Part 3 (1/2)
A rattlesnake can sometimes strike as far as her own length, they say.”
Immediately a scene of great excitement followed. Each fellow ran around, trying to find a suitable stick, that would be stout enough to do execution, and at the same time have sufficient length. For now that they knew what its species was, the coiled serpent looked terribly ugly, as, with head drawn back, she waited for another attack, all the while sounding her rattle like a challenge to battle.
Steve happened to be the first to find a stick that he thought would do the business, and he immediately rushed forward.
”Slow, now, Steve!” warned Max, fearful lest the natural headstrong nature of the other might get him into trouble.
Just then Owen also picked up a long pole, and advanced from the opposite side. The badgered snake, only intent on defending her young, thinking that here was a chance to get away from all this turmoil, had slipped out of coil, and even started to glide off; but as Steve made a wild swoop with his pole, she again flung herself into coil, ready to fight to the end.
n.o.body spares a rattlesnake, however much they might wish to let an innocent coachwhip or a common gartersnake get away. From away back to the Garden of Eden times the heel of man has been raised against venomous serpents. And somehow the close call their chum had just had from a terrible danger, seemed to arouse the hostility of the chums against this snake in particular.
When both Max and Toby came up, each, with a part of a hickory limb in their hands, the destiny of that snake was written plainly, strive as she might to escape, or reach one of her human tormentors.
Whack! came Steve's pole down across the reptile's back, and from that instant the fight was taken out of the scaly thing.
”Wow! this is what I call rus.h.i.+ng the mourners!” gasped Bandy-legs, after they had made sure that the rattler was as dead as might be expected before sundown; for Owen declared that he had some sort of belief in the old saying that ”cut up a snake as you will, its tail will wriggle until sunset.”
”I should say yes,” added Steve; ”and you're bent on bein' in the center of every old thing that happens. First you shout out your boat's sinking, and while we're fixing her you wander out and stir up a hornets' nest about your ears.”
”Say, it did sound like it, sure as anything,” admitted the repentant Bandy-legs. ”I'm sorry I gave you all so much trouble, boys; next time I run across a litter of little snakes, it's me to the woods. Wonder what became of the beggars? They disappeared about the time the mother came tootin' up.”
”Mebbe they ran down her throat,” suggested Owen; ”some say snakes can hide their young that way, but I never believed it.”
”Well,” remarked Max, who was examining the dead reptile, ”this one didn't, so I reckon they must have skedaddled off in the bushes. Perhaps they're old enough to take care of themselves, though I hope they don't live to grow up. If there's one thing I detest on earth it's a poisonous snake.”
”Me, too!” piped up Bandy-legs; ”but then, you see, I never thought this one was loaded. Yes, I just reckoned she'd come to see what I was doin'
with her bunch of youngsters, and I kept on jollyin' her. Thought I was havin' fun, boys, but never again, you hear me!”
”Want to take these rattles along, Bandy-legs?” asked Owen, who had severed the h.o.r.n.y looking appendage at the end of the tail; ”it'll serve to remind you of what a silly job it is to play with a snake that you've never been properly introduced to.”
”Not for me,” replied the other, with a little shudder. ”I'd just hate to have my folks know how foolish I was. Keep 'em, and hang the thing up in the clubhouse, boys.”
”Sure,” interrupted Steve; ”do for a dinner horn some time; better than j.a.panese wind bells to make music.”
”Ugh! I'll never hear it without thinkin' of the grand scare I got when Max here shouted out the way he did,” admitted the one who had been the cause for all this commotion.
”The canoe's ready for business at the old stand,” announced Max, ”and don't be afraid that there's going to be any trouble again with that same leak. I've fixed that plug in good and strong, Bandy-legs. Now let's be off!”
Accordingly the voyage was resumed. And just as some of the boys had said, they speedily turned from the main river into the branch called the Big Sunflower, which, as the scene of their late successful search for pearls, was invested with memories of a rather pleasant character for the five chums.
As they paddled along against the rather brisk current, first one, and then another had something to call out regarding this place or that.
”It's just great to be coming up here again, after buying these boats with some of the hard cash we earned that time,” declared Steve, who was keeping closer to the others now.
”How many fellers d'ye reckon started grubbin' up here, after we quit?”
demanded Bandy-legs, who was working the paddle fairly well, though at times he made a bad stroke, and seemed to learn slowly that it could all be done without the splash and noise he insisted on making.
”Dozens of 'em,” replied Owen; ”but they didn't find much, and it soon petered out. Why, one boy told me he'd hunted two whole days, and found just three mussels, which didn't turn up a single pearl. He said we'd cleaned the whole river out, and sometimes I think that way myself.”
”But that bunch back of Ted were as smart as anything, too,” observed Max. ”Think of them finding that there was a whole lot of ginseng growing wild in the woods around Carson, and gathering it in on the sly.”