True Grit - Charles Portis [69]
I wondered if the snakes could bite in their present lethargic state. I thought they could not see well, if at all, but I observed too that the light and warmth of the sun had an invigorating effect on them. We kept two speckled king snakes in our corn crib to eat rats and I was not afraid of them, Saul and Little David, but I really knew nothing about snakes. Moccasins and rattlers were to be avoided if possible and killed if there was a chopping hoe handy. That was all I knew about poisonous snakes.
The ache in my broken arm grew worse. I felt some more of the binding moss give way against my right arm and at the same time I saw that some of the snakes were crawling out through the man’s ribs. Lord help me!
I set my teeth and took hold of the bony hand that stuck forth from the blue shirtsleeve. I gave a yank and pulled the man’s arm clean away from the shoulder. A terrible thing to do, you say, but you will see that I now had something to work with.
I studied the arm. Bits of cartilage held it together at the elbow joint. With some twisting I managed to separate it at that place. I took the long bone of the upper arm and secured it under my armpit to serve as a cross-member. This would keep me from plunging through the hole should I reach that point in my descent. It was quite a long bone and, I hoped, a strong one. I was grateful to the poor man for being tall.
What I had left now was the lower part, the two bones of the forearm, and the hand and wrist, all of a piece. I grasped it at the elbow and proceeded to use it as a flail to keep the snakes at bay. “Here, get away!” said I, slapping at them with the bony hand. “Get back, you!” This was well enough except that I perceived the agitation only caused them to be more active. In trying to keep them away, I was at the same time stirring them up! They moved very slowly but there were so many I could not keep track of them all.
Each blow I struck brought burning pain to my arm and you can imagine these blows were not hard enough to kill the snakes. That was not my idea. My idea was to keep them back and prevent them from getting behind me. My striking range from left to right was something short of 180 degrees and I knew if the rattlers got behind me I would be in a fine “pickle.”
I heard noises above. A shower of sand and pebbles came cascading down. “Help!” I cried out. “I am down here! I need help!” My thought was: Thank God. Someone has come. Soon I will be out of this hellish place. I saw drops of something spattering on a rock in front of me. It was blood. “Hurry up!” I yelled. “There are snakes and skeletons down here!”
A man’s voice called down, saying, “I warrant there will be another one before spring! A little spindly one!”
It was the voice of Tom Chaney! I had not yet made a good job of killing him! I supposed he was leaning over the edge and the blood was falling from his wounded head.
“How do you like it?” he taunted.
“Throw me a rope, Tom! You cannot be mean enough to leave me!”
“You say you don’t like it?”
Then I heard a shout and the sounds of a scuffle and a dreadful crunch, which was Rooster Cogburn’s rifle stock smashing the wounded head of Tom Chaney. There followed a furious rush of rocks and dust. The light was blocked off and I made out a large object hurtling down toward me. It was the body of Tom Chaney. I leaned back as far as I could to avoid being struck, and at that it was a near thing.
He fell directly upon the skeleton, crushing the bones and filling my face and eyes with dirt and scattering the puzzled rattlesnakes every which way. They were all about me and I commenced striking at them with such abandon that my body dropped free through the hole. Gone!
No! Checked short! I was shakily suspended in space by the bone under my armpit. Bats flew up past my face and the ones below were carrying on like a tree full of sparrows at sundown. Only my head and my