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.
Chickory Worth’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. They weren’t just any old snakes crawling around his feet. They were
“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