“He wanted his own way and I had to put my foot down firmly,” Brent said coming to himself. “His death must have been quite unexpected. He was on the job the last time I saw him. Maybe he had a stroke.”
“Doesn’t make any difference—long as you’re all right,” Tom said, with a ring of real feeling in his voice.
“Oh, I’m all right; asleep at the switch, that’s all,” said Brent rather weakly. “Gee williger, he’s a long guy, isn’t he? Do you know there was something crooked about that snake? He’s a rattler, isn’t he?”
“He was,” said Tom, dangling the frightful thing, “but he ain’t.”
And do you know, it was I and no other, who suggested the solution of the snake’s death. And that was a month afterwards. It did not occur to Brent what he had done. As for Tom, scout, woodsman, detective, general wiseacre, and what not, he did not deduce the fact; perhaps because the stone was not visible. Anyway, the little scene of the encounter was changed by his own descent and by Brent’s sprawling fall.
But unquestionably in those last moments of that ghastly deadlock the creature’s head was held under water long enough to kill it. What other explanation is there? If you can think of any you are welcome to it. At least Tom is satisfied that I am right (for once in my life), and as for Brent the only alternative he has to offer is that the snake had acute indigestion.
“Any news of the sock?” Tom asked.
“Look in that hollow place where I lifted a stone out.”
“Nothing there,” said Tom.
“Foiled again,” said Brent. “There was a stone in there that had a cross on it.”