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. H