“I don’t like killing things without they’re good to eat,” said Joses, picking up another stone, and seeking for an opportunity to crush the serpent’s head— “Ah, don’t go too near, boy; he could sting as bad as ever if he got a chance!”
“I don’t think he’d bite now,” said Bart.
“Ah, wouldn’t he! Don’t you try him, my boy. They’re the viciousest things as ever was made. And, as I was saying, I don’t—there, that’s about done for him,” he muttered, as he dropped the piece of rock he held right upon the rattlesnake’s head, crushing it, and then taking hold of the tail, and drawing the reptile out to its full length—“as I was a-saying, Master Bart, I don’t like killing things as arn’t good to eat; but if you’ll put all the rattlesnakes’ heads together ready for me, I’ll drop stones on ’em till they’re quite dead.”
“What a fine one, Joses!” said Bart, gazing curiously at the venomous beast.
“Six foot six and a half,” said Joses, scanning the serpent. “That’s his length to an ’alf inch.”
“Is it? Well, come along; we are wasting time, but do you think rattlesnakes are as dangerous as people say?”
“Dangerous! I should think they are,” replied Joses, as he shouldered his rifle; and they tramped rapidly on to make up for the minutes lost in killing the reptile. “You’d say so, too, if you was ever bit by one. I was once.”
“You were?”
“I just was, my lad, through a hole in my leggings; and I never could understand how it was that that long, thin, twining, scaly beggar should have enough brains in her little flat head to know that it was the surest place to touch me right through that hole.”
“It was strange,” said Bart. “How was it?”