Page 15 of Working the Lode

CHAPTER TEN

Zelnora

Zelnora didn’t obey Cormack’s command. She had never shot at anything more frightening than a duck, but she was fully prepared to rub out anyone who would dare attack her mining camp. Following Cormack, she streaked it down to the campfire to hear Aaron shouting,

“He’s choking on jerked beef! Do you have that tube thing you used to get McPherson to breathe?”

Zelnora couldn’t see past the clot of men hovering over the supine body, but they parted when Cormack arrived. Nutting’s face was red as an apple and he seemed unable to breathe, his arms flailing about. Cormack instantly flipped him on his stomach and punched two cupped fists into the pit of the man’s stomach. One, two, three times he punched between his ribs.

He told Aaron, “I lost the cannula when those Apaches raided us on the Gila. Get out your knife!”

Flipping Nutting onto his back again and dropping him, Cormack whipped the knife from Aaron’s hand. “Get my eagle’s quill from my tent,” he instructed his compañero with a sudden professional, level tone. Aaron took off like greased lightning to the tent while Cormack ferreted about with his fingers shoved down Nutting’s throat.

“Can you get it? Can you get it?” Men breathed down his neck with alarm.

“Nothing,” Cormack nearly whispered. “It must be lower than the forth tracheal ring,” it sounded like he said. As Aaron barreled back down the hill and placed the eagle quill on Nutting’s stomach, to Zelnora’s utter shock Cormack carefully placed the tip of the large knife at the base of Nutting’s throat.

“Hold his arms,” he instructed the men. With a smack of his palm against the hilt, the knife went through the throat muscle like cheese. What was he doing, some mountain man medicine? Did he intend to reach through a hole in his throat and remove the wad of stuck jerky?

The men looming over the body fell back in bewilderment, jaws slack. Blood that seemed darker than usual spurted through the hole, splashing Cormack’s hands and forearms. Cormack tossed the knife to the sand and dumped out the gold from the eagle’s quill. Almost more astoundingly than cutting his friend’s throat, he now inserted the hollow quill into the incision…and the man breathed through it!

Zelnora leaned back on her heels, overcome with amazement. No one uttered the smallest sound. Satisfied with his handiwork, Cormack said to Aaron, “This is a perfect cannula. I found that the shorter straight things keep it from dropping into the trachea. Raise his shoulders—Quartus, hand over that drum.”

“Bear’s ass!” Quartus whispered in awe, numbly handing over the beloved drum.

Cormack rolled the drum sideways under Nutting’s shoulders as the tomato shade of his face turned back into a shade more human, albeit sunburned. Cormack massaged as if to move the piece of meat down his throat, digging his fingers into the poor man’s neck.

At length Bigler blurted out, “What in blazes did you just do?”

Aaron replied proudly, “Something called a ‘tracheotomy.’ I’ve seen him do it twice, once on the Lewis Fork and once in New York. Lots of doct—folks are afraid to do it, so they wait too long and the poor fellow has gone under before they get desperate enough to try.”

“Zelnora,” Cormack interrupted. “Go get that white shirt I was wearing. Can you cut it into strips maybe an inch wide?”

Zelnora fetched the shirt and cut it. With each strip she handed Cormack, he wrapped the tube snugly into Nutting’s trachea so it might stay without his holding it. She had seen several men choke to death in her time, at least two in the mines of Georgia, but never did it occur to her one could poke a hole in a man’s throat, and have him breathe through it, bypassing his nose and mouth!

The millworker Sly finally asked Cormack, “Where in godamn hell did you learn to do that? Something some Injuns taught you?”

“Yes,” Cormack said vaguely, still sliding his fingertips down the muscles of Nutting’s throat while Aaron poured whiskey on the bandages. “It’s medicine of some kind.”

“Medicine of some kind,” bear’s ass! Aaron had just told them he’d seen Cormack do it in New York, where they had presumably first met, prior to either one of them setting out for the Far West! This was no Injun medicine, and not something one picked up every day as an educated man of leisure in New York. Zelnora reached for the discarded bottle of whiskey and took several zealous swallows.

“There it goes!” Cormack reported cheerfully. Nutting gulped air through his mouth like upside-down whales Zelnora had seen dying on the beach, and Wimmer propped the millworker’s torso almost fully upright against his knees.

“God damn,” said Nutting. “Did you really have to cut a hole in my neck, Bowmaker?”

“Ha ha!” cried Aaron joyfully. “Viva Carlos Quinto! You did it again, Cormack!”

Quartus sullenly took the whiskey bottle from Zelnora. “But now your gold is mixed back in with the sand.”

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Joaquin

“This way, jefe. I saw el pelirrojo go down that creek bed.” Three-Fingered Jack pointed with his revolver. Jack was chomping at the bit to go shoot at some oyster cans or animals of any kind, but Valenzuela forbade the noise of any merry-making now they were tracking the norteamericanos.

“Alone?”

“Alone.”