A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

My field of pea-vine hay is beautiful, but it was so badly ploughed that here and there cockspurs were not turned under and they would ruin the whole field. I have paid a woman twice to go through the field and pull out the plants before the fatal little burr was hard. I went through it myself some time ago and found that she had only broken off the heads and left the roots, all there to spring again.

I pulled out quite a number, and to-day called Dab to go into the field with me to pull them. If only I had told him to bring a hoe the day would have been saved. In order to get to the field by the shortest way I had to pass through a low spot in the corn-field which was grown up with weeds dense and as tall as my head. The ox cart had made a track in the midst, where its wheels had mashed the weeds, from the barn-yard. I was about fifty feet in front of Dab, lifting my foot very high at each step and going very slowly, with eyes everywhere, when six feet in front of me I saw a heart curdling sight—a moccasin so enormous that I could not believe my eyes.

He lay with his tail a foot beyond the wheel tracks on one side and his awful head a foot beyond on the other! I called as softly as I could to Dab, who was just opening the gate, "Bring a strong stick quickly to kill this snake!"

Dab called aloud in his most educated tone, which he very seldom uses, "A snake, eh? What kind of a snake? A big snake, eh?"

"Come at once, Dab, with a strong stick!" I said in anything but a conversational tone, but Dab continued to discourse and ejaculate, and before I could get him to take a lath from an old gate near which he stood the monster, who had listened to everything, slowly moved into the thick bushes and was gone.

There I stood, afraid to move one way or the other. I do not remember ever to have been so thoroughly demoralized since I was a child. When Dab came up even the tail was out of sight. I hate to think it, but it almost seemed as if Dab had dallied and waited until he was sure it had gone, for I kept crying, "Come quickly, it is beginning to move! Oh, Dab, come on, it will get away! It is going!" and not until I cried in despair, "Now it is gone!" did he come forward with great boldness, a splendid lightwood stake in his hand with which the snake could easily have been killed while it was in sight. I would not let him pursue it into the high growth.

I sent him back to the house for a hoe, and while he was gone I stood there battling with myself. I could not bear to go on through that tall, dense growth of grass and weeds with this terrible thing somewhere, but I said to myself: "You have never let fear turn you back from an undertaking in your latter life; are you going to turn craven now? If you do you will be miserable; your life is beset by many dangers; once let fear get the upper hand and your composure and peace of mind are gone."

So I argued and reasoned and fought with myself, and by the time Dab came, it was easy to go on. I took the hoe from him and cleaned a space of weeds in the direction the snake had taken, and when I had showed him that I was not afraid to do it and how I wished it done he took the hoe and very gingerly chopped down the growth toward the vegetable garden, for I feared very much that the monster should establish itself in there. I kept behind him, encouraging him on, when he gave a shriek and cried:—

"Der de snake now." No educated tone now. He cried aloud "de snake, de sing."

I tried my best to see the snake, but could not. He is a little taller than I am and could see over the bushes.