" became the watchword on the Strip.

Mrs. Christopherson's little Heine, a small, taciturn boy of five who
had become a daily, silent visitor at the store, came in one afternoon,
roused into what, for him, was a garrulous outburst:

"There's a snake right out here, and I bet it's six feet long the way it
rattles."

Ada grabbed a pole and tried to kill it. The monster struck back like
the cracking of a whip. She backed off and with her strong arm hit
again and again, while Ida Mary ran with a pitchfork.

"Keep out of the way," shouted Ada, "you may get bitten!"

Winded, Ada fanned herself with her straw hat and wiped the perspiration
from her face. "I got that fellow," she said triumphantly.

This was one problem about which _The Wand_ seemed helpless. Printers'
ink would have no effect on the snakes, and if this horror were
published, the Strip would be isolated like a leper's colony. After
using so much ingenuity in building up the achievements of that
swift-growing country, the announcement of this plague of snakes might
undo all that had been accomplished.

And the snakes increased. When Ida Mary was out of sight I worried
constantly. It was like one's fear for a person in battle, who may be
struck by a bullet at any moment. But the rattler was more surely fatal
when it struck than the bullet.

Something had to be done. To Hades with what the world thought about our
having snakes! We had to do something that would bring relief from this
horror. We went to the old medicine men--John Yellow Grass, I think was
one of them--to find out how the Indians got rid of snakes. They didn't.
But at least they knew what to do when you had been bitten. The Indian
medicine men said to bleed the wound instantly, bandaging the flesh
tightly above and below to keep the poison from circulating. That was
the Indians' first-aid treatment; and, as a last resort, "suck the
wound."

_The Wand_ printed warnings: "Bank your houses ... keep doors and
windows tightly screened ... keep a bottle of whisky close at hand....
Carry vinegar, soda and bandages with you, and a sharp thin-bladed knife
to slash and bleed the wound." What a run there was on vinegar and
pocket knives!

By this time the sight of a coiled rope made me jumpy and I dreamed of
snakes writhing, coiling, moving in undulating lines. At noon one day I
was alone, making up the paper. I stood at the form table working, when
I turned abruptly. A snake's slimy head was thru