Evelyn King pulsed with fear. She tried to stand, but her left leg was pinned. The horse lay unmoving and silent save for the rasp of its labored breathing. “Please, no,” Evelyn said. She pushed against the sorrel. She pushed harder. She might as well push a mountain.
The rattler kept coming. It was crawling straight for her, its tongue constantly flicking.
Evelyn stabbed her hand for her other flintlock. Terror seized her as she realized it was gone. She glanced about her, but it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it was under the horse, she thought. She groped for her knife in its sheath on her left hip, but she couldn’t pull the blade free. It was wedged tight by her weight and she couldn’t rise high enough to work it free. She gave a last frantic tug, and the snake reached her.
Evelyn turned to stone. She expected it to coil and bite. Instead, it crawled up onto her shoulder. She shuddered at the contact and immediately willed herself to stop in case it provoked the snake into striking. The rattler went crawling on past as if she were a rock or a log.
“God,” Evelyn breathed, and grinned. She had been lucky, awful lucky. She pushed at the saddle and at the sorrel with the same result as before. Tiring, she sank onto her back and stared at the sky. She needed help. She couldn’t extricate herself alone.
Rising onto her elbows, she went to shout—and new fear gushed through her like spears of ice.
More snakes were emerging from the pool and making for the woods. Six, seven, eight of them, six rattlers and a bull snake and another that might be a ribbon snake. They crawled with purpose, their heads slightly raised, forked tongues darting.
Evelyn choked off a cry as the foremost viper crawled over the sorrel’s neck and onto her chest. It was so close to her face, she could have stuck out her own tongue and licked it. Rigid with fright, she didn’t breathe. She saw the vertical slits in its eyes, she saw every scale. The feel of it brushing across her body was almost more than she could bear. No sooner was it off her when another smaller rattler took its place. This one, too, went over her without a sideways look. A third rattler slithered over the sorrel and onto her. It was thicker than the others, the skin pattern not the same. The head came even with her chin—and the rattler stopped and swung its head toward her.
Evelyn resisted an impulse to scream and throw it off. She started to swallow and caught herself. The snake’s tongue was an inch from her throat. She prayed it would keep going but it just lay there, staring. Its mouth opened and she braced for the pain of its fangs, but all it did was hiss and continue on. She closed her eyes tight and fought back tears. When she opened them, the snake was off her.
Evelyn didn’t know how much of this she could stand. The other snakes had gone wide of her, but there were bound to be more. She pushed at the sorrel with all the strength in her, but it wasn’t enough. Exhausted, she sank onto her back and closed her eyes again. She couldn’t imagine where all the snakes had come from. She didn’t really care. She wanted
away from there, to be with Dega, to have him hold her in his arms. She liked being in his arms more than she had ever liked anything. It felt so good, so comforting. She wondered if she would ever see him again. The thought of not seeing him brought an ache to her chest, a hurt so powerful it was as if her heart were being crushed.
Something was on her arm.
Evelyn opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t. A veritable legion of snakes were streaming out of the pool and nearby puddles and moving in a body toward the drier sanctuary of the forest floor, so many of them that in places they formed a living carpet of moving scales. She barely had time to brace herself when four of them crawled onto her, moving across her chest, the nearest brushing her chin as it went by.
Tears filled Evelyn’s eyes, but she refused to cry. Not with more snakes wriggling onto her. She couldn’t look. Again she shut her eyes and felt a serpentine form glide over her neck. Another went over the top of her head. All it would take was for her to sneeze and she was as good as bitten.
Evelyn thought of her father and mother. In the past she had always counted on them to get her out of tight scrapes. Not this time. They were too far away. Even if they heard the shot, they might figure it was someone shooting game and not realize she was in trouble.
“I want to live,” Evelyn said softly, and meant every syllable. She nearly gave a start when a snake brushed her throat.
A rattler crawled onto her face.
It was the hardest thing Evelyn ever had to do; to lie there and not twitch a muscle as the rattler slithered
across her mouth and cheek and forehead. The scrape of every scale was magnified tenfold. She was scared down to her marrow but dared not react.
