some length of it winced
and thrashed ineffectively, and after a few minutes lay slack, the tail
wriggling aimlessly.

Buddy stood with his feet far apart and his hands on his hips, as he had
seen the cowboy do whom he had unconsciously imitated in the killing.

"Snakes like Injuns. Dead'ns is good 'ens," He observed sententiously,
still playing the part of the cowboy. Then, quite sure that the snake
was dead, he took it by the tail, felt again of the horned toad on his
chest and went back to see what the ants were doing.

When so responsible a person as a grownup stops to watch the orderly
activities of an army of ants, minutes and hours slip away unnoticed.
Buddy was absolutely fascinated, lost to everything else. When some
instinct born in the very blood of him warned Buddy that time was
passing, he stood up and saw that the sun hung just above the edge of
the world, and that the sky was a glorious jumble of red and purple and
soft rose.

The first thing Buddy did was to stoop and study attentively the dead
snake, to see if the tail still wiggled. It did not, though he watched
it for a full minute. He looked at the sun--it had not set but glowed
big and yellow as far from the earth as his father was tall. Ezra had
lied to him. Dead snakes did not wiggle their tails until sundown.

Buddy looked for the dust cloud of the herd, and was surprised to find
it smaller than he had ever seen it, and farther away. Indeed, he could
only guess that the faint smudge on the horizon was the dust he had
followed for more days than he could count. He was not afraid, but he
was hungry and he thought his mother would maybe wonder where he was,
and he knew that the point-riders had already stopped pushing the herd
ahead, and that the cattle were feeding now so that they would bed
down at dusk. The chuckwagon was camped somewhere close by, and old
Step-and-a-Half, the lame cook, was stirring things in his Dutch ovens
over the camp-fire. Buddy could almost smell the beans and the meat
stew, he was so hungry. He turned and took one last, long look at the
endless stream of ants still crawling along, picked up the dead snake by
the tail, cupped the other hand over the horned toad inside his waist,
and started for camp.

After a while he heard someone shouting, but beyond faint relief that he
was after all near his "Outfit", Buddy paid no attention. The boys were
always shouting to one another, or yelling at their horses or at the
herd