“Pshaw!”
“Waal, you may pshaw, for you don’t know any better; but when you have hunted for them to eat as long as I have, you’ll be up to the dodge.”
“Eat snakes!”
“Yes, and mighty good eatin’ they are, though I don’t hanker after them when thar’s any thing else round.”
“I’d starve first.”
“Wait till you try, boy. I tell you, a starvin’ man ain’t no way perticular about what he eats. It’s a sorter first come first served game. Now a mule isn’t the best kinder meat, but it’s palytable then. Horse is juicy, ef he hasn’t been worked to death, and rattlesnake is prime.”
A hearty laugh followed the epicurean opinion of the hardy frontiersman, and the march was resumed, with many an eye turned to the ground to watch for the unwelcome visitors that are a terror alike to man and beast, when Waltermyer continued:
“Just hold your horses, boys, for a minute. A little rest won’t hurt them none, and mayhap they’ll need all the vim they’ve got in them when it comes to the mountings. It’s about four years ago since La Moine and I was crossin’ this very sloo. It was a dreadful hot day—August—when the snakes are blind as bats and ten times as venermous as in any other month. You knew that, didn’t you? If one bites you then it’s sartin death. Waal, as I was a-sayin’, the Frenchman and I was a-ridin’ along—it was before I got this horse—when, all of a sudden, I heard him give two of the orfulest yells that ever was. It wasn’t any time to ask questions, so I kinder looked, and, as I hope for mercy, ef thar’ wasn’t two of the biggest kind of rattlers twisted around his horse, and bitin’ away with all thar might at his throat. Somehow, I never could understand the right of it. The horse must have trod on their tails. Onyway, they didn’t live long, and the poor horse died the orfulest to behold.”
“I thought you could cure the bite,” remarked Morse.
“Waal, yes, so we can, ef we are only whar the blue-ash grows or the snake-fern is to be found. But I can tell you, stranger, that ef a man’s time has come ’tain’t no manner of use to doctor him. It is only wastin’ whisky and time. Remember that, boys, and—”