Suddenly the snake was off her, but it was only a temporary reprieve. More were crawling toward her. A lot more.
God,
Evelyn thought. She couldn’t take much more of this. It would drive her insane.
Chickory Worth’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. They weren’t just any old snakes crawling around his feet. They were
rattlesnakes.
Chickory yelped and kicked and jumped backward. A couple of bounds and he would be inside. But as he sprang a sharp pain shot up his leg and when he landed he felt another snake under him and looked down just as it sank its fangs into his right foot. Chickory screeched, as much in terror as from the hurt, and threw himself at the doorway. He stumbled through, slammed the door behind him, and sprawled onto his hands and knees.
“What in the world?” Emala exclaimed, sitting up.
“Snakes!” Chickory gasped. “Rattlers! I’ve been bitten!” He sat and extended his legs.
Emala was speechless with shock for a few moments. Letting out a shriek of dismay, she smacked Samuel’s shoulder, bawling, “Get up! Get up! Our boy’s done been snakebit!” Despite her bulk she was the first to reach Chickory and kneel beside him. “Where?” she bleated. “Where were you bit?”
Chickory pointed. The bite marks were plain to see; two red dots on his right foot and two more on his left calf. “Twice,” he said. “They’re all over out there.”
Randa ran to the door. Opening it, she looked out and exclaimed, “Oh my God! He’s right! They’re everywhere.”
“Close the door,” Samuel commanded. He squatted beside his wife, leaned over his son, and drew his knife.
“What are you fixin’ to do?” Emala asked in wide-eyed horror.
“Suck the poison out like they do with cottonmouths.” Samuel cut an X above the bite marks on Chickory’s calf and pressed his mouth to the incision. Blood welled, and he sucked a mouthful and spat it out.
“What if you get poison in you?” Emala asked. “I’ve heard tell of that happenin’.”
“Has to be done,” Samuel said, and sucked another mouthful.
Emala clasped her hands to her bosom and raised her eyes to the roof. “Hear me, Lord. Spare my son. I pray you’ll spare my husband, too. Save them from that awful venom. Don’t take them away from me now, when we are startin’ our new home.”
“Hush, will you?” Samuel said, and sucked a third mouthful.
Appalled by his lack of courtesy, Emala said, “Don’t be interrupin’ me when I’m talkin’ to the Lord. Do you want him mad at us?”
Randa came over and placed her hand on her brother’s arm. “How do you feel?”
“How do you think I feel?” Chickory retorted. “I’ve just been bit by two rattlers. I’m dyin’.”
Louisa King stayed calm. Turning her head, she called out, “Zach, I need you.”
Zach put down the book and walked to the doorway. He thought maybe she wanted to go riding and needed him to saddle her horse. She could do it herself except he insisted on doing it for her. He was smiling to show he wasn’t bothered by their little tiff. “What do you—” he began, and stopped, his breath catching in his throat at the sight he beheld: snakes, snakes and more snakes. From what he could see, most were rattlers. Several were near Lou’s feet. Instantly he drew his tomahawk and his Bowie.
“Don’t move. I’m coming for you.”
Lou didn’t argue. A large rattler was circling her as if it couldn’t decide whether she was something it should bite. She recalled that not all bites were fatal, but even so, all that venom in her body wouldn’t be good for the baby in her womb. “God, no,” she said.
Zach counted six snakes near enough to her that they might strike if she moved. Clearing the threshold in a bound, he was among them. He arced the tomahawk at a thick neck. He sheared the Bowie at another. Spinning, he cleaved a viper just as it was coiling, slashed a fourth as the snake turned toward him. The largest and the nearest to her raised its ugly head and he severed the head from the body with a sideways swipe. The last turned to flee and he chopped it into three pieces with three swift cuts. Then he had Lou in his arms and was flying into the cabin and kicking the door shut behind them.
Lou clung to him. She had been terrified that he would be bitten. He was quick, so very, very quick, but there had been so many rattlers, she’d worried that even his speed might not have been enough. “Thank you,” she breathed into his neck.
“I have some uses,” Zach said.
