The Serpent's Bite

by Warren Adler

  “Make sure you clean up before we get back,” he barked to Tomas in an arrogantly commanding tone. Tomas shrugged his consent. While Temple bristled at such treatment of the Mexican, he did not interfere. It wasn’t pleasant to witness, and it took considerable discipline to force himself to cast a blind eye.

  He was discovering that Harry had turned into a brute. What bothered him more was that he had let nostalgia color his judgment in hiring him. He would have been better served if he had done more research and had chosen a different outfitter, although that would have somehow defeated his purpose.

  Leaving Tomas behind to attend to the cleanup and other chores, they moved out of the camp on horseback, following Harry on the lead horse. Occasionally, as if he felt compelled to validate his expertise in the face of his obvious addiction, he would stop to point out wildflowers by name. With obvious expertise, he identified Indian paintbrush, white yarrow, bluebell, wild buckwheat, mountain harebell, Queen Anne’s lace, and an array of lilies, mountain orchids. At times, he would dismount and point out patches of wild fruits: raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, elderberry, silverberry, and thimbleberry.

  “Berry good,” Scott joked.

  At each change in the landscape, Harry would halt the horses and offer more information about the environment. He was encyclopedic when it came to birds, usually recognizing them by their birdsong, and able to point them out as if he possessed superhuman eyesight and hearing. He pointed out an amazing variety of woodpeckers—downy, hairy, white-headed—and insisted he could identify them by their pecking sounds. At times he would get excited and animated when a species surfaced that wasn’t supposed to be seen at this time of year.

  He would rattle off the names of little critters that crossed their path: Uinta squirrels, chipmunks, yellow-bellied marmots, meadow mice, red squirrels, and white-footed mice. This was his turf, and Temple marveled at Harry’s knowledge. He seemed to enjoy imparting the information. Temple understood and listened earnestly.

  In a compelling way, this display of knowledge did vindicate his choice, and Temple felt himself willing to overlook his own criticism. This place, after all, seemed on another planet. Different rules applied. Such thoughts made him feel better.

  If one discounted the drinking, there was no question that Harry was a man who reveled in the outdoors and was proud of his knowledge. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, probably glimpsing the end to his outfitter’s working life and the changing trends in management of the wilderness, he had made his disappointment palpable, numbing himself with booze as he faced the inevitable. He wondered what Harry’s life was outside his outfitting career. Had he a family? Children? For some reason, Temple had never asked, as if he had had a secret wish that his outfitter’s only real life was in the wilderness.

  At one point, as they crossed a meadow, Harry pointed along the tree line.

  “There they go,” he said. “Wolves.”

  They followed his gaze. Three wolves had stopped to inspect them then moved on.

  “All over the fucking place now,” Harry said.

  “Is that bad?” Courtney asked.

  “There,” he pointed to a dead animal. “Elk calves.” He looked around and moved to other parts of the meadow. They followed him to more carcasses of young elks. “Sumbitches. Herd went through, and these bastards just killed off the babies.”

  “Just killed them and left them?” Temple asked. “I thought they killed to eat and survive.”

  “So they say,” Harry sighed.

  “You sure about that, Harry?” Courtney asked. It was quickly apparent that she had triggered Harry’s ire. “The wolves belong here. Greedy ranchers decimated them. They belong here.”

  Harry flushed with anger but did not respond.

  “Hey, sis,” Scott said. “It’s Harry’s business. I mean, what the hell do you know about it? You live in Hollywood.”

  “And that explains it?” Courtney snapped.

  “Yup,” Scott said, chuckling.

  The defending voice seemed to placate the outfitter and throw him back into teaching mode. Wisely, Courtney fell silent.

  “Good and bad in everything,” Harry said. “Wolves have real family solidarity. All for one, one for all. That’s the good. Right, Temple?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Temple said. He certainly could not argue with the concept. Harry had gotten that right. It was, after all, the purpose of this enterprise.

