nate mused. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been attacked by wild animals before. Bears, wolves, snakes, name it and he had found himself on the receiving end of their wrath. So why did Satan bother him so? The idea of the panther going unpunished after all that had happened agitated him terribly.

It was foolish.

Wasn’t it?

~*~

Many years before. New York City.

The boy named Nate was crouched on top of his father’s work bench, the club clutched in his right hand. He stared at the mouse that had emerged from the hole moments ago and a tingle of excitement rippled through him. Here was his chance! All he had to do was jump and swing.

Nose twitching, the mouse warily approached the cheese. It took a nibble, then another, and began eating in earnest, convinced it was safe.

Nate balanced on his heels, tensed to leap. Then he mentally pictured the end result of his club crashing down on the rodent’s head, and he hesitated. The creature was so small, so very innocent. How could he take its life? Why didn’t his father just plug up the holes so no mice could enter the house? That would be better than pounding this one to a pulp.

A second mouse appeared, poking its head out and looking right and left. Seeing its fellow eating the cheese, it dashed out to join in the feast.

Nate remembered his father’s words: “Where there’s one mouse, there are always more. If we don’t prevent it, they’ll overrun the house in no time. Your mother will find them in the pantry, in the flour, in the bread. Mouse droppings will be everywhere.’’ Here was living proof his father had been right, yet still Nate couldn’t bring himself to jump.

What’s wrong with me? Nate quizzed himself. Was he so weak-willed he couldn’t do what had to be done? Was he a puny thinker, as his Uncle Zeke described some people who didn’t see things the way they were? He thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his other poetry books and was staggered by a mature insight; poetry, grand, glorious poetry, those golden words he loved so much, had no bearing at all on the day to day things that people did. Poetry didn’t put food on the table, or keep a person clothed, or teach someone how to deal with vermin.

As if to prove that point, one of the rodents below paused in its chewing long enough to excrete waste.

Nate’s mouth curled in heartfelt disgust. For the first time in his young life he looked at another creature and felt an urge to kill. Legs uncoiling, he sprang, swinging as he dropped. It was ridiculously easy. The first mouse had no inkling of danger and died with cheese bulging its cheeks. The second mouse froze, petrified with terror, giving Nate an opportunity to dispatch it with a single blow. He stood looking down at them, then hefted his club and smiled.

It took only a minute to reach the front room where his father sat reading a newspaper. His father glanced at him, saw the mice dangling by their tails from his hand, and frowned. “You should have known better than to bring them up here. What if your mother saw them?”

“I knew she’s off shopping. And I wanted you to see.”

“You did the job you were supposed to do. What do you want? A pat on the back?”

“I killed two of them.”

The father folded his paper and regarded the boy a moment. “What did you kill, son?”

“Sir?” Nate responded uncertainly.

“What did you kill?”

The answer was so obvious that Nate was at a loss to understand why the question was even asked. “Two mice, Father.”

“Look at them.”

Nate did as directed, noticing how the brains of one trickled from its split skull. To his surprise he didn’t feel queasy.

“What do you see?”

Confused, Nate studied them intently. What was he supposed to see? “Two dead mice.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. Just two dead animals.”

“Then what was all the fuss about? Why did it take you so long to do a simple chore?”

“I told you, Father. I’ve never killed before.”

“How do you feel now that you have?”

“I’m glad I did as you wanted.”

“You don’t regret killing them?”

“No. It had to be done, just as you said.”

His father smiled, a rare genuinely warm smile, and beckoned Nate closer. He draped a hand on Nate’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “Remember this lesson, son. There’s an old saying that life isn’t a bowl of cherries, and nothing could be truer. We have to work hard to get what we want in this world. We have to overcome difficulties every step of the way.” He nodded at the mice. “Often there will be things we don’t want to do, don’t like doing at all, but they have to be done whether we like doing them or not. The measure of a man is that he accepts his responsibilities and performs them without complaint. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Excellent. Now take those mice out back in the alley and leave them there for the cats.”

“Sir?”

“You’ve seen how many cats and dogs run loose in this city, haven’t you?”

“Of course. There must be hundreds.”

“Thousands,” his father corrected him. “All because people won’t take responsibility for their pets. They let them breed like rabbits, and when they have too many, they just throw those they don’t want out on the street where the animals have to fend for themselves.” He lowered his hand to his lap. “It was different when I was young. Back then if people had too many cats or dogs they just took them and drowned them in a bucket or bashed their brains in. We didn’t have the problem New York City has now with strays.”

“So you want me to leave these mice for the cats to eat?” Nate said, amazed by this rare display of kindness.

“I want you to stack those old crates we have out in the alley and hide behind them. When a cat comes to eat the mice, you club it to death. Kill as many cats as you can before the mice are all gone.”

“Sir?”

“Are you hard of hearing?”

Nate stared at the mice, at his club. “Oh. I’m to use the mice as bait like I used the cheese.”

“You’re learning.” His father picked up the newspaper and went to unfold it.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you want the cats killed?”

“There always has to be a reason with you, doesn’t there?” His father tapped the paper. “Very well. Of late some cats have taken to standing on the fence late at night and caterwauling so loudly the racket wakes your mother. Then she has a hard time falling asleep again. Perhaps if we kill a few of the cats that call the alley their home, the caterwauling will stop.”

Nate remembered their first talk about the mice. “So you want me to do this for Mother’s sake, just like you wanted me to kill the mice for her sake?”

“You find that odd?”

“I just figured I was doing it for you.”

“Would that make a difference?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it. As for your mother, one day you’ll have a wife of your own and then you’ll understand why everything I do is for her benefit.”

Nate was stunned. Clearly his father bore his mother tremendous affection. He had never given much thought to how much his parents loved one another. Based on all the arguments they had, he’d assumed they barely tolerated each other.

“A husband owes it to his wife to provide things like a decent home and fine clothes,” his father was saying. “And to do all the little things he can to make her life easier. Of course, don’t go overboard.”

“Sir?”

“Like everything in life, women have their proper place. Take this business about granting them the right to vote. Whoever heard of such nonsense? Their minds are too shallow to grasp the complexities of politics. Can you imagine your mother casting an intelligent vote for mayor or president?”

“Yes,” Nate said.

His father stared at him, then sighed. “Just when I was beginning to think there was some hope for you.” He made a shooing motion with his hand. “Off with you, son. Do as I told you. And don’t bother bringing the dead cats in to show me. Just pile them in the back yard and I’ll count them later. I don’t know if I can trust you to give an accurate tally.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” Nate responded, turning away quickly so his father wouldn’t see the feelings his face betrayed. The mice in one hand, the club in the other, he ran from the house as if the fires of Hell were lapping at his heels.