“Never said you didn’t.” Lou kissed him. “You can put me down. I’m all right.”
Zach placed her in a chair and went to the window. “There must be hundreds. Thousands, even.”
Lou was thinking of something else. “Do you remember we heard a horse go by a while ago?”
Zach nodded.
“And then there was that shot. Do you think…” Lou didn’t finish. The implication was obvious.
Zach turned. He mentally kicked himself for not going out and seeing who had ridden by; he had been lying in bed with Lou. “I doubt it was any of the Worths. They had no reason to be out and about so soon after the storm.”
“Your mother or your father?”
“Ma or Pa would have stopped.” Zach had a troubling thought. “Whoever it was, they were headed east toward Waku’s lodge.”
They looked at each other and both of them said at the same time, “Evelyn.”
Zach was still holding his tomahawk and Bowie. He went to the door and paused with a finger on the latch. “Stay inside, you hear me? I won’t brook an argument. If you won’t do it for me or you won’t do it for yourself, do it for the baby.”
Lou nodded. “Don’t worry.” She stood and came over. “I wish you didn’t have to.”
“She’s my sister.”
“You’re going without your rifle?” Lou nodded at the Hawken in the corner.
Zach hefted his edged weapons. “These are better. I can kill more, faster.” He worked the latch.
“Be careful, darn you,” Lou said anxiously, and kissed him hard on the mouth. “Our baby needs a pa.”
“I don’t aim to die.” Zach smiled and slipped out and shut the door behind him.
Lou leaned her forehead against it and closed her eyes in dread. The thing was, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t.
Nate jerked his Hawken to his shoulder and fired. The heavy ball hit smack in the center of the rattlesnake’s head and the head exploded. The path to the lake was momentarily clear. He reloaded as he rode. He goaded the bay into the water, reined parallel with the shore, and brought it to a gallop. Winona was right behind him.
Nate was astounded at the number of snakes he saw and relieved that they didn’t come near the lake. Rattlers could swim, but it was his understanding they only did so when pressed or after prey. Most of the time they fought shy of water. A lot of the snakes, he noticed, were crawling toward the forest to get out of the wet and the chill.
Moments like this, Nate almost regretted living in the wilderness. There was always something, always some new threat to deal with. He yearned for a spell of peace and quiet, a long spell where none of his family or his friends were in peril.
That was the crucial difference between the wilderness and civilization. People who lived in cities and towns and on farms back East could go their entire lives without anything to fear save old age. Oh, a wagon might roll over or a horse go down or they might come down with a disease, but for the most part their lives were peaceful.
The wilderness was anything
but
peaceful. It was a savage realm of fang and claw where the only true peace was the peace of the grave. Yet God help him,
Nate loved it. Not the savagery, but the freedom that came from living without laws and rules. The only restraints were those he imposed on himself.
It was freedom in its purest sense, and more precious to him than the security of civilized society.
A long time ago, when the children were small, Nate had asked Winona if she would rather live east of the Mississippi where there were fewer dangers. She had stopped sewing and looked at him with that special look of hers and said that danger had always been part of her existence. She couldn’t let fear of it rule her. Life was for living, not hiding.
“Husband! Look!”
Nate came out of his reverie. They were on the north side of the lake. Ahead was his son’s cabin. Lou was at the window, waving her arms.
“We should stop!” Winona called.
Reluctantly, Nate slowed. He would only take a minute and be on his way. Whoever had fired that shot might need help. Any delay could prove fatal.
Snakes were all over her.
Evelyn held herself still and clenched her fists and bit her lower lip so hard she drew a drop of blood, all in an effort to keep from screaming and flailing. Serpents were on her arms, her chest, her head. She never knew when one might sense she was a threat and attack.
The sorrel stopped breathing. A last gasp, its tongue lolled from its mouth, and it was gone.
Evelyn would have wept if she wasn’t so afraid. Here she had always thought of herself as somewhat brave. She’d faced buffalo and bears and an alligator once and survived people trying to kill her, and none of that filled her with the fear and loathing
this
did. Having snake after snake crawl over her, having their bodies brush her clothes and rub her skin—she could barely stand it.
