The boys cast their eyes on the ground, and beheld a big rattlesnake, stone dead.
“Did you kill it, Dick?” was Garry’s first question.
“No, it was laying there under the boughs that made my sleeping place. Gosh, it scared me, I can tell you. I don’t know what made me scream so. I guess it was just the thought that it might have been alive, and that I would have laid down there tonight. I saw that it was dead, of course, the minute I looked at it, but I couldn’t help letting out that yelp. Ugh, it makes me creep now to think of it. Wonder how it chose that place to die?”
“Must have crawled in and then gave up the ghost,” said Phil.
In the meantime Garry had been examining the reptile’s body.
“That snake was killed by a human being,” he announced. “See, its head is crushed, and it has been hit several times with a club. Don’t see how it could have crawled very far after being mashed up that way.”
“What do you mean?” was the startled question of Dick.
“Looks suspiciously like an ill-timed practical joke to me,” answered Garry. “Of course it is foolish to think we are the only ones that ever come near here, and some passerby or camper might have killed it and seeing that this place was occupied, hidden it there to do just what it did—scare one of us half to death. Any snake is bad enough, but a rattler, even a dead one, is enough to shake anyone’s nerve for a minute.”
“Well, let’s throw the thing away and forget about it,” said Phil.
“I think I remember Dud say once that among his many occupations and ways of making a living in the woods, was by skinning a snake whenever he happened to kill one, and selling the skin. There are some people who want such things for curios, but blessed if I would want one,” said Dick. “Chuck it outside and next time we see him we can tell him he can have it.”