Jehovah’s short hairs!” Bilbo exclaimed. “Ain’t it a marvel, though! Go on, lad.”
“Yes. Well, the effect was almost instantaneous. I experienced it as a fugue of bodily sensations, not altogether pleasant. Frankly, I thought myself at first in the grip of an apoplexy, a coupe de sang as it were. I seized a trunk of a young box elder”—
“Acer negundo,” Uncle said.
—“and the attack passed. I climbed back upon Old Tom, my horse, and went my way.”
“This was on Zane’s Trace?” Bilbo inquired avidly.
“This was off the Trace,” I replied.
“Hard by the Trace, perhaps?”
“Some distance from it. A day’s march, at least.”
“Dear me,” Bilbo shrank back into his seat. “Well, what happened next?”
“I became aware, in a very vivid degree, of the aroma of sassafras, of wild roses, of bear dung—all the scents of the woods—and realized it had been long since I had enjoyed such olfactory delights. Years. Decades! I was near besotted with it. That is no exaggeration, sir. Soon, I began to feel a tingling in every joint in my body. My eyes were assaulted by a clarity, a brightness of vision—”
“Like the effect of phrensyweed,” Uncle inserted. “Furor muscaetoxicus.”
“Thank you, brother. Ahem. It was then that I chanced to look down at my hands, gripping the pommel of my saddle, and damn me if all the gnarls of gout, all the deformities of arthritis, all the liver spots and blue veins of dotage had vanished! Suddenly, I gasped for my very breath, and realized that my cravat was like to choke the life out of me. I reached for my throat and ripped the collar open. But all my clothes were now tight beyond endurance. My frock coat bit into my shoulders as if it had suddenly shrunk two full sizes. My breeches went slack at the waist. Without that premeditation of movement that is a hallmark of old age, I leaped from Old Tom to the ground and landed on legs that had the spring of a young roebuck’s, then at once cast off my clothing. Had this occurred on any civilized highway or city street, I would have been trundled off to the nearest lunatics’ asylum, no doubt. But I looked down upon myself and, by heaven, I was a youth again! Gone were the sagging gut, the teatlike bosoms, the broomhandle arms and spindly legs. I reached for my face and ran my fingers across it like a blind man feeling the face of a long-gone loved one. The dewlaps and wattles had vanished! I was transfigured!”
“By Jupiter’s thundering bungchute!”
“Indeed, sir, my very sentiments—”
“Sammy!”
“I must be candid, brother, though it pollute your morals. But, there I was: a new man. Being of a lifelong skeptical bent, I puzzled my brains to discover what might be the cause of this momentous transformation. For breakfast I had consumed the ham of a bear and a cupful of mulberries—nothing more. It had to be something in that spring, thought I. I hastened to retrace my steps to it, and this time brought up Old Tom to sip from its modest pool. In a matter of moments he too began to submit to the most startling transformation. Where his coat had been dull and listless, it suddenly shone like waxed mahogany. Where his old spine had swayed under two decades of saddlery, it became as straight as an oak beam. Where mane and tail had hung in graying tatters was suddenly luxurious black hair, as stiff as that of a hussar’s charger—”
“By God’s flaming gorget!”
“My thoughts exactly, sir. But Old Tom’s throes did not end there, for he was seized by such a thirst that he would not stop guzzling of the spring, and in a matter of minutes he was reduced to a spindle-legged colt. He collapsed under the weight of the saddle and fell a’bawling and a’neighing beside the pool; and luckily so, Bilbo, for had he continued, no doubt he would have departed this world by retroactive birth, rather than merely gained a new lease on the life he already owned. Damn me, sir, if I didn’t have to carry all my own necessaries for weeks afterward—not to mention the trouble of milking a she-deer twice a day for the little brute’s sustenance.”
Uncle rolled his eyes at this outlandish embroidery. I confess I was carried away.
“Had I not the stamina of a youth, Bilbo, I would have had to abandon my dear companion to the wolves.”
“You’ve a heart o’gold, by the Lamb o’Nazareth,” our captor said.
“In conclusion, Bilbo, those jars you plundered from our boat were intended for that marvelous fountain of the wilderness. We were going to bottle the stuff, return with it to Philadelphia, and make a fortune, not to mention the dividend of enjoying eternal life—but since you plan instead to blow out our brains, then I suppose it is just another promising business scheme gone up in a vapor—”
“Just a moment there, friend,” Bilbo stopped me. “Has it ever occurred to you to take on a partner? Someone with a good business head?”
And so did Captain Melancton Bilbo et famille become our partners in a venture calculated only to gain us freedom from the clutches of said Bilbo and his brood of freaks.
“Gentlemen,” Bilbo stood up at his place, “or should I say partners? A toast to our consociation!” He hoisted his cup and grinned malefically, revealing a mouth full of green and black teeth as mossy as so many timeworn stumps in an old river bottom. We clanked cups. Bilbo belched. “Let’s to our slumbers, for tomorrow we embark on the trail to riches and life everlasting!”
Uncle was tethered by means of a length of rope to the vigilant Neddy, who lay curled upon a rug at the hearthside like one of Father’s water spaniels, one hooded eye glinting ever-watchfully. Of course, Uncle did not submit to this indignity without protest.
“If this is how thee treats a partner, then thee deserved all thy misfortunes in the silkworm debacle.”
“Sir,” Bilbo riposted in a pedantic tone, “is trust founded on such shifting sands as would tempt you, after only minutes of formal consociation, to speak in such spiteful and censorious terms to he who bears only your best interests in his bosom?”
“And is partnership founded on so mushy a soil that thee would treat thine associate as a mere captive?”
“You object to your bedding?” Bilbo laughed. “Let me remind you, sir, that this is the frontier and that you are lucky to have a roof over your head, let alone a hearth to warm your feet, not to mention the protection of this vigilant stalwart.”
“Grrrrr,” Neddy said.
“I am as familiar with the ways of the wild woodland as thou art acquainted with the habits of perfidy and crime,” Uncle countered. “It is the bonds I object to.”
“A most regrettable but necessary precaution,” Bilbo said with a sigh. “Had I only a strand of potato stalk borer thread securing me to that rascal Voorhees in the silkworks fiasco … well, gentlemen, why prate on about what might have been, for ’tis the vision of what will be that drives the venture at hand. Come now, old fellow,” Bilbo took me by the elbow and guided me up the ladder to the sleeping loft at the far end of the cottage. Once upstairs, he bid me lie down on the wooden bed.
“Am I to sleep in your daughter’s bed?”
“Nothing is too good for such a worthy gentleman as yourself,” Bilbo said, binding my wrists and ankles to the four posts. “Sweet dreams.”
He climbed downstairs, taking the candle with him. Soon the house was dark, save the flickering glow of the hearth. Despite my bindings, sleep quickly overwhelmed me. I don’t know how much later it was that I awoke to the sensation of hands creeping across my breast, opening my shirt buttons, then foraging in my breeches.
“O, no!” I cried before the monster stuffed a rag in my mouth. I next felt her soft, warm, feminine flesh bear its weight upon me, while her mouth issued the telltale whistling exhalations.
But her face was not visible to me in that near-total darkness,