Their number became fewer and fewer until at long last she had none on her. She hoped that was the end of them, that they had all gone into the woods, but she was mistaken.
Out of the pool came five more, some of the biggest yet, crawling slowly but inexorably toward her and the poor sorrel.
“Please, no,” Evelyn pleaded, and squeezed her eyes tight shut. Maybe if she didn’t watch them it wouldn’t affect her as much. She heard them, though, heard the scrape of scales on cloth and a hiss. One
crawled onto her arm. Her natural reaction was to jerk her arm away, but she commanded herself not to move. The snake wriggled onto her chest, and stopped.
Evelyn almost sobbed. She waited for it to move on and when it didn’t, she cracked her eyelids. The thing was huge, as thick around as her pa’s arm. Its head was a few inches from her face and it was flicking its tongue as if testing the air.
Keep going,
she mentally begged.
Please keep going.
The rattler didn’t move. It looked around and then lay back down with its lower jaw on her shoulder.
Dear God,
Evelyn thought. It was resting on her. It must like how warm her body was after the cold of the water. She suppressed an impulse to shudder. She mustn’t so much as twitch. But how long could she stay still? Evelyn asked herself. Her nerves were raw. She was frayed to where she might lose control.
Please,
she prayed,
make it go away.
The rattler started to coil. She tensed, expecting it to attack, but no, it coiled in on itself and lay on her chest with its head on top of its coils. It wasn’t going anywhere. It might stay on her for the rest of the day, for all she knew.
Evelyn couldn’t take it. She just couldn’t. She knew that if she screamed or she moved it would make the snake mad, but her need to get it off overwhelmed her reason. Torn from her innermost being, ripped from her against her will, a keening shriek burst from her lips. Simultaneously, she swatted at the snake with all her might and sent it tumbling onto the ground. For a span of heartbeats she felt sheer elation. It was off her! She was safe!
A hiss shattered the illusion.
Evelyn twisted her head.
The rattler had coiled and its tail was buzzing like a hundred angry hornets. Its baleful eyes fixed on her and it poised to strike.
Zach King stood at the rear corner of his cabin, his Bowie in his left hand, his tomahawk in his right. Before him were puddles and pools teeming with snakes. Many of the reptiles were making for the trees. If he waited a while, the shore would be clear, but he couldn’t shake a persistent feeling that his sister was in trouble. He must get to her quickly.
Taking a deep breath, Zach bounded forward. He vaulted a viper, skirted another. A thick one reared in his path and he separated its head from its body. To the right was a clear space. A few steps, and he jumped over several rattlers entwined together. He tried not to think of how many there were. He tried not to dwell on the consequences of being bitten. He thought only of Evelyn, and of not letting anything stop him from reaching her.
The next stretch was clear of water and almost clear of rattlers. He ran faster. Well to the east a mound caught his eye, a mound where none had been before. He couldn’t quite make out what it was and he couldn’t keep staring at it with snakes to watch out for.
A lot of small pools and puddles appeared, pools and puddles writhing with serpents.
Zach stopped. It would be easier to go around. He turned toward the lake and glanced at the strange mound again—and his pulse quickened. He had realized what it was; a horse, on its side. And when he squinted he could make out a part of a saddle.
“Evelyn,” Zach said, and flew toward it. He didn’t care that there were rattlesnakes in his path. He didn’t see his sister and that meant she must be down, too, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to stop him from reaching her. He slashed a rattler, sidestepped, cut another, took several long bounds and cleared a moving rug of scaly death. He landed, swung, rent a reptilian head, spun, chopped another in half and was in motion even as the blow landed.
He didn’t dare stop, didn’t dare relax, didn’t dare relent. He must stay on the move so he was harder to bite. Speed and reflexes, they were the key. He mustn’t think. He mustn’t worry about Evelyn. He hacked. He cut. Always in motion, always slicing. There were so many snakes. So very many. For every serpent he slew there were ten more.
