Sidewinder

by Jory Sherman

  “Come,” Wading Crow said, gesturing to Brad and Felicity. “Rain soon.”

  Felicity stopped just outside the shelter, looking up at the top and sides. The shelter was really two lean-tos with a double beam at the top. The Indians had cut small thick spruce trees, trimmed the bottoms, and cut a single branch to make a kind of hook. The hooks were set over each beam and more small spruces were set in the trough between them on small cross-beam supports. There were trimmed tree branches crisscrossed on both sides of the sloping roof, and these, too, had small, hooked spruce trees draping them, so that all of the trees overlapped and offered shelter from the rain and wind.

  “This is very nicely built,” Felicity said. “You could almost live in it.”

  When she stepped inside, she saw Gray Owl drop the snake out of its bag into a basket. Then she heard all the snakes rattling, and she shrank back against Brad for protection.

  “Wait until you see Gray Owl feed them mice and rats,” he said.

  Felicity shuddered. Brad put an arm around her.

  He took off her hat and stroked her hair. He had the right touch. She began to relax.

  “Gray Owl, this is my wife,” Brad said in Spanish. “She is called Felicidad, Felicity, in English.”

  “With much pleasure,” Gray Owl said in Spanish. “Sit. Do you have hunger?”

  “I have a little hunger,” she replied in the same tongue. Then, in English, “Brad, I brought sandwiches for the three of us. But we can share with Gray Owl and Walking Crow.”

  “What is sandwich?” Walking Crow asked.

  “You will see,” Brad said.

  Brad put their hats near the door. He and Felicity sat on a buffalo robe.

  “This is where I slept last night,” he told her. “Snug as a bug in a rug.”

  She rubbed her fingers in the deep fur of the buffalo robe.

  “Nice,” she said, and glanced around at all the baskets. She heard hissing and rattles, and she snuggled close to Brad.

  “Can they get out?” she whispered to him.

  “Not unless you open a basket and call to them,” he said. “They’ll come a-runnin’ if you do that, like trained pups.”

  “Don’t joke about a thing like that,” she said.

  “You need to stop thinking about those snakes, darlin’.”

  “How can I?”

  Brad smiled. He was thinking about the snakes, too. After all, one of them, a sidewinder, had gotten out, and it had sunk its fangs into his hand. He winced at the thought.

  In a few minutes Julio returned, carrying saddlebags, three rifles, and three canteens.

  He set them down just inside the shelter, next to Felicity’s and Brad’s hats.

  He handed two yellow slickers to Brad and kept one for himself.

  “I put the saddles and bridles under a deadfall,” he said. “Covered them up good with branches and leaves. We should ride back to the rancho, I think.”

  Julio eyed the Hopi and the Arapaho as if they were poisonous snakes, ready to strike at any minute.

  “Sit yourself, Julio,” Brad said in Spanish. “We will eat soon and wait out the rain. Maybe it will blow over quick.”

  Brad knew that storms in the mountains were unpredictable. They could come up suddenly and blow on by just as quickly. Or, at certain times, they could rage for days, not with just one lone storm but a passel of them, streaming down from the north, one after the other. It was early spring in the Rockies, and this might be just one of those spring storms that lasted only an hour or two.

  “We can’t stay the night, Brad,” Felicity said. “We can eat on the ride back.”

  “There’s no hurry, is there?” He thought he had detected an odd tone in Felicity’s voice, as if there was more to her thoughts than what she was saying.

  “I—I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”

  “The brindle cow, she come back,” Julio said, and Brad saw a look pass between him and Felicity.

  “She did?” Brad said. “When?”

  “This morning, as we were leaving,” Felicity said.

  Again, there was a sharp look between his wife and Julio.

  “So, we can go back, eh?” Julio said. “Maybe we can ride faster than the storm.”

  As if in answer, there was a flash of light inside the shelter. Five seconds later, they heard a loud rumble of the thunder. There was more thunder right behind it, sounding like an empty warehouse full of rolling barrels.

  Brad had been counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. Five seconds.

