The Chisholms Read Free Page A

we—”
    “You’d spend what’s taken half our lives to save?”
    “I’d spend it for the next half, Min. Damn it, I’m a farmer ain’t got nothin to farm! There’s
land
out west. It can be bought cheap, it can be planted. I want to go. Bailey says he’ll sell us the wagon. I want to buy it, Min.”
    “Do what you like,” she said, and angrily struck flint into the tinder.
     
    The snake was not as big as some Hadley had handled; he guessed it was maybe four, five feet long — he hadn’t measured the creature, nor didn’t plan to. In his time in these mountains, he had seen every kind of poisonous snake there was, from diamondbacks, like the one in the gunnysack, to copperheads, which if you cornered one hiding in the bushes, he’d shake his tail and make them bushes buzz to stop your heart. He’d even seen a cottonmouth or gapper or trapjaw or water moccasin, or whatever you wanted to call the damn thing, swimming in the Clinch like an eel and nearly scaring him half to death.
    He’d been bit by a snake only once, and that one a rattler who’d struck first and only then given warning. Hadley’d gone back to the cabin and swallowed two whole cups of whiskey and then tied a rag tight around his arm between his heart and where the snake had bit him. He poured salt on the fang marks, where the arm was beginning to rise, and then he moved the rag a bit higher on his arm when the rising started to spread. He was alone in the cabin and beginning to get a bad headache and feeling somewhat dizzy and thinking maybe he shouldn’t have drunk the whiskey, though some people hereabouts said whiskey was the only sure cure for snakebite. It was then Will came in the house and saw Hadley standing with one hand against the wall, his head bent, and went over to him fast and caught him before he fell down.
    Will cut through the fang marks with a knife he’d brought back with him from the fighting in Texas. The knife had a walnut handle inlaid with silver. He sucked out the venom, and spat it on the floor, and then washed out his mouth with whiskey. He gave Hadley more whiskey to drink after he’d bandaged the wound, and then both men sat drinking till sundown, when the rest of the family got home. Hadley was drunk by then and eager to tell them all about how he’d almost died from snakebite, weren’t for Will here with his Mexican knife. But they’d all been in town watching a man used to be with the Buckley & Weeks Circus, had himself a dancing bear now, and was selling a medicine supposed to be good for curing snakebite! Never did get to tell them what had happened. When Minerva in bed that night saw the bandage and asked him what was wrong with his arm, he said he’d got bit by a rattler while she was in town watching the dancing bear, and she said, “No, you didn’t, Hadley.”
    That was the first and only time he’d been bit by a rattler or any other kind of snake. It was all in knowing what to expect from the creatures, and also in knowing how to handle them if you were of a mind to pick one up. Hadley picked up most any serpent he ever saw because the way he read the Bible, it said in John 3: “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Hadley believed in the Son of man and hoped for eternal life and felt that one way to guarantee life forever was to lift up the serpent in the wilderness.
    Besides, he enjoyed snakes.
    Liked them better than birds, you wanted to know. All birds did was make an infernal racket in the morning when a man was trying to sleep. Messed up the front porch, too. Snakes were clean and polite, and even the poisonous ones wouldn’t strike at you less you stepped on them by accident or poked at them with a stick. The way he looked at it, snakes