He watched while Pretty Paws went leaping from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, and the marten after her. As agile as herself, for all his great size, was that marten. How it ended Fuzzy never knew, for he could not follow fast enough. But if it wasn’t Pretty Paws herself who barked at him next day, it was her twin sister.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RATTLESNAKE DEN
FUZZY often wandered far down the mountain side.
One hot week in July his restless wandering carried him almost down to the valley. He had been chasing a jack rabbit through the tall grass when he was startled by a sound like the rustling of a dry leaf, only ever so many times louder. He jumped out of the way till he could find out what it would be that could make such a queer sound.
As he did so, a great snake shot from its coil to the spot where he had been but an instant before. Its mouth was open and it displayed two long, sharp fangs. Its scaly back was mottled with cross-wise stripes, dark, reddish brown, with yellow edges to the lighter spots.
Fuzzy’s fur rose along the back of his neck. He had caught many a snake and eaten it with relish, but not this kind. This one was different. This must be what had made that ominous rattling sound. He had nearly stepped on it.
He started to climb between two bowlders and go on his way, but no sooner had he set foot on the spot than there came another of those peculiar rattling sounds, then another, and another. He had stepped into a den of rattlesnakes.
Now the rattler always plays fair. It gives warning before it strikes. As an actual fact, it will not strike at all unless some one comes near stepping on it or makes it fear for its life. But the unfortunate Fuzzy-Wuzz had actually stepped into the retreat of a whole colony of baby snakes. And the babies themselves were equipped with poison fangs. There must have been other mothers there, too, the way they rattled. And now the first snake was all coiled ready to spring again, her ugly flat head rising straight up out of the middle of the coil and her tail again rattling its buttons warningly.
The little bear leapt for his life, but he was not quite quick enough. One of the snakes, (he never knew which one,) struck his left hind foot a terrific blow, driving its fangs in till it had squeezed the little poison bag that lies at the root of each fang, so that the poison ran down a groove in the fang.