YOU IDIOT,” I SAID TO HIM. “WHY DID you grab it?”
“Damn,” he said. “Damn it.”
I grabbed his arm, locked my mouth over the bite marks, and sucked. I tasted blood and spat, then did it again two more times.
“Just in case,” I said. “It might be a dry bite. Sometimes they don’t inject any venom at all, or very little—just as a warning. Sit down. Right here, against the rocks. Put your hand on the ground. You want to keep it lower than your heart.”
He looked at me with a boy’s panic-stricken eyes. I put my hand on his arm. His body felt hard, tensed for flight, like he could outrun the venom that might be spreading through his veins.
“Everything all right?” said a voice behind me, and I turned to see Mr. Withrow. “I heard him calling out for you.”
“I found her,” Sam said. “But I just got bitten.”
“Rattlesnake?” said Withrow, coming closer. He saw the bloody marks on Sam’s wrist. “I’ll get Thomas. He knows about snakebites.”
“He’s on the east side of the other butte,” Sam told him.
“Hold tight,” Withrow said, and ran off.
“What happens now?” Sam asked me.
“Nothing,” I said, searching my satchel for a clean rag for a bandage. “Just sit still.”
If there was venom, every beat of his heart would speed it. I didn’t tell him this, because that would make anyone’s heart pound.
“Thank you,” he said, forcing a smile across his pale face. “Good thing you know so much about snakes.”
“Well, I never kept poisonous ones, but I’ve read lots about them. Does it hurt?”
“Like a hot vise,” he said tightly.
“The swelling isn’t too bad at all,” I said. “That’s good.”
There was still a fair amount of blood as I tied the bandage around the wound.
I sat beside him, feeling helpless. I’d read stories about snakebites; they made irresistible reading. There were many treatments, many cures, but all of them disputed, and some of them downright dangerous. The only thing most people agreed on was trying to suck out the poison.
A few minutes later the others came running. Thomas knelt beside Samuel. He undid my bandage and stared at the puncture marks.
“You sucked out the poison?”
“Three tries,” I said.
He pulled his knife free and, before I could say anything, cut two slashes across the wounds. Sam yelped and tried to jerked his arm back, but Thomas held it tight. He bent his mouth to the bite, and his cheeks caved in as he sucked hard, then spat out. Blood welled up alarmingly.
I’d read that cutting the bite marks did more harm than good, and told Thomas so.
“Helps it bleed out,” he said. “It drains the poison with it.”
I wasn’t at all sure about this.
“Tourniquet now,” he said, and took my bandage and knotted it a few inches up Sam’s forearm. Sam winced.
This I had heard of. “But not so tight,” I said. “You don’t want to cut off the circulation to his hand.”
“If the poison spreads, he could lose more than that.”
“I’m going to lose my arm?”
“No,” I told Sam, glaring at Thomas.
“There’s an army surgeon at your father’s camp,” Withrow said. “We should get him there.”
“No,” Sam said, shaking his head. Even in the shade sweat beaded his forehead.
“The doctor will know better than us what to do.”
“I’m not going!” Sam shouted.
“There’s nothing more anyone can do,” said Thomas. “He shouldn’t move anyway.”
“I read something about pouring milk into the wounds,” Browne said.
“No,” said Thomas.
“Whiskey’s the trick,” said Hobart. “Half a quart, swallowed neat.”
“No,” I said.
“I’m from New York City, for God’s sake,” said Withrow. “We don’t have this problem. What else can we do?”
“Carry him back to camp,” said Thomas. “We can use a blanket.”
On the way back Sam was shivering; I wasn’t sure if it was fever, or just fear. Walking alongside his blanket stretcher, I touched his head. It felt cool enough. But his skin looked greasy.
“It’s more swollen,” he said.
I checked. “It’s not so bad.” It really wasn’t.
“I’ve seen it much worse,” Thomas said, glancing over.
“Did they live?” Sam asked.
“Sometimes.”
“How’s the pain?” I asked him.
“Bearable.”
“That’s good too,” I said. “Some people are doubled over with it.”
Back at camp we got him into our tent and propped him up so his hand stayed lower than his heart. We got him some water, and he sipped a little. I stayed with him.
“So stupid,” he said, and swore at himself.
“That’s not meetinghouse language, is it?” I said, trying to make him smile. It didn’t work.
“Feel sick,” he said, and turned over and retched against the side of the tent.
“You’re all right,” I said. “That’s normal.”
“Sorry,” he panted.
“That’s fine.” I threw one of my dresses over the mess and bundled it up. “It’s been almost an hour, and the swelling’s not getting any worse. I think this is the worst of it. Sip of water?”
He shook his head.
“There’s a very interesting thing about snakes I read. They get more venomous the farther south and west you get. So that’s a good thing.”
“We’re pretty far west,” he mumbled.
“But only a third of the way down,” I pointed out. “Anyway, you obviously didn’t get much in you. You were very fast when you grabbed it. Its bite must’ve been quite shallow.”
