on there. I picketed
Dude down in a draw, and we went wandering about, looking for a hole
that would be easy to dig. The dogs were out, as usual, dozens of them,
sitting up on their hind legs over the doors of their houses. As
we approached, they barked, shook their tails at us, and scurried
underground. Before the mouths of the holes were little patches of
sand and gravel, scratched up, we supposed, from a long way below the
surface. Here and there, in the town, we came on larger gravel patches,
several yards away from any hole. If the dogs had scratched the sand up
in excavating, how had they carried it so far? It was on one of these
gravel beds that I met my adventure.

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!'