Tom Slade at Bear Mountain

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

Even in his frightful predicament, Brent noted with interest how every instinctive impulse of the snake was evidenced in the pressure and relaxation of its coiling body. But he was all but panic-stricken now in the enshrouding darkness; he could only feel and hear his would-be assailant. The sudden failure of that little flashlight was like the sun going out of his life.

The rank growth on the surface above overflowed into the deep hole and had taken root here and there in crevices of the loose or fallen masonry. Looking up Brent had not even an unbroken view of the little area of sky above the shaft. He could only see little glints of light through the brush. This unwholesome growth, starved of open sunlight, was damp and emitted a pungent, sickening odor. He wondered whether this horrible deadlock would end in his falling in a faint from the unwholesome air, and being attacked during unconsciousness. Well, in that case, he reflected, he would never know the feeling of the serpent’s fangs.

There was no light below now, and only checkered glints of light above. He wondered what time it was and why Tom did not come. Tom, all-round scout that he was, could have told him that one loses all sense of time in a predicament occurring in darkness. He could have told him (as he later told me) of the hunter who was imprisoned by a rock falling against the mouth of a cave in the Rockies and was rescued after three hours’ waiting. He thought he had been in the cave two days.

But, in any case, it was getting dark above: Brent could see that. The failure of the flashlight had confounded several moves he had been considering. They had not been pleasant moves to think of, but they had been less unpleasant to think of than death. He had thought of trying to reach his knife, which had dropped in among the dank growth in the well, and stab the snake with it. He had feared that if he stooped and dealt with the head his action might result in a certain relaxation of his foot’s pressure with instant fatal results. So nicely did he calculate in the dreadful position he was in. He had hesitated to jeopardize his safety by any kind of action. So, also, stooping and groping in that enveloping mesh for his knife might cause the imprisoning foot to stir—relax. So he had done nothing. And now, in darkness, he did not dare to try anything. He could only hold on.

And he feared he was not doing even that. In the uncertainty of the darkness he thought that the wriggling neck was making some headway. Suppose that smooth, incessantly wriggling and struggling snake should succeed in working enough of its neck through the trap which held it, to enable the creature to turn its head and dart its fangs into the shoe. Could it do that? Could it possibly contrive by its constant wriggling to reach the unprotected ankle? Brent was glad that his were high shoes. But his fears were now manifold.

The darkness and the inaction and the waiting and the sickening odor were sapping his morale. His imagination was turning against him and playing him false. He could not, as before, check up the situation with his eyes. He felt that the snake was wriggling little by little through the vise which held it. In that awful darkness he had a feeling that any second he might feel the sting of deadly fangs in his foot or ankle. He was panic-stricken—plunged in ghastly apprehension and horror.

In his growing terror he could not bear the feel of those moving coils upon his leg; he would have given anything to be able to free himself of that living, spiral mass. Yet here his impulse eclipsed his good sense. If the snake had known enough to free its body it might indeed have had a chance to free itself, or at least move a few inches in the vise which held it. By following its blind instinct to coil, it had placed itself in a position where it could not contribute the full measure of its strength to pulling and wriggling. It exerted a dead pull but not an agitated and spasmodic pull.

If that horrible rattlesnake had possessed the intelligence of a fox it would have got its poisonous fangs into Brent in short order. But it coiled in blind instinct, as they always do, and made the conflict a mere tug of war instead of a wrestling match, as one might say. It could have lashed Brent and squirmed frantically until it got free. For the pressure of his foot was not invincible. But a snake has no brains, and there you are.

Yet this constant pulling, pulling, pulling under his foot was bad enough. It was appalling in the darkness. Again and again he looked above and listened. Would Tom never come? Each time he looked the light through the overflowing brush seemed fainter. Then there seemed no light at all. And again the sun seemed to go out of his life. Light, blessed, cheering, companionable light, had been snatched from beneath him, then from above him. And Brent Gaylong was alone in the world, in a deep, dank hole crowded with unsavory débris, vines and smelling moss and loathsome fungus and deformed toadstools. Nature’s outcasts. And mud and rock.

The gathering night above him had no cheering voice; not even a cricket or a locust could he hear; they did not patronize such places. Only darkness. He pressed harder with his foot; his whole leg was aching. Could the fatal poison be in his veins? How? Absurd.... It was just the pressure that made his leg ache. And must this pressure go on all night? Until he dropped?