“Huh! nothing funny about that, because I’ve been drinking all my life,” the other answered back.
“Does it hurt?” asked Thad.
“Well, I guess, yes,” replied Step Hen, making a grimace; “but then, I want it to just gouge me. Go it, you little gripper; hope you counteract every drop of poison. That’s it, hit me up again. Whew! that’s going some.”
“Now there are two of us,” remarked Giraffe, as he vied with Step Hen in seeing which could limp the most. “It’s your right leg, and my left one; so we’ve still got a decent pair between us.”
“But they ain’t mates, by a long shot,” declared Step Hen.
Joking in this way they followed after Thad and Allan. But as the morning was nearly done it was decided to make camp long enough to have a bite.
Again they talked of Bumpus and his affairs, as they sat around the fire, and ate.
Step Hen hoped that the fat scout would not have the misfortune to run across a “fighting snake,” such as the one that had thrown him into such a panic.
“Because, you see,” he went on, “not knowing any better, the poor feller would think it was a rattler, instead of just a plain, every day black snake. And it w’d give him no end of worry, because he couldn’t suck the wound himself, being no contortionist like Davy Jones; and he wouldn’t have Thad and his little potash bottle handy.”
“Yes, that’s so,” remarked Giraffe, “there are some people who don’t know the difference between a poisonous rattler, with its square head, and a long twisting black snake.”