Chapter Fourteen
The next day in the afternoon, Shaw is able to swallow down a small cup of the broth, and then the following morning, as they watch him, he sits up unaided and has his first taste of solid food.
As the days go on and his damaged body continues, against all expectations, to mend itself, the natural bullishness that had fallen into abeyance also begins to return, gradually at first, but then more strongly, until about a week after drinking the chloride of gold, when he is able for the first time to stand up and walk about a little, he begins in his usual boastful manner to remind Hearn and Walker that, despite what they may think, all the credit for his remarkable recovery is his alone.
“You two would have left me to sicken and die inside that tent,” he reminds them cheerfully.
His cheeks are still gaunt from the illness, but his eyes within their gouged and darkened sockets flash fire as he talks.
“But the little bottle of gold did just what I told you it would and here I am now, like old Lazarus himself brought back from the grave.”
Abel Walker, when he sees with what speed and completeness Shaw has shrugged death aside, begins to wonder if there might not be some supernatural force at work inside the man, some mysterious motive power far beyond the usual human reckoning.
Don’t ask me what it is, he thinks, or what it means, but I saw him lying there as pale as a corpse calling on the gold to save his life and now I see him back on his feet again, clowning and crowing like nothing is amiss.
If there is not some secret magic going on, then how is such a transformation possible?
When he shares these thoughts with Hearn, Hearn tells him it’s not magic at all, only the work of chance or accident.
“I know it may look like a miracle,” he says, “but the body will heal itself sometimes when all hope seems lost. I’ve seen it more than once before.
A man who seems about to draw his final breath will open his eyes, look about, and ask in great puzzlement why his wife and child are standing by the bedside weeping.
It’s tempting to ascribe a higher meaning to such startling turns, I know, to believe they express some greater goal or purpose, but the truth is much simpler and more mundane. ”
Walker, though he respects, as usual, the sharpness and stringency of Hearn’s opinion, cannot, in this case, wholly believe it.
Hearn is a wise and capable man, Walker thinks, but his hard experiences have also made him narrow and a little dry.
John Shaw is an oaf and a scoundrel, perhaps, but there is a vividness to him yet and a spark of life that Tom Hearn, all wrapped around in his cloak of disappointment, sometimes lacks.
Perhaps, as Hearn says, there is no magic in the gold, or not the kind that I imagine anyway, he thinks, but still I cannot believe what happened is a mere accident, a nothingness, without interest or implication at all.
When Nabayah realizes that John Shaw, his enemy, instead of dying in dreadful pain as the seer promised he would, is quickly regaining his strength, he is angry at first and feels betrayed, but then, when he gives it more thought, he realizes that although death is what they agreed on and what he paid for, losing an arm is very nearly as good.
The way it happened, after all, first the dead wolf coming back to life, then the brutal amputation, was much more satisfying than he could ever have expected.
To be invited to hold the boastful bastard down while the man who was supposed to be Shaw’s ally took an axe to his arm was a joy, and now, even though he’s somehow still breathing, Shaw will have to live every day for the rest of his life with the shame of being crippled.
So really, Nabayah thinks, I shouldn’t complain too much at all.
He still wishes he could tell his father about the arrangement with the seer, but he knows that if he tries, there’ll only be another argument.
Datsanthi should be proud of me for protecting my honor and taking revenge, he thinks, but he won’t see it like that.
He’ll only scold me for being reckless and remind me again how powerful the English are and how long and hard he has had to work to win their trust. I’m all alone in the world, that’s the sad truth of it, Nabayah thinks more somberly.
Other men have friends and companions they can trust and rely on, but I have to make my own way through this life, scraping and scratching to get what I deserve.
Now that he’s had a satisfying measure of revenge, most of the time he’s able to look at Keasik without feeling overcome by anger and jealousy, but even so, he’s not sure that things will ever go back to the way they were before.
I won’t say anything for now, he thinks, but when we return to Goose Lake, I’ll find myself a different wife.
It’s the best thing for both of us. Keasik can stay with me if she wants to, or she can find herself another man.
I don’t really care where she goes or what she does as long as I don’t have to lie down with her every night and be reminded of the bad times when all I really want to do, like any man, is take my ease and forget.
A fine freezing rain is falling steadily as they pack up the tents and make ready to leave.
Keasik hums an old song as she finishes loading the copper cooking pots onto the sledge and then lashes them down with a length of rope while the dogs, made frantic by these early indications of departure, bark and strain at their leashes.
Her mood is more cheerful today, because last night Nabayah touched her again for the first time in weeks.
Every day since they left Crow Lake, Pawpitch has insisted that he would come back to her eventually because men, being simple creatures, always do, but despite the warning, when it happened so suddenly, she was taken by surprise.
Lying there beside him afterward, confused and delighted, she wanted to ask the reasons for his change of heart, but stopped herself, because she knew that if she forced him to explain, he might become embarrassed or annoyed.
Instead, she just smiled and touched his cheek and told him she was happy to have her husband back again.
Now, as she finishes loading the sledge and starts tugging at the bindings on her snowshoes to test their tightness, she sees Nabayah up ahead at the front of the column talking to Datsanthi.
While she watches, he turns around and walks back to where the Englishmen are standing.
He doesn’t speak a word as he goes by, but he doesn’t need to because the kind of look he gives her and the simple fact of his presence, the smell and sound of his living, breathing body as he brushes past, makes Keasik feel deep inside herself, in the hidden secret places, dark-veined and convolute, a strange quivering excitement as if something always there but too long neglected has come twitching back to life.