“Wish I’d a brought a hair rope,” mused Ace. “We might have had one that would go clear around all our sleeping bags. First chance we get, I’m going to buy one.”
“Naw! We won’t need one. Did you ever see a rattler catch a rabbit?” asked his chum.
“No, d’you?”
“Once I was going along when I noticed the trail of some sort of snake going across the road. Next thing I heard a rabbit squeal, and by the time I spotted the snake it had a hump half way down its throat, and it was swallowing and swallowing trying to get that rabbit down whole.”
“I consider the possibility of rattlesnake bite the one biggest danger in the whole Sierra,” declared Norris, one night, lighting each step carefully over the rocks. “And he does his hunting by night.”
“Considerate of him!” laughed Ace, “seeing that campers do most of theirs by day. But why is it such a danger? I’ve heard opinions pro and con.”
“Rattlesnake venom disintegrates the blood vessels, makes the blood thin and unable to clot. I knew a man who was struck in the ankle, and they had to amputate the leg, and the very bones of that leg were saturated with the blood that had seeped through the weakened walls of the blood vessels.”
“How does it feel to be struck, I wonder?” the boy shuddered.
“This man’s ankle became discolored practically immediately and began to swell. Of course the bite was through his sock, which must have kept a little of the poison out of it, and it fortunately did not happen to penetrate an artery. We could have cut and kneaded the wound instantly to clear out as much as possible of the venom before it had time to enter the blood system, but the fellow refused such heroic measures. We should have taken him by force; it would have saved his leg, likely, for ordinarily this, and a ligature, will do the work.
“Or we could have burned it clean, or injected the serum if we’d had it. But as I was about to explain, he soon became dull and languid, breathing noisily, for the poison affected heart and lungs. It was then that he let us get to work,—almost too late,—or rather, that he ceased his protest. His whole leg swelled and turned black, clear up, he got feverish and nauseated, and for hours he kept swooning off, while we worked over him, almost giving up hope, and one of our men had gone post-haste for an old guide who made the serum,—anti-venom serum.”