Chapter Twelve
When the wind drops off and the storm’s power finally abates, the Englishmen, awakened by the sudden silence, shake off their deathly torpor and, like hungry revenants newly released from the tomb, stagger out from the tent into the still, bright air and stare about amazed.
From above, they hear a soft, persistent moaning, and when they look up they see, displayed in the sky like a giant arrow pointing northward, a wavering chevron of snow geese fifty or sixty strong.
Shaw, exultant, hails the birds as blessed harbingers of spring and promises that the worst of the journey is behind them now, and for the remainder of that day, as if to prove his prophecy correct, fresh squadrons fly overhead one after the next without pause, like troops of soldiers passing in a grand parade.
Although he will never admit his error in leading them out onto the Barrens too early, Shaw the next day accedes without complaint to Hearn’s proposal that they should remain where they are a little while longer to rest their weakened bodies and recoup their spirits before the final push onward to Ox Lake.
While they wait, since there are still no deer to be found, Datsanthi and Nabayah build a wattle blind by the side of a nearby lake and go there every day to hunt for geese, swans, and ducks.
The three Englishmen, once they have recovered from the worst effects of the storm, join them sometimes at the blind for the pleasure of the sport, but on other days they leave the Indians alone and roam abroad in hope of finding larger prey.
On one such occasion, when they are all three together, they spy in the distance a group of six musk oxen being baited by a pack of wolves.
While they watch, the oxen, who have pressed together for safety, suddenly take fright and start to run.
The wolves give chase and quickly succeed in separating a single animal from the larger group, but when they surround it, snapping and growling, and try to bring it down, it kicks out with its hind legs and sends two of its attackers tumbling backward across the snow shrieking and spraying blood.
The remainder of the wolf pack shrink away in fright and the separated ox, still bellowing and snorting steam, its long brown coat clagged with ice, is able to turn about and gallop off to find its companions.
As the three Englishmen come closer, one of the two injured wolves gets up slowly and limps away while the second remains as it is, motionless on the snow.
“I confess I never ate a wolf before,” Shaw says as they stand in a half circle looking down at the prone body. “But I’d say there’s enough meat on this one to make a decent stew.”
“It might still be breathing,” Hearn says. “I’d use the bayonet first if I were you.”
Shaw removes the long knife from his belt and, taking a step forward, crouches down.
“It’s not breathing,” he says. “That ox broke the spine clean in two, I expect. Just look there how it’s bent.”
He touches the animal’s neck with the tip of the blade, and as he does so, as if galvanized by the contact, the wolf suddenly springs back to life, and before Shaw has a chance to jump away, it twists itself about like a python and sinks its serried teeth into his left arm.
Shaw howls in pain, and Hearn, who is standing closest, steps forward, and with the butt of his musket deals the wolf two quick blows, caving in its skull and allowing Shaw, first with a shudder and then with an agonized gasp, to prize his torn and tattered forelimb free from the creature’s stiff and angulated jaws.
Back inside their tent, Walker, with a shaking hand, holds up a lighted candle stub while Hearn cleans and bandages John Shaw’s wound. As he wipes away the blood, he can glimpse in places, beneath dark lines of sinew, torn flesh, and separated muscle, the whiteness of bone.
“How deep does it go?” Shaw asks him.
“Deep enough. You’ll need to rest here a while until the healing starts. We have some tincture of opium in the medicine chest, and that should help ease the pain.”
“I thought the wolf would tear your hand clean off,” Abel Walker says, his eyes still wide with excitement and fear. “But it’s not nearly so bad as that, thank God.”
“The beast played a trick on us,” Shaw says, “pretending to be dead. Someone should have guessed what it was up to and warned me.”
“What happened out there took everyone by surprise,” Hearn says. “Datsanthi tells me he’s never heard of such a thing happening before.”
Hearn ties off the bandage, and Shaw looks down at it and nods.
“We have some fresh meat for supper, at least,” he says, his voice still strong and resolute despite his injuries, “and this arm will heal up quick enough. I’ve had worse hurts than this one, much worse. You’ll see, another day or two and I’ll be up and about again.”
