Chapter 35 - Adventures in the Far West by Mayne Reid
The Snake-Doctor
With admiring eyes I looked for some moments on this bold black man—this slave-hero. I might have gazed longer, but the burning sensation in my arm reminded me of my perilous situation.
“You will guide me to Bringiers?” was my hurried interrogatory.
“Daren’t, mass’.”
“Daren’t! Why?”
“Mass’ forgot I’se a runaway. White folk cotch Gabr’l—cut off him arm.”
“What? Cut off your arm?”
“Saten sure, mass’—dats da law of Loozyaney. White man strike nigga, folk laugh, folk cry out, ‘Lap de dam nigga! lap him!’ Nigga strike white man, cut off nigga’s arm. Like berry much to ’bleege mass’ Edwad, but daren’t go to de clearins. White men after Gabr’l last two days. Cuss’d blood-dogs and nigga-hunters out on im track. Thought young mass’ war one o’ dem folks; dat’s why um run.”
“If you do not guide me, then I must die.”
“Die!—die! why for mass’ say dat?”
“Because I am lost. I cannot find my way out of the forest. If I do not reach the doctor in less than twenty minutes, there is no hope. O God!”
“Doctor!—mass’ Edwad sick? What ail um? Tell Gabr’l. If dat’s da case, him guide de brack man’s friend at risk ob life. What young mass’ ail?”
“See! I have been bitten by a rattlesnake.”
I bared my arm, and showed the wound and the swelling.
“Ho! dat indeed! sure ’nuff—it are da bite ob de rattlesnake. Doctor no good for dat. Tobacc’-juice no good. Gabr’l best doctor for de rattlesnake. Come ’long, young mass’!”
“What! you are going to guide me, then?”
“I’se a gwine to cure you, mass’.”
“You?”
“Ye, mass’! tell you doctor no good—know nuffin’ ’t all ’bout it—he kill you—truss Ole Gabe—he cure you. Come ’long, mass’, no time t’ be loss.”
I had for the moment forgotten the peculiar reputation which the black enjoyed—that of a snake-charmer and snake-doctor as well, although I had so late been thinking of it. The remembrance of this fact now returned, accompanied by a very different train of reflections.
“No doubt,” thought I, “he possesses the requisite knowledge—knows the antidote, and how to apply it. No doubt he is the very man. The doctor, as he says, may not understand how to treat me.”
I had no very great confidence that the doctor could cure me. I was only running to him as a sort of dernier ressort.
“This Gabriel—this snake-charmer, is the very man. How fortunate I should have met with him!”
After a moment’s hesitation—during the time these reflections were passing through my mind—I called out to the black—
“Lead on! I follow you!”
Whither did he intend to guide me? What was he going to do? Where was he to find an antidote? How was he to cure me?
To these questions, hurriedly put, I received no reply.
“You truss me, mass’ Edward; you foller me!” were all the words the black would utter as he strode off among the trees.
I had no choice but to follow him.
After proceeding several hundred yards through the cypress swamp, I saw some spots of sky in front of us. This indicated an opening in the woods, and for that I saw my guide was heading. I was not surprised on reaching this opening to find that it was the glade—again the fatal glade!
To my eyes how changed its aspect! I could not bear the bright sun that gleamed into it. The sheen of its flowers wearied my sight—their perfume made me sick!
Maybe I only fancied this. I was sick, but from a very different cause. The poison was mingling with my blood. It was setting my veins on fire. I was tortured by a choking sensation of thirst, and already felt that spasmodic compression of the chest, and difficulty of breathing—the well-known symptoms experienced by the victims of snake-poison.
It may be that I only fancied most of this. I knew that a venomous serpent had bitten me; and that knowledge may have excited my imagination to an extreme susceptibility. Whether the symptoms did in reality exist, I suffered them all the same. My fancy had all the painfulness of reality!
My companion directed me to be seated. Moving about, he said, was not good. He desired me to be calm and patient, once more begging me to “truss Gabr’l.”
I resolved to be quiet, though patient I could not be. My peril was too great.
Physically I obeyed him. I sat down upon a log—that same log of the liriodendron—and under the shade of a spreading dogwood-tree. With all the patience I could command, I sat awaiting the orders of the snake-doctor. He had gone off a little way, and was now wandering around the glade with eyes bent upon the ground. He appeared to be searching for something.
“Some plant,” thought I, “he expects to find growing there.”
I watched his movements with more than ordinary interest. I need hardly have said this. It would have been sufficient to say that I felt my life depended on the result of his search. His success or his failure were life or death to me.
How my heart leaped when I saw him bend forward, and then stoop still lower, as if clutching something upon the ground! An exclamation of joy that escaped his lips was echoed in a louder key from my own; and, forgetting his directions to remain quiet, I sprang up from the log, and ran towards him.
As I approached he was upon his knees, and with his knife-blade was digging around a plant, as if to raise it by the roots. It was a small herbaceous plant, with erect simple stem, oblong lanceolate leaves, and a terminal spike of not very conspicuous white flowers. Though I knew it not then, it was the famed “snake-root” (Polygala senega).
In a few moments he had removed the earth, and then, drawing out the plant, shook its roots free of the mould. I noticed that a mass of woody contorted rhizomes, somewhat thicker than those of the sarsaparilla briar, adhered to the stem. They were covered with ash-coloured bark, and quite inodorous. Amid the fibres of these roots lay the antidote to the snake-poison—in their sap was the saviour of my rife!
Not a moment was lost in preparing them. There were no hieroglyphics nor Latinic phraseology employed in the prescription of the snake-charmer. It was comprised in the phrase, “Chaw it!” and, along with this simple direction, a piece of the root scraped clear of the bark was put into my hand. I did as I was desired, and in a moment I had reduced the root to a pulp, and was swallowing its sanitary juices.
The taste was at first rather sweetish, and engendered a slight feeling of nausea; but, as I continued to chew, it became hot and pungent, producing a peculiar tingling sensation in the fauces and throat.
The black now ran to the nearest brook, filled one of his “brogans” with water, and, returning, washed my wrist until the tobacco juice was all removed from the wound. Having himself chewed a number of the leaves of the plant into a pulpy mass, he placed it directly upon the bitten part, and then bound up the wound as before.
Everything was now done that could be done. I was instructed to abide the result patiently and without fear.
In a very short time a profuse perspiration broke out over my whole body, and I began to expectorate freely. I felt, moreover, a strong inclination to vomit—which I should have done had I swallowed any more of the juice, for, taken in large doses, the seneca root is a powerful emetic.
But of the feelings I experienced at that moment, the most agreeable was the belief that I was cured!
Strange to say, this belief almost at once impressed my mind with the force of a conviction. I no longer doubted the skill of the snake-doctor.