  “That was about five miles away,” he said. “We can’t beat it, and if we ride out there, we’re liable to get fried to a crisp by a lightning strike.”

  Wading Crow walked over to the three sitting by the entrance.

  “No good ride,” he said. “Big storm. Much rain. Lightning kill like bullet. You stay.”

  “But . . .” Felicity started to say, but the look on Brad’s face told her she might want to keep quiet. She knew that look, as a wife knows her husband’s ways.

  “We will accept your hospitality, Wading Crow,” she said, and Brad smiled at her, a quick smile that told her she had done the right thing.

  “Heap food. Many robes. Plenty wood make fire. Fire make warm. Sleep good,” Wading Crow said, and walked away.

  “I never knew Indians could be so polite,” she whispered. “Well, I guess we’ll stay then. After all, we’re not at war with them. I don’t expect they’ll scalp us.”

  “Indians learned scalping from the white man, Felicity. And probably some of our other bad habits as well.”

  “Oh, you’re just making that up,” she said in a playful voice, then slapped a hand on his chest. She jerked her hand back right away and a startled look flared the light in her eyes.

  “What was that?” she said.

  “What?”

  “When I hit you just then, I felt something. Have you got a bug or a spider on your chest?”

  Brad looked down and patted his chest. He had forgotten about the rattles. He had tucked the lanyard inside his shirt and just forgotten about it.

  He pulled on the thin sinew and drew out the set of rattles. He shook them in Felicity’s face, and she drew back in shock.

  “Oooh,” she said, “get it away from me.”

  She scooted away from him a few inches. He continued to shake the rattles and dangled them still closer.

  “It won’t bite,” Brad said.

  “That’s cruel, Brad. You know I’m scared of snakes.”

  He stopped shaking the rattles and slipped them back inside his shirt.

  “Gray Owl cut these off the snake that bit me,” he said.

  Felicity’s eyes widened.

  “Oh,” she said. “Are you going to keep them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I hope you’re not going to wear them.”

  “Well, they’re not much good in a drawer at home.”

  “Brad, you aren’t going to wear them around me, you hear?”

  “Certainly not, darlin’. Those rattles would give you too much warning.”

  “What?”

  “Well, sometimes a man likes to sneak up on a woman.”

  “Oh, you. That’s not funny.”

  “It’s funny to me.” He turned and looked at Julio. “Isn’t it funny to you, Julio?”

  “It is a little funny,” Julio admitted, but his heart wasn’t in it. The last thing he wanted to do was get into the middle of an argument between a man and his wife. He pulled his legs up and rested both arms on them, as if he was a turtle drawing into its shell.

  “See, Felicity? Julio thinks it’s funny.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “I’ll keep the rattles as a souvenir,” he said.

  “In a drawer. In the tack room. Out in the barn.”

  “Whatever you say, darlin’.”

  And she knew he wasn’t going to obey her wishes. But she would never let him wear them when the
y were in bed together. That was a sacred place to her and no place for souvenir rattlesnake rattles. And she knew he would abide by that particular ruling. She scooted back toward him, a sly, coy look on her face.

  The shelter lit up with a flash of lightning, and two seconds later a peal of thunder rolled across the skies. The thunder shook the shelter and the ground beneath them.

  “Close,” Brad said.

  Then they all raised their heads and listened to the first spatters of rain hitting the trees outside and tinking on the spruce boughs. Moments later, the wind picked up, blowing rain inside the hut, lashing the cut boughs, and wailing high in the trees.

  Felicity nestled against Brad. He put his arms around her.

  “I’m so glad we’re not out there in this,” she said.

  In counterpoint to the rain, some of the rattlesnakes, disturbed, began to clatter. Brad felt Felicity shiver against him as a crack of lightning struck within a few yards of the shelter.

  Brad could smell the ozone, taste it like copper in his mouth.

  He, too, was glad that they were not riding through this storm, out in the open where the lightning danced across the land like an electric lattice.

