Venom Read Free Page B

to make molehills out of mountains. “You and yourmissus are invited to our place tonight to tell us all about it.”
    “If Louisa is up to it,” Zach said. “She has started to show, and some days she is sickly.”
    “Your mother had her bouts, too,” Nate told him. “Carrying a baby wears women down.” It would wear him down. The swelling, the sickness, the need to eat for two instead of one; he didn’t know how women bore it.
    “Listen to us.” Zach chuckled. “Talking about making babies instead of lifting scalps.”
    “I thought you gave that up.”
    “I have,” Zach said. “For now.”
    Nate decided to change the subject. “Tell me something. Have you seen many snakes around this summer?”
    “What kind? I saw a few garters and a black snake and the tail end of what might have been a pine snake.”
    “The tail end?”
    “It was going down a hole.”
    A raven flew over, the swish of its wings loud in the rarefied mountain air.
    “How about rattlers?” Nate asked.
    “Come to think of it, I’ve seen a few.”
    “How many, exactly?” Nate pressed him.
    “What does it matter? We see rattlers a lot.”
    “It’s important,” Nate urged.
    Zach scratched his chin. “Let’s see. Nine or ten, I reckon, since the weather warmed.”
    “That’s more than usual, isn’t it?”
    “I suppose. I don’t pay much attention. You’ve seen one snake, you’ve seen them all. Why?”
    “I’m thinking of organizing a rattlesnake hunt,” Nate revealed.
    Zach snorted in amusement. “Are you giving up buffalo and elk and deer for snake meat?”
    “There are too many around.”
    “There are too many chipmunks, too. Do we exterminate them next?”
    “Very funny. But your sister was almost bit.”
    “If she was, I’d feel sorry for the snake,” Zach joked. “Likely as not, she would poison it. ”
    “Now, now,” Nate said.
    “I don’t see the sense to it, but if you want to hunt rattlers, count me in. Someone has to watch your back so one doesn’t bite you in the behind.”
    Nate gazed to the north at his son’s distant cabin. Wisps of smoke rose from the stone chimney. “How is Lou coming along otherwise?”
    “Fine. She swears she can feel the baby kick, but it can’t be nowhere near big enough yet.”
    “You’ll make a fine father,” Nate predicted.
    “So she says and so Uncle Shakespeare says and so Ma says and so you say,” Zach recited without much conviction.
    “You don’t sound as sure.”
    Zach looked out over the lake and then at the sky and then down at the tips of his moccasins. “Do you want the truth?” he quietly asked.
    “Always.”
    “I’m scared, Pa. More than I’ve ever been scared. I have an awful feeling I won’t make a good father at all.”
    Nate stood next to him, their shoulders nearly touching, and pretended to be interested in the lake. A male and female mallard were a short ways out, swimming side by side. “Why won’t you?”
    “I’m not ready. I have a temper, remember? I’ve done things that have gotten me in a lot of trouble.”
    “When we’re young we all do things we wouldn’t do when we are older. It’s normal.”
    “Is it normal to be taken into custody by the army and put on trial for murder?”
    “Well, no.”
    “Is it normal to have to make worm food of as many people as I have and get a reputation as a killer?”
    “Hold on,” Nate said. “When a hostile is out to count coup on you or a white man is out to slit your throat because he doesn’t like that you are half-and-half, you have to defend yourself.”
    “I don’t feel guilty over any of that. I’m just saying I might not be fit to be a good father. Not like you. For long as I can remember, whenever I needed you, there you were. Always ready to help. Just as you’re trying to help me now.”
    “You’re my son,” Nate said.
    “I don’t know as I have it in me to do the same with mine.”
    “We never do until we’re put to the test. I didn’t know when I married