Chapter One
My feet were killing me. Well they would be if I could feel them.
Shivering uncontrollably I remained where I was as I listened for the sound of riders. Finally the thunder of hooves sounded and I waited for them to pass by, but to my horror I heard them slow to a halt so close to the bridge I was hiding under that I could hear them talking.
“Did you see her?” A man called out.
I about jumped out of my skin as a voice directly overhead on the bridge spoke out in reply, “No, I didn’t. I’ve been waiting here figuring she’d drift downstream, but nothing so far.”
“Well if she ain’t come by now she’s not coming as she didn’t get by us! She must’ve went upstream.”
“Maybe she went over the mountain.” Came another voice into the two-way conversation.
“Are you daft man! She ain’t no fool! She be one of us hill folk. Ain’t nobody but a city slicker stupid enough to cross over Rattlesnake Ridge!”
There were several grunts of agreement and as a party the group took off back the way they’d come. I stayed a little longer in the water, but then crying from the unbearable pain of the cold water I stumbled free of it.
Falling against the river bank I crawled up it until I was free of the water and there I lay shivering. The sun had chosen not to give its warmth today and instead it lay hid behind a field of clouds.
How I could have used its warmth right now!
Crying now more from the pain of loss than the icy tingling of my bare feet and calves I forced myself to get up. Making it up to the elevation of the road I stopped and looked about. No riders were visible.
I stood there debating about what to do. There would be no cover for me, if I continued on downstream and no friends either. I’d stick out in the bigger towns and I didn’t have much money for such places, which left my options being but few.
I would do better to stay in the mountains, but that was no easy feat either. Back a year ago when the killing of the Collins had begun my Ma had packed me up and we’d come and settled in this backwood area of the mountains a good many miles from the place of my upbringing.
Here we’d outlived most of our other kin by all accounts, but it had done us no good in the end for they had found us. Gold money paid up front with more to follow had a way of finding what it wanted.
Again my mind relived the events of the morning in a brutalizing fashion that never seemed to dim in the intensity of the emotion it evoked. Ma had pulled me out of my bed while it was still dark and thrusting my dress on she’d told me to light a shuck for the creek.
She’d told me to wait for her there, and that she’d be along soon after she gathered some things. She hadn’t had the time though.
She’d been about halfway out the door when I’d seen two neighbor men and a city man I’d never seen before slip up out of nowhere and push her back inside the cabin. I’d heard some scuffling and then had come the gun shot and right then and there I knew she was dead.
I’d stayed in hiding, to horror stricken to move, all the while I’d had to listen to them tear our little cabin apart as they looked for something. I knew what it was as I had that something in my pocket.
The something that they wanted was a letter from my Uncle Taran that was over two years old. It was the one thing my Ma had thought to give me when she’d dragged me from my bed.
Before she’d pushed me out the door she’d said, “If anything happens to me you use the gold coins I sewed into your dress and you get yourself West and find your Uncle Taran. He’ll help you and finish the raising of you.”
I’d started to protest then, but she’d pushed me on down the path and out of respect I’d gone on to the hiding place that we had set up. Now, however, she was dead and I had literally nobody to turn to as our friends and kin were either dead or turned traitor to us. Us Collins had once been mighty numerous, but now it seemed we were an endangered kind.
I started out walking and the movement helped bring my feet back to life.
I was going to do what no sane person would be about. I was going to cross Rattlesnake Ridge.
It was a cold late spring day and the sun wasn’t making it through the clouds and so just maybe I’d be lucky. I didn’t really have a choice anyway.
Without a horse I stood no chance down in the valleys and the other routes into the surrounding hills were all watched. Beyond Rattlesnake Ridge was wild country all the way to the Kentucky border. I’d find me a way West then and hopefully free of this blood wrath on anyone that went by the name of Collins.
*****
The day wore on and so did my hunger. Since we’d moved away from home last year in the midst of the killings times had been rough. Ma had guarded our money sparingly and there hadn’t been much in the way of extra.
