"'Fangs pulled, eh?' says he, and he made the rattler open his mouth and show a perfect pair of stingers. The wise guy took one look at them and fled, and the snake man would have carried it off all right, only he was so busy calling a few choice names after him that he placed the snake back in the cage instead of throwing it in, and the rattler struck him before he could draw his hand out. He had a clown make-up on, so I couldn't tell whether he was pale or not when he came to me a few minutes later and held out his hand, but there was a queer expression on his face and I knew that my apprehensions had not been groundless.
"There were just two little red dots, no bigger than pin heads, on the back of his hand.
"'You got it, didn't you?' says I.
"'Good and plenty,' says he. 'My arm hurts me already.'
"We got busy right away and took him up to the hospital where Bonavita is now. Say, he was a very thin man and you can see that I'm no lightweight; but by midnight the right side of his body and his right arm and leg were swollen to my size, and in the morning all of the swollen part was as black as a coal. He was suffering terribly, and I tried to get hold of the Arab snake doctor but couldn't locate him, so I wired to Rochester for Rattlesnake Pete. He came down and a mighty interesting man he is, but he couldn't do anything which 'Doc' up at the hospital hadn't done, and it was five days before my man was out of danger. He was not a drinking man—I finished having drunkards around my show a good many years ago—and the whiskey took right hold of him and pulled him through. 'Doc' kept squirting some red stuff into his arm, but it was the 'red-eye' which saved him—and that reminds me."
"The wise guy."
He beckoned to the waiter and each one ordered his favorite antidote for a possible snake bite.
"Did he return to the show?" asked the Stranger, after he had rendered himself immune.