Read Online Venom by David Thompson - Free Book Online

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 matteredto 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?”
    Emala fanned her neck with her hand. “Land sakes, it’s powerful hot under here. It’s like standin’ on the sun.”
    “The forge has to be hot or the metal won’t melt,” Nate said.
    “We found us a spot,” Emala told him. “We’d like for you to come have a look-see and tell us what you think.”
    Nate undid his apron and set it aside. He took his Hawken from where he had propped it. “Show me.”
    They headed north along the lake. Nate held his Hawken with the barrel across his shoulder, his hand on the stock.
    Emala nodded at the rifle. “You don’t go anywhere without that, do you, Mr. King?”
    “It’s Nate, remember? And no, not if I care to go on