he said, pushing down with the dipper until she formed a small
pool in the heart of the plant which rapidly filled. "Have a taste."

"Jove, that is good!" said Donald. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Show you later," laughed Linda. "Think I'll take a sip myself."

Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the car. Once
Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an extremely curious little
plant spreading over the ground, a tiny reddish vine with quaint round
leaves that looked as if a drop of white paint rimmed with maroon had
fallen on each of them.

"I never saw that before," said Donald. "What are you going to do with
it?"

"Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite," said Linda. "That
is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites you, score each side
of the wound with the cleanest, sharpest knife you have and then bruise
the plant and bind it on with your handkerchief, and forget it."

"Is that what you do?" inquired Donald.

"Why sure," said Linda, "that is what I would do if a snake were so
ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn't seem to be much of the
antagonistic element in my nature. I don't go through the desert
exhaling the odor of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent or slip away so
silently that I never see them."

"Now what on earth do you mean by that?" inquired Donald.

"Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he took me
to the mountains and the desert. If you are afraid, your system throws
off formic acid, and the animals need only the suspicion of a scent of
it to make them ready to fight. Any animal you encounter or even a bee,
recognizes it. One of the first things that I remember about Daddy was
seeing him sit on the running board of the runabout buckling up his
desert boots while he sang to me,

'Let not your heart be troubled
Neither let it be afraid,'

as he got ready to take me on his back and go into the desert for our
first lesson; he told me that a man was perfectly safe in going to the
forest or the desert or anywhere he chose among any kind of animals if
he had sufficient self-control that no odor of fear emanated from him.
He said that a man was safe to make his way anywhere he wanted to go, if
he started his journey by recognizing a blood brotherhood with anything
living he would meet on the way; and I have heard Enos Mills say that
when he was snow inspector of Colorado he traveled the crest of the
Rockies from