[CHAPTER II.—BILLIE HAS A CLOSE CALL.]
“Oh! Billie’s fallen down in that rattlesnake den!” gasped Adrian, even while he and Donald were jumping over the rocks as fast as their legs would carry them, and headed in the direction where just ten seconds before they had seen the fat chum waving his arms excitedly to attract their attention, only to suddenly slip and disappear from view.
In all their experiences with the clumsy Billie, the two boys probably never had such a sensation of absolute horror sweep over them as at that particular minute.
They must have pictured all sorts of terrible results springing from this weakness on the part of Billie to do just the very thing he should have avoided. For him to make a misstep, and fall into that hole in the rocks where he had just told them dozens of poisonous snakes were coiled, and wriggling about, was possibly the greatest calamity that could have happened to him. And it might be the last mistake poor clumsy Billie was ever apt to make in this world of woe.
Spurred on by fear, and almost dreading to peer
into the pit, the two boys reached the edge in a very few seconds. Both of them shut their teeth hard as they proceeded to thrust their heads out in order to look downward.
What they saw gave them a new thrill.
Billie was there, but he had not fallen all the way to the bottom of the hole, it appeared. His old lucky streak seemed to still hold good, for he had succeeded, somehow or other,—and Billie could never explain in what way it came about,—in clutching hold of the rocks as he fell, so that he was clinging there, with his fat legs kicking wildly in space, and not more than five feet from the bottom of the rocky pit.
And just as he had so exultantly shouted when he wanted to attract his resting companions to view the strange sight, the floor of the den seemed to be almost carpeted with squirming reptiles, as though this might be a regular breeding place for rattlesnakes.
They were some of them monsters, while others seemed to be of the smaller species so generally found on the plains, and usually inhabiting the burrows of prairie dogs; but which are just as deadly as their diamond-back cousins.