The next morning, the women boil the butchered wolf meat in a cauldron for breakfast, but when they offer some to Shaw, he shakes his head and says he has no appetite now but will eat his portion later on.
He spends the remainder of the day curled up amid his nest of blankets, sleeping fitfully or lying awake looking pained and pensive, and in the evening when they offer him the meat again, he eats only a small part and leaves the rest where it is, untouched.
In the days that follow, rather than improving, Shaw’s condition worsens.
He sleeps more and talks less and less. His face turns pale and his eyes darken, recede, and lose their glister.
When Hearn asks him how he’s feeling, he says he is tired and sickly from taking too much opium, but then, soon after, when all the opium is gone, he complains again of the dreadful pain and wishes he could have some more.
On the fourth day, when Shaw starts to shiver, sweat, and turn feverish, Hearn, with Abel Walker looking on, unwraps the bandages to inspect the condition of the wound.
Where the wolf’s teeth pierced through, he sees, the broken skin has now turned purple-black and tumid; there is pus oozing from the puncture marks and a strong, autumnal smell of rotting.
He looks at Shaw and notices, for the first time ever, a hint of fear in his eyes.
“Some poison must have found its way inside me,” Shaw says glumly. “Some foulness from I don’t know where, but if I rest here a while longer, then the fever will pass.”
“The wound is suppurating,” Hearn says. “That smell is a sure sign. If we leave it as it is, do nothing, it will only get much worse.”
“Is there something else in the medicine chest?” Walker asks. “Another potion to try?”
Hearn shakes his head.
“There’s nothing useful left in that chest. Not for this.”
“We’ll wait,” Shaw insists. “Have some patience. The body heals itself if you only give it a chance.”
Hearn looks at Shaw lying there shuddering, his broad forehead damp and blotchy, his hot breath as sour as curdled milk, and wonders if he understands what he’s saying or if the opium or the fever has clouded his judgment and caused him to think in this childish fashion.
“On the Blanford, for half a year I was assistant to the ship’s surgeon,” Hearn explains.
“More than once we had some fighting with the French and men were badly injured—broken bones, powder burns, scorchings, lacerations, contusions, and so on. I saw wounds such as this one back then, and there was only one remedy that ever worked.”
Shaw stares at him fiercely for a moment as if insulted, then screws his face into a scowl and shakes his head.
“Not out here,” he snaps. “Not that. Don’t you think of it.”
“If Hutchins were here, he would agree.”
“Agree about what?” Walker asks.
“Hearn would like to take the knife to me,” Shaw answers bitterly. “He wants to take off my arm and leave me a cripple.”
“I don’t want to do it, God knows, but I see no other path. Better to lose half a limb than be dead with all four still intact.”
Shaw looks down at his discolored forearm, bends warily to sniff the rotting wound, and recoils, despite himself, at the awful stench.
“If we had a surgeon in our party, I might let him try,” he says. “But not you. I don’t believe you have the skill or the nerve. You’ll faint halfway through and leave me nowhere.”
“I won’t faint or waver, I can promise you that. It may not be as quick and neat as a trained surgeon would make it, but I’ve seen the operation performed a dozen times and if you trust me, I can get it done.”
“I could still die afterward. Poisoned just the same.”
“If you lie here and do nothing, death is all but certain, but if we act quickly, you’ll at least have a fighting chance.”
Shaw groans and moves his better hand uncertainly across the sweating surface of his bloodless face like a blind man trying to recognize the features of a stranger.
How quickly he is altered for the worse, Hearn thinks, all his famous strength now drained away, and all his surety and pride replaced by doubt and self-pity.
“Do you think I should put my faith in him, Abel?” Shaw says, looking urgently at Walker as if the lad is the possessor of some secret hoard of wisdom. “Should I take that chance or no?”
“You taught me that it’s better to be bold,” Walker answers warily. “You told me more than once that we’re only out here because you and my uncle dared to do what other men wouldn’t.”
Shaw thinks for a moment, then nods as if the remark confirms an important but oft-neglected truth.
“Cowards don’t prosper. Isn’t that the advice I like to give you?”
“Yes,” he says. “It is. Cowards don’t prosper. That’s what you always like to say.”
