Farnham’s Freehold By Robert A. Heinlein

Duke tells Karen that she must be patient.

I should not criticize Duke; he is probably going to be my husband. I mean, who else is there? I could stand Duke but I’m not sure I could stand Grace as a mother-in-law. Duke is handsome and is considerate of both me and his sister. He did quarrel with his father at first (foolishly it seemed to me) but they get along perfectly now.

In this vicinity he is quite a catch.

Myself? I’m not soured on marriage even though I struck out once. Hugh assumes that the human race will go on. I’m willing.

(Polygamy? Of course I would! Even with Grace as senior wife. But I haven’t been asked. Nor, I feel sure, would Grace permit it. Hugh and I don’t discuss such things, we avoid touching the other, we avoid being alone together, and I do not make cow’s eyes at him. Finished.)

The trouble is, while I like Duke, no spark jumps. So I am putting it off and avoiding circumstances where he might pat me on the fanny. It would be a hell of a note if I married him and there came a night when I was so irritated at his mother and so vexed with him for indulging her that I would tell him coldly that he is not half the man his father is.

No, that must not happen. Duke does not deserve it.

Joe? My admiration for him is unqualified-and he doesn’t have a mother problem.

Joe is the first Negro I’ve had a chance to know well-and I think most well of him. He plays better contract than I do; I suppose he’s smarter than I am. He is fastidious and never comes indoors without bathing. Oh, get downwind after he has spent a day digging and he’s pretty whiff. But so is Duke, and Hugh is worse. I don’t believe this story about a distinctive “nigger musk.”

Have you ever been in a dirty powder room? Women stink worse than men.

The trouble with Joe is the same as with Duke: No spark jumps. Since he is so shy that he is most unlikely to court me- Well, it won’t happen.

But I am fond of him-as a younger brother. He is never too busy to be accommodating. He is usually bear guard for Karen and me when we bathe and it’s a comfort to know that Joe is alert- Duke has killed five bears and Joe killed one while he was actually guarding us. It took three shots and dropped dead almost in Joe’s lap. He stood his ground.

We adjourned without worrying about modesty, which upset Joe more than bears do.

Or wolves, or coyotes, or mountain lions, or a cat which Duke says is a mutated leopard and especially dangerous because it attacks by dropping out of a tree. We don’t bathe under trees and don’t venture out of our clearing without an armed man. It is as dangerous as crossing Wilshire against the lights.

There are snakes, too. At least one sort is poisonous.

Joe and Hugh were starting one morning on the house leveling and Joe jumped down into the excavation. Dr.-Livingstone-I-Presume jumped down with him-and here was this snake.

Doc spotted it and hissed; Joe saw it just as it struck, getting him in the calf. Joe killed it with his shovel and dropped to the ground, grabbing at his leg.

Hugh had the wound slashed and was sucking it in split seconds. He had a tourniquet on quickly and permanganate crystals on the wound soon after as I heard the hooraw and came a-runnin’. He followed that with rattlesnake anti-venom.

Moving Joe was a problem; he collapsed in the tunnel. Hugh crawled over him and pulled, I pushed, and it took three of us-Karen, too-to lift him up the ladder. We undressed him and put him to bed.

Around midnight, when his respiration was low and his pulse uncertain, Hugh moved the remaining bottle of oxygen into the room, put over Joe’s head a plastic sack in which shirts had been stored and gave him oxygen.

By morning he was better.

In three days he was up and well. Duke says it was a pit viper, perhaps a bushmaster, and that a rattlesnake is a pit viper, too, so rattlesnake anti-venom probably saved Joe’s life.