"Huh! guess you got tired of the job quicker'n you expected, Rufus!" he called out lazily from his seat on the soft moss under a tree. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, they say. But what in the dickens is that you're dragging along after you, Alec? Great Scott! a rattler!"
George scrambled to his feet, filled with excitement. His eyes stared at the four-foot reptile, which still showed signs of life; and Lil Artha had assured Alec its tail would continue to jerk until sundown, even though its head be cut clean off.
"I hope it didn't strike any of you fellows?" George went on to add with a vein of fright in his voice.
The story was quickly told, and the convinced George had to measure the reptile with his tape line, finding it only an inch or two short of four feet.
"As big a rattler as I ever saw," Elmer told them. "They have them five feet long down in Florida, I understand, those diamond-back fellows; but as I haven't been there I can't say anything about it. For a Northern snake this one is certainly a whopper."
"Lil Artha has promised to get the rattle for me," remarked Alec. "Rufus had the first choice, but man, he said he'd never sleep easy nichts if he had it hangin' on the wall of his room at home, thinking about his narrow escape. But it's a verra curious thing to me, and I don't care a bawbee about the sound. It wasn't my ox that was gored, ye ken."
George was acting now in something of a mysterious manner. Elmer noticed this and was looking at the camp-keeper out of the tail of his eye, as though trying to guess what was in the wind. He felt certain that George had a secret of some kind or other, which he was holding back, just for the satisfaction it gave him.
Lil Artha was an observing chap, as we happen to know; and before long he too noticed the same thing. This, however, was after he had seen Elmer observing George closely, with a line across his forehead that told of a puzzled mind.
The tall scout was not the one to bother himself about trying to solve a thing when there was a short cut to the answer. He believed that the best way to get at the meat in a cocoanut was to smash the shell.
"Here, what's brewing with you, George?" he suddenly demanded, facing the other.