Centennial

by James A. Michener

  In the end the children took the body away, for it was no longer of any use, and automatically she went about the job of gathering food. Dimly she sensed that now there could be no more babies, no more kits playing in the limestone chamber and scampering down the runways.

  She left the security of the lodge and went to each of the compass points and to the salient ridges in between, and at each she scooped up a handful of mud and mixed it with grass and kneaded in a copious supply of castoreum, and when the job was done she swam back to the middle of her lake and smelled the night air.

  This was her home, and nothing would drive her from it, neither loneliness nor the attack of otters nor the preying of wolves nor the flooding of the river. For the home of any living thing is important, both for itself and for the larger society of which it is a part.

  Diplodocus had evolved in Colorado but had died out. The horse had evolved here but had left. The bison had originated elsewhere and had moved in. The beaver had originated here but had emigrated. Was there no inhabitant that had originated here and had stayed? Indeed there was, perhaps the most terrifying creature now living on earth.

  For the first four animals that occupied the land about the twin pillars there was self-evident justification. Diplodocus was a magnificent creature that harmed no one; the horse would make man mobile; the bison would make him warm and well fed; and the beaver would make him rich. Even the omnipresent wolf was needed, for he policed the area and kept the herds strong through killing off the old and the weak, while the chattering prairie dog could be justified for the humor it provided. But for the fifth inhabitant no acceptable justification had ever been proposed; the reason for his presence on earth was a mystery.

  On a hot summer’s day a female eagle flying lazily in the sky watched as a herd of bison left the shadows of the twin pillars and headed north for rendezvous on the far side of the North Platte. The eagle watched with unconcern as the great beasts moved out in single file, for there was nothing of advantage to her in the movement of bison or even. in their congregation in large numbers. All they produced was dust.

  But as the bison moved north she noticed that at a certain spot each animal shied to the left, even the most aggressive bulls, and this was worth inspecting, so she hovered for some minutes to confirm her observation, then flew in lazy circles till the herd passed.

  As soon as the last straggler had come to this spot, looked down and veered, she dropped like an arrow from aloft, keeping her eye on the spot and noticing with pleasure that her deduction had been right. Below her in the dust beside a rock was food.

  Increasing her speed, she swooped to earth, almost touching the sand with her wings. At the last moment she extended her talons and grabbed at the object which had attracted her, an enormous rattlesnake some five feet long and very thick in the middle. It had a flat, triangular head and on the end of its tail a curious set of nine hornlike knobs.

  The eagle miscalculated slightly, for its talons did not strike the snake squarely. Only one claw of the right foot caught the rattler, well toward the tail, and although the eagle tried to carry the snake aloft so as to drop it on rocks and perhaps kill it, she failed, for the snake, with a violent twisting effort, tore free, and with blood flowing from the wound, immediately coiled itself to repel the next attack.

  Seeing that the rattler was in a position to strike, the eagle realized that she could not swoop down and take it by surprise, so she landed some distance away, her feet and wings throwing up a cloud of dust, and with wary, high-stepping movements, approached to give battle.

  The snake watched her come and adjusted his position to match hers, but he was not prepared for the kind of attack she made. Uttering a wild cry, she ran directly at the snake, raised her wings, encouraging it to strike at the feathers, then brought the edge of her left wing sharply across the snake’s backbone. It was a staggering blow, delivered with all the force the eagle could muster, and it flattened the rattlesnake.

  Instantly she leaped upon it, catching it squarely in the middle so that her claws dug all the way through that part of the snake’s body. With a flap of her extended wings she soared into the air, but she did not rise to the highest heavens, for she was working on a plan of calculated cunning. Searching not for rocks but for a terrain quite different, she found what she wanted. She flew with her eyes into the wind to assure herself that it was not strong enough to blow the snake off target when she dropped him. Satisfied, she disengaged the serpent and watched as it plummeted into the middle of a cactus thicket, whose needle-sharp spines jutted upward.

  With a thud the rattlesnake fell onto the cactus, impaling itself in a score of places. As it writhed, the jagged edges of the spines cut deep and held fast. There was no way the snake could tear itself loose, and death became inevitable.

  Had the eagle realized that exposure to the sun and loss of blood must soon kill the snake, it could merely have waited, then hauled the dead carcass off to its young. But the bird was driven by deep inner compulsion and felt obligated to kill its enemy, so it flapped its great wings slowly and hovered above the cactus spines, lowering itself until its curved talons could catch the serpent again.

  This time the eagle flew in wide circles, searching for an area of jagged rocks on which to drop the rattler. Locating what she wanted, she flapped her wings and rose to a great height and shook the snake free, watching with satisfaction as it crashed onto the rocks. The fall did great damage, and the snake should have been dead, but like all rattlers he had a terrible determination to survive, so as soon as he struck the rocks he marshaled his remaining strength and took the coiled position.

