The gold and crimson of late afternoon
changed to the violet of early dusk, but still I sat awed and
motionless. I resented every ring of the telephone and every whir of
the buzzer, and I could have cursed the nurses and interns whose knocks
now and then summoned the doctor briefly to the outer office. Night
came, and I was glad my host switched on all the lights. Scientist
though I was, my zeal for research was half forgotten amid such
breathless ecstasies of fright as a small boy might feel when whispered
witch-tales go the rounds of the chimney-corner. *       *       *       *       *

It seems that Yig, the snake-god of the central plains
tribes--presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl
or Kukulcan--was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary
and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually
quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and
his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally
ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That
was why the tom-toms in the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded
ceaselessly week in and week out in August, September, and October;
and why the medicine-men made strange noises with rattles and whistles
curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas. Yig's chief trait was a relentless devotion to his children--a devotion
so great that the redskins almost feared to protect themselves from the
venomous rattlesnakes which thronged the region. Frightful clandestine
tales hinted of his vengeance upon mortals who flouted him or wreaked
harm upon his wriggling progeny; his chosen method being to turn his
victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake. In the old days of the Indian Territory, the doctor went on, there was
not quite so much secrecy about Yig. The plains tribes, less cautious
than the desert nomads and Pueblos, talked quite freely of their
legends and autumn ceremonies with the first Indian agents, and let
considerable of the lore spread out through the neighboring regions
of white settlement. The great fear came in the land-rush days of
'eighty-nine, when some extraordinary incidents had been rumored, and
the rumors sustained, by what seemed to be hideously tangible proofs. Indians said that the new white men did not know how to get on with
Yig, and afterward the settlers came to take that theory at face value. Now no old-timer in middle Oklahoma, white or red, could be induced to
breathe a word about the snake-god except in vague hints. Yet after
all, the doctor added with almost needless emphasis, the only truly
authenticated horror had been a thing of pitiful tragedy rather than of
bewitchment. It was all very material and cruel--even that last phase
which had caused so much dispute. Dr. McNeill paused and cleared his throat before getting down
to his special story, and I felt a tingling sensation as when a
theater curtain rises. The thing had begun when Walker Davis and
his wife Audrey left Arkansas to settle in the newly opened public
lands in the spring of 1889, and the end had come in the country
of the Wichitas--north of the Washita River, in what is at present
Caddo County. There is a small village called Binger there now, and
the railway goes through; but otherwise the place is less changed
than other parts of Oklahoma. It is still a section of farms and
ranches--quite productive in these days--since the great oil-fields do
not come very close. Walker and Audrey had come from Franklin County in the Ozarks with
a canvas-topped wagon, two mules, an ancient and useless dog called
"Wolf," and all their household goods. They were typical hill-folk,
youngish and perhaps a little more ambitious than most, and looked
forward to a life of better returns for their hard work than they had
had in Arkansas. Both were lean, rawboned specimens; the man tall,
sandy and gray-eyed, and the woman short and rather dark, with a black
straightness of hair suggesting a slight Indian admixture. In general, there was very little of distinction about them, and but
for one thing their annals might not have differed from those of
thousands of other pioneers who flocked into the new country at that
time. That thing was Walker's almost epileptic fear of snakes, which
some laid to prenatal causes, and some said came from a dark prophecy
about his end with which an old Indian squaw had tried to scare him
when he was small. Whatever the cause, the effect was marked indeed;
for despite his strong general courage the very mention of a snake
would cause him to grow faint and pale, while the sight of even a tiny
specimen would produce a shock sometimes bordering on a convulsion
seizure. The Davises started out early in the year, in the hope of being on
their new land for the spring plowing. Travel was slow; for the roads
were bad in Arkansas, while in the Territory there were great stretches
of rolling hills and red, sandy barrens without any roads whatever. As the terrain grew flatter, the change from their native mountains
depressed them more, perhaps, than they realized; but they found the
people at the Indian agencies very affable, while most of the settled
Indians seemed friendly and civil. Now and then they encountered a
fellow-pioneer, with whom crude pleasantries and expressions of amiable
rivalry were generally exchanged. Owing to the season, there were not many snakes in evidence, so Walker
did not suffer from his special temperamental weakness. In the earlier
stages of the journey, too, there were no Indian snake-legends to
trouble him; for the transplanted tribes from the southeast do not
share the wilder beliefs of their western neighbors. As fate would have
it, it was a white man at Okmulgee in the Creek country who gave the
Davises the first hint of the Yig beliefs; a hint which had a curiously
fascinating effect on Walker, and caused him to ask questions very
freely after that. Before long Walker's fascination had developed into a bad case of
fright. He took the most extraordinary precautions at each of the
nightly camps, always clearing away whatever vegetation he found, and
avoiding stony places whenever he could. Every clump of stunted bushes
and every cleft in the great, slab-like rocks seemed to him now to hide
malevolent serpents, while every human figure not obviously part of a
settlement or emigrant train seemed to him a potential snake-god till
nearness had proved the contrary. Fortunately no troublesome encounters
came at this stage to shake his nerves still further. As they approached the Kickapoo country they found it harder and harder
to avoid camping near rocks. Finally it was no longer possible, and
poor Walker was reduced to the puerile expedient of droning some of the
rustic anti-snake charms he had learned in his boyhood. Two or three
times a snake was really glimpsed, and these sights did not help the
sufferer in his efforts to preserve composure.