“You are like us—you like the sun. It is warm; it is good. Look at it. Look long time, white man!”
There was something ominous in his tone, and Smith moistened his short upper lip with the tip of his tongue.
“Over there is the ranch where the white woman lives. Look—look long time, white man!” He swung his gaunt arm to the west.
“You make the big talk, Injun,” sneered Smith, but his mouth was dry.
“Up there is the sky where the clouds send messages, where the sun shines to warm us and the moon to light us. There’s antelope over there in the foothills, and elk in the mountains, and sheep on the peaks. You like to hunt, white man, same as us. Look long time on all—for you will never see it again!”
The sun rose higher and hotter while the Indian talked. He had not finished speaking when Smith said:
“God!”
A look of indescribable horror was on his face. His skin had yellowed, and he stared into the crevice at his feet. Now he understood! He knew why they waited on the limestone hill! An odor, scarcely perceptible as yet, but which, faint as it was, sickened him, told him his fate. It was the unmistakable odor of rattlesnakes!
The crevice below was a breeding-place, a rattlesnakes’ den. Smith had seen such places often, and the stench which came from them when the sun was hot was like nothing else in the world. The recollection alone was almost enough to nauseate him, and he always had ridden a wide circle at the first whiff.
His aversion for snakes was like a pre-natal mark. He avoided cowpunchers who wore rattlesnake bands on their hats or stretched the skin over the edge of the cantle of their saddles. He always slept with a hair rope around his blankets when he spent a night in the open. He would not sit in a room where snake-rattles decorated the parlor mantel or the organ. A curiosity as to how they had learned his peculiarity crept through the paralyzing horror which numbed him, and as if in answer the scene in the dining-room of the ranch rose before him. “I hates snakes and mouse-traps goin’ off,” he had said. Yes, he remembered.