of duct tape. From his flask, he
drank water, but he did not sit
down. In a moment, he and
his fabulous pole had disap-
peared down the hill.
We found the dry stone
corral tucked against the
mountain, blanketed in shade.
It was filled with rubble and
brush. Beyond a waist-high
forest of creosote, the arrow
continued from page 21
“I missed my first shot.
The snake started striking,”
she said. “I yelled at him so
loud to stop but Chuy
grabbed the Mojave by the tail
and shook it hard. He fell
back and then he ran, but still
I didn’t think he was bitten.”
She put a bullet in the
dying snake and went looking
for Chuy. She found him sit-
ting in a field with half of his
face already paralyzed. He
was hyperventilating.
“We carried him to my
screen porch and wrapped
him in a blanket. I gave him
an antihistamine and water
and cleaned his wound. The
doctor said by the time we got
there it would be too late.”
Chuy did not want to stay
on her porch and the ranch
manager honored his request
to crawl under a truck to die.
She sat by him in the dirt and
reached under the tire wells to
pet his fur.
quarry would have been easy
to miss. It was not a hole in the
ground, but a cliff of flaky-
looking dark rock. Broken
arrowheads lay all about:
bone white, pink, orange,
some tinged lavender. Before I
put it back, I held one in my
hand. Who knew how old it
was, a hundred, five hundred
years? I tried to conjure an image
of the hands that had chipped,
so expertly, until this triangle,
a form at once unfathomably
ancient, life-giving, and dead-
ly, emerged. It was probably a
man, probably older than
most in his tribe— let's say he
had an arthritic knee. A claw
strung onto his necklace.
“How long did it take?”
Cook said.
“About six hours,” she said.
“I think he had a heart attack
from hyperventilation. He
was breathing so hard. I
wished I had not fired a gun.
It is hard for me to tell you
this. I cared for him.”
“He had been bitten
before, hadn’t he?” Cook said.
“Yes, years ago, but not by
a Mojave. He knew about rat-
tlesnakes and their capabili-
ties. He knew what he was
doing. He was trying to pro-
tect me,” the ranch manager
said.
The ranch manager and
the cowboy who’d released
Chuy from a leg trap the year
before dug a hole in a pasture
with a backhoe. She touched
his fur in departure before
weighting the dirt above his
grave with rocks against pred-
ators and scavengers.
“There was a lot of white
fur in your casita last year after
you left, and on the spare bed too. I guess you brought him
in when it was cold. That’s
ok,” the ranch manager said.
“I brought him in every
night and put him on the extra
bed by the heater. I thought I
got all the dog hair out. I’m
sorry about that,” Cook said.
Cook knew the sheep track
down Bighorn Hill the next
December, and the javelina
path home through the thorn
bushes from the spring by the
cottonwood tree. She stood in
the kitchen window as she had
the year before, and washed
dishes. The natural lines in
her thumbs cracked open and
began to bleed from satura-
tion and repetition. Cook
remembered her unlikely
companion who fit onto the
upholstered chair by the stove
- a tightly wrapped black and
white dog with a tail across his
nose against the cold.
Marfa’s Swiss Café
201 E. Holland Ave • Alpine
432-538-7075
103 E. Hwy 90 • Marathon
432-386-4310
brownkat1@sbcglobal.net
Kathy Haynes
Owner
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2015
27