Both felt like eating something warm, and while Mr. Morris got out the provisions, Dave stirred round with a hatchet with which to cut some firewood. There was little on the knoll and he descended and walked over an opening to where grew some brush. Here lay a fallen tree with several dry branches well suited to his purpose.
Dave was hard at work chopping off one of the branches when a noise coming from the woods beyond the brush attracted his attention. There was a cry and then a thrashing around of a human being.
“Hullo, what’s up there?” he called out, and leaving the fallen tree, started in the direction from whence the sounds proceeded. Running through a strip of the woods, he reached a series of rocks where there was another open patch with a spring.
Just as Dave came to the opening a gun went off, and as the smoke cleared away the first thing he saw was a snake twirling and twisting on the ground in its death agonies. Several other snakes were close by, and in their midst was a young man who was doing his best to get away from the reptiles.
Dave had often encountered snakes on the farm, so he was not as frightened as he might otherwise have been. As the young man started to club one of the reptiles with the stock of his gun, Dave aimed a blow with his hatchet at another, and in a few seconds two more of the snakes were put in a condition where they could do no further harm. Then the young man and the boy attacked the remaining snakes, but these glided away between the rocks, and in less than five minutes after it had begun the battle was over and the snakes had departed to return no more.
“That was warm work,” remarked Dave, as he wiped the bloody hatchet on the grass. “Did that first snake bite you?”
“He struck at my boot, but the leather was too thick for him,” was the answer, delivered in quite a cool tone considering the excitement which had just passed. “I must thank you for coming to my assistance.”
“You were lucky to escape so easily. I know a man who got in a nest of snakes like that and was bitten three times.”
“I was somewhat on my guard, as it happens. I imagined there might be snakes around these rocks. But I had to come here.”
“Had to come here?”