  “And the bad?” Courtney asked with obvious skepticism.

  “The young ones hone their skills, become sport killers,” Harry hissed, shaking his head in disgust. “Must get their jollies this way. Kill off the young. They’re supposed to be smart. Bullshit. Soon they’ll bring down the whole elk population. There’ll be nothing left to hunt. Hunters cull the herd. Wolves decimate them. Moose, too. They’ll be gone in a few years. Have to close shop.”

  “Hunting is so—” Courtney began.

  “Enough,” Scott said. “You’ve been in Hollywood too long. Talk about predators. They eat each other.”

  Courtney sneered.

  Temple contemplated the idea as Harry had expressed it. Like Courtney, he didn’t really agree with Harry’s explanation. It had all the earmarks of self-interest, which he understood.

  Besides, he hated guns, which were the choice of weapon in numerous thefts in the jewelry business. Friends in the diamond trade had been murdered and burglarized by hoodlums using guns. He had been lucky never to have been robbed, but security was an enormous expense.

  Contrary to Harry’s point of view, he was attracted to the wolves’ sense of family. He looked at his children.

  “Guess all of us creatures are both good and bad.”

  “You got that right, Temple,” Harry sighed, turning his horse back to the trail. The others followed.

  They reached the river’s edge in a couple of hours and dismounted. Harry unpacked the rods and waders and offered rudimentary lessons on casting, then attached a fly to his own line and demonstrated his skill and prowess by hooking trout after trout, detaching them and throwing them back into the river. He explained that the protocol of fly-fishing was to treat it strictly as a sport, abiding by the rules of catch and release, regardless of the size of the catch.

  “Of course,” Harry winked, “we’ll save the fat old guys for dinner. The Mexican is a wiz at trout.”

  Temple, as usual, snapped pictures of each of them and prevailed on Harry to take pictures of the three of them in their fishing duds.

  Observing Harry as expert instructor, Temple’s fear of Harry’s excessive drinking abated somewhat. After attaching flies to their lines and letting them practice casting, Harry assigned them different spots along the river, and they moved into the current in their waders and began casting their lines.

  Temple took up his position at a spot about fifty yards from where Courtney was stationed and began a clumsy series of casts while Harry went from person to person correcting their mistakes. The process required great concentration, and Temple kept at it for some time without results. Courtney seemed to be having better luck, occasionally screaming her success when she landed a fish and calling for Harry to unhook it and throw it back in the river. Scott, at the furthest point, was apparently having as little success as his father.

  About an hour into the activity, Temple managed to get a bite and reel in his catch. He looked around for Harry, who seemed to have disappeared, then called out to Courtney who cried out Harry’s name without response and waded back to shore and soon disappeared in an apparent search for him. In the distance, he saw Scott start to move back to shore, assuming he had gone to assist in his sister’s search for Harry.

  Temple managed to reel in the trout but he was having difficulty reaching out to grab it so that he could disengage it from the hook. He had been standing on some submerged rocks, but in the effort to reach the fish with his hand, he was thrown off balance, and he slipped off the rock and found himself on much softer footing.

&
nbsp; With the fish still wriggling on the line, he reached out again and again, not only failing to retrieve the fish but sinking deeper and deeper into the muck. He continued the attempt until he realized that he was now knee-deep and could no longer move his legs. No more clues were needed. He was caught in what Harry had warned was a quagmire.

  He tried turning in the direction of where the others had been assigned only to find that he faced in the opposite direction.

  He did not panic until he was waist high and, to his horror, still sinking. The more he struggled, the more he sank. Finally, he cried out. He threw the rod into the water, leaving his hands free to create a kind of sound cup. Again and again, he called at the top of his lungs. He heard the echo but was discovering that the sound was being carried in the wrong direction. All thoughts left his mind, except one: survival!

