The air was full of a hot smell of pine gum. It was a poor sort of pleasure ride. Lockwood, in disgust, was several times at the point of proposing to turn back. Louise, saying nothing, swerved round into still another trail skirting a ridge that ran parallel with the river a few hundred yards away.
Suddenly Louise’s horse shied violently and wheeled half around, jostling into Lockwood’s mount, that recoiled back in sympathetic fright.
“Back! Keep back!” Louise called, half laughing, getting her horse under control.
At the edge of the trail ten feet ahead a snake lay in a bunchy heap, a snake four or five feet long perhaps, glossy as satin with its spring skin, and with a dull checker-pattern down its back. Its flat head poised, cold and menacing and motionless, above its huddle of coil; and from the middle of the heap its tail stood up vibrating too fast for the eye to follow, with a penetrating buzz. The horses shivered, pricking their ears forward.
“The first rattler I’ve seen this year,” said Louise. “They’re not as common as they used to be. I don’t believe we can get the horses past it.”
There was really plenty of room beyond the snake’s striking range, but the horses refused to go on. Lockwood looked around for a long pole or a rock, preparing to dismount. He could see no sort of weapon, and he drew the automatic pistol from its holster under his left arm.
“Don’t laugh at me if I make a clean miss,” he apologized in advance.
He had practiced daily for two years with this weapon, but the target was small, and it was really only by a fluke of the greatest luck that he shot the rattlesnake square through its flat head with the first bullet. It flopped off the bank out of sight into a hollow in a squirming tangle.
“What a good shot!” Louise exclaimed. “Tom thinks he’s wonderful with a gun, but I believe he’d have missed that.”
“Just practice,” said Lockwood modestly, concealing his own surprise and putting the pistol back.