  And the darkness steeped around them while Gray Owl scratched his flint on steel to start the fire. A thousand tom-toms and kettle drums boomed outside, and the rain blew straight and hard, shooting silvery lances through the openings in the spruce boughs.

  ELEVEN

  The wind howled through the trees, cracking limbs, hurtling pine branches to the ground with loud crashes. To those in the makeshift shelter, it sounded like cannon and gunfire, as if armies were clashing in mortal combat all around them. The sky was so dark, it felt like night, and the flashes of lightning only served to heighten the illusion of a great war in the mountains.

  The rattling of the snakes inside the baskets reached a feverish pitch, adding to the din. Then the hail fell from the sky and, blown by the wind, sounded like grapeshot striking the trees, both living and dead, littering the ground with white pellets. A few entered the shelter, stung Julio’s back and arms until he moved away from the entrance, and a couple hit the fire, hissed, and melted in almost the twinkling of an eye.

  The five people munched on fresh beef sandwiches, packed with mustard, ketchup, and boiled turnip greens. Gray Owl kept the fire bright with fresh wood, and shadows danced to the tune of the hail and rain.

  Julio moved closer to the fire, sitting near Felicity and Brad on the buffalo robe. They drank water from their canteens. The men stepped outside to relieve themselves until Felicity could stand it no longer. She donned her slicker and ventured outside, too, after the hail stopped. Brad went with her. When she found a place, he took off his slicker and held it over her as she squatted next to the south side of a large juniper tree. They both heard the horses whinny several yards away.

  When she had finished, Brad said, “Let’s check on the horses before we go back.”

  “Good idea,” she said, her face glistening with rain drops.

  The horses were packed together, their rumps to the wind. All wore the long rope halters Brad always carried with him when he rode off the ranch. He sometimes let the horses graze while he and Julio had lunch. He couldn’t find the saddles and bridles. It was too dark. He patted the necks of each horse and spoke soothingly to them.

  “I’m glad I left Curly inside when I left,” Felicity said. “But, he’s going to be scared.”

  “Yeah. Curly doesn’t like storms.”

  “He doesn’t like thunder and lightning, you mean.”

  “I know he shakes like he’s passing peach seeds every time a storm comes up.”

  “Runs under our bed and hides.”

  “Is that a safe place?” Brad kidded. “It’s good to know.”

  “Not for you it isn’t,” she said, and they ducked their heads and trotted back through the trees. They could see the soft glow of firelight inside the Indian hut. They had forgotten to wear their hats, which probably saved those from being blown away, and when they returned, their heads were soaked to the scalp. They looked like a pair of drowned rats, but no one in the shelter laughed at them.

  Felicity shook out her hair and combed it with her fingers, letting the warm air from the fire blow through her tresses until they dried.

  The darkness came on, and the wind died down. But the rain persisted, and sometimes a gust would spray water through the small openings and spatter the fire and the people sitting around it, looking for all the world like a gathering of ascetics on some dark pilgrimage to the nether regions.

  Gray Owl lit a small clay pipe and offered it around. Julio and Brad both shook their heads.

  “You do not take the smoke?” Gray Owl said to Brad.

  “Too hard to get tobacco. We live a long way from a general store.”

  “Tobacco is good. To smoke is good.”

  Brad noticed that Gray Owl had sprinkled some of the tobacco into the fire before he packed his pipe. And then he had blown smoke to the four directions before offering it to the others. Wading Crow took the pipe and did the same thing, blowing smoke in four directions.

  “The Mexican sheepherders who bring their sheep to the mountains in summer bring much tobacco. We buy, we trade.” Wading Crow passed the pipe back to Gray Owl. “We have much tobacco. We buy the old sheep from them.”

  “Wading Crow does not like sheep much,” Gray Owl remarked. “He likes the beef.”

  “But we do not have beef anymore. If you have beef, Sidewinder, I would like to buy some cows from you.”

  “I have beef,” Brad said. “I suppose I could sell you a few head. How will you pay?”

  “I will pay in gold.”

  “Gold?”

  “My people have much gold.”

  Julio’s eyebrows arched in surprise.