I’d never tended anyone before. There was always a maid for my father or me when we were ill. I’d never had a mother take care of me or teach me anything, so I just kept repeating things and telling Sam he was doing fine.
But he wasn’t. As it got dark, he got sicker. The swelling worsened. He didn’t want food or water. He vomited some more, but there wasn’t much left to come up. For a while he wanted to talk about the Black Beauty and the places we hadn’t looked yet, but it seemed to make him more agitated, and I said we would talk about it in the morning.
“I’m tired,” he said. His eyes closed, and his breathing came faster. He was terribly pale. A cold sweat dewed his neck.
I wished it were morning now; I hated the dark coming on. I talked to him and told him everything was going to be all right.
He muttered, half-asleep, “Do you have it?”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s supposed to . . . every hidden thing?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. The marriage license? So I just said, “Yes.”
His head lifted a bit, eyes only half-open. “You’ve got it?”
“I’ve got it, Sam. I do.”
His head dropped back. “Don’t lose it,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“You hardly ever get one. With nothing missing.”
“I know,” I said, understanding. “We’ve got every piece.”
He went quiet.
You idiot. Grabbing the snake when it would have been best to do nothing. So like you to do something rash like that.
Your pulse raced, and your face was gray and filmed with sweat, and I knew you were going to die.
I went close to you, so I could hear your breathing, and I told you you must not die. I told you to live because I’d never felt loved the way you loved me. No one else would be as good at it. I am sorry if I’ve been stingy. Come back to me. I love you, Samuel Bolt. Please do not leave me.
I tugged at the tourniquet on my forearm. My fingers teased the knot loose so it fell away. That was much better. I didn’t remember leaving the tent, but I was suddenly outside. Entering the night air like slipping into a cool lake. Breathing again. A quarter moon and so many stars.
My hand felt fat, a tight leather glove. Hot, too, but its heat kept me warm. There was no more pain. I was light enough to drift up into the sky. Had to concentrate to keep my feet on the ground, really plant them on the soil. My heart was jumpy.
It was good to be in the open, away from the stifling fake night of the tent. But I was sad to be getting farther away from Rachel. Dawn was still a little ways off. With every step, thread spooled out, connecting me to her, but the thread would run out eventually, it couldn’t last forever, and then I might not be able to keep my feet on the ground anymore.
Oh, Rachel, I wish you could see the sky now. I want to burst up into it. Would you come with me? Even though we’re like two different species and we only have a torn marriage certificate and you don’t know how much I love you.
If I caught the Pennsylvanian from Philadelphia to New York, arriving at Penn Station, I could make a quick change to the New England line, which would bring me to New Haven in another two hours. Didn’t you say your house was on a big hill? You’ll be there, won’t you?
I wanted to run, so I ran. It was a sloppy kind of run. Arm jangling loose and painful at my side. I tripped up on something, hit the ground, tasted blood between my teeth. Up again, stride, jangle, flop, stride, jangle. How good it felt to be going somewhere! Nothing in my way, the far hills hammered together into the same seamless sheet of blackness.
I was torn from a dream. I heard a coyote howl, an echo from all directions. Around me, things moved underfoot. All the earth’s nocturnal smells were out to greet me. Still didn’t know all their names yet. I staggered and clumped, afraid every sound I made was a thunderclap. Coyotes! Scorpions! Indians! Shhhh. Go to sleep.
How many stars was I seeing? I’d never seen so many blemishes on the moon’s pockmarked face.
I had nowhere to go, so anywhere was good.
I know you think I’m terribly impulsive and you’re right, or why else would I be staggering in the dark, at risk of breaking my ankle or falling into a gulch, or being scalped by some braves eager to prove their manhood again?
The boy, the Sioux boy. His father battled in the darkness before he saw the sky. Isn’t that the way he put it?
I fell again. I liked it. The pain. I wished for a battle, something to fight.
I ran, head tilted to the sky. The stars wheeled, then disappeared altogether, and I was being dragged down, rock striking my spine and the back of my head. My arms and legs nearly wrenched from their sockets—but with each jarring blow I was aware I was still alive. I didn’t know how long I fell, but there were snakes. Couldn’t see them, but felt their coiled presence all around me. “Shhhh, shhhh,” they said.
I kept falling, went deeper into time, flaying the earth to expose all its secrets. So much easier than prospecting! A single stutter of my heart and I was back a million years, and then a million more. When I finally stopped moving, I knew I was entombed, like all the fossils I’d searched after all my life. The stone was so tight, the darkness even tighter. Within the rock I felt a stirring and a tensing. Something was coming for me.
I should have been afraid. Instead I was elated. Finally! From above came a pale wash of light, and I saw the moon slanting down. I looked at my own bloodied hands, one swollen.
When I looked up, I was feverish with happiness. Lunging from the stone was the most beautiful and terrible face I’d ever beheld. It was the creature the Sioux boy’s father had battled in darkness. My heart went boom boom boom.
The skull was built from black bones and its jaws were parted and its teeth were curving scythes the length of my forearm, and it was coming through seventy million years of stone to greet me.