  The eagle had made a sad miscalculation in dropping the snake onto the rocks, for she had counted upon the fall to kill him outright, but this it had not done, so now she was forced to leave the flat, sandy terrain where she had an advantage and go among the rocks, where the advantage was his. However, since the snake was obviously close to death, she judged that she could quickly finish him off.

  But when she sought to deliver the culminating blow with the edge of her wing, he somehow thrust himself about her body and enclosed it in a constricting embrace, fighting desperately to bring his lethal head into contact with some vital part.

  She was too clever to permit this. Keeping his head at a disadvantage, she strained and clawed and bit until he had to release his hold. For the moment he was defenseless, and she took this opportunity to pierce him for the third time, and now she carried him very high, kicking him free over the rocks again, and once more he crashed onto them.

  He should have been dead, and he feigned that he was, lying stretched out and avoiding the coil. Sorely shattered by this last fall and bleeding from numerous wounds, he made no sound, for his rattles were broken.

  The eagle was fooled. She inspected him from the air, then landed on the rocks and walked unsteadily over to carry him aloft for the last time, but as she neared, the snake coiled and struck with what force he had left and plunged his fangs into the unprotected spot where her thin neck joined her torso. The fangs held there for only a moment, but in that brief instant the muscles in his neck contracted, sending a jet of lethal poison deep into her bloodstream. Easily, so easily, the fangs withdrew and the snake fell back upon the rocks.

  The startled eagle made no motion. She merely stared with unbelieving eye at the snake while he stared back at her with basilisk gaze. She felt a tremor across her chest and then a vast constriction. She took two halting steps, then fell dead.

  The rattlesnake lay motionless for a long time, one wing of the eagle across his wounded body. The sun started to go down and he felt the coldness of the night approaching. Finally he bestirred himself, but he was too damaged to move far.

  For a long period it seemed that he would die, there on the rock with the eagle, but just before sundown he mustered enough strength to drag himself into a crevice where there would be some protection from the night cold. He stayed there for three days, slowly regaining strength
, and at the end of this time he started his painful trip home.

  He lived, as did several hundred other rattlers, some much bigger than he, in the rocks at the twin pillars. They had lived there for two million years, a mass of snakes that found the area good hunting for rats and prairie dogs, with safe crevices in the. rocks for hibernation in the winter. When men reached the area the twin pillars would become known as Rattlesnake Buttes, reassuring beacons in the desert when spotted from afar, dangerous death traps when approached too closely.

  Rattlesnake Buttes! A thousand westward travelers would remark about them in their diaries: “Yesterday from a grate distance we seen the Rattlesnake Butes they was like everbody said tall like cartels in Yurope and you could see them all day and wondered who will be bit by the snakes like them folks from Missuri?”

  The myriad poisonous snakes that infested the buttes served no purpose that man could discern: they terrorized, they ate harmless prairie dogs, they killed whatever they struck, and after a long life they died. Why had they been made custodians of such a deadly poison? It was impossible to say.

  The two fangs that folded back against the roof of the mouth when not needed dropped into operating position when the snake wanted to kill. They were not teeth as such, but hollow and very sharp hypodermic needles, so formed that pressure from the rattler’s throat would not only deposit the poison but inject it to astounding depths. The poison itself was a combination of highly volatile proteins which reacted with the blood of the victim, producing quick and painful death.

  The snakes at Rattlesnake Buttes were apt to leave intruders alone unless the latter did something to frighten them. Bison roamed the area by the thousands, and always had, and as calves they learned to avoid the rattlers. Indeed, even the sound of a rattle, that dreaded clatter in the dust, was enough to make a line of bison move in another direction.

  Occasionally some stupid one would put himself into a position from which there was no escape for the rattler, and then the snake would strike him. If the venom entered the bison anywhere near the head or face, it was invariably fatal, but if it struck a leg, there was a fighting chance that the poison would be absorbed before it reached the heart, but the bison would thereafter be lame in that leg, its nerves and muscles half destroyed by the venom.

  In the days when horses roamed the area, many a fine steed went lame because it blundered upon a rattlesnake and had taken a shot of venom in its fetlock. But if either a bison or a horse saw a rattler about to strike, and saw it in time, it would take protective action and stamp the snake to death. Sharp hoofs were more dangerous to rattlers than eagles or hawks, so that if the bison tried to avoid the snakes, so, too, did the rattlers keep out of the way of bison—and especially deer, whose ultra-sharp hoofs could cut a snake in half.

  The rattler that had defeated the eagle in mortal combat took a long time to recover. For the next two years he was in poor shape, able to leave the buttes for only short trips and always gratified when winter came so that he could sleep for five or six months, but gradually he began to feel better, and the gaping wounds in his body retreated into scars. He started to move about, and when the weather was good he joined some of the other snakes in short expeditions in search of mice and small birds.

