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the snake

by dianne briggs

THE STARS blurred in milky streaks as the youth pushed ~is horse
faster and faster through the night. He had to keep gomg, had
to keep urging his sweating pinto forward, had to keep running and
looking back and then running into the void which had suddenly be-
come his life.

The sun beat down upon the parched desert land and caused
shimmering heat patterns to distort the sand into constant motion.
Mopping the sticky rivulets of sweat from his brow with a faded red
handkerchief, George Crandall leaned against his wagon of wares and
frowned at the wasteland around him. He had stopped beneath a
scraggly mesquite tree over an hour ago to rest his team, and during
that time he slouched there bitterly contemplating his circumstances.
Many thoughts had drifted through his mind in the disjointed pat-
terns of cigarette smoke ... thoughts of his wife, Martha, who had
died from hard work and consumption four years before and left him
with a motherless child ... thoughts of the clang and rattle of his
pots and pans as he rode from one town to another to be greeted by
the shrill, intense bargainings of the ugly farmers' wives ... thoughts
of his short, paunchy build by which nature had made him her pawn
to be unattractive and ridiculous ... thoughts of the government
man who had passed him on the road that morning and asked if he
had seen a young kid riding hard on a pinto. A thousand dollar re-
ward was being offered for the capture, dead or alive, of a boy who
was now dubbed a killer. As if he, who had already been cheated in
so many ways, would ever see a thousand dollars.

Crandall spat upon the ground in disgust and squinted into the
distance where his little daughter rode around gaily on her pony.
Life had even mocked him by giving such a lovely child as Cathy to
.him. How the heavens must be laughing at his inadequacy to give
her dainty dresses and dolls and a home; how they must have en-
joyed his frustrating and impotent attempts to find her another
mother. A thousand dollars, hell!

The sun had passed its highest point when the boy came upon
a peddler's wagon stopped beneath a lone mesquite tree. His head
whirled from heat and exhaustion, and he knew he would have to
stop in his flight. With heaving sides and lather-streaked body, his

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