In a minute Pea's horse was across the deep water and found its footing. Call and Deets held the horse still while Pea took the dying boy in his arms-then Deets led the horse ashore. Augustus rode out of the water behind Call. The cattle were still crossing, but no cowboys were crossing with them. Bert, the Rainey boys and Allen O'Brien were on the south bank, not eager to take the water. A mile back, across the long clearing, the wagon and the horses had just come in sight.
Pea handed the boy down to Dish and Deets. Call quickly took his slicker off his saddle and they laid the boy on it. His eyes were closed, his body jerking slightly. Augustus cut the boy's shirt off-there were eight sets of fang marks, including one on his neck.
'That don't count the legs,' Augustus said. 'There ain't no point in counting the legs.'
'What done it?' Dish asked. He had seen the snakes plainly and had even wanted to shoot them, but he couldn't believe it or understand it.
'It was his bad luck to strike a nest of them, I guess,' Augustus said. 'I never seen a nest of snakes in this river before and I've crossed it a hundred times. I never seen that many snakes in any river.'
'The storm got 'em stirred up,' Deets said.
Call knelt by the boy, helpless to do one thing for him. It was the worst luck-to come all the way from Ireland and then ride into a swarm of water moccasins. He remembered, years before, in a hot droughty summer, stopping to water his horse in a drying lake far up the Brazos-he had ridden his horse in so he could drink and had happened to look down and see that the muddy shallows of the lake were alive with cottonmouths. The puddles were like nests, filled with wiggling snakes, as brown as chocolate. Fortunately he had not ridden into such a puddle. The sight unnerved him so that he shot a snake on reflex-a useless act, to shoot one where there were hundreds.
He had seen the occasional snake in rivers along the coast but never more than one or two together; there had been at least twenty, probably more, around the boy. On the south bank, the horse he had ridden was rolling over and over in the mud, ignored by the frightened cowboys. Maybe the horse was bitten too.
Pea, who had been the first to the rescue, swimming his mount right into the midst of the snakes, suddenly felt so weak he thought he would fall off his horse. He dismounted, clinging to the horn in case his legs gave out.
Augustus noticed how white he was and went to him.
'Are you snake-bit, Pea?' he asked, for in the confusion a man could get wounds he wasn't aware of. He had known more than one man to take bullets without noticing it; one Ranger had been so frightened when his wound was pointed out to him that he died of fright, not the bullet.
'I don't think I'm m bit,' Pea said. 'I think I whupped them off.'
'Get your pants down,' Call said. 'One could have struck you down low.'
They could find no wound on Pea-meanwhile, the cattle had begun to drift, with no one watching them cross. Some were making the bank a hundred yards downstream. The cowboys on the south bank had still not crossed.
'Gus, you and Deets watch him,' Call said, mounting. 'We've got to keep the cattle from drifting.'
He noticed Newt sitting beside Pea's horse, his face white as powder.
'Come help us,' he said, as Pea and Dish loped off toward the cattle.
Newt turned his horse and followed the Captain, feeling that he was doing wrong. He should have said something to Sean, even if Sean couldn't hear him. He wanted to tell Sean to go on and find a boat somewhere and go back to Ireland quick, whatever the Captain might think. Now he knew Sean was going to die, and that it was forever too late for him to find the boat, but he wanted to say it anyway. He had had a chance to say it, but had missed it.
He trotted beside the Captain, feeling that he might vomit, and also feeling disloyal to Sean.
'He wanted to go back to Ireland!' he said suddenly, tears pouring out of his eyes. He was so grieved he didn't care.
'Well, I expect he did,' the Captain said quietly.
Newt held his reins, still crying, and let Mouse do the work. He remembered Sean's screams, and how much the snakes had looked like giant wiggly worms. When at last the cattle were started back toward the main herd the Captain put his horse back into the river, which startled Newt. He didn't see how anybody could just ride back into a river that could suddenly be filled with snakes, but this time no snakes appeared. Newt saw that Mr. Gus and Deets had not moved, and wondered if Sean was dead yet. He kept feeling he ought to leave the cattle and go talk to Sean, even if it was too late for Sean to answer, but he was afraid to. He didn't know what to do, and he sat on his horse and cried until he started vomiting. He had to lean over and vomit beneath his horse's neck.
In his mind he began to wish for some way to undo what had happened-to make the days run backward, to the time when they were still in Lonesome Dove. He imagined Sean alive and well-and did what he had not done, told him to go off to Galveston and find a boat to take him home. But he kept looking back, and there was Deets and Mr. Gus, kneeling by Sean. He longed to see Sean sit up and be all right, but Sean didn't, and Newt could only sit hopelessly on his horse and hold the cattle.
Augustus and Deets could do little for Sean except sit with him while his life was ending.
'I guess it would have been better if Pea had just let him drown,' Augustus said. 'He was an unlucky young sprout.'
'Mighty unlucky,' Deets said. He felt an unsteadiness in his limbs. Though he had seen much violent death, he had not seen one more terrible than the one that had just occurred. He felt he would never again cross a river without remembering it.
Before his brother crossed the river, Sean O'Brien died. Augustus covered the boy with his slicker just as the horse herd came clambering up the bank. The herd passed so close that when some of the horses stopped to shake themselves the fine spray wet Deets's back. The Spettle boys came out of the river wide-eyed with fright, clinging to their wet mounts. On the far bank Call had the other men helping to ease the wagon down the steep crossing.
'Now if them snakes had come at Bol, he would have had a chance,' Augustus said. 'He has his ten- gauge.'
'The storm stirred them up,' Deets said again. He felt guilty, for he had chosen the crossing in preference to one up the river, and now a boy was dead.
'Well, Deets, life is short,' Augustus said. 'Shorter for some than for others. This is a bad way to start a trip.'
Bolivar was unhappy. He didn't think the wagon would make it, even across such a small river, but he was not willing to leave it either. He sat grimly on the wagon seat, Lippy beside him, while the cowboys got ropes on the wagon.
'You mean Sean's dead?' Allen O'Brien asked the Captain, so stunned he could barely speak.
'Yes, he's dead,' Call said-he had seen Gus cover the corpse.
'It's me that done it,' Allen said, tears on his round face. 'I never should have brought the boy. I knew he was too young.'
Call said nothing more. The boy's age had had nothing to do with what had happened, of course; even an experienced man, riding into such a mess of snakes, wouldn't have survived. He himself might not have, and he had never worried about snakes. It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate. Allen O'Brien should waste no time on guilt, for a boy could die in Ireland as readily as elsewhere, however safe it might appear.
Jasper and Bert had seen the snakes, and Jasper was so terrified that he couldn't look at the water. Soupy Jones was almost as scared. The Rainey boys looked as if they might fall off their horses.
More than anything, Jasper wanted to quit. He had crossed the Nueces many times, and yet, as the moment approached when he would have to do it again, he felt he couldn't. Pea and Dish and the others who had already crossed seemed to him like the luckiest men in the world.
'Captain, do you reckon them snakes are gone?' he asked.
'Well, they're scattered,' Call said.
As they got ready to go in Jasper drew his pistol, but Call shook his head. 'No shooting,' he said. He had no confidence that any of the men could shoot from a swimming horse and hit anything, as Gus had.
'Just quirt 'em if you see any,' he added.
'I hope none don't crawl in this wagon,' Lippy said, his lip quivering with apprehension.
The wagon floated better than expected-Bolivar barely got his feet wet. Jasper flinched once when he saw a
