Charles Portis - True Grit

The ache in my broken arm grew worse. I felt some more of the binding moss give way against my right arm and at the same time I saw that some of the snakes were crawling out through the man’s ribs. Lord help me!

I set my teeth and took hold of the bony hand that stuck forth from the blue shirtsleeve. I gave a yank and pulled the man’s arm clean away from the shoulder. A terrible thing to do, you say, but you will see that I now had something to work with.

I studied the arm. Bits of cartilage held it together at the elbow joint. With some twisting I managed to separate it at that place. I took the long bone of the upper arm and secured it under my armpit to serve as a cross-member. This would keep me from plunging through the hole should I reach that point in my descent. It was quite a long bone and, I hoped, a strong one. I was grateful to the poor man for being tall.

What I had left now was the lower part, the two bones of the forearm, and the hand and wrist, all of a piece. I grasped it at the elbow and proceeded to use it as a flail to keep the snakes at bay. “Here, get away!” said I, slapping at them with the bony hand. “Get back, you!” This was well enough except that I perceived the agitation only caused them to be more active. In trying to keep them away, I was at the same time stirring them up! They moved very slowly but there were so many I could not keep track of them all.

Each blow I struck brought burning pain to my arm and you can imagine these blows were not hard enough to kill the snakes. That was not my idea. My idea was to keep them back and prevent them from getting behind me. My striking range from left to right was something short of 180 degrees and I knew if the rattlers got behind me I would be in a fine “pickle.”

I heard noises above. A shower of sand and pebbles came cascading down. “Help!” I cried out. “I am down here! I need help!” My thought was: Thank God. Someone has come. Soon I will be out of this hellish place. I saw drops of something spattering on a rock in front of me. It was blood. “Hurry up!” I yelled. “There are snakes and skeletons down here!”

A man’s voice called down, saying, “I warrant there will be another one before spring! A little spindly one!”

It was the voice of Tom Chaney! I had not yet made a good job of killing him! I supposed he was leaning over the edge and the blood was falling from his wounded head.

“How do you like it?” he taunted.

“Throw me a rope, Tom! You cannot be mean enough to leave me!”

“You say you don’t like it?”

Then I heard a shout and the sounds of a scuffle and a dreadful crunch, which was Rooster Cogburn’s rifle stock smashing the wounded head of Tom Chaney. There followed a furious rush of rocks and dust. The light was blocked off and I made out a large object hurtling down toward me. It was the body of Tom Chaney. I leaned back as far as I could to avoid being struck, and at that it was a near thing.

He fell directly upon the skeleton, crushing the bones and filling my face and eyes with dirt and scattering the puzzled rattlesnakes every which way. They were all about me and I commenced striking at them with such abandon that my body dropped free through the hole. Gone!

No! Checked short! I was shakily suspended in space by the bone under my armpit. Bats flew up past my face and the ones below were carrying on like a treefull of sparrows at sundown. Only my head and my left arm and shoulder now remained above the hole. I hung at an uncomfortable angle. The bone was bowed under my weight and I prayed it would hold. My left arm was cramped and fully occupied in holding to it and I had not the use of the hand in fending off the snakes.

“Help!” I called. “I need help!”

Rooster’s voice came booming down, saying, “Are you all right?”

“No! I am in a bad way! Hurry up!”

“I am pitching down a rope! Fasten it under your arms and tie it with a good knot!”

“I cannot manage a rope! You will have to come down and help me! Hurry up, I am falling! There are snakes all about my head!”

“Hold on! Hold on!” came another voice. It was LaBoeuf. The Texan had survived the blow. The officers were both safe.

I watched as two rattlers struck and sunk their sharp teeth into Tom Chaney’s face and neck. The body was lifeless and made no protest. My thought was: Those scoundrels can bite in December and right there is the proof of it! One of the smaller snakes approached my hand and rubbed his nose against it. I moved my hand a little and the snake moved to it and touched his nose to the flesh again. He moved a bit more and commenced to rub the underside of his jaw on top of my hand.

From the corner of my eye I saw another snake on my left shoulder. He was motionless and limp. I could not tell if he was dead or merely asleep. Whatever the case, I did not want him there and I began to swing my body gently from side to side on the bone axle, The movement caused the serpent to roll over with his white belly up and I gave my shoulder a shake and he fell into the darkness below.

I felt a sting and I saw the little snake pulling his head away from my hand, an amber drop of venom on his mouth. He had bitten me. The hand was already well along to being dead numb from the cramped position and I hardly felt it. It was on the order of a horsefly bite, I counted myself lucky the snake was small. That was how much I knew of natural history. People who know tell me the younger snakes carry the more potent poison, and that it weakens with age. I believe what they say.

Now here came Rooster with a rope looped around his waist and his feet against the sides of the pit, descending in great violent leaps and sending another shower of rocks and dust down on me. He landed with a heavy bump and then it seemed he was doing everything at once. He grasped the collar of my coat and shirt behind my neck and heaved me up from the hole with one hand, at the same time kicking at snakes and shooting them with his belt revolver. The noise was deafening and made my head ache.

My legs were wobbly. I could hardly stand.

Rooster said, “Can you hold to my neck?”

I said, “Yes, I will try.” There were two dark red holes in his face with dried rivulets of blood under them where shotgun pellets had struck him.

He stooped down and I wrapped my right arm around his neck and lay against his back. He tried to climb the rope hand over hand with his feet against the sides of the pit but he made only about three pulls and had to drop back down. Our combined weight was too much for him. His right shoulder was torn from a bullet too, although I did not know it at the time.

“Stay behind me!” he said, kicking and stomping the snakes while he reloaded his pistol. A big grandfather snake coiled himself around Rooster’s boot and got his head shot off for his boldness.

Rooster said, “Do you think you can climb the rope?”

“My arm is broken,” said I. “And I am bit on the hand.”

He looked at the hand and pulled his dirk knife and cut the place to scarify it. He squeezed blood from it and took some smoking tobacco and hurriedly chewed it into a cud and rubbed it over the wound to draw the poison.

Then he harnessed the rope tightly under my arms. He shouted up to the Texan, saying, “Take the rope, LaBoeuf! Mattie is hurt! I want you to pull her up in easy stages! Can you hear me?”

LaBoeuf replied, “I will do what I can!”

The rope grew taut and lifted me to my toes. “Pull!” shouted Rooster. “The girl is snake-bit, man! Pull!” But LaBoeuf could not do it, weakened as he was by his bad arm and broken head. “It’s no use!” he said. “I will try the horse!”

In a matter of minutes he had fastened the rope to a pony. “I am ready!” the Texan called down to us. “Take a good hold!”