Venom

plump as I am, it’s a bother to climb on. I always have to ask you to help.”

“I don’t mind.”

“That’s not the point. I’d rather live where I can walk to Winona’s cabin. It’s more dignified.”

Samuel surveyed the shore. “That means it would have to be between Nate’s cabin and his son’s or between Nate’s and Mr. McNair’s.”

“How come you only mentioned the men?”

“What?”

“They have wives. You didn’t mention Winona or Blue Water Woman or that darling little Louisa. Did you forget them?” It had been Emala’s experience that men did tend to forget their womenfolk and needed to be constantly reminded of the love and devotion their women showed them.

“Good God.”

“Don’t blaspheme.”

“I didn’t forget them. I just didn’t think to say them.”

“That’s the same thing.” Emala put her hands on her hips. “You men. That we put up with you is a wonderment.”

Samuel sighed and tilted his head back and stared at the sky.

“What are you doin’?”

“Countin’ to ten.”

“Don’t you start with me, Samuel Worth. Let’s walk along the lake and maybe I’ll find a spot I like.”

So that’s what they did. They walked north. Samuel pointed out a suitable spot. Emala said it was too near the water.

“What’s bad about that?” Samuel asked.

“Didn’t you hear Winona? Sometimes it rains so hard the water rises. We don’t want our home where it can be flooded.”

Further on Samuel noticed a shaded spot near the trees.

“Too close to the woods,” Emala said. “I could be out hangin’ laundry and one of those big brown bears could jump out and gobble me up.”

“Nate says there aren’t any grizzlies in his valley. There was one, but he had to shoot it.”

“It doesn’t have to a grizzly that gobbles me. It could be a black bear. Or one of those tawny cats. Or a pack of wolves. Winona says sometimes at night you can hear them howlin’ up on the mountain.”

“They don’t attack people all that often,” Samuel had been told.

“I don’t care. I won’t be gobbled. I didn’t come into this world to end up as some animal’s supper. We’ll have to find another spot.”

Samuel stopped suggesting. They came to the northwest corner of the lake and Emala stopped to catch her breath. She saw where a giant pine cast a giant shadow and she went over to sit in the shade. A thicket fringed the woods to the right of the pine. To the left, a long stone’s throw off, was what appeared to be a gully. “This is nice here.”

Samuel scratched his head. “You said you didn’t want a spot near the trees. This is closer than the place I picked.”

“But it’s nicer. There’s all this shade. And it won’t be easy for critters to sneak up on me with that thicket yonder.”

“It’s flat enough,” Samuel said, and walked back and forth, examining the ground. He stared at the timbered slopes above and then at the lake. “It sure is pretty.”

“It’s near Winona, too.” To Emala that counted for more. She liked to be around people. She liked to talk and laugh and sing. Samuel didn’t. Back when they were slaves, he would as soon sit around their shack than gather at the fire with the other slaves and socialize. He stayed too much inside himself. She’d told him that a million times, but he stayed there anyway.

“All right. I’ll go get Nate.”

“Hold up. You’re not leavin’ me here alone.” Emala heaved up off the ground. “Who knows what’s lurkin’ about?”

“You need to get over your fear,” Samuel advised. “Otherwise you won’t ever enjoy livin’ here.”

Emala regarded the towering peaks. She regarded the dark, somber forest and the high grass that could hide just about anything. “I can’t help it. It’s scary, and that’s no lie.”

“No more so than back at the plantation.”

“What are you talkin’ about? We didn’t have bears out in the fields. We surely didn’t have no wolves. And there weren’t red men runnin’ around wantin’ to—what did Nate King call it?”

“Count coup.”

“That’s it. What is a coup, anyhow?”

“I didn’t ask. But I don’t think it’s a thing. I think it’s like hunters who shoot animals and put their heads on the walls.”

“Whatever it is, it’s not nice, and we didn’t have none of it back home. So you can’t blame—”

“No,” Samuel said.

“No what?”

“The plantation was never ours. It wasn’t our home. It was where we were forced to live, where we were treated the same as the horses and cows and sheep.” Samuel gestured at the broad expanse of valley. “This is our home.”

The sun was warm on Emala’s face. She watched several geese come in for a graceful landing. A yellow and black butterfly fluttered past. Finches took wing, chirping gaily. “I guess it does have its nice parts.” She took Samuel’s hand. “I’ll do the best I can, but it still scares me.”

“I won’t ever let anything happen to you.”

They walked a ways and Samuel said, “I want to thank you, Emala.”

“For what?”

“For stickin’ with me through all of this. You’ve had to put up with a lot.”

“Well, of course I’d stick with you. You’re my husband. A wife is supposed to stick by her man, even when he’s wrong.”

“You think it’s wrong we ran away? You think it’s wrong I wanted a new life for us? A better life?”

Emala knew how important it was to him. More important than it was to her. She had been born a slave and never knew anything else. She had been used to that life. This idea of freedom, of doing what she wanted when she wanted, was almost as scary as the wilderness. “You weren’t wrong,” she said so as not to upset him.

Nate was at his new forge. He had built it several months ago out of rocks he collected along the lake. Nate had mixed the mortar, too, using clay and dirt and water. Shakespeare had offered to help and then sat and sipped blackberry juice Winona had made and kept pointing out that this or that stone wasn’t set right and there were gaps in the mortar. It wasn’t fancy, but it was the next best thing to having a blacksmith handy.

Nate built it mainly to shoe their horses. Not just his, but everyone else’s in the valley. It didn’t matter much to Winona or Blue Water Woman since the Shoshones and the Flatheads never shod their horses. Or to Shakespeare, who shod his mare only when he expected to ride long distances. It mattered to Nate, though. A lot of hard riding wore a horse’s hooves down and could cause the animal a lot of pain. Shoes spared them from suffering.

The forge had a small bellows and an anvil, ordered out of a catalog at Bent’s Fort. Ceran St. Vrain had sent word to Nate when they arrived and Nate had rigged an extrastrong travois to a packhorse to haul them back.

Now, standing under a plank roof supported by four thick poles, a precaution on Nate’s part to protect his equipment from rain and snow, he picked up metal tongs and was about to grip a bar of wrought iron when Samuel and Emala appeared. They had been gone almost an hour and were walking hand in hand, the first instance Nate could recall them doing that. He walked hand in hand with Winona all the time. So did McNair with Blue Water Woman. As Shakespeare once joked, “We’re natural-born romantic cusses.”

“I hope we’re not interruptin’,” Samuel said.

Nate set down the tongs and came around the forge. “Not at all. What did you decide?”