ht showed was the
varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a
second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to
pour it down.

He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all
comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you
leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it.
Jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then
skin the body and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and
said it would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie
them around his wrist, too. He said that that would help. Then I slid
out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I
warn't going to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could
help it.

Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his
head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself
he went to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big,
and so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I
judged he was all right; but I'd druther been bit with a snake than
pap's whisky.

Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all
gone and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take
a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had
come of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he
said that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we
hadn't got to the end of it yet. He said he druther see the new moon
over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a
snake-skin in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself,
though I've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your
left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body
can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in
less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and
spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may
say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin,
and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it. Pap told me. But
anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks
again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big
hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was a