  Chapter 7

  Courtney saw her father downstream casting and Scott upstream looking totally absorbed in the process. After her first two strikes, after which Harry had unhooked the fish and released them back into the stream, her luck seemed to have changed, and for a long time the trout rejected her fly. Then suddenly the rod bent. She had a big one on the line and shouted for Harry.

  He did not respond. She called again and again. No response.

  She couldn’t understand it, although his drinking problem lurked in the back of her mind. Earlier he had been solicitous and instructive, the dutiful guide, dispelling her earlier fear. It now roared back.

  Harry had complimented her on her natural casting ability, which greatly increased her interest and concentration. She could barely remember her earlier attempt at the sport on their first trek, but she decided that it was fun and she might, indeed, have some natural aptitude in the process.

  The fly-fishing adventure surprised her. Instead of continuing to brood over her relationship with her father and anxieties about her future, she found her mind intensely focused on the predatory nature of the sport. It was predatory in that the hunt required the hunter to goad the hunted into accepting the false premise of the artificial fly and lure it into the trap of its own misperception. She acknowledged that something about the idea must have fascinated her since she took to it with such enthusiasm.

  Her first strike caused her to scream with pleasure, attracting Harry’s attention. He came splashing in beside her, bringing along his familiar scent, then instructing her on the method required to battle the fish into submission and reel it in. Harry skillfully grabbed the slithering trout, extracted the hook, and sent the fish back on its merry way.

  “Seems silly,” she told him, as she observed the release and watched the trout slither away, apparently none the worse for wear.

  “It’s all about the skill and pleasure of the sport,” he muttered. “And the rules of the game.”

  “What about the injured fish?”

  “Heals quickly. None the worse for wear. Lives to be hooked again.”

  “Don’t they ever learn?”

  “They’re like us humans. Never learn nothin’. Always repeat their mistakes.”

  She supposed there was more than a grain of truth in that observation.

  “Spoken like a true cynic,” she snickered.

  He stayed close, watching her as she bagged another one. “A natural,” he muttered, as he repeated the extraction process and threw the trout back into the stream.

  “Just holler when you get another strike,” he said, moving back to the shore.

  She noted that her father and brother were not having much luck, which added to her pleasure. But then she ran into a dry period and for a long time the fish ignored her fly, but she kept up the casting and finally encountered another strike. She caught a glimpse of the trout as it jumped and fought to detach itself from the hook. She called for Harry and continued the fight, remembering his instruction as she let out line and reeled it back cautiously. This was a big one, and she greatly enjoyed what was becoming a fierce encounter, screaming for Harry’s attention to help her bring off the final victory.

  “Hey, Harry,” she cried. “I got a big one on the line.”

  He did not come, and she stayed with it until the fish finally managed to break the line and with the hook still embedded swam away, destined probably to live with this appendage throughout its lifetime.

  Wading out of the river, she cried again for Harry and got no answer. Still calling his name, she moved inland to the flat where they had tied the horses, but Harry was nowhere in sight.

  She was surprised to find Scott behind her joining in the search.

  “Harry’s disappeared,” she told him.

  “Probably sleeping off a drunk somewhere. He’ll turn up.”

  “He better.”

  The idea of Harry’s disappearance was not lost on her. She hadn’t a clue about how to get back to the camp and was certain that her brother and father were equally ignorant.

  “Don’t panic, little sister. He doesn’t want to lose his livelihood.”

  She took some comfort in his reassurance and tried to put it out of her mind.

  “You should’ve seen what I had on my line,” she said, changing the subject. She illustrated the size of the trout. “It broke the line and got away. I needed the son of a bitch to help me bring it in.”

  “I didn’t even get a nibble.”

  “Dad, too, didn’t seem to have any action.”

  The thought of their father reminded her that he was still out there, and they meandered toward the stream to observe him in action. They had moved some distance away, but he could be seen in the near distance, a dark figure standing a few yards into the stream. At first she thought that the distance and brightness of the sun had distorted her image of him. He looked smaller, and she could not detect any movement, nothing suggestive of active fly-fishing.

