“Wonder if Dud would have done that for a joke,” asked Phil.
“I doubt that,” said Garry. “Dudley is too sensible a person to play a fool trick like that, knowing how it would startle anyone. No, whoever did that was half foolish. Gosh, there’s the coffee boiling over,” and Garry dashed to the campfire. They forbore talking about the snake during supper, and were about to forget it, when Garry looked at his chums with a gleam of understanding.
“Listen, you two. I may be wrong, but am more likely right. I just happened to remember something that gives me the creeps. If I’m right, it is the most dastardly attempt to kill a person that I ever heard of.”
“Gosh, don’t give a lecture; tell us what you mean,” broke in Dick.
“It’s just this. That dead rattler was put there with a distinct purpose by some one who wants us out of the way!”
“You don’t think anyone is foolish enough to believe that a dead reptile would drive us away do you? Of course we would be startled, but it wouldn’t make us run out of the country,” scoffed Phil.
“No, you don’t get the point at all,” said Garry, his face paling at the thought. “Haven’t you ever heard that the mate of a dead snake will always find the body and wait there, sometimes for days? It must be some instinct that makes it think the killer of its mate will come that way, and enable him to get revenge.”
The truth of this sank in with such appalling suddenness that the boys were speechless for a moment.
When at last Dick found his voice, he said in a trembling tone that he tried to conceal but could not:
“Why, that means that I might have been bitten as I slept tonight; and not only that, but all three of us might have met the same fate. Who do you suppose was at the bottom of that attempt on our lives?”