101 Mystery Stories

11 The Plan of the Snake Edward Wellen

Far out on the veldt one hundred years of weather have scoured and scattered the bones of the Bantu, the Boer, and the snake. If the bones have changed, the pebble half buried amid them has not. The wind and the sun have worked on the pebble, but it is the sun’s beam that takes a polish and the wind’s glassiness that gets scratched.

When the bones of the Bantu wore flesh, it was the Bantu who found the pebble. The earth in its long travail had worked the pebble to the surface. The pebble winked at the world in vain who knows how long till the Bantu happened by on his hunt for springbok.

The Bantu abandoned the springbok’s spoor to answer the blinking call of the pebble. He stood staring down at it, then hunkered and picked it up. The hand holding his assegai went suddenly slick on the weapon’s wooden shaft, and the hand cupping the pebble weighed it in wonder.

He had heard of these pebbles and even seen a few, but never in the wildest tales had there been talk of one this size. With it he might, if not cheated, buy a hundred head of breeding cattle, and much land for a kraal, and more than one woman to grow sorghum and children. He laughed at the play of light in his hand, picturing his woman carrying one child strapped to her back while carrying another within.

It was then that the Boer cast his shadow across the Bantu’s present and future.

The Bantu closed his hand over the pebble, but it was too late. Turning his head, he knew the Boer had seen the pebble; the pebble’s glitter was now in the Boer’s eyes.

The Boer, also out hunting, had come upon him while he squatted dreaming. The Boer could stand beyond reach of the assegai’s iron tip and speak death from the mouth of his gun.

The Bantu looked at the Boer, knowing the man without ever having seen him before. The elders had a saying: “If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.”

The Boer’s mouth had the twist of old meanness. And now it spoke soft words that did not hide the crookedness behind them. “Good day, kaffir. Show me the mooi klip.”

Unwillingly the Bantu’s hand opened to show the Boer the pretty pebble.

The glitter grew in the Boer’s eyes. The Bantu’s hand closed on the pebble but the light did not go out. The Boer smiled.

“That pebble would make a nice plaything for my child. I will give you my hunting knife for the pebble.” The Boer unsheathed his knife to show how it flashed.

The Bantu wrinkled his face in thought, pretending to weigh the offer, then slowly straightened. In pushing himself to his feet he palmed another pebble, a commonplace pebble, and held it in his fist along with the first.

The Boer extended the knife toward the Bantu. “So we see eye to eye. The pebble for the knife.”

The Bantu shook his head. “It is a good knife, but I do not wish to trade the pebble.”

The Boer slid the knife home in its sheath, “Then it is an even better bargain. I will have the pebble for nothing. Hand it over, kaffir.” The Boer raised the gun so that the mouth looked at the Bantu.

The Bantu gestured around at the veldt with his closed fist. “The pebble belongs to the earth.”

The Boer’s mouth tightened and the gun’s mouth grew perfectly round. “The pebble belongs to me.”

The Bantu half opened his fist as though to give in. Then, while his two smallest fingers held the mooi klip fast, the other fingers flung the commonplace pebble spinning far. He made his voice shake with rage rather than fear. “If it is yours find it, as I found it.”

The Boer’s gaze followed the false flight and the gun’s mouth dropped.

The Bantu whirled and ran. He remembered a dip in the earth along the back trail. But before the Bantu reached the dip and sank out of sight the Boer had seen through the trick.

The gun spoke.

So swift was the gun’s word that it seemed to the Bantu his flesh heard the gun before his ears. A blow as from a flinty fist struck fire in his side.

Then he was slipping and sliding over the lip of the hollow. He lost his footing and rolled over roughness to the bottom, where dry grass grew and here and there a sizable boulder sunned itself.

He lay half stunned, half catching his breath. Plucking at his breath’s raggedness only raveled it more. He did not want to look at the hole in his side but he looked. He was losing much blood.

To have any time at all, the Bantu knew he must haul himself behind a boulder before the Boer appeared at the rim of the Bantu’s barren little world. He heard the Boer’s shout of rage as he found strength to plug the hole with grass to leave no trail of blood and found will to make for the nearest boulder, the pebble digging into his palm as he thrust himself along.

Rounding the boulder, the Bantu began to stretch his own length and the assegai’s in the boulder’s grudging wedge of shadow, then saw he shared the shade with a snake.

The snake’s tongue flickered.

The Bantu’s mouth pulled against pain in a smile. “Snake, do not waste your poison. I am already dead.”

But the snake did not listen. It coiled to strike.

The Bantu struck first. The assegai spitted the snake and the snake writhed and died.

The Boer’s voice broke into the Bantu’s world. “Kaffir, I know you are down there. You cannot hide from me or outrun my gun. Show yourself and give me the pebble and I will let you go.”

The Bantu tightened his hold on the pebble and smiled at the hurt. The Boer did not have the pebble yet.

But neither was there anywhere to hide the pebble from the Boer. If the Bantu scrabbled a hole, the Boer would spot the digging. If the Bantu cast the pebble away, the Boer would never leave this cup of earth till he had found it.

The Bantu eyed the snake. “Where, oh, snake?”

And the dead snake answered silently.

The Bantu laughed. “Thank you, oh, snake.”

He weighed the pebble on his palm. It looked too big to go down but the Bantu made one last scan of it, put it in his mouth, and swallowed.

The pebble started down, then stuck in his windpipe, blocking all air. The Bantu’s eyes bulged and his throat convulsed. Then the pebble worked its way and went down.

Sooner or later the Boer would know the Bantu had swallowed the pebble and would slit his belly and writhe searching fingers through his slippery guts. The Bantu put his hands over the grass plug. For this plan of the snake’s to work, the Bantu had to hold himself together and hang on to life till the Boer found him.

To hasten the Boer’s coming, the Bantu twisted so that his feet left the boulder’s shade. The Boer would see the movement.

Drumbeat of death, the Boer’s boots trampled dry grass.

Carefully the Boer rounded the boulder. In a sweep the Boer’s glance took in the Bantu and the spitted snake.

The Bantu looked up at the shimmer of heat that was the Boer. He let his hands fall from the wound.

The Boer looked down. The Bantu’s hands lay open and empty. Fresh blood loosened the grass plug from blood that had crusted around the wound and the Boer saw the Bantu had not stuffed the pebble in the wound. The ground ringing the boulder showed no smoothing over. With his foot the Boer rolled the Bantu wound side down. The Bantu’s body had not been hiding anything. The Boer rolled the Bantu back with his foot.

He prodded the Bantu with the mouth of the gun. “Where is the mooi klip? If you have swallowed it and cannot cough it up I will take my hunting knife and slit your belly.”

The Bantu pointed to the snake. Trying to hide the rawness of his throat, he spoke. “What you seek is in the snake’s mouth.”

The Boer narrowed his eyes. “Kaffir, if you are lying, you are just putting off your belly-slitting a little and adding to my anger a lot.”

The Bantu only steadied his pointing finger. “What you seek is in the snake’s mouth.”

The Boer hesitated but a moment. After all, the kaffir lay helpless, eyes glazing, and the snake lay dead. The Boer leaned his gun against the boulder and knelt to probe the snake’s mouth.

Reptiles have lasting reflexes. Even dead, a freshly killed snake will sink its fangs into probing flesh.

The Boer cried out.

After a time all was stillness.

And all is stillness still, but for the wind through the bones.