Up the ridge the hunter ran, the snake close behind him, then down the other side toward the river, but with all his running the Uksuhi gained rapidly, and just as he reached the low ground it caught up with him and wrapped around him, pinning one arm down by his side, but leaving the other free. Now, it gave him a terrible squeeze that almost broke his ribs, and then began to drag him along toward the water. With his free hand the hunter began to clutch at the bushes as they passed, but the snake turned his head and blew its sickening breath into his face, until he had to let go his hold.
Again and again this happened, and all the time they were getting nearer and nearer to a deep hole in the river, when, almost at the last moment, a lucky thought came into the hunter’s mind. He was sweating all over from his run across the mountain, and suddenly remembered to have heard that snakes cannot bear the smell of perspiration. Putting his free hand into his bosom he worked it around under his armpit until it was covered with perspiration. Then withdrawing it, he grasped at a bush until the snake turned its head, when he quickly slapped his sweaty hand on its nose. The Uksuhi gave one gasp almost as if it had been wounded, loosened its coil, and glided swiftly away thru the bushes, leaving the hunter, bruised but not disabled, to make his way home to the Hickory-log.
MYTH TWENTY-ONE.
The Ustutli.
There was once a great serpent, called the Ustutli, that made its haunt upon Cohutta mountain. It was called the Ustutli or “foot” snake, because it did not glide like other snakes, but had feet at each end of its body, and moved by strides or jerks, like a great measuring worm.
These feet were three-cornered and flat and could hold to the ground like suckers. It had no legs, but would raise itself up on its hind feet, with its snaky head high in the air until it found a good place to take a fresh hold; then it would bend down and grip its front feet to the ground while it drew its body up from behind.
It could cross rivers and deep ravines by throwing its head across, and getting a grip with its front feet, and then swing its body over. Wherever its footprints were found there was danger.
It used to bleat like a young fawn, and when the hunter heard a fawn bleat in the woods he never looked for it, but hurried away in the other direction. Up the mountain or down, nothing could escape the Ustutli’s pursuit, but along the side of the ridge it could not go, because the great weight of its swinging head broke its hold on the ground when it moved sideways.
It came to pass after awhile that not a hunter about Cohutta would venture near the mountain for dread of the Ustutli.