Shaw sighs, blinks, and then, before attempting to speak again, ponderously, with a greenish-gray, uncertain tongue licks his desiccated lips, the upper first, then the lower.
“If it must be done at all,” he says to Hearn slowly as if each new thought must be pulled out separately and with some effort from the quagmire of his mind, “then best do it quickly. You’ll need the Indians’ help to hold me down.”
“I’ll speak to them now.”
As Hearn starts to leave, Shaw grabs his arm and keeps him where he is for a moment.
“They can help, but you alone must wield the knife, no one else. Promise me that.”
“I thought you didn’t trust me to do it right.”
“I don’t, but I trust those pagans even less. So you promise me now.”
“Very well,” he says. “I promise.”
“And bring me the brandy too. If I’m to be carved and jointed like a hand of pork, I have no wish to be sober as it happens.”
After the Indians have been informed of the plan and all the necessary instruments cleaned and sharpened, Hearn goes back inside the tent. The brandy flask is lying on the ground empty and the smell of liquor, piss, and rotting flesh is fierce.
“Already?” Shaw says, looking back at him with wild, imploring eyes as if surprised in the midst of some shameful and illicit act. “So soon as this?”
“The quicker we start, the quicker it’s over. We’ll carry you out now and then bring you back directly after. It’ll take but a moment.”
“The shock alone might kill me. Did you never think of that?”
“I don’t think it will. You have a good strong heart inside you.”
Shaw twitches twice, then snorts and looks drunkenly amused.
“Flattering me now,” he mumbles. “Will the wonders never cease?”
Hearn calls the other three inside and indicates to Datsanthi and Nabayah that they should each take a leg while he and Walker lift the shoulders.
Shaw’s body, as they drag and raise it, feels as massive and lifeless as a sack of stones.
Outside the tent for the first time in nearly a week, Shaw winces at the brightness, and then when they lay him down by the blazing fire he starts to struggle, and they have to fight to keep him subdued.
“You three hold tight now,” Hearn says. “Don’t let him get away.”
Now that the moment has arrived, Hearn wonders if he possesses as much courage and coolness as he claimed.
Yes, he has seen it done before, but to do it himself and to do it here in this raw and savage place that seems by its implacable enormity to give the lie to all mere human endeavors is quite a different matter.
He wishes there were someone else who could take on the task instead, someone with a stronger stomach and a steadier nerve than he, but he knows there is no one like that here, and if he doesn’t do it, then Shaw will likely die.
There is no other way than this, he thinks, so I must pretend to have the courage and confidence I lack and act now, as Shaw himself would no doubt act if our places were exchanged, without reserve or hesitation but rather with a swift and callous certainty.
He drops down onto his knees, picks up the knife, and, being careful not to catch Shaw’s eye or allow any thought of the other man’s suffering to enter his mind and cloud his judgment, makes the first quick incision near the elbow joint, then continues slicing carefully around the bone.
As the blade cuts into him, Shaw howls and tries frantically to twist away, but the others grit their teeth and use their weight to press down harder.
As soon as the flesh is parted and enough of the bone is exposed, Hearn exchanges the knife for the axe and, after taking aim and muttering a silent faithless prayer that sounds to those listening more like a curse, raises it up and brings it sharply down again.
The iron blade makes a dull chime against the rock below, the lopped-off limb rolls free, and all around the campsite the raw, jagged sound of Shaw’s unbridled screaming fills and shakes the innocent air.
Pawpitch and Keasik, standing over to one side together watching on, gasp and clutch each other with fear as Hearn, moving quickly so that no new qualms or imaginings can distract him from his course, drops the axe, picks up the red-hot bayonet from the fire, and presses it firmly against the newly fashioned stump.
Beneath the glowing steel, the fresh wound spits and steams; there is a cloying, sickly smell of burning fat and roasting muscle, and John Shaw, his eyes as wide and white as goose eggs now, belches out a pint of greenish spew onto his beard and chest, then opens his wide-open mouth much wider still, and in a language primal and far beyond all words, like a martyr being scorched at the stake, roars out the frenzied cantus of his agony.