The Long Night of Winchell Dear by Robert James Waller

Author:Robert James Waller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307351593
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2006-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

The diamondback located the rabbit nest and found it empty. Minutes earlier, three coyotes had come by on the slink and cleaned it out, gobbling all that was warm and furry and hopeful there in the grass. They had even caught the mother rabbit, reluctant to abandon her young and staying too long and finally becoming confused by the triangulated approach of the coyotes. The diamondback hesitated, then took his seven feet in a northwesterly direction, toward the ranch house, still hunting. Sometimes there were mice in the grass near the house foundation.

Twice Winchell Dear had seen the snake. And though, in the way of most Texas ranchers, he killed any rattlesnake that happened by, this big one having lived for so many years somehow deserved to live more. As long as it stayed away from the house. Each time he’d seen the diamondback, it had been evening and along a ranch road a half mile from the house. Once, the snake simply crossed the road in front of him. He’d been on foot that time.

The second occurrence had come when he was mounted, and his horse shied well before Winchell saw the diamondback off to one side. Disturbed by the lurching horse, the snake rattled with a sound that carried for thirty yards. Winchell Dear reined in the paint and quieted her, watching the snake from well back.

“Here’s the deal, old fellow. You stay out here in the desert and there’ll be no bad blood between us. Come any closer to the house and I’ll kill you, just as I did one of your brothers two months ago when he decided to sleep against the stone steps out front.”

The horse, still afraid, snorted and tried to buck. Winchell Dear steadied the paint and from ten yards away continued to study the diamondback, now coiled into strike position, tongue flicking, rattles sounding. From the time of his boyhood, Winchell had regarded the snakes with a mixture of wariness and admiration. There was elegance about them, like the great sharks of the ocean, clean and pure in design and intent. They carried no unnecessary accoutrements or, far as he could tell, hazy dreams of random possibilities for their lives. And in the case of the diamondbacks, they meant no harm to humans unless it appeared the same might come to them.

The snake quieted for a moment, looking directly at Winchell Dear, it seemed. “Think I’ll give you a name, big fellow. Maybe…let’s see, Luther might do it. Old poker-playing friend of mine named Luther Gibbons would probably appreciate the likeness between him and you.”

Winchell turned the paint for home, rode a few yards, and called back over his shoulder, “Remember our deal, Luther. Stay out here, and I’ll leave you alone. Show up near the house, you’ll get a load of twelve-gauge double-aught buckshot that’ll make your head disappear into nothing.”

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