  They moved toward him but had not gone more than a few steps when they stopped suddenly and looked at each other.

  “Are you seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Courtney asked.

  Scott swiveled, looking first at his father in the distance then at her.

  “Could be an optical illusion,” he said, his voice a throaty whisper.

  “Or the contour of the riverbed.”

  “Could be.”

  Sounds came to them, echoes.

  “Maybe the wind,” Courtney said, unsure.

  She found herself contemplating a course of action, deliberately holding back. Could this be an opportunity? she asked herself.

  “We had better see,” Scott said, exchanging glances with his sister, stepping forward.

  “He’s fine.”

  “Could be my eye’s playing tricks,” Scott acknowledged. “These sunglasses aren’t prescription.”

  “Could be,” she said calmly, remembering Harry’s warning.

  “We should get closer.”

  “Let’s look for Harry,” Courtney said, glancing at her brother, who continued to squint in his father’s direction.

  “He might be in trouble,” Scott said, betraying signs of anxious uncertainty. “He did warn us. We were told to be careful.”

  “Don’t be such a worrywart, Scottie. He’s out there fishing is all. Let’s find Harry.”

  She started moving in the direction of where the horses were tethered. Scott held back still squinting.

  “Maybe we should go see.”

  “Stop overreacting.”

  She stopped moving, looking into the distance. He did seem smaller. She shot a glance at her brother who looked puzzled.

  “I’m going,” Scott said. “He looks like he’s sinking.”

  “You think so?”

  She knew she was stalling now, acknowledging the truth to herself.

  “Damn it, Courtney, he’s in trouble.”

  He started to run toward his father. Courtney held her ground, conscious of her motive.

  “I’ll get a rope,” she shouted. “There’s one on Harry’s horse.” She started to move toward the horses again. She saw Harry m
oving toward them, running.

  “Fuck, I warned you,” he shouted, moving fast. When he reached Courtney he passed her quickly, and she followed. He caught up to Scott who stood on the bank parallel to his sinking father.

  “Hold on, Dad,” he shouted through cupped hands.

  Their father had turned ashen. He was no longer holding his fly rod.

  “Don’t fight it,” Harry shouted. Courtney noted that he seemed panicked, sobered by the situation. “Hang on, Temple.”

  Their father nodded, his expression pained. He was clearly frightened.

  “We’re here, Dad, you’ll be fine,” Scott cried, his voice trembling.

  “We’re here, Dad,” Courtney echoed.

  “Be right back,” Harry called. “Just don’t fight it.”

  Harry rushed into the tree line, quickly reemerging with a long branch. He instructed Scott and Courtney to join hands as he cautiously made his way into the stream, stopping at what appeared to be some rock foundation below, which gave him a firm footing. Then he reached out with the branch, ordering their father to grasp it with both hands. Turning toward Scott and Courtney, he cried, “Heave when I say.”

  They joined hands.

  “Heave,” Harry shouted.

  At first Temple did not budge, but after a number of tries he began to slide forward until his body was free of the muck. They dragged him toward the edge of the stream and rushed over to assist him, Scott holding him under one armpit and Harry the other. At first, he lay supine, trying to catch his breath as the color slowly came back into his complexion.

  Courtney and Scott kneeled beside him. Scott massaged one hand and Courtney the other.

  “Easy, Dad,” she said. “You’ll be fine.”

  Scott shot her a look of reproach.

  “Just relax, Dad,” Scott said. “You sure had us worried.”

  Temple nodded, closing his eyes for a moment, obviously exhausted by the experience.

  “Easy, Temple,” Harry said.

  Slowly, their father gained his composure. Then he sat up.

  “You had us really scared, Dad,” Scott said.

  “Powerful stuff, that muck,” he said, shaking his head, smiling faintly.