There was a soft brightness in the black eyes, as if tears were not far off, and everybody began talking at once, trying to drown the thought of the two “wild orphans” clinging together, and the utter hopelessness of an appeal to Miss Sophia.
“Think the critter’d be most as unpop’lar as Ethan’s rattlesnakes, hey?” chuckled Uncle Si.
“What?” screamed Doris and Cynthia, together, and the boy blushed to the roots of his hair.
“Well, you know, that was a long time ago,” he muttered, but Uncle mercilessly continued:
“Said they wa’n’t dangerous at all, if ye knew how to handle ’em—pick ’em up by the scruff o’ the neck, like blind kittens; wa’n’t that it, Ethan? Studied a heap on the subjick, he had. ‘Uncle,’ says he, ‘they don’t need to eat a thing fer six months to a year;’ an’ I says, ‘There orter be a good bit o’ profit in boarding ’em,’ says I. But Ethan, he says as how he can get five dollars apiece from a museum; and he has a pair o’ boots made to come up to his waist, pretty nigh; an’ he tramps over to Rattlesnake Gulch one mornin’ afore daylight, so as to ketch ’em crawlin’ out o’ their holes, most likely.”
Every eye was fixed upon the speaker, except that of his victim, who wriggled uneasily and vainly tried to break into the conversation.
“Ethan allers did go in fer makin’ money, ye know,” pursued Uncle, enjoying his success. “Wouldn’t take along any whisky fer bites, though I offered him all I had left, sayin’ as how it was a wuss pizen than the snake’s an’ not accordin’ to modern methods. Wal, along about dark Ethan comes back pretty well tuckered out, carryin’ a gunny-sack over his shoulder on the end of a stick. Didn’t need to tell me there was a live rattler in that there gunny-sack! I could hear his tail a-goin’ like an alarm-clock, an’ every now an’ then he’d strike out kinder vicious an’ set the thing to wavin’ back an’ forth.”
“How did you ever get him into the sack, Ethan?” begged Cynthia, much excited. Doris shuddered, and hid her face in her hands, while Stella sat quite silent, with the fawn’s head in her arms.
“Mischief of it was to git him out agin,” remarked Uncle. “Ef Ethan ever got that five dollars, I will say he arned it. Just tell ’em what your aunt by marriage said when she stumbled over that gunny-sack in the woodshed an’ found out what was in it, Ethan.” But Ethan had slipped out to the barn, and was fixing up an unused box-stall for Stella’s fawn.