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It was in August that I met the Virginian again at the point we had previously ordained, and we had to spend a week in the onerous and unexpected duty of trout-fishing, for the elk had not yet shed the velvet that shrouds their antlers when those growths are new.
"Yu'd be wanting something you could ship back East for your wall all proud-like," he said, with no expression on his tanned face. I had the notion that there might be a strain of amusement hiding somewhere in that, but the talking part of him, never much inclined to self-revealing, seemed to shut off entirely for a while, so that I never got a sufficiently detailed discourse to prove to me whether or not the Virginian was laughing. In any event, the trout-fishing was spectacular, and I was seated by the side of a fast-flowing water so thick with fish that I had barely need to bait my rod when I saw to my surprise the Virginian from beside me shoot at an elk that was barely visible in the wood across the stream.
The elk went down, of course, heavy head falling into the undergrowth.
"I had thought..." I said, in some small confusion, but my companion had already gone to butcher the animal.
I was distracted just then by a particularly rambunctious pull on my fishing rod, and so did not speak to him until his return, in which he bore not only the meat of the animal but also its antlers, although those were still decidedly soft in outline with that coating he had stated the hunter wished to avoid. He made no reply to my enquiries save whistling, and when we built that evening's campfire he placed the antlers carefully above it, propped on a set of sticks, and shifted them at whiles so that they caught the full of the smoke.
For several weeks the antlers were our companions, while the light lengthened slowly towards autumn and the winds that came whistling down the valleys in the evening grew colder. The little flowers that dotted the end-of-summer grasses were beginning to die, and yet we shot no more elk, and the Virginian continued to fish as though we had no other purpose in the wilderness.
At long last, one morning we woke to find a thin silver layer of frost on the ground and our gear in the dawn light, and the Virginian smiled to see it. That evening, he took the antlers away from their customary place at our fire-- and so familiar had they become that I was almost homesick for their shadow-- and snapped them like dry twigs, gathering the shards into our kettle and pounding them with stones until they became a coarse near-powder. He poured water over them and set it to boil, and after it had done so he gestured to me to take a mug of the bizarre concoction.
I could not imagine what the purpose of this was, and it seemed likely that it would be a vile brew indeed in flavor, so I hesitated, looking up at the Virginian with an unmistakable question in my face.
"I told yu'," said he, "that we shud make you stronger; well, the Indians up north of hyar swear by elk velvet, and I found it ain't stupid of 'em. Some o' them can take it without ever hurting the creeture, but we needed meat after all that round o' fishin'. Now yu' drink that, and it'll do you a power o' good."
Grimacing, I swallowed some of the antler-water, and found it not appalling, though certainly medicinal rather than savory.
It grew more and more appalling as the nights went on, and it became obvious that the Virginian intended us to drink his potion right unto the dregs, but I could not deny that I was seeing decided benefits. I woke more easily in the mornings, and I found that my hand was more sure on my rifle (for indeed we were hunting every day now); a flood of new life and vigor seemed to be making its way into my very bones. Even the sky seemed a more lucent depth of clarity, the turning leaves more brilliant vermilion.
On the day we drained the kettle to the bottom, I found that I could not get to sleep. Restlessness pervaded my body, and a state of nervous excitement. If we had been near a town, I would have gone out helling. I thought of drink; I thought of cards; and all the time I thought of women, and I thought about them so much that it hurt me. I was ill accustomed to this condition, being unused to pine for what was not immediately before me, and quite late at night I took to pacing up and down before the campfire, cursing my mind and my body for not allowing me the sweetness of repose.
At length the Virginian woke and found me thusly, flushed as though I were feverish, and swearing under my breath, and I flushed further at his very presence, with a deep profound embarrassment. He did not track me in my pacing, but caught at my wrist as I came by him, and held me stock still with it, peering into my face.
I heard that my own breath was panting, and decided that I was indeed ill. This was what came of Indian remedies; well, I would know better in future!
"A little too much o' that," was the virginian's verdict. "It took me the same way, when first I came acrost it. Don't you fret on it. It won't harm yu' none, and it ain't hurtin' yu' now."
I stared at him in disbelief. Not hurting me! Was he mad? I could not make my mouth spit out the words, for my head was swimming and articulate speech was beyond me.
Seeing my distress, he set the hand that was not gripping my wrist on my head, heavily, and stroked it as one might the head of a horse or a dog that one were trying to gentle. His touch did not gentle. It seemed to inflame. I felt my knees begin to buckle, and leaned forward a little till I rested against his shoulder. I wished that I could stop my panting.
"Now then, now then," I heard him mutter soothingly, as he turned me about a little to sling my arm over his shoulder. I was only dimly aware that we were walking, for he must have been more than half carrying me. I thought that I was going to die.
We came to a place in the hollow of a hillside, a place that was full of thick sweet cool grass with the dew laid on it not yet hardening to rime, and I looked at the grass longingly as we approached it, for the wet looked chilling and therefore inviting. The Virginian did indeed pause before this spot, and propping me against a tree divested me of my garments in a manner so efficient that I barely noticed what he was doing till he knelt to pull my boots and trousers off. Embarrassment near panicked me then, but my companion was never one to make shame of a man's weakness, and kept, very kindly, dead silence.
Upon standing, he put a hand at the small of my back and shoved, and I found myself toppling forward into that inviting greensward, the damp coating me with what I felt should have been an audible sizzle.
"Roll," said the Virginian.
I did roll. I wallowed like any mountain pony. I felt both cooled and heated further, calmed and strung taut, and I was losing my embarrassment at the sight of the Virginian, hands in his pockets, waiting peacefully for me to recover my senses.
Surely I could not be the only one who was suffering untoward effects of the elk medicine, no matter how used he was to it.
And the grass was really very pleasant.
I smiled up at him, aware that it was the wild grin of a fever patient. "You roll too," I said. "It can't help but be good for you. You had as much of that medicine as I did."
I was not really expecting him to listen to this, but he stripped himself as efficiently as he had undressed me, and lay down in the wallow, and we both started laughing at the spectacle of us. I turned and I twisted and I made myself dizzy in the cool of the ground, and I was actually starting to be able to remember that it was a frigid night in September when I rolled without noticing up against the large hot bulk of the Virginian.
And there I stayed, all night and for most of the morning, and did in fact die of my illness, although not very permanently, and several times together.
When the next noon came, we put our clothes on, and gathered our possessions, and took the trail that headed for Sunk Creek. I had sufficient kills to smoke the meat for a good addition to my hosts' winter provisions, and I had several heads with very worthy antlers to send to various relatives to hang on the wall.
When I visit these relatives, I still smile when I look at my trophies, but I allow them to think that it is the simple pride of the hunter that causes me to smile, when in fact it is the warm and solid memory of the Virginian.
I have seen him smile, too, when he looks at an elk.