  Then his full vigor returned and he resumed a normal life. For him this had always consisted of matching wits with prairie dogs, those chattering little squirrel-like animals that built intricate subterranean towns. There was such a town, rather extensive, not far from the buttes, and for a hundred thousand years the rattlesnakes had invaded it.

  On a warm day, when the sun relaxed and vivified the muscles that had grown stiff in winter, he set out from the buttes and slithered across the desert toward dog-town. From a distance he could see the little mounds that indicated where the creatures lived, and he noticed with gratification that they were as numerous as ever.

  As he approached the town, which contained several thousand dogs, he tried to move as inconspicuously as possible, but from a hillock a sharp-eyed lookout spotted the grass moving and gave a loud chirping sound, which lookouts elsewhere in the town repeated, so that within an instant the whole area was alerted. Where there had been thousands of little prairie dogs sunning themselves and chattering, there were now none and all was silent.

  He had encountered this tactic before and was prepared for it. Crawling as close as practical to a concentrated nest of houses, he coiled the long length of his body and waited. The one thing he could count on was curiosity; no matter what threatened, the prairie dog sooner or later had to come out of his safe burrow to inspect. A hawk could be perched at the opening, his feet showing, but the little dogs had to come out to satisfy themselves that he was really there.

  So the snake waited, and before too many minutes had passed, from one of the burrows a furry little head appeared. By chance its first glance was directly into the eyes of the snake, which startled it so, it gave one wild cry and disappeared down its hole, but before it had ceased trembling from fright, another dog from another hole came out to see if there really was a snake, and this one was not so fortunate as to look directly at the rattler. It turned first in the opposite direction and before it ever saw the snake, the fangs had sunk into its neck.

  There were many burrows in this town, and sometimes the rattlesnakes, caught far from the buttes in bad weather or when the sun was dangerously hot—for a snake, like the great reptiles before him, would quickly perish if exposed too long to the direct rays of the sun—would crawl into the burrows, and even make them their home for extended periods, in which case the prairie dogs would simply leave by another exit.

  Sand owls, which built their nests and raised their young underground, also liked to preempt the burrows rather than take the trouble to build their own, and it was not unusual to see within one town the prairie dogs inhabiting one set of burrows, the sand owls another, and the rattlesnakes a third, with each allowing the other to go pretty much his own way.

  This rattlesnake had no intention of taking up residence in dog-town. It came only to feed, and when it had caught its prey and swallowed it, there were other areas to visit, down by the river, for example, where mice lived among the roots of the cottonwoods. A rattler would always prefer a mouse above any other food, but they were not easy to catch. There were also birds, especially the young, but catching them required unusual patience, and after his encounter with the eagle this rattler was not much attracted to birds.

  As autumn approached, it was essential that each rattler fortify himself with a series of meals upon which he could draw in the months of hibernation, and the hunting became more intense. In those days he practically lived in the heart of dog-town, picking off whatever inquisitive little animals he could, but as the days shortened he felt an irresistible urge to seek protection at the buttes. It was no trivial thing to go to sleep for a series of months during which he would be vulnerable to any foe that came upon him; it was essential that he return to deep rocky crevices which had protected him in the past.

  So he started the trek back to the buttes, and as he went he saw many other rattlesnakes on their way, too, and as they convened at familiar places they moved together and sometimes formed intertwined balls of writhing forms, a score of large rattlers twisted together. When men reached this area, as they soon would, they would sometimes in autumn stumble upon such a ball of writhing snakes—“they was as big as a watermillion”—and they would be horrified; memory of the sight would haunt them, and years later they would speak of it: “I was ridin’ a gray mustang, a very steady brute, and all at oncet he shies and like to throw me on my ass and thank God he didn’t because there by them red rocks at Rattlesnake Buttes was this ball of snakes all twisted up I like to died.”

  Now as the snakes crawled down a path which they had often used before, the old rattler became aware of an unfamiliar creature blundering toward him from the opposite direction. Following his ancient custom, he coiled himself in the middle of the path and emitte
d a sharp rattle. The stranger, unfamiliar with this warning, ignored it, stumbling directly at the rattler, which made an even sharper sound.

  At last the intruder took notice, almost too late.

  The snake struck at the thing that stood close to its fangs, but this was to be a unique experience, for deftly the target leaped aside, and from aloft something descended, striking the rattler a heavy blow behind the head. Knocked out of its coil, the snake endeavored in bewilderment to adjust to this unprecedented assault. It formed a half-coil, preparing to strike anew at its assailant.

  And then it looked up, and instead of seeing a buffalo or a sharp-hoofed deer, it saw a new creature, standing erect, bearing a heavy weapon not seen before, and the last sensation this rattler had was the sight of the weapon descending toward his head with tremendous force, and the strange cry of triumph from the standing figure, and sharp death.