That said we’d eaten well enough most days, but right now I was missing breakfast and the lunch that should’ve followed. It was still too early for berries although I saw many of them on the bushes I passed by. They were still too green to be eaten and I had no wish of adding stomach upset to my already long list of agonies.
My feet although well calloused were not used to this rough of a terrain. The ground beneath me was turning into nothing but rocks. Rocks with sharp irregular edges.
Sitting down on a boulder I tore at the hem of my dress. The worn fabric ripped and I pulled off several strips of it. I’d sat down next to a birch tree and pulling with all my might I managed to pull off two decent sized strips of bark.
I fashioned the bark pieces as best as I could into the general outline of my foot. That done I laid the bark pieces on the ground near my feet. Reaching into my pocket I pulled free several handfuls of puffy milkweed seeds that I’d picked earlier.
I laid the white plumed seeds that were as soft as chicken feathers onto the two pieces of bark. Next I put my feet on top of the seeds and bark and individually began to wrap each foot up with strips of cotton I had torn off my dress.
The padded bark now secured to my feet from parts of my dress, I sat back and did what I’d been dreading. I reached into my other pocket and pulled free the clumpy piece of root that it held.
It was a swamp cattail root. I’d pulled it this morning from the stream, but only now could I force myself to eat it.
Opening my mouth I bit down on the starchy tuber and chewed. It tasted like pond water and dirt. The urge to throw up was very present, but the urge to survive was greater.
Mouthful after mouthful I forced myself to chew on the starchy roots until it was all gone. There were many times throughout the long ordeal of eating the root that I’d prayed to be wealthy. I never wanted to eat this again, but after the meal was done I forced myself to bow my head and say, “Thank you God for my meal. I hope and pray it does my body good.”
Looking up from the ground I had to fight against sudden tears as all I had lost came to full realization through the daze I felt locked up in, “God help me!” I whispered out brokenly.
“Please keep the snakes away! Both the slithering kind and the kind with two legs that have murdered my whole family. I ask this in your name Jesus, Amen.”
Standing up I forced myself to start climbing upward over the rocky terrain again. The makeshift shoes helped, but they made walking awkward and quite a few times I fell to land hard on the rocks.
*****
By midafternoon I’d cleared the lower reaches of the ridge and I was now coming up on the crest of it. This was the danger area. This ridge faced the warm southern horizon and all along its crest was a stony outcrop that was full of cracks that led deeply into the ground.
The area was literally chock-full of rattlesnakes. Some of the dens had hundreds of snakes to them and the dens themselves weren’t but a few feet from each other in some places.
On a hot day if something were to startle the sunning rattlers into giving their warning tale shake the combined sound of so many snakes rattling could be heard down in the valley. The man had been right. It was insane to contemplate crossing such an obstacle, but I had no choice.
If I fell victim to the snakes then so be it. The bravado of my mind however couldn’t replace the shaking consciousness of my physical reaction to the thought of how that death would be.
I saw them even now all laid out in jumbled piles in the rocks ahead.
“Oh God what do I do?” I moaned out.
If I’d had fire I could’ve made two torches and burned a way through, but all I had was a piece of paper in my pocket. What else could I do?
On sudden inspiration I picked up a rock and threw it. The startled snakes scattered off to the sides to the tune of a mass hissing.
Picking up more rocks I continued to throw them at the sleeping reptiles in order to form sort of a safe corridor between their abundant numbers.
Arming myself with a stick I moved forward toward the pathway of thrown rocks. Giant rattlers to little itsy-bitsy ones reared up into coils at my approach. It was the little ones that you had to watch out for the most though. They packed more venom than the adults did.
Before I could think about it any longer I sprinted forward. Snakes to either side of the cleared pathway of thrown rocks lashed out at me, but I was running and I’m a fast runner.
