“Not another rattlesnake, I bet a cent—though it’s some rattling,” chuckled Neale O’Neil.
The heads of a pair of horses then appeared around the turn. They proved to be drawing a tin-peddler’s wagon, and over this rough piece of driveway the wash-boilers, dishpans, kettles, pails, and a dozen other articles of tin and agate-ware, were making more noise than the passage of a battery of artillery.
Some scientists have pointed out that snakes—some snakes, at least—seem to be hard of hearing. That could not have been so with the big rattlesnake that had held up the Kenways and their automobile.
Before the Jewish peddler on the seat of the wagon could draw his willing horses to a halt, the snake swiftly uncoiled and wriggled across the road and into the bushes. All that was left to mark his recent presence was a wavy mark in the dust.
“Vat’s the madder?” called the peddler. “Ain’t dere room to ged by?”
“Sure,” said the relieved Neale. “Let me back a little and you pull out to the right, and we’ll be all right. We were held up by a snake.”
The Jew (he was a little man with fiery hair and whiskers, and he had a narrow-brimmed derby hat jammed down upon his head), seemed to study over this answer of the boy for fully a minute. Then, as Neale was steering the automobile slowly past his rig, he leaned sidewise and asked, with a broad smile:
“I say, mister! Vat did you say stopped you?”
“A snake,” declared Neale, grinning.
“Oy, oy! And that it iss yedt to drive one of them so benzine carts? No! Mein horses iss petter. They are not afraid of snakes.”