My very center was beginning to expand, as it always did before violence, a toppled pot of black ink covering the frame of my mind, its contents ceaseless, unaccountably limitless. My flesh and scalp started to ring and tingle and I became someone other than myself, or I became my second self, and this person was highly pleased to be stepping from the murk and into the living world where he might do just as he wished. I felt at once both lust and disgrace and wondered, Why do I relish this reversal to animal? I began exhaling hotly through my nostrils, whereas Charlie was quiet and calm, and he made a gesture that I should also be quiet. He was used to corralling me like this, winding me up and corralling me into battle. Shame, I thought. Shame and blood and degradation.
We were close enough that I could see the spot where Warm and Morris were tucked away, and the indistinct shape of their arms as they tossed their stones. I imagined how their hiding place would look when it was brightly and momentarily lit from our muzzle flashes; each leaf and stone would be sharp and clear and I could envision the men’s frozen expressions, their terrible surprise at having been discovered.
Charlie suddenly clapped his hand on my chest to halt me. His eyes examined my eyes and he said my name searchingly; this removed me from the above-described mentality and returned me to the actual earth. ‘What?’ I said, frustrated, almost, by the interruption. Charlie held up his finger and pointed and said softly, ‘Look.’ I shook my head to awaken my true self and followed the line of his finger.
South of the camp there came a line of men in the dark, and I knew just as soon as I saw their rifle-toting silhouettes it was the blue-eyed brothers from downriver. Thinking back on my brief interaction with the men, I remembered the slightest shift in their stances at my mention of Warm’s wine casks, and now the barrels were just what they moved toward. The beaver was at the waterline with his hard-won prize, but a kick in the belly from the largest brother and he was soaring through the air, landing with a plop in the river. Outraged, he began slapping his tail on the surface of the water, alerting his fellows of this latest danger; they instantly ceased their labors and returned to the safety of the dam interior where they might huddle together without threat of mayhem and brutishness. The boss-man beaver was the last to vacate the scene and his movements were sluggish. I thought he was probably winded after the boot to the stomach—or was he nursing his wounded pride? There was something human about those little beasts, something old and wise. They were cautious, thoughtful animals.
The largest brother rolled the barrel upriver and set it beside its mates before moving to look inside the tent. Finding it empty, he called out a loud ‘Hullo!’ I thought I detected some restrained laughter from Morris and Warm, and I looked quizzically to Charlie. The laughter grew louder, becoming hysteric, and the brothers shifted on the sandbank, looking at one another uneasily.
‘Who is there?’ said the largest brother.
The laughter died away and Warm spoke: ‘We’re here. Who’s there?’
‘We are working a claim downriver,’ the brother answered. Kicking a keg, he said, ‘We want to buy some of this wine from you.’
‘Wine’s not for sale.’
‘We’d give you San Francisco prices.’ He shook his purse to illustrate this, but there was no reply, and the brother looked searchingly into the darkness. ‘Why are you hiding in the shadows like that? Are you afraid of us?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Warm.
‘Then will you come out here and speak with us like men?’
‘We will not.’
‘And you refuse to sell to us?’
‘That is correct.’
‘What if I simply took a barrel?’
Warm paused to think of the answer. At last he said, ‘Then I will send you home less a ball, friend.’ Now I could hear Morris’s crazed laughter—the last sentence had tickled him to the depths of his soul and he submitted wholly, overtaken by his joy. Charlie, smiling, said, ‘Warm and Morris are drunk!’
The brothers came together on the sandbank to speak in private. After their conference of opinion, the largest stepped away from the others, nodding. He said, ‘Sounds like you have had your fair share tonight, but before the sun comes up your spirits will turn low, and your heavy blood will force you into sleep. You can count on us returning then, you men. And we will have your wine, and we will have your lives, also.’ There was no response to this, no laughter or mocking retort, and the brother took a step downriver, his chin in the air, very dramatic and proud. He was having sovereign-type thoughts, it was plain. His words, at any rate, were sufficiently theatrical as to give the jolly duo below us pause; but now I could hear Morris and Warm speaking in a hurried back-and-forth, lowly at first, but soon giving rise to an outright argument at full volume, their words heated and cross. Morris’s pleading voice came clearly as he cried: ‘Hermann, no!’ Just after this was the report of Warm’s baby dragoon, and I saw the largest brother was dropped with a fatal shot to the face.
In a flash then, the other brothers fell to a crouch and began firing in the direction of Morris and Warm; and the drunken pair returned fire, shooting wildly, likely with their heads down and eyes closed. Charlie offered me his swift instruction: ‘Take them both down. It’s all for nothing if they murder Warm.’ From our elevated angle the two remaining brothers proved to be the most elementary game. Less than twenty seconds had passed before they were lifeless in the sand, just beside their leader.
The staggered echoes of our gunshots jumped away over the hills and treetops, and there came from the base of the valley the whooping war cry of Warm. Unaware we had assisted them, he believed they alone had murdered the brothers, and was feeling roisterous about it. Charlie called out to them: ‘That was none of your shooting, Warm, but my brother’s and mine, do you hear me?’ This brought Morris and Warm’s celebration to an abrupt end, and they fell once more to hissing at each other, disagreeing and worrying beneath their shrubs and foliage.
‘I know you can hear me calling you,’ said Charlie.
‘Which one’s that talking?’ asked Warm. ‘The mean one or the fat one? I don’t want to talk to the mean one.’
Charlie looked at me. He gestured that I should speak and I stepped forward to do this. I hoped to appear purposeful and serious in my movements, but I was embarrassed, and he was embarrassed for me. I cleared my throat. ‘Hello!’ I said.
‘That the fat one?’ asked Warm.
‘Eli is my name.’
‘But you are the bigger one? The huskier of the two?’
I thought I could hear Morris laughing.