“Glad to say he didn’t, Elmer; but shucks! if he could only have flung himself his full length, instead of only half, I believe he’d have struck me. But I did for him, let me tell you, that’s right. Six rattles, and a prime button to wind up with, to show for my encounter! Whew!”
“But didn’t you hear his warning rattle?” demanded Wee Willie; “I never knew a case where one of his stripe didn’t shake his can like thunder before you almost stepped on him. They’re the only honorable snake there is.”
Perk colored up, and then candidly admitted his shortcoming.
“Why, er, you see, I just must have thought it was only a locust buzzing away like all get-out,” he confessed, in some confusion. “Then all at once he launched himself out at me, to fall short; but like a flash he was coiled again, and starting in to make that queer buzzing sound once more. Oh! yes, I did get a shock, and felt as cold as ice for a few seconds; then my dander seemed to rise, and I just looked around for a pole, which luckily enough happened to be handy. It knocked him silly, you can see.”
“We’ll take no chances with such a slick neighbor,” said Wee Willie, who happened to be carrying the camp hatchet in his left hand; with which he now proceeded to decapitate the squirming snake. “There, be careful not to step on his head, Perk; I’ve heard of a case where a man died by doing that, the sharp fangs running into his foot through his soft moccasin.”
Perk was contented to obtain possession of the rattle as a memento of his late exciting encounter. He showed some concern over the matter.
“I certainly hope there isn’t a nest of these chaps hanging around Log Cabin Bend,” he remarked, solicitously. “What with watching for snakes, and escaped lunatics, I can see where we’re bound to be on the alert every minute of our stay up here.”
“So far as that goes, it always pays to keep your eyes open when afoot in the Tall Timber,” Elmer warned him. “You never know what you may run up against any minute; and preparedness is the right bower of every woodsman worthy of the name. Already we’ve run across three instances of this—first there was that crouching cat Amos frightened off with his flashlight; then came the mysterious party who slipped away from the cabin at our approach; and now this venomous snake that was lying coiled in your path, and on which you might have trod unawares only for his generous warning.”
“This ought to be a good lesson to me, Elmer,” humbly admitted the contrite Perk. “I realize that I’m a whole lot short on woods lore, and all those things some of my fine pards know so much about; but I mean to soak in a wheen of the same while we’re up here in camp. Yes, every time I shake this rattle it’ll remind me how wofully lacking I am in scoutcraft, and everything connected with life in the woods.”
“Everything perhaps except the splendid art of cookery, Perk,” remarked the cunning Wee Willie, adroitly feeding the ambition of the other to shine as an artist along such lines; “there you’ve got the bunch of us left at the post.”