Today would be my Grandma Russell's 118th birthday. In her honor I will tell you my favorite story about Ethel H. Stewart Russell. Hope you enjoy it.
TO MANY SNAKES!
Wham! The gun slammed into Ethel's shoulder, undercutting the sidewinder and blowing it and dirt into the air, knocking her back a step on the damp earth. The snake came down and immediately began zigzagging across the wet desert. Catherine grabbed a hoe and chased after it, chopping its head off.
Ethel's heart pounded in her throat, but she swallowed hard and ran to catch up to her sister and the dead snake. How she hated snakes! One day when she was a little girl she had started towards the big, shady fig trees in the backyard, taking a book with her to read. As she ran barefoot through the grass, she stepped right on the middle of a big gopher snake. She never forgot that feeling!
In 1882, Ethel's father, Joseph Alvin Stewart, settled in Mesa, Arizona. He built a home on Alma School Road and West Main Street. Since he had a large family he thought it would be a good idea to file on a homestead as well, planning to divide it among his children. A homestead consisted of 160 acres that the government would give anyone who was willing to work the land for 5 years. In 1906, Joseph Alvin chose land on the desert about 11 miles south east of town in an area called Higley. The soil was rich and the desert was covered with mesquite trees. Queen Creek, just east of them, often overflowed the land, making it possible to grow crops with very little other moisture. Often as not, though, the rain wouldn't come at the right time and crops suffered.
Now it was the summer of 1910. Ethel had turned 16 that spring, and her sister Catherine was 23. The two sisters had volunteered to stay on the farm, taking care of the stock while their parents helped out a sick relative. During the summer the desert was cool and fresh compared to town. The sisters were glad for a chance to stay at the homestead. They slept outside at night so they could enjoy the breezes that drifted across the desert. They had no close neighbors to be embarrassed by, and they kept a loaded gun under their pillow for emergencies.
As often happened in the summer, there had been a big thunderstorm on this afternoon. When the rain ended, Catherine suggested walking over to Queen Creek to see if it had flowed over its banks. The air was fresh and clean after the downpour. Although the mountains were miles away, it seemed as if they could reach out and touch them. Superstition Mountain in the east, the San tans on the south, and Usery and Red Mountains on the north glittered like amethyst in the rays of the setting sun. Four Peaks and the Sierra Anches gradually turned blue behind them. Dust had been washed off Palo Verde trees turning their skin lime green. Saguaro trunks were swollen with water, and prickly pear and jojoba bushes glittered with drops of rain. Nothing in the world could compare with the perfume of the desert. Wet dirt and creosote mingled to produce the smell of rain itself. With so much beauty around them it was not surprising that the sisters did not notice the sidewinder on the ground in front of them until they were almost upon it. It was purely a reflex action on Ethel's part when she lifted the gun and pointed at the snake. She just wished she had killed it instead of Catherine. If only she hadn't shot so low.
With disgust Catherine looked down at the sidewinder. "You know, the old timers say if you see one snake you'll see another one in the same day. I bet we'll kill another snake before the sun goes down." Ethel sure hoped Catherine was wrong.
Ethel left the gun on the front porch when they got home from their walk. Later, when she was ready for bed, she remembered and went to the porch to get it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a snake slither up on the porch to hide behind a five-gallon oil can in the corner. "Catherine was right!" she gasped as she lifted the gun to shoot, but this time she was too close.
"Catherine, come out here!" she yelled.
Hearing the fright in her sister's voice, Catherine ran to the porch. "What is it?" she demanded.
"A snake, there, behind the oil can," pointed Ethel. "It's huge! I was afraid to shoot because I was so close, but we can't let it go. What should we do?"
"Wait until it comes out from behind the can," answered Catherine. "I'll get the lamp."
As the twilight deepened Catherine brought the kerosene lamp from the kitchen table and put it on a chair. She and Ethel sat on the front porch and stared at the can, waiting to see the snake peek out from it's hiding place. The night was still. Crickets chirped in the yard. Doves settled on the branches of mesquite and Palo Verde trees, cooing softly for their mates. A coyote howled at the moon, answered by another, then another, as the summer evening turned to night and the nerve-twisting seconds lengthened into minutes, then hours.
The girls kept their vigil most of the night. At last, softly at first, then louder and louder, the sisters heard the unmistakable whir of rattles. Warily, the snake lifted its head and looked over the top of the oil can. Slowly Ethel raised her gun. Not breathing, she looked down the barrel at the triangular shaped head, then squeezed the trigger. Boom! The headless snake dropped into it's coils and lay still, the whir of it's rattles slowing to a tick, tick, tick, and finally stopping altogether in the startled night.
It was a diamondback rattlesnake, five feet long, five inches around, with nine rattles and two buttons. This was no ordinary snake! Knowing that a rattlesnake's reflexes could make it move even after it was dead, Ethel decided to put a heavy anvil on its middle. She did not want this snake to slither under the porch and be lost before she could show it off.
The next day Ethel's father and older brother Jess came out to the farm. The first thing they saw was the dead snake on the front porch. Jess was impressed that his baby sister had killed the old diamondback. Months earlier he and his brothers had cleared the desert for planting. In the process they came across a pile of dead cactus and other rubbish that looked like a pack rat's den. The brothers decided the quickest thing to do was to burn the heap. When they did, snakes slithered out. The men chased and killed as many as they could with shovels, but a huge granddaddy diamondback escaped and made its home under the windmill platform. From time to time the snake was seen around the yard, but no one had been able to catch him.
Ethel's father thought it was pretty funny that she had squashed the rattlesnake flat with an anvil. Jess, on the other hand, was glad that the snake was still there. He had seen an advertisement at the Co-op in Mesa offering $100 for a rattlesnake skin five feet or longer. He was disappointed, though, when he brought the skin in to get the reward and found that someone else had already collected the money.
So Ethel killed a rattlesnake, and she had proof. When the anvil was lifted off a grease spot was left where the snake had been pinned down. No amount of scrubbing could ever wash it out!
Today, the porch and the homestead are gone, torn down long ago to make way for progress. Still, at least in memory, the rattlesnake and his stain remains.
