by Gary D. Svee
In a darkness that hid her own hands from her eyes, Catherine’s imagination revealed the snake to her, its head drawn back in an ugly S, eyes black and impenetrable as death. In her mind’s eye, Catherine watched the snake’s tongue flicking, seeking the scent and warmth of her body.
It is a law of nature that cold flows to warmth, and rattlesnakes are no exception to that rule. They seek out sun-warmed rocks and the blood-warmed bodies of mice and freshly hatched birds. They are creatures without warmth or reason or compassion or hate, embodiments only of cold and darkness and death. And this rattlesnake, scratching its way across the floor of the dugout toward Catherine, was following instinct it would obey unto death.
Catherine was petrified with fear. More than anything she wanted to move, but she couldn’t. Her arms pressed about her body as though they were ropes pulled by someone far more powerful than she. Her breath came in wrenching gasps torn from air as palpable as the dirt roof over her head.
Move! Move, damn you, Catherine move! Don’t sit still and let that snake sink its fangs into you. Move!
More scratching. The snake was closer, but how close? Just beyond the table? Just beyond striking distance? Please, God, let it be beyond striking distance.
And then, drawing on some hidden reserve of strength, Catherine began to move, first one leg and then the other. Ever so slowly, she lifted her feet to the rung of the chair, about six inches from the floor.
Her nerves were singing. Had the snake struck, its fangs piercing Catherine’s skin, her muscles would have exploded, bursting into movement.
She leaned forward on the table, bracing herself as she stood. Then she stepped up on the chair seat. From there it was a quick, easy hop to the top of the table, but her leg brushed a plate and it clattered to the floor.
The snake rattled again, more angrily this time, Catherine thought. Just under the table? No, closer to the door. Somewhere closer to the door, but not much. Somewhere close. Very, very close.
Catherine was crouched hands and knees on the table. There wasn’t room for her to stand, and she wasn’t sure the old table would hold her if she could. Even now it was sagging toward her bed, nails giving way under the unaccustomed weight. Catherine edged toward the more stable end, knocking a butter knife on the floor.
Buzzz!
Under the table! The damn thing was under the table. When the sagging table collapsed, the snake would be right under her, writhing and biting like that evil snake at the barn raising.
A shudder ran through Catherine.
She had to get out of the dugout, but how? And then it came to her. Her hands roamed the table, seeking anything left from breakfast that morning. Max’s plate was gone, but her hand found the table knife, and she threw it skittering on the floor. The snake buzzed. The knife must have come close.
Catherine leaned down and threw the spoon. It rasped against the floor and thumped into the snake. By now the buzzing was steady, like bees around a hive on a sunny day. The snake was coiled stationary, and Catherine had the chance she had hoped for. She vaulted off the table, sprawling when the floor reached out of the darkness to slam her to the canvas. She yelped then, expecting to feel the sting of the snake’s fangs, but when that didn’t come, she struggled to her feet and ran to the hazy light that outlined the blanket over the entrance.
The blanket tore as she rushed through into daylight so bright it took her sight away. Blinded, she stumbled on the first step and pitched toward the bottom.
The fall took Catherine’s breath away. She lay in a heap for a moment struggling to draw air into her lungs, and then she rose and began to run, stumbling at first, but smoother as her muscles reached out to meet her fear.
Down the creek bottom she ran, and across the creek, water spraying in sheets from her running feet. Her pace slowed as she climbed the hill on the other side, but then she was free, out on the level plains and away from the hole in the ground and Max and all the rest of it, and she ran and ran and ran.
The plow was slicing through the earth like a knife through living tissue. Max half expected to see blood issue from the wounds he was cutting into the prairie, to hear the earth cry out in protest, but he continued, turning the gold of this year’s wheat crop into a bed for next year’s seed.
The soil was dry, and Max moved in a cloud of dust that hung in the still air like a pall. It was difficult to breathe or see, and after each round Max would pull the team to a halt and climb a little way up the ridge that adjoined the field, sitting in the still, sullen heat to clear his lungs and eyes of dust and to peer at a land burned flat and bleak by the brunt of the sun.
In the distance and the harsh light, it appeared to be nothing more than the shadow of a stump etched against the prairie to the east. But Max knew it could not be a stump, the sun having washed all definition out of natural features long ago, and stumps did not move as this shadow did, painfully, slowly against the vast expanse of the land.
Max rose and took off his hat, wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
Bracing himself against the steepness of the hill, he worked his way back down to the field and walked to the team. He unhitched the horses from the plow, leaving it buried in the field like a splinter, while he drove the horses back to the corral and unharnessed them.
Then Max saddled the mare unhurriedly, working by habit while his mind plowed more fertile fields. When he climbed aboard the mare, he felt at home for the first time in days, the saddle contoured from long use to fit the swell and sway of his legs. He kicked the horse across the creek, and as she topped the hill, he felt the weight of the last few days, the anger and arguments and deceit, slip free of him.
He was on horseback, alone and easy, as he was meant to be. Max urged the mare, somnolent from the morning sun, into a lope and pointed her nose in the direction of the shadow he had seen from the ridge, and then he settled back, enjoying the wind on his face and the hunt.
