Page 98 of The Honorable Texan
He nodded.He finished his pie and coffee and got to his feet.“I’d better change and get back to work.Thanks for running interference, by the way.You’re a cool head in an emergency,” he remarked with a smile.
“I’ve had lots of practice,” she said modestly and grinned.“But try to stay away from horned things for a while.”
“Especially my brother, the minor devil,” he said, tongue-in-cheek, and grinned back when she got the reference and started laughing.
* * *
After Leo wentback to work, Meredith went out to gather eggs.It seemed very straightforward.You walked into the henhouse, reached in the nest, and pulled out a dozen or so big brown eggs, some still warm from the chicken’s feathered body.
But that wasn’t what happened.She paused just inside the henhouse to let her eyes adjust to the reduced light, and when she moved toward the row of straw-laced nests, she saw something wrapped around one nest that wasn’t feathered.It had scales and a flickering long tongue.It peered at her through the darkness and tightened its coils around its prey, three big brown eggs.
Meredith, a city girl with very little experience of scaly things, did something predictable.She screamed, threw the basket in the general direction of the snake, and left skid marks getting out of the fenced lot.
Annie Lewis, who was doing the laundry, came tothe back door as fast as her arthritis would allow, to see what all the commotion was about.
“There’s a…big black and whitesnnnnnakkkkkke…in there!”Meredith screamed, shaking all over from the close encounter.
“After the eggs, I reckon,” Annie said with a sigh.She wiped her hands on her apron.“Let me get a stick and I’ll deal with it.”
“You can’t go in there alone with the horrible thing and try to kill it!It must be five feet long!”
“It’s a king snake, not a rattler,” Annie said gently, recognizing the description.“And I’m not planning to kill it.I’m going to get it on a stick and put in the barn.It can eat its fill of rats and poisonous snakes and do some good out there.”
“You aren’t going to kill it?”Meredith exclaimed, horrified.
“It’s a king snake, dear,” came the gentle reply.“We don’t like to kill them.They’re very useful.They eat rattlesnakes, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”Meredith shivered again.“I’ve never seen a snake except in a zoo, and it was a python.”
“You’ll see lots of them out here in the country.Just remember that if one rattles at you, it means business and it will strike.Rattlesnakes are venomous.”
Meredith looked around as if she expected to be mobbed just at the mention of them.
“You can finish the washing,” Annie said, trying not to grin.“I’ll take care of the snake.”
“Please be careful!”
“I will.After all, you get used to things like…”
Rey drove up and stopped the truck just short of the two women, exiting it with his usual graceful speed.
“What’s going on?”he asked as he pulled a box of assorted bovine medicines out of the boot of the truck.
“There’s a snake in the henhouse!”Meredith exclaimed.
He stopped with the supplies in his arms and stared at her curiously.“So?”he asked.
“I’m just going to move it for her, Rey,” Mrs.Lewis said with a grin.“It sounds like a king snake.I thought I’d put him in the barn.”
“I’ll get him for you.”He put the box on the hood of the truck.“Scared of snakes, are you?”he scoffed.
“I’d never seen one until a few minutes ago,” she said huffily, and flushed.He was looking at her as if she were a child.
“There’s a first time for everything,” he said, and his eyes made a very explicit remark as they lingered on her breasts.
She gave him a glare hot enough to fry bacon, which he ignored.He walked right into the chicken lot and, then, into the henhouse.
Barely a minute later, he came back out with the snake coiled around one arm, its neck gently held in his other hand.