  “Dust or nuggets?” Brad asked.

  “Some dust. Some small nuggets. We have a scale as well.”

  “Do you know where my ranch is?” Brad asked.

  “Do you not live in the valley below where the Mexi cano Albert once lived?”

  Brad exchanged a look with Julio. Felicity looked puzzled. She wore a quizzical expression on her face.

  “Who is this Albert?” she asked. “Why have I never heard of him?”

  “Julio, did you show her the burned house?” Brad asked.

  “Yes. I did not tell her who had once lived there.”

  “That was Albert’s house? Who was he? What happened?”

  “Seguin,” Wading Crow said. “Albert Seguin. He and his woman, his two sons were killed by a very bad man, a stealer of cattle. There was an American boy living with him also. He, too, was killed. I did not know his name. He said he had run away.”

  “He was from Denver, I heard,” Julio said. “The white boy. I had forgotten about him. His father rode down from Denver, took his body back there to be buried.”

  “Do you know who the rustlers were?” Brad asked.

  Gray Owl passed the pipe back to Wading Crow. He puffed slowly on it.

  “We know the stealers of cattle,” he said. “Two brothers. They are called Coombs. The leader is Delbert. His brother is called Hiram. They are very bad white men. They are much feared.”

  Brad looked at Julio.

  “I did not know who the rustlers were. I did not want to know. I did not ask.”

  “How horrible,” Felicity said. “To murder those poor people over a few head of cattle.”

  “The bad men live in Oro City,” Wading Crow said. “They steal from good men.”

  “What do they do with the cattle they steal?” Brad asked.

  “They are what you call butchers,” Wading Crow said. “They sell the meat to those who cook and sell food in the towns.”

  “Why hasn’t somebody stopped them?” Felicity asked. “Why doesn’t the law arrest them?”

  “I do not know,” Wading Crow said.

  “Julio?” Brad looked straight at him.

  “I t
hink people are afraid. And it is said that they pay the town marshal and the sheriff. There is much money to be made in selling cattle that cost no pesos to the thieves.”

  “Damn,” Brad said. “Somebody ought to do something. Back in Missouri, they would be hanged.”

  “They do not hang such men in Oro City,” Julio said glumly.

  They all sat silent for a time, listening to the soft patter of rain on the spruce-laden shelter. Felicity wondered if she ought to tell Brad about the horse tracks down by the creek. She could not help thinking about them now, especially after learning about the Seguin family. Maybe the Coombs brothers were scouting out their ranch, counting heads, with an idea to rustle their entire herd, some two hundred cows. No, now was not that time. They were stuck up here in the storm. She would tell him on the way back or wait until they got home.

  “Wading Crow,” Felicity said, after a time, “why did you call my husband ‘Sidewinder’? His name is Brad. Brad Storm.”

  “Indian name, Sidewinder.”

  She looked at Brad. “Your Indian name? When did this happen?”

  “This morning, I think. Last night maybe. It’s just what they call me.”

  “Him good medicine,” Gray Owl said. “Strong medicine. Kill sidewinder.” He made a rattling sound with his teeth.

  Wading Crow had been thinking. He was counting on his fingers. Brad watched him, wondered what he was figuring in that Arapaho brain of his.

  “Sidewinder,” Wading Crow said, “you bring ten cow. I give two ounces for cow.”

  “Two ounces of gold for each cow?” Brad said.

  Wading Crow nodded. “Ten cow. Twenty ounce. You bring. I make map to village.”

  Brad looked at Felicity, who seemed lost.

  “That’s more than we could get in Pueblo,” Brad said. “More than we could in Denver. Even if we drove them to the railhead in Kansas, we probably wouldn’t get that much.”

  “How much is it in greenbacks?” she asked.

  “Thirty-two dollars a head, Felicity. Three hundred and twenty dollars for ten cows.”

  She let out a low whistle.

  “I could buy you that dress you wanted in Oro City,” he said. “The one at Cotter’s store.”

  “Oh, Brad. That was just a-wishin’.”