Catherine had run until her breath gave out. She was walking now, hand pressing the stitch in her side, her breath coming in gasps. She was wet with sweat and muddy from the dust her shoes had kicked up along the road. She felt, more than heard, the horse as it swept by at a gallop, leaving a wake of wind as welcome as it was brief.
But it was no longer welcome when she realized it was Max who reined the mare to a stop and turned to face her.
She bolted, then, through the sagebrush and yucca and prickly pear that lined the road. Max touched his boots to the mare’s flanks, and a moment later Catherine was facing the horse again. She took a few more stumbling steps, and heard the thump of the horse’s hooves as the mare jumped to cut her off.
The mare was a cutting horse, and she knew the game better than Catherine, reading the direction Catherine would run by the set of her head and the tensing of her muscles. The game lasted only the few moments it took Catherine to realize that, and then she sank in a heap to the ground.
Max sat emotionless astride the mare. He felt no pleasure in running Catherine to ground and no vindictiveness. Catherine had run, and he had caught her. That was no more or less than he would have done if she had been a cow or a horse.
The silence, broken only by Catherine’s labored breathing and the buzz of horseflies that came to nip the mare, hung over man, woman, and horse.
Finally, and with great effort, Catherine raised her eyes to look at her captor. The sun hung over Max’s shoulder and painted him sharp edged, black and implacable as a statue. She couldn’t see his face and didn’t know what was written on it. She knew only her exhaustion and her need.
“Ride?”
The silhouette shook its head, almost imperceptibly, and Catherine nearly burst into tears. She had put her soul into that run, and she couldn’t bear the idea of the long walk back. But she rose, sagging with the weight of her desolation, and began to pick her way through the sagebrush to the road. She turned there toward the dugout, plodding along on foot while Max followed behind as though he were drivin
g a range calf in to be cut and branded.
They reached the hill leading down to the creek just when Catherine had decided that she couldn’t walk another step, that she would rather die than force one foot ahead of the other any longer. But when she saw the water, she staggered down the hill and into the creek with the fervor of a believer going to baptism. Catherine knelt on the rock bottom and scooped cool water to her face, rinsing the dirt and dust and exhaustion from it.
And Max sat silently on the mare, aloof to her ministrations, but after a moment he nudged the horse across the stream and then down to the corral. He left the mare inside, cinch loosened but still saddled, and walked back to the crossing.
Catherine had left the creek and was sitting in the swing, water dripping from her face, but as Max neared, he saw the drops were tears. Catherine was crying silently, so intently she didn’t notice Max.
And at that moment, he almost burst into tears. He could not remember ever having cried, nothing having touched him that deeply before. But now he remembered that day not very long ago when Catherine had first seen the swing, how her hair flashed in patches of sunlight as she swung through the shadow of the old cottonwood. He remembered the wonder and the delight in her voice as she walked across the creek bottom and asked, “Did you make that for me?”
Her smile touched him then, dispelling briefly the dread he felt for the moment when she saw the dugout.
And when she smiled and said, “I shall ride out here every day to sit in it beside this brook,” Max was so taken with her beauty he couldn’t speak.
And now Catherine sat in the swing dressed in rough ranch clothes, her hair hanging in strings, and her body streaked with sweat and dust, water and mud.
The guilt Max felt as he looked at her robbed him of speech, but he continued toward her because he was drawn by her vulnerability and his need to ease her pain … and his own. He stood quietly, invisible until he reached out and pulled the swing to a stop.
Catherine looked up then, face white and pasty. When she spoke, her voice was lifeless. “There was a rattlesnake in the cave. He wanted to kill me. I could feel that. Why do you suppose he wanted to kill me?”
But Catherine didn’t wait for an answer. She continued as though she had only a moment to tell the story.
“So I ran and ran and ran until I could run no farther, and then I walked. I felt as though the earth were crawling past me, and if I didn’t walk, it would carry me back here … to you. And then you galloped by on your horse, and I knew that after all that running I had gone nowhere.”
“I realized then that you want to kill me, too. Not like the rattlesnake. You want to corral me, make me into someone I don’t want to be.”
“Isn’t it odd that I have spent my whole life trying to make myself into someone I’m not, and now you’re trying to do the same thing to me and I struggle so against you?”
Catherine was wracked with sobs then, shudders that shook her body, and without thinking, Max stepped into the swing, his arm encircling her shoulders as he sat down. And surprised as he was at his own actions, he was even more surprised when Catherine laid her head on his shoulder and wept.
Max sat stiffly, at attention, afraid that Catherine might break if he moved, that the moment might be lost. But she wept on, running out of tears long before she ran out of grief.
When the sobs died, there was silence that grew until Max felt he could reach out and touch it, if he dared. And then Catherine spoke to Max because there was no one else to listen, and Max listened as Moses had listened on the mountain.
“Until now, I didn’t think this was real. I thought you would come to your senses, and it would all be over. I would be on my way back East, and you would be plotting to bring some other woman to this godforsaken place.”
“But I realize now that you don’t ever intend to let me go—not in November when the priest comes, not ever.”