A big one with green markings lashed at his foot. He jumped and struck as he alighted, his tomahawk splitting its skull as neatly as a butcher knife split red meat. Then he was on the move again, running, jumping, dodging, evading. He was closer to the horse, but he couldn’t look at it. Not yet. Not until he was there.
More rattlers bared his way. Those heading for the forest paid no attention to him unless he came near them and then most hissed and a few coiled, but they didn’t attack. He cleared a knot of ten or more and in front of him were a pair of thick ones, one on his right and the other on his left, big and coiled and their tails buzzing chorus. Both struck at his legs and Zach leaped straight up as high as he could leap. The two snakes flashed under his moccasins. He came down on top of them, slamming his right foot on the neck of the one and his left foot onto the head of the other. Instantly he speared the Bowie in and drove the tomahawk
down. Then he was off and running, jumping, spinning.
I’m coming, Evelyn,
he thought.
I’m coming for you.
Chickory Worth couldn’t understand it. He had been biten twice. The bites hurt like the dickens. But he was still breathing. Even more amazing, except for where he’d been bitten, he didn’t feel anything. He wasn’t numb or tingly or itchy or in much pain.
Emala had her hands clasped to her bosom and was rocking on her knees and praying at the top of her lungs. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Hear me, Lord. I beg you. Spare him. He’s my only boy. Don’t let him die by no serpents. Serpents are Satan’s brood and the Bible says that those who have faith are proof against their poison.”
“Please, Ma,” Chickory said.
Emala raised her hands over her head. “I pray my faith is true. I pray you will heal him. I pray for your blessin’ in this as I pray for your blessin’ in all there is. Please, Lord, help us.”
Samuel had stopped sucking and was sitting with his hands propped behind him. Spittle glistened on his lower lip and chin. “I don’t know as I got it all out, but I tried my best, Son.”
“I know you did, Pa.”
Randa hunkered and examined Chickory’s leg. “There’s no swellin’ yet. I think I heard they swell sometimes.”
“How do you feel?” Samuel asked.
“Except for where they bit, I feel fine. I don’t feel nothin’.”
“Nothin’?”
“Not a thing, Pa. It could be you got all the poison out. It could be you saved my life.”
“Or it could be there wasn’t any poison to begin with,” Samuel said. “I didn’t taste any. But then, I ain’t exactly sure what snake poison tastes like.”
“I was bit,” Chickory said.
“Sure you were. But Nate King told me that rattlers don’t always…” Samuel stopped. “What was the word he used? Oh. Yes. Rattlers don’t always inject their poison. Sometimes they just bite and that’s all.”
“Please hear me, God!” Emala wailed. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Unto thee, oh Lord, do I lift up my soul. I will praise thee, oh Lord, with all my heart. Have mercy upon me, oh Lord. Have mercy upon my son.”
“Emala,” Samuel said.
“Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for unto thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the mornin’, oh Lord.”
“Emala?”
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table—”
Samuel gripped her arm. “Stop your caterwaulin’ and listen to me, woman.”
Emala opened her eyes and recoiled as if he had slapped her. “Did you just call my prayin’
caterwaulin’?
”
“He’s all right.”
“Here I am, tryin’ the best I know how to persuade the Lord to help us, and you go and blaspheme.” Emala shrugged off his hand. “You’re beginnin’ to worry me, Samuel Worth. You truly are. Don’t you give a fig about your eternal soul?”
“Chickory is all right.”
“The Lord don’t like blasphemin’. It says so right in the Bible. He’ll forgive a heap of things but not that. You’d best get on your knees and beg him to forgive you or—” Emala blinked. “What did you say?”
“Our son is fine.”
“He is?” Emala turned to Chickory, new tears shimmering in her eyes. “Is that true? The poison isn’t makin’ you turn all blue and choke on your tongue?”
“The bites sting some, is all,” Chickory answered. “But I’m breathin’ fine.”
“Land sakes.” Emala grasped Samuel’s arm and nearly jerked him off balance. “Do you know what this is?”
“We were lucky,” Samuel said.
Emala vigorously shook her head. “None are so blind as those that won’t see. Luck had nothin’ to do with it.” She reverently put her hand on Chickory’s calf and said in awe, “This was a miracle.”
