“Well, I’ll tell you what they look like so as you’ll know ’em. And don’t ketch ’em for playthings, Lanky, don’t ketch ’em for playthings. Jest as well pet a rattlesnake. They’re flat yeller worms with a hundred legs, like fringe on each side, and on every foot there’s a little hook that the centipede can hook into things that he walks on. And them hooks is so pizenous that if he walks across your skin while he’s mad, your flesh will putrefy, and you’ll go as crazy as a locoed hoss, and like as not take to the bushes like a jackrabbit unless somebody holds you. That’s how pizenous they are.
“Well, what I started out to tell you was, one time at dinner me and Zac was settin’ on the ground about fifty feet apart facin’ each other eatin’ our beans and sow-belly. All at once I got a glimpse of somethin’ like a yellow streak runnin’ up my vest on my bandanner, but I jest barely did git a glimpse and couldn’t tell what it was.
“‘Is there somethin’ on my neck?’ I says to Zac.
“‘Good God, man!’ says Zac. ‘It’s a centipede!’
“Well, we’d took off our gloves to eat, and I knowed if I tried to knock the critter off, I’d jest make him mad, and he’d git me shore. And I knowed if Zac come over to knock him off with a stick or somethin’, he’d be dead certain to chase him off on my neck.
“‘Let him alone,’ I says, ‘and maybe he’ll crawl off after while.’
“‘Jest be still,’ says Zac. And he whips out his old six-shooter, and I hears the bullet whistle by my ear.
“‘I got him,’ says Zac.
“And I takes off my bandanner, and there is jest a little speck where the bullet had jest barely teched it. I always did feel grateful to Zac after that, for he shore did save my life that day.”
“You think, then, that if the centipede had touched your skin, he would really have killed you?” asked Lanky.