Max tried to protest, but Catherine waved him to silence. “I would rather die than stay here. My only regret would be that I have lived so much of my life in fantasy, pretending to be someone I’m not. I would die wondering only who I am, and who I might have been.”
A shudder ran through Max, and he couldn’t keep the image of that crazy filly out of his mind. He could see her all tangled in barbwire, standing on three legs while blood streamed from her wounds.
And that image was in Max’s voice as he whispered, “Don’t talk like that.”
But Catherine continued as though Max hadn’t spoken. “I am alone here in the middle of this big empty. I understand now how that can drive someone like Joey to play with death.”
“I’m here.”
“You are my captor, and I am your prisoner. We will never be more than that to each other.”
Then Catherine rose, shrugging off Max’s arm as she stepped off the swing. “You’ve got work to do. First, get that snake out of the dugout, and then build me a door.”
10
Fall came without formal announcement. There was no storm to chase summer away, and trees had not yet written their leafy epitaph … but it was fall.
Max felt the change, seasons in Montana more sensible to feeling than to calendars. Days were wilting still in summer heat, but mornings came with an edge to them, bumping against him as he lay in his blankets on the prairie. And each evening, God painted the sky with such color that even He must weep with the joy of it.
Max had shared one of those evenings with Catherine. He had walked east with the horses that afternoon toward the dugout, watching the light play across the prairie ahead of him. Behind, the sky was practicing with subtle shades of pinks, purples, golds, and blues as an orchestra warms itself before a performance.
At the corral, Max had unharnessed the horses, giving them an extra ration of oats in celebration of having finished seeding the winter wheat. He left the gate of the corral open so they could leave to graze on the cool grass of the creek bottom, and then he hurried to the dugout, knocking before entering the door he had built a couple of weeks before.
Catherine was standing at the stove, putting the finishing touches on dinner. Max took her hand from the frying pan and placed it in his own. When she didn’t resist, he led her out of the dugout, helping her up the hill that marked the boundary of the creek.
When they reached the wagon, Max lifted Catherine to the seat and then leaned against the box, his eyes fixed on the western horizon.
Serenity eases night onto the prairie. The time between light and dark is a quiet celebration of the cycle of life, creatures of the day making way for creatures of the night. Already, bats—weaving their way among the shadows, suspected more than seen—had replaced the swallows.
The sky, a tease in the afternoon, is temptress at dusk. Pale colors richen and deepen until the horizon billows with beauty. Clouds sail through golden seas, and then turn to soar into the sun, mind sketchings on a magnificent canvas.
Men who tear at the earth during the day become one with her at dusk. The beauty of God’s creation pulls at their souls, as a child tugs a friend outside to play.
Catherine felt the tug and the release and the peace that comes from having seen the face of God. At the end, a shaft of light broke through the clouds and streamed to earth in benediction.
Neither Catherine nor Max moved, entranced until barking coyotes broke their reverie.
“Thank you,” she said as Max helped her off the wagon. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“If I could,” Max replied, “I would follow the sun around the earth, living always in sunsets.”
Catherine looked at him quizzically, and he felt a blush spreading from his collar as the color had spread that night from the horizon.
“We best go eat,” he said. “I’m hungry as a bear.”
The rains came the next morning, as though by some grand plan to germinate the wheat before it was covered by winter snow. Days commenced and closed gray and wet, and the land, dry and parched from t
he summer sun, opened like a blotter, drinking long and deep. Springs, little more than trickles in August, grew strong again, cutting new paths through the earth, and for a time Pishkin Creek assumed the color of the land around it.
The rain continued for nearly a week, and Montana old-timers—those who had been in the state when the Indians were still wild—poked faces etched with concern from the doors of log cabins and dugout’s and saloons around the prairie and shook their heads.
The gray, wet sky wasn’t right, and they peered at it from the corners of their eyes, afraid to look directly at this aberration for fear of seeing something man wasn’t meant to see.
Montana could be cold and hot and wet and dry from one moment to the next. But a week of rain was nothing less than a sign from God, and they lacked the cipher.
They couldn’t talk about that, of course. Most of them hadn’t put words to the dread the rain occasioned in them, and those who had were silent, not wanting to be thought of as strange.
So they huddled around dull-red stoves that normally went cold from June to mid-September and waited for a break in the weather—one way or another.
And Max and Catherine were trapped.
The land was impassable in the rain, the clay gumbo slick and sticky at the same time. Max had turned the Percherons loose after the seeding, but on the third day of the rain, they appeared above the creek, each carrying eight to ten inches of caked mud on their hooves. They walked awkwardly, slipping as they worked their way down to water.
Max put the animals into the barn and spent the better part of an hour scraping their hooves clean of the clinging mud. To ride or walk in that mud was madness. And the world pulled in on itself. Max and Catherine had only the bam, the dugout, the rain, and each other.
Before the rain, Max had been filling the loft with hay from the stack on the creek bottom. The job wasn’t done, but to mix wet hay with dry was to invite trouble, and Max couldn’t haul the wet heavy hay to the barn, anyway.