Thankfully I didn’t trip and clearing the outcropping of stones I ran a short distance further before stopping even as the afternoon continued to hum to the sound of rattles behind me. Breathing hard I noticed one rattlesnake on the small side was giving chase.
What was bothering him so much as to pursue after me I didn’t know, but his lone approach toward me gave me an idea. I shimmied the shoulders of my dress off my shoulders so I could pull the strings that held my nighty in place.
The strings pulled I slid the shoulders of my torn dress back on and pulling the hem of it up I tugged on the nighty, which slid free to pool around my ankles. Stepping out of it I quickly tied the upper end of it off in a knot effectively making an open bag out of the lower portion of the night dress.
The ticked off reptile was nearly upon me and reclaiming my snake stick I pinned him to the ground just behind his head. Leaning forward I arranged the open bottom end of the night dress before the snake which writhed to be free of the pressure of my stick.
I let go with the pressure of the stick on the snake only to then scoot it towards the improvised bag opening. Angrily it retreated from the stick into the night dress and dropping the stick I snatched up the loose ends of the nighty and brought them up into the air.
The snake fell down to the knotted end of the nighty as with satisfaction I viewed by capture of the angrily rattling snake. I was without a gun or a knife, but now at least I had a weapon of distraction to hurl at someone if need be.
Careful to hold the improvised snake bag away from me I started on over and down off the north side of the ridge. Thankfully there was no massing of snakes on this end.
I walked on feeling odd being without an undergarment beneath my dress. My chest with the advent of me turning ten, six years ago, had underwent major changes. Changes I wished would soon stop!
Now the ebullient evidence of my emerging woman’s body swayed to and fro freely as I walked all the while painfully chaffing off the inside of the dress I wore. Holding my free arm up I halted the movement, but it was hard to keep my arm up for prolonged periods of time.
Sighing I came to a stop. In frustration I looked down at the unwanted evidence of my raw appeal to many men both young and old. It wasn’t just my breasts they ogled and paid attention to. I couldn’t count how many times I had been smacked on the rear or pinched by the men of this area at every church social I had attended in the last year.
It hadn’t been like that back home, as I’d had an army of cousins to do war on my behalf, but here in this neck of the woods I had essentially been a foreigner and thus free game for every lecherous fellow that came along. Oh why couldn’t I be one of those girls of my age with a flat chest and no hips to speak of?
My mother’s admonishing words came back to me, “Now Tara don’t be talking down the beauty you’ve been given! You can’t help the way men are in this place and for sure they give men a bad name, but one day my love there will be a man who will come along who will make you glad to have the curves you do so don’t be wishing to be otherwise than you are. You’re just fine the way God made you and that’s that.”
Sighing in the moment though I couldn’t relate with her words as my breasts literally ached. Looking around to see if I was alone in the forest, which I was as near as I could tell, I sat down on a rock and ripped more cloth off the bottom of my dress.
Pulling the bodice of my dress down I then began to wrap the cloth in a binding clasp around my chest and upper back. I tied the cloth pieces off and pulled my dress back up. Standing up I shimmied slightly and was awarded with no corresponding ache of sensitized motion.
That problem was solved, but if I kept ripping cloth off my dress for varied purposes I’d have a problem of a different kind soon enough. My face flushed red at the notion of appearing within any town looking as I did now.
Be that as it may that day would come and I’d meet it with all the dignity that I could. I started out once more being careful in how I lifted up my captured weapon bound within the confines of my night dress.
It was getting on toward dark when I saw a campfire in the forest below me. Instinct warned me to avoid it, but hunger drove me to go nearer to it.
In the end I stayed where I was in indecision. Miserably I acknowledged that I couldn’t afford to go near the fire, hungry or not, and I was simply too tired to go on much farther today and whoever had made that fire might hear me in my passing by of it in the still dark of the forest. The best thing for me to do was to stay right where I was.
On the verge of tears I sat down in the sheltering enclave of two fallen over trees. The air was getting colder and shivering I pulled my shortened dress as far over my drawn up knees as possible. Shivering I pressed my face against my knees and cried silently until at some point I must’ve fallen asleep.
