Guy Smith - Snakes

Ten yards, maybe less. He tried to draw a bead on the head but it darted from one side to the other, dodged away from the shaking twin barrels as though it knew. Oh Christ, so different from driven grouse that couldn't fight back.

Five yards. He swung his sights on to the body, the lower damaged part that dragged behind the rest, took a trigger pressure. A deafening blast, and somewhere in the background he heard his wife screaming, saw the snake jerk and roll, seem to twist back on itself as though it was trying to view the damage.

At that range the concentrated shot charge was still strung together, had cut through skin and tissue, almost severed the lower body. A slimy pulp streaked the tarmac. And in that split second Peter Eversham finally got his bead on the head.

The left barrel, leaden death obliterating the rattlesnake's head, throwing it back into the morass behind, its nerves twitching. And then it was still.

It was dead.

Eversham lowered the smoking gun, opened the breech and the spent cartridge cases were ejected, bounced on the drive. He stood there, experienced a euphoria that was only just beginning to make its heady impact on him. A pose he was reluctant to relinquish, the hunter looking down on his trophy, awaiting the arrival of his bearers.

The garage shutters slid upwards and Keith Doyle emerged, white-faced. Eversham thought the gardener might spew up just to complete the picture. Cynthia still had her face covered; look at it, you two, look at it. It's dead and I killed it. Me, Peter Eversham. They've been hunting the bastards for two days but they didn't do any good until I returned.

'Well done, Mr Eversham.' A cry of relief, the young red-haired man having to hold on to the car, swaying unsteadily on his feet. 'It trapped me in the garage. We better get the police.'

'I think this is them now.' Peter Eversham heard the bee-boraf an approaching siren, anticipated the white Escort turning into the drive. He shifted his pose slightly, cradling the gun beneath his arm, sporting style. Take a good look, you guys, I just did what you've failed to do. Send the press, let's get the record straight, nobody's stealing my thunder.

'I got him,' he told PC Aylott as the constable climbed out of the car. 'It's a rattler, a western diamondback.' I know because I once saw a TV programme about them.

'He's dead, all right.' Aylott approached the shot-blasted mulch with some trepidation.

'He is.' Peter Eversham still stood there holding his gun. Jesus Christ, where were the bloody newshounds? They were quick enough off" the mark when some randy vicar or other ran off with the verger's wife, used rolls of film and gave it front page spread, but when somebody shoots a dangerous reptile in an English village they don't want to know.

There's two rattlers.' The officer stepped back. 'I'd've thought being a pair they would have stuck together. Search parties have spent two days combing the moors and the slopes without seeing so much as a good old British adder sunning itself in the heather.'

Then they were looking in the wrong place. Eversham just checked himself from speaking his thoughts aloud. The snakes are hanging about the village, right under your bloody noses and you haven't twigged it yet. A man with a gun who knows what he's about might have far more success than hundreds of police and soldiers.

'I'll have to leave this for the experts to come and have a look at.' Aylott turned back towards his vehicle. 'I'll go and let the Super know at once.'

And not a bloody word of 'well done' or 'thank you', Eversham reflected as he stood there watching the constable reverse out into the road. Cynthia was getting out of the Jaguar, trying not to look at the remains of the rattler, Doyle was back in his van.

Eversham glanced down at his gun, a Holland and Holland side lock Royal, the ultimate in English gun-making, a beautifully balanced and efficient weapon. If you knew how to use it, it killed every time, grouse or snakes.

He looked up at the sky. There were a good three hours of daylight left yet, the perfect evening for a quiet mooch round the hedgerows bordering the barley and oilseed rape fields in the hope of a shot at an unwary rabbit.

Or a deadly snake.

PETER EVERSHAM moved furtively along the straggling hawthorn hedge just inside the field of growing barley that was showing the first signs of ripening. His every movement was that of the accomplished stalker, one who wished to see and yet not be seen. Neither by the snakes he hunted nor his fellowmen.

His gun gave him a new sense of power, one that he had not fully appreciated until now. Man was a hunter by nature but it did not end there. He was a born predator even though civilisation had attempted to eradicate it from the species, all part of a Marxist plot to bring about a revolution; they branded the hunting and shooting fraternity as upper-class barbarians, overlooking the fact that thousands of ordinary working men enjoyed field sports. Use an emotive lever to prise the capitalist clique apart and the masses will join the ranks. Eversham's lips curled into a contemptuous smile. Those opposed to killing ought to be here in Stainforth right now and they'd soon change their minds. He wondered how that fellow Cousins, who lived in the village and was always writing the predictable emotive anti-blood-sports letters to the papers, was feeling at this moment. Cowering indoors, doubtless, listening in to every radio and TV bulletin to find out if the hunters had accounted for any of the snakes yet. Tally-ho, go get 'em, you chaps, and we'll forgive you so long as you don't go back to killing foxes when it's ail over.

Cousins was a convener in one of the factories in the city, a trouble-maker, had instigated a strike only a few weeks back over some petty formality. In his spare time he campaigned against blood sports and was anti anything that people enjoyed doing.

Eversham had had his own brushes with the unions and on a couple of occasions he had dug his heels in and won. If necessary, he would shut his business down and take early retirement. 'It suits me,' he had told a shop steward. 'It's you chaps who'll lose out. I can sell my premises and machinery and put my feet up. Your chaps will just be out of a job. Please yourself.'

Now he was going to make the headlines again. He paused alongside the overgrown hawthorn hedge, took stock of his surroundings. There was too much damned cover, the barley waist high and reaching right up to the hedge. A fox could sit and watch you from a few yards away and you would have no idea it was there. Or a snake.

He thought about moving on up to the grassland beyond but the reptiles were unlikely to be where they could be spotted easily. They would be in the thickest cover. Maybe he should have fetched Kell, the springer spaniel, from the kennels where he had been boarded whilst the Evershams were away. Kell had a keen nose, he was able to scent out a skulking shrew; anything that breathed, he found. It was too late now, Eversham must play a lone hand.

He pondered on a plan of action. Assume that the snakes were in the barley. In all probability they would not be found round the edge but would be deep in the stalky growth. It was no good blundering through it, they would hear him coming and either slink out of the way or else attack, a sudden ambush. Yet there was a way . . . Modern farming methods and the use of poisonous chemicals caused barren patches of ground amidst the crops, destroyed the vital minerals in the soil and created mini-deserts in the seemingly lush growth akin to clearings in a forest. Find one of these and take up a position there. Vision on all sides, no chance of being attacked from behind and ... he trembled with excitement, if he imitated a rabbit squeal from time to time one of those reptiles was sure to come on the run. Easy enough, the same way that you fooled a fox on a summer evening; you sucked the back of your hand noisily and it sounded like a wounded or snared rabbit squealing. Old Kenning, the gamekeeper, had taught him how to do it. Now he would put that knowledge to good use.