“Right.” Casings grinned. “Fine dun you’ve got here, Rock,” he said. He reached out and patted the dun’s neck.
“Yep,” Rochenbach said. He turned slightly toward him, knowing the outlaw hadn’t walked over to talk about his horse or the Giant. He stared at him expectantly.
“Okay,” said Casings, “the thing is, Spiller is asking me what’s got into you since our talk on the trail back from Bell’s place.” He paused. “I told him it was because you overheard the group talking about you while you were in the barn.”
Rock didn’t answer. Instead, he shook his slouch hat off, placed it atop his head and stood up, his rifle in the crook of his arm.
“That was it, wasn’t it?” said Casings, standing up beside him.
Before Rochenbach could answer, the Giant called out from where he sat watching the two.
“Hey, Rock, you need a rock. I can get you a rock, if you want a rock, Rock,” he said, goading.
Rochenbach stood staring back at the Giant as he said sidelong to Casings, “Is something wrong with his mind?” As he spoke, he stared past the Giant at the big hole in the wall of the wash where the boulder had been.
Casings chuckled and replied, “No, he just don’t always know what’s going on around him. It makes him act peculiar.”
Rochenbach’s eyes narrowed, looking past the Giant and to the side of the wash. “Then he’d better start paying attention,” he said.
The Giant stood up and called out to Rock in a surly tone, “Don’t talk about me over there, law dog. I will jerk you up by the top of your head and stick my arm down your—”
His words stopped short; his eyes widened in terror as Rochenbach threw his rifle up to his shoulder, pointed straight at him.
“Wait, Rock!” Casings shouted.
But Rock paid him no attention as he took aim and squeezed the trigger. The other men scattered in every direction.
The Giant’s mouth opened wide in fear as he saw the shot explode from Rock’s Spencer rifle. He heard and felt the bullet whistle past his head. Behind him, crawling down the fresh-turned earth where the Giant had unseated the boulder, a large bull rattler had raised its head, ready to make a strike at the back of the Giant’s neck.
“Holy God!” shouted Casings, seeing Rochenbach’s bullet snap the big rattler’s head off in a bloody mist.
The snake’s thick body flew up from the side of the wash, spun whipping in the air and landed limply over the Giant’s right shoulder just as the Giant had started to draw his holstered Colt.
Seeing the snake suddenly dangling down his chest, the Giant screamed shrilly in spite of his usually deep, powerful voice. Instead of snatching the dead snake and tossing it away, the Giant lost all control of himself and jumped up and down on his tiptoes, screaming, his big hands flopping uselessly beside him.
“Jesus, run, Giant!” shouted Casings, seeing three more snakes spill down from their disturbed resting place among the cluster of rocks.
In his hysteria, the Giant caught a glimpse of one of the snakes slithering past his feet. He ran screaming in a wide circle, the dead snake flying from his shoulder as he plowed through the already spooked horses. The bloody bull rattler landed atop one horse, sending it into a wild kicking, whinnying fit.
“We need to stop him,” Rock said quietly, watching in rapt fascination.
“Not me,” said Casings, knowing what a job it would be wrestling the big man to the ground and holding him there.
The Giant, still screaming out of control, ran smack into another horse. His massive body knocked the animal to the ground as he bounced back from it, right into the kicking hooves of the horse with the dead snake flopping up and down in its saddle. A wild kick gave the Giant a glancing blow to his head and sent him staggering in a zigzagging line for a few feet while his thick legs seemed to slowly melt beneath him.
“Well, there’s that,” said Casings as the Giant slammed the ground with the same powerful thud as the boulder he’d thrown down in a show of strength.
Shots rang out as the other men hurried and killed the other awakened rattlers.
“Yes,” said Rochenbach, “there’s that.”
He stepped forward and looked down at the Giant lying knocked cold in the dirt.
“He had to show off for everybody, lift that big rock,” said Casings, stepping up beside him.
Rochenbach only nodded, wondering if this would soften the Giant’s attitude toward him.
Chapter 7
A half hour later, the Giant sat on the same rock, this time facing a fire Bonham and Batts built so he could dry the crotch on his wet trousers. He sat in his long-john underwear and stockinged feet, his knees opened wide toward the fire, shivering even with a wool blanket clutched around him. His trousers hung on a stick stuck in the ground, and his enormous boots stood drying on the ground beside his trousers.
“God, I hate sna-snakes,” he said, his deep, powerful voice broken and trembling. “Ever since I was a ki-kid,” he added painfully. Blood ran down the side of his head.
“Lots of people hate snakes, Giant,” said Casings, trying to help him calm down. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
The Giant tried to settle down and breathe deep.
“Pres is right, Stillwater,” said Bonham. “Jesus, a big ol’ rattler like that. One bite and he would have filled you so full of poison—”
“Why don’t you pour yourself a hot cup of coffee, Lon?” Casings said to cut him off.
The Giant started shaking all over again.
“I was just saying,” explained Bonham, “a big bull like that. What if he’d fallen down your shirt before Rock got a shot at him?”
“Jesus, shut up!” Casings snapped. “The man hates snakes! Can you give it a rest?”
“He—he’s right,” the Giant said, shaking again. “The law dog sa-saved my life.” He looked all around the dry wash. “Where is he anyway?”
“I’m right here, Giant,” said Rochenbach. He stepped over from among the settled horses, a wet cloth in his hand. “But my name’s not law dog,” he corrected the Giant. He pressed the wet cloth to the Giant’s hoof-grazed head and directed the Giant’s large hand against it.
“Of course it’s not, Rock,” the Giant said. “No offense. I just ain’t myself right this minute. Hell, you saved my life. I’ll call you Mr. Rochenbach if you want. Man, if you hadn’t been there—” He lowered his big head as his voice cracked with emotion.
Rochenbach and Casings gave each other a bemused look.
“It’s all right, Giant,” Rock said. “You need to put it out of your mind. It’s over.”
The Giant looked at his drying trousers, then at Rochenbach and Casings.
“I’d just as soon Grolin not hear about any of this,” he said, shaking his swollen head slowly, the wet cloth pressed against it.
“I’ve faced a wild bear, once wrestled a Louisiana alligator, killed men of every size, shape and color,” he said. “I fear nothing—not the devil in hell. But a damn snake gets near me, I fall plumb apart. That’s all there is to it.”
“All right, we understand,” said Spiller, sounding a little tired of hearing it. He stepped in and put a cup of steaming coffee in the Giant’s free hand. “You need to buck up and get control of yourself. Like Rock here said, it’s over.”
The Stillwater Giant lifted his eyes around to Spiller and gave him a hard stare.
“Obliged for the coffee, Dent,” he said, his deep, intimidating voice starting to return. “But don’t start crowding me over this. I’ve also taken a hell of a lick to the head. You ought to know how that feels after what happened to you.” He nodded toward the welt on Spiller’s head.