*****
“Hey lookee what I found!”
In startlemeant from the voice out of nowhere I woke to the image of an older man standing not over five feet in front of me. He had a disreputable look to him and his next words confirmed it, “I thought I saw a patch of white up here before dark settled in last night. I’m affixing your that Collins girl that the whole counties on the hunt for. $200 in gold pays for a heap of trouble young miss! I’ze gonna have that money for myself now though! Yes Sirrreeee!”
I stood up stiffly and tried to back away, but the fallen tree trunks of the two massive trees I’d taken shelter from prevented any easy flight for me now.
“Whoo whee! Look at the jugs on you girl! I’m gonna have me a bonus before I turn you over in a day or so!” The man lecherously said with his eyes fully rooted on my chest.
I’d had it! Were there truly no more decent men in these mountains? It sure seemed so!
He was reaching out toward my chest and I launched forward and bit his offending fingers as hard as I could. He yelped and jumped back and I used the opportunity to slip by him.
He kicked out and caught me in the shin and I went flying into the leaf matter of the forest floor. Spitting out dirt I turned and started to surge up to my feet when his voice stopped me, “You stay put now! I got this here throwing knife and I don’t miss, especially when no $200 be in jeopardy!”
My eyes tracked over to him and the knife he held in his hand. I scooted backward until I was but a short distance from where I had spent the night.
“Hey what you got in the bag?” He inquired suspiciously.
I glanced down to the white of my night dress beside me and not quite sure why I did it I picked it up and held it perilously close to my chest as if it was a treasured possession. At any moment I expected to feel fangs sink into my chest, but surprisingly there wasn’t even a rattle from the bag.
“Hey I get it! You got something they want don’t yah? What’s that in the bag there? I bet it be more than just $200 worth in gold that they be wanten to pay for ya! Give it here!”
Clutching the bag closer I defiantly said, “No!”
I felt movement within the bag.
Stepping closer the man reached down and yanked the night dress free from my clasp and pulled it roughly to him as he stepped back triumphantly. Undoing the twisted off end of the bag he boldly stuck his hand in, “I got it! Now fortune come to Papa!”
He pulled his prize free and screamed in horror. He made to drop the fully awakened snake, but it was too late. The snake lashed out and bit him on the cheek and then again on the neck.
In hysteria the man hacked with the knife on the snake still latched onto his throat and the snake fell in two pieces to the forest floor. The man meanwhile stumbled about screaming insanely and then all sound seemed to come to a wheezing halt.
He fell to his knees as his face turned purple from lack of air and then he pitched over dead before me. Breathing hard I waited for my breath to come back to me.
Cursed man or not, it had been hard to watch what had happened. I felt guilty somehow.
Shaking my head violently I reminded whatever part of me that had come up with that emotion that if I hadn’t played along even now I’d be held pinned to the ground and raped by the man who then would’ve turned me over for $200 in blood money and shed nary a tear over me. No, as hard as it had been to watch the man’s death my actions were justified. His greed had brought his own doom down upon himself.
Standing up I made to move past the man when my still shocked mind slowly came aware to the fact of my good fortune other than the fact of not being this man’s prisoner. All of his stuff was available now for my use.
I picked up the bloody knife carefully and then moving off down the slope I came to his campfire. The smell of food was overwhelming and I ate like the starving person I was.
Guilt tried to set in once more, but my need was too great to fully listen to it. I ate till I was full and then I began scavenging through the man’s pack for whatever else might be of use to me, which unfortunately wasn’t very much.
The man’s coat was too big and it smelled, but at least I was warm. I had food for two more days unless I was able to augment my food supply in some way.
My real problem however though was that I was lost. The best I could come up to do was to keep heading west.
At times within the deep forest even that was hard to manage, because most of the time the sun’s light was lost to me because of the deep shade given off by the forest canopy.