Charley's rifle flew to his shoulder and its sharp crack woke the echoes in the little wood. "It's a deer and I have got it," he exclaimed, dashing off after the animal which was staggering and wavering as it ran.
Walter paused only to hang his birds high up in the crotch of a big tree, and followed after his chum.
But the deer, though wounded and losing blood at every step, was really running faster than either of the boys calculated. It soon became evident to both that they would have to work hard to overhaul the wounded creature before it entered the main forest on the other side of the prairie. Once amongst the dense growth, it would soon lose its pursuers.
Walter was only a few feet in the rear of his chum and running at the top of his speed when Charley stopped so short and unexpectedly that he collided with him with such force as to bring both to the ground.
"Look," exclaimed Charley breathlessly, as he pointed ahead, "did you ever see such a repulsive sight?"
Charley had stopped just in time, not fifteen feet from where the two had fallen, was a deep, saucer-like depression in the ground. In its center, where the ground was soft, and muddy, was a writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, nauseating odor.
"It's an awful sight," shuddered Walter after one glance, "and just think how close you were to running into that mass. You would never have got out alive."
"I would never know what struck me," Charley agreed. "I expect there's a full quart of the deadliest of poisons distributed among those beauties."
"Ugh," said Walter, "the sight of them makes me sick. Come away, Charley."
"They have done us considerable damage anyway," Charley said, as they pressed on giving the snake-hole a wide berth. "I cannot see anything of the deer, can you?"