“What?” Samuel said.
“You heard me. A miracle. Just like in the Bible when Jesus healed the sick and Moses parted the Red Sea.” Emala ran her fingers over the bites as if caressing them. “Our very own miracle right here in our family. That I should live to see somethin’ so wondrous.”
“The snakes only bit him, is all,” Samuel explained.
“Of course they bit him. I can see the holes.”
“No. I mean they bit him, but they didn’t get their poison into him,” Samuel said. “Haven’t you been payin’ attention? That’s why he’s not dyin’.”
“He’s not dyin’ because the Lord heard my prayer.” Emala raised her arms on high. “We must give thanks. When we go to church we—” She stopped
and her eyes widened. “Glory be. I just realized. We don’t have a church to go to.”
“Ministers don’t come to the Rockies,” Samuel said. “I doubt there will be a church hereabouts for a hundred years or better.”
“We can’t have that,” Emala said. “We need a house of worship. I bet if we had one, the Kings and the McNairs would come and maybe those Nansusequas if we asked them real nice, even if they are heathens.”
“But we don’t have one, so why bring it up?”
“We don’t have one now, but we will.” Emala beamed and nodded. “We’re going to build one.”
“What?” Samuel said.
“What?” Randa echoed.
“You heard me,” Emala declared.
Chickory groaned and put his hand on his leg as if the pain had made him do it.
“Listen to yourself, woman,” Samuel scoffed. “You can’t just build your own church.”
“It wouldn’t be just for me,” Emala said. “It’d be for everyone. Since there’s not a lot of us, it wouldn’t need to be big. We could even add a room to our cabin and have it be the church.”
“Are you sure you weren’t the one snakebit?”
Emala bristled like a kicked porcupine. “Samuel Worth, you don’t fool me. You don’t want to have to go to church every Sunday. You were a shirker back on the plantation and you are a shirker still.”
“You better ask Mr. King what he thinks.”
“I don’t need to ask Mr. King. I have my answer right here.” Emala patted Chickory’s leg. “The Lord himself has given us a sign.”
“The snake bite?”
“The miracle. It’s the Lord’s way of showing us
we’re all under his care and we shouldn’t forget him just because we’re in the middle of nowhere without a church.”
Samuel stared.
“Why are you lookin’ at me like that? I’m right and you know it. King Valley needs a house of worship. Maybe we can have a bell hauled in and every Sunday morning Chickory can ring it to call everyone together.” Emala couldn’t wait. “It’ll be marvelous. We’ll have pews and a pulpit and we’ll even get our hands on hymn books.”
“What about a minister?” Samuel brought up. “Where do you expect to find one out here in the middle of nowhere, as you called it.”
“That’s easy,” Emala said. “One of us will have to take charge of the services, and there’s only one person in this whole valley who’s qualified.”
“Mr. McNair?” Randa said.
“No, silly.” Emala laughed with delight. “Me.”
Chickory gripped his leg and groaned louder.
Evelyn King stared death in its reptilian face. The rattlesnake had reared to strike. She’d heard tell that rattlers didn’t open their mouths until the moment they struck, but this one did, baring its lethal fangs. A drop of venom fell from each one. She went to fling up her arm when there was a flash of light and the viper’s head plopped to the ground. There was another flash and another and pieces of the snake joined the head. A buckskin-clad figure blotted out the sun and a hand gently touched her cheek.
“I’m here, little sister,” Zach said.
Evelyn gripped his hand and held it to her cheek and closed her eyes and held back tears.
“There are more coming.”
Evelyn let go and Zach stepped over her and put himself between her and the snakes. In one hand was his gore-spattered tomahawk, in the other his gore-spattered Bowie. Both weapons became blurs. She lost count of how many he killed, marveling the whole while at how quick he was, and how unerring his aim.
Evelyn knew that her brother was widely feared by whites and red men alike, and seeing him now, as he hacked and split and cut every rattlesnake that came near her, it wasn’t hard to see why. She would never say it to his face, but Zach was a natural-born killer. For long minutes he proved her right. Then, at last, he straightened and wearily turned.