“What is that?” he thought, and instantly stopped and cocked his gun.
Old Bruden would have been freshly loaded if the dogwood ramrod had grown with a screw at the end, so that Mr. Muller could have drawn out the old loads. But he had sifted some powder into the nipples of the gun, and had put on fresh percussion-caps, and was content to fire out the old loads.
Something now quickly glided from the tuft, slipped rapidly over the ground in front of him, and disappeared in another thicket.
It was a large blacksnake, but it passed before him so suddenly and swiftly that Mr. Muller was not ready to fire at it. But he would be sure to take a shot at it if it appeared again. He would be very glad to kill a large snake like that. He would take the skin home and stuff it. It would be quite a curiosity.
Mr. Muller stepped forward a few paces and stood ready, his eyes fixed upon the thicket. In half a minute the blacksnake appeared again, and rushed directly up the hill with that rapid motion peculiar to these reptiles.
Mr. Muller took good aim at him, and when he thought he had him well covered with the muzzle of his gun, he pulled the forward trigger. The cap snapped loudly, but there was no report.
Instead of that, a man’s voice shouted,—
“What are you about?”
Utterly astonished, Mr. Muller looked beyond the point where the snake had been, and found that he was aiming his gun almost directly at a man who was lying on the ground in the shade of the tall sumach.
The snake had been on a little rise in the ground when he pulled the trigger, and if the gun had gone off, a great part of the charge would probably have struck the man, who was lying on the ground not many yards beyond.