Its needles long since dried and brown, showering down when he touched them, a tall pine had become victim to a storm and its roots had pulled up the earth as it fell, leaving a cavity now almost completely covered with weeds and coarse grass.
The natural foxhole was ideal for the short time he’d need one.
Remembering the rattler, Drake used the barrel of the rifle to probe the grass thoroughly. Satisfied, he avoided a large patch of nettles, lowered himself to his stomach, and thrust the rifle through the tall weeds toward the campsite along the creek. Above and to his left, the dead roots of the tree loomed high, while in back of him trees and scrub brush concealed him from the ridge. Settled down into the pit, he couldn’t be seen by anyone not standing almost on the rim of the hole.
He peered through the scope of the rifle, making delicate adjustments until he could see the campsite clearly and sharply. There was still no movement. Gruber’s camper and the small tent beside the stream could have been an idyllic setting for a photo extolling the benefits of the great outdoors.
He checked the rifle again and began to take deep breaths. When the time came to shoot, he couldn’t afford to be anything but relaxed. With the trial next week, Shelbrook wouldn’t like it if he failed.
He glanced at his watch. Gruber was a little late arising this morning.
Lying motionless in the heat of the rising sun, insects buzzing around him, Drake was suddenly aware that his mouth was dry. He grimaced. He should have brought a canteen. And insect repellent. He was getting careless — but, then, he hadn’t expected Gruber to oversleep.
He was lying perfectly still, his left hand cradling the rifle, his right curled casually around the stock, when he felt movement along his left leg.
He stopped breathing. His mind told him it could be any kind of small animal. His senses told him it was not. A heavy rope seemed to be rippling across his legs.
Holding his body rigid, Drake had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming.
Down on the creek bank, a grey-haired man with a heavy belly, wearing an undershirt, slid out from under the small tent and headed toward the creek.
Drake closed his eyes and willed himself not to move. He could imagine he felt the broad belly plates digging as the reptile crossed his legs.
The movement stopped but he could still feel the weight alongside his right calf.
The man below returned and pulled a small propane stove from the rear of the camper.
Drake’s eyes were still glued to the scope. He had only to move the crosshairs a trifle and squeeze the trigger, but he knew the sudden jar and noise would startle the snake and bring on a strike.
He cursed silently. The sun beat down. An ant crawled across his hand. Birds sang in the woods, darted and swooped overhead. His thirst mounted. Most of his weight was on his left side, and his ribs and muscles began to ache. Drake resisted the desire to leap to his feet and run. There was no way he could move quickly enough. The uprooted tree to his left prevented him from rolling away from the snake, and he couldn’t move his legs to spring ahead or back.
The sun climbed higher.
The man beside the creek was working at the stove, preparing breakfast. Foreign to the forest, the odor of coffee drifted up the hillside.
Drake fought down an impulse to turn his head, to look at what was beside his leg. He knew that if he saw that triangular head so close nothing could keep him from leaping to his feet.
The snake moved. Drake felt it curling on itself.
Hearing a slithering whisper, he shifted his eyes. Some feet in front the tall weeds wavered as something moved toward him, something hidden in the grass, and suddenly it appeared only a few feet in front of him and coming right at him.
It was the largest rattler he’d ever seen. Evidently headed for the hole Drake was in, the snake paused as it caught his body heat, its tongue flicking rapidly.
It was so close the deep pits under the eyes stood out with startling clarity, so close he could count the scales, so close the shadow of the rifle barrel fell across it.
Drake understood then. Somewhere under that tangled mass of roots was a den and, without thinking, he had moved into the rattlers’ front yard. Examining the depression hadn’t meant a damn thing. He should have known better, picked a more open spot. He should have remembered from his youth how things were in the mountains, how wild things behaved.
The flat eyes stared into his. Blood running cold, ice forming painfully deep inside his gut, he wanted to let go of the rifle, throw himself backward, and run.
He now had one snake coiled against his leg and another staring him in the face. Boxed in, he thought, as if it had been planned.
His stomach tightened, his nerves beginning a thin screaming that seemed to be nowhere yet everywhere inside.
Below, Gruber had donned a bright red shirt and was busy eating breakfast.
Neither snake moved as the sun rose higher.
Drake squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He couldn’t escape with his body so he escaped with his mind, down the long dark tunnel of memory. He relived his days as a shoeless boy in the mountains, long before he grew up and met Shelbrook; the days when all he hunted were the deer, the bear, and the small running game of the forest. He had learned to shoot well because shells were expensive and each shot counted. If he missed he often went hungry.
And he had been smart enough in those days to know how to live in these mountains but the years had cost him that wisdom, and the mountains had a way of exacting a price for ignorance and carelessness just as the city did.
And then had come the war, and the targets became men. And after the war there was Shelbrook, with money to pay for that skill with the rifle, because Shelbrook knew there were always men who desired the death of other men and were willing to pay for it. And none of it made any difference to Drake because he told himself that each day, each hour, each minute, somewhere in the world men justified killing other men in the name of religion or politics or hate or greed — and if he did it for money he was no better or worse than any of them.
He had only contempt for someone like Gruber who would testify next week because he felt he had to testify, who would gain nothing for himself in taking the witness stand and, even though he had to be aware that he couldn’t be allowed to tell his story, was still fool enough to come up here to fish when he should have been in a guarded room somewhere.
The fierce ache in Drake’s cramped muscles brought him back to where he was.
The rattler had coiled upon itself defensively and its head was slowly weaving, its forked tongue darting, its tail buzzing sporadically. It was puzzled by this warm-blooded, unmoving thing before it, uncertain as to whether it represented danger.
Flying insects, attracted by the film of perspiration that covered Drake’s body, crawled over him, bit freely through his thin slacks and returned to bite again. Unable to move, to scratch, Drake felt his skin was afire. His face and hands were smarting from the sun and his left arm had become numb.
The heat, the thirst, the insect bites, and the fear piled up and for a moment he felt himself sagging into a pit of horror from which he could emerge only as a madman. He closed his eyes and clamped his jaws shut so tightly his teeth hurt.
Below, Gruber was washing his breakfast dishes in the creek.
Drake calculated the odds. The snake alongside him would not move. Nestled against his warm leg, it had no reason to move. What the rattler in front of him would do was questionable. It represented the bigger threat because any bite would be in Drake’s face, arms, or upper torso and thus more deadly.