"Worse than that," replied the Lieutenant. "It was a diamond-back rattler, the most venomous snake known to this country, and with another step I should have been on him. I'd rather face your panther unarmed than to have stepped on that fellow."
"What would you have done if you had met it without a gun in your hand?" asked Sumner, curiously.
"Run," answered the Lieutenant, laconically, as he grasped the lifeless body of the snake by the tail, with a view to dragging it into camp.
"But if he had caught and bitten you?"
"He wouldn't have caught me, because, in the first place, he would have been content to be let alone, and wouldn't have chased me. In the second place, the rattlesnake is such a sluggish reptile that I could run faster than he, and could easily have kept out of his way."
"Well, then, what would you do if you were bitten?"
"If it were on an arm or a leg, I should tie my handkerchief above the wound, and twist it with a bit of stick as tightly as possible, so as to impede the circulation. Then I should enlarge the wound with my knife, and, if I could reach it with my mouth, I should suck it for five minutes, frequently spitting out the blood. After that I should get to camp as quickly as possible, put a freshly-chewed tobacco plaster on the wound every ten minutes for the next hour, and at the same time drink a tumblerful of whiskey or other alcoholic liquor. If I could do all that, and the fangs had not struck an artery, I should feel reasonably sure of recovery."
"Suppose they had struck an artery, what would you do?"
"Reconcile myself to death as quickly as possible, for I should probably be dead inside of three minutes," was the grim reply.
Worth shuddered as he gazed at the scaly body that, marked with black and yellow diamonds, trailed for more than five feet behind the Lieutenant, and remarked that the sooner they got away from the haunts of panthers and rattlesnakes, and back among the good-natured alligators, the better he should like it.