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Page 17
We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The burrow sloped into
the ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see where the two corridors
united, and the floor was dusty from use, like a little highway over which
much travel went. I was walking backward, in a crouching position, when I
heard Antonia scream. She was standing opposite me, pointing behind me and
shouting something in Bohemian. I whirled round, and there, on one of
those dry gravel beds, was the biggest snake I had ever seen. He was
sunning himself, after the cold night, and he must have been asleep when
Antonia screamed. When I turned, he was lying in long loose waves, like a
letter `W.' He twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big
snake, I thought--he was a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity,
his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my
leg, and looked as if millstones couldn't crush the disgusting vitality out
of him. He lifted his hideous little head, and rattled. I didn't run
because I didn't think of it--if my back had been against a stone wall I
couldn't have felt more cornered. I saw his coils tighten--now he would
spring, spring his length, I remembered. I ran up and drove at his head
with my spade, struck him fairly across the neck, and in a minute he was
all about my feet in wavy loops. I struck now from hate. Antonia,
barefooted as she was, ran up behind me. Even after I had pounded his ugly
head flat, his body kept on coiling and winding, doubling and falling back
on itself. I walked away and turned my back. I felt seasick.
Antonia came after me, crying, `O Jimmy, he not bite you? You sure? Why
you not run when I say?'
`What did you jabber Bohunk for? You might have told me there was a snake
behind me!' I said petulantly.
`I know I am just awful, Jim, I was so scared.' She took my handkerchief
from my pocket and tried to wipe my face with it, but I snatched it away
from her. I suppose I looked as sick as I felt.
`I never know you was so brave, Jim,' she went on comfortingly. `You is
just like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you go for him.
Ain't you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and show
everybody. Nobody ain't seen in this kawntree so big snake like you
kill.'
She went on in this strain until I began to think that I had longed for
this opportunity, and had hailed it with joy. Cautiously we went back to
the snake; he was still groping with his tail, turning up his ugly belly in
the light. A faint, fetid smell came from him, and a thread of green
liquid oozed from his crushed head.
`Look, Tony, that's his poison,' I said.
I took a long piece of string from my pocket, and she lifted his head with
the spade while I tied a noose around it. We pulled him out straight and
measured him by my riding-quirt; he was about five and a half feet long.
He had twelve rattles, but they were broken off before they began to taper,
so I insisted that he must once have had twenty-four. I explained to
Antonia how this meant that he was twenty-four years old, that he must have
been there when white men first came, left on from buffalo and Indian
times. As I turned him over, I began to feel proud of him, to have a kind
of respect for his age and size. He seemed like the ancient, eldest Evil.
Certainly his kind have left horrible unconscious memories in all
warm-blooded life. When we dragged him down into the draw, Dude sprang off
to the end of his tether and shivered all over-- wouldn't let us come near
him.
We decided that Antonia should ride Dude home, and I would walk. As she
rode along slowly, her bare legs swinging against the pony's sides, she
kept shouting back to me about how astonished everybody would be. I
followed with the spade over my shoulder, dragging my snake. Her
exultation was contagious. The great land had never looked to me so big
and free. If the red grass were full of rattlers, I was equal to them all.
Nevertheless, I stole furtive glances behind me now and then to see that
no avenging mate, older and bigger than my quarry, was racing up from the
rear.
The sun had set when we reached our garden and went down the draw toward
the house. Otto Fuchs was the first one we met. He was sitting on the
edge of the cattle-pond, having a quiet pipe before supper. Antonia called
him to come quick and look. He did not say anything for a minute, but
scratched his head and turned the snake over with his boot.
`Where did you run onto that beauty, Jim?'
`Up at the dog-town,' I answered laconically.
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