“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.