"Can I have the skin and rattles?" Galloway asked.
"Yes," Serena said, "but the meat belongs to the bird."
Galloway set his boot heel on the serpent's head and detached the body with a quick sweep of his barlow knife. By the time the other men returned, Galloway had eviscerated the snake, its skin and rattles tucked inside his lunch pail.
By month's end the eagle had killed seven rattlesnakes, including a huge satinback that panicked Snipes' crew when it slipped from the bird's grasp mid-flight and fell earthward. The men hadn't seen the eagle overhead, and the serpent fell among them like some last remnant of Satan's rebellion cast from heaven. The snake landed closest to McIntyre and had just enough life left to slither a few inches and rest its head on the lay preacher's boot toe, causing McIntyre to fall backward in a dead faint.
Dunbar quickly finished off the snake with an axe while Stewart brought his spiritual mentor to consciousness by filling McIntyre's wide-brimmed preacher's hat with creek water, then dousing the unconscious man. Several wagers were made and then settled when Snipes' tape measure reached sixty-three inches from the triangle-shaped head to the last of the snake's twelve buttons.
"That eagle won't likely fetch her one bigger," Ross, the bet's winner, argued.
"Not less it flaps off to them jungles in South America and totes back a anaconder," Snipes interjected before pocketing the tape measure and wire-rimmed glasses that, though lacking lenses, the crew foreman nevertheless insisted worked because the oval frames better focused his vision.
"I'm wondering if she's of a mind to train up a whole flock of them?" Dunbar asked.
"If she done it them snakes would be clearing out like Saint Patrick himself was after them," Snipes said.
"It would sure enough be a blessing," Dunbar said, "not to have to hold your breath every time you picked up a log or limb."
Ross stashed the handful of coins he collected into his pocket.
"If I had my rathers I'd take them rattlesnakes where the Good Lord put them," he said. "At least then you'd not have the worry of them dripping out of the sky onto you."
Stewart and Dunbar looked uneasily upward.
"You're disturbing the natural order of things is what you're doing," Snipes added. "Same as Pemberton offering his gold doubloon for the feller who flushes that panther out. If that thing really is around, all it's done up to now is put the skeer in a few folks, but you start bothering a critter like that it's untelling the trouble you're stirring up."
"Still," Dunbar said wistfully as his gaze lowered to take in the mountains of east Tennessee. "If I was to be the one to find that panther, a twenty-dollar gold piece would buy me a new hat, a sure enough spiffy one with a bright-yallar hatband and feather to boot. Money left over to get me a good sparking outfit too."
"If you was still around to wear it," Ross noted. "It might end up being your burying clothes."
McIntyre, now conscious but still sprawled on the ground, looked up as well. Some frightening new thought appeared to come to him. He attempted to speak but only a few inarticulate sounds came from his throat before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he passed out again.
"I heard Campbell built that eagle a perch in the stable," Dunbar said.
"I seen it," Snipes said, shaking his head with admiration. "He made it with a lead pipe and metal soldered off an old boxcar. Used that and a big block of hickory, put some sisal rope on top for the eagle to settle its claws in. I believe Campbell could make you a flashlight out of a tin can and a lightning bug. That bird sets there on that perch like a big old rooster. Don't blink nor nothing. It's partial to the darksomeness of that stable. Keeps it calm like the hood she puts over its head."
McIntyre moaned and opened his eyes briefly before closing them again. Stewart fetched more water, then seemed to think better of pouring it on the lay preacher so instead set the pail down. He took off his stricken mentor's coat and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt, then dipped a soiled handkerchief in the water and pressed it to McIntyre's forehead as if a poultice. The other men watched as McIntyre's eyes flickered a few moments and opened. This time he did not attempt to speak. Instead, McIntyre solemnly removed a kerchief that had been around his neck and tied it around his head, covering his eyes.
"He ain't never been in such a way as this," Stewart said worriedly, and helped McIntyre to his feet. "I'm taking him back to camp so Doctor Cheney can look at him."
Stewart helped McIntyre down the slope, moving slow and all the while holding his mentor's upper arm firmly, as if leading a fellow soldier newly blinded in battle.
"I reckon you'd argue the snake didn't land on you because of that getup you're wearing," Ross said to Snipes.
"I don't have to argue it," Snipes said. "You seen well as I did where it landed."
"Well," Dunbar said, appraising the drabness of his own outfit. "I got me a shirt red as a mule-team tomato but I still ain't wearing it out here. I need me one thing pretty to catch a gal's eye."
The men paused to watch as Stewart led McIntyre down the ridge, pausing every few steps to nervously check the sky.
"That bird, it ain't from this country," Snipes said, pausing to tamp some tobacco into his pipe. "It's from Asia, a Mongoloid, and it's worth five hundred dollars so you best not be taking no pot shots at it. It's the same kind of eagle ole Kubla Khan used to hunt with, that's what Campbell says."
"That conversing you had with Campbell must have been the most he's said at one time in his life," Dunbar noted. "He's ever one to keep thoughts to his own self."
"A wise man always keeps his counsel," Snipes said.
"We've noticed," Ross said.
"One of the cooks claimed he seen Mrs. Pemberton training that bird one day," Dunbar said. "Dragged a dead snake around on a rope and ever time that bird tore off after the snake she'd give it a piece of prime-cut beef."
Ross had unpacked his lunch and stared dubiously at his sandwich. He slowly peeled back a soggy piece of white bread in the same manner he might a scab, revealing a gray slab of meat that appeared coated with mucus. For a few moments he simply stared at the fatback.
"I'd near about chase a dead snake around my ownself for a hunk of steak," Ross said wistfully. "It's been ever so long since I had a piece of prime cow meat."
"Put it betwixt a big yallar-butter biscuit and I'd near give up the promise of heaven," Dunbar said.
A raven flew overhead, wing shadow passing over the men like a dark thought. Dunbar flinched when he saw the bird's shadow, looked upward.
"I believe you're right, Ross," Dunbar said, still staring at the sky. "It's trouble coming from every direction now."
The men watched the raven disappear over Balsum Mountain.