I called out at once and was again mocked by the echo of my own voice and by the wind and the dripping of the cave water and the squeaking of the bats. I told numbers to measure the time. It occupied my mind and gave me a sense of purpose and method.
I had not counted far when my body slipped down appreciably and with panic in my breast I realized that the moss which gripped me in a tight seal was tearing loose. I looked about for something to hold to, broken arm or not, but my hand found only slick and featureless planes of rock. I was going through. It was a matter now of time.
Another lurch down, to the level of my right elbow. That bony knob served as a momentary check but I could feel the moss giving way against it. A wedge! That was what I needed. Something to stuff in the hole with me to make the cork fit more snugly. Or a long stick to pass under my arm.
I cast my eyes about for something suitable. The few sticks lying about were none of them long enough or stout enough for my purpose. If only I could reach the blue shirt! It would be just the thing for packing. I broke one stick scratching and pulling at the shirttail. With the second one I managed to bring it within reach of my fingertips. Weakened as my hand was, I got a purchase on the cloth with thumb and finger and pulled it out of the dark. It was unexpectedly heavy. Something was attached to it.
Suddenly I jerked my hand away as though from a hot stove. The something was the corpse of a man! Or more properly, a skeleton. He was wearing the shirt. I did nothing for a minute, so frightful and astonishing was the discovery. I could see a good part of the remains, the head with patches of bright orange hair showing under a piece of rotted black hat, one shirtsleeved arm and that portion of the trunk from about the waist upwards. The shirt was buttoned in two or three places near the neck.
I soon recovered my wits. I am falling. I need that shirt. These thoughts bore upon me with urgency. I had no stomach for the task ahead but there was nothing else to be done in my desperate circumstances. My plan was to give the shirt a smart jerk in hopes of tearing it free from the skeleton. I will have that shirt!
Thus I took hold of the garment again and snatched it toward me with such sharp force as I could muster. My arm seized up with a stab of pain and I let go. After a little tingling the pain subsided and gave way to a dull and tolerable ache. I examined the result of my effort. The buttons had torn free and now the body was within reach. The shirt itself remained clothed about the shoulders and arm bones in a careless fashion. I saw too that the maneuver had exposed the poor man’s rib cage.
One more pull and I would have the body close enough so that I could work the shirt free. As I made ready for the job my eyes were attracted to something—movement?—within the cavity formed by the curving gray ribs. I leaned over for a closer look. Snakes! A ball of snakes! I flung myself back but of course there was no real retreat for me, imprisoned as I was in the mossy trap.
I cannot accurately guess the number of rattlesnakes in the ball, as some were big, bigger than my arm, and others small, ranging down to the size of lead pencils, but I believe there were not fewer than forty. With trembling heart I looked on as they writhed sluggishly about in the man’s chest. I had disturbed their sleep in their curious winter quarters and now, more or less conscious, they had begun to move and detach themselves from the tangle, falling this way and that.
This, thought I, is a pretty fix. I desperately needed the shirt but I did not wish to “mess” further with the snakes in order to have it. Even while I considered these things I was settling and being drawn down to. . . what? Perhaps a black and bottomless pool of water where the fish were white and had no eyes to see.
I wondered if the snakes could bite in their present lethargic state. I thought they could not see well, if at all, but I observed too that the light and warmth of the sun had an invigorating effect on them. We kept two speckled king snakes in our corn crib to eat rats and I was not afraid of them, Saul and Little David, but I really knew nothing about snakes. Moccasins and rattlers were to be avoided if possible and killed if there was a chopping hoe handy. That was all I knew about poisonous snakes.
The ache in my broken arm grew worse. I felt some more of the binding moss give way against my right arm and at the same time I saw that some of the snakes were crawling out through the man’s ribs. Lord help me!
I set my teeth and took hold of the bony hand that stuck forth from the blue shirtsleeve. I gave a yank and pulled the man’s arm clean away from the shoulder. A terrible thing to do, you say, but you will see that I now had something to work with.
I studied the arm. Bits of cartilage held it together at the elbow joint. With some twisting I managed to separate it at that place. I took the long bone of the upper arm and secured it under my armpit to serve as a cross-member. This would keep me from plunging through the hole should I reach that point in my descent. It was quite a long bone and, I hoped, a strong one. I was grateful to the poor man for being tall.
What I had left now was the lower part, the two bones of the forearm, and the hand and wrist, all of a piece. I grasped it at the elbow and proceeded to use it as a flail to keep the snakes at bay. “Here, get away!” said I, slapping at them with the bony hand. “Get back, you!” This was well enough except that I perceived the agitation only caused them to be more active. In trying to keep them away, I was at the same time stirring them up! They moved very slowly but there were so many I could not keep track of them all.
Each blow I struck brought burning pain to my arm and you can imagine these blows were not hard enough to kill the snakes. That was not my idea. My idea was to keep them back and prevent them from getting behind me. My striking range from left to right was something short of 180 degrees and I knew if the rattlers got behind me I would be in a fine “pickle.”
I heard noises above. A shower of sand and pebbles came cascading down. “Help!” I cried out. “I am down here! I need help!” My thought was: Thank God. Someone has come. Soon I will be out of this hellish place. I saw drops of something spattering on a rock in front of me. It was blood. “Hurry up!” I yelled. “There are snakes and skeletons down here!”
A man’s voice called down, saying, “I warrant there will be another one before spring! A little spindly one!”
It was the voice of Tom Chaney! I had not yet made a good job of killing him! I supposed he was leaning over the edge and the blood was falling from his wounded head.
“How do you like it?” he taunted.
“Throw me a rope, Tom! You cannot be mean enough to leave me!”
“You say you don’t like it?”
Then I heard a shout and the sounds of a scuffle and a dreadful crunch, which was Rooster Cogburn’s rifle stock smashing the wounded head of Tom Chaney. There followed a furious rush of rocks and dust. The light was blocked off and I made out a large object hurtling down toward me. It was the body of Tom Chaney. I leaned back as far as I could to avoid being struck, and at that it was a near thing.
He fell directly upon the skeleton, crushing the bones and filling my face and eyes with dirt and scattering the puzzled rattlesnakes every which way. They were all about me and I commenced striking at them with such abandon that my body dropped free through the hole. Gone!
No! Checked short! I was shakily suspended in space by the bone under my armpit. Bats flew up past my face and the ones below were carrying on like a treefull of sparrows at sundown. Only my head and my left arm and shoulder now remained above the hole. I hung at an uncomfortable angle. The bone was bowed under my weight and I prayed it would hold. My left arm was cramped and fully occupied in holding to it and I had not the use of the hand in fending off the snakes.