tically. "Ner
I wouldn't advise any one to trust 'em too fur, neither."

"They say a rattler has one rattle on his tail for every year of his
age," ventured Pedro.

"A young snake," spoke up Ted, "has a soft button on its tail. And then
the rattle grows at the rate of three joints a year, and you can't tell a
thing about its age, because by the time there are about ten of them, it
snaps off when it rattles."

"Down in San Antonio," said Ace, "we had an hour between trains once, and
we went into a billiard parlor where they had a collection of
rattlesnakes, stuffed. And they showed some rattles with 30 or 40 joints
to them."

"Huh!" laughed Ted. "That's easy! You can snap the rattles of several
snakes together any time you want to give some tourist a thrill."

"You seem to know all about it," gibed Ace. "They had 13 species of
rattlesnakes down in this--it used to be a saloon. And ten of them
Western. They had a huge seven foot diamond back, and they had yellow
ones and gray ones and black ones and some that were almost pink. I
mean, they had their skins. All colors----"

"To match their habitat," supplemented Norris. "Our California rattler is
a gray or pale brown where it's dry summers, and in the Oregon woods
where it's moist, and the foliage deeper colored, it's green-black all
but the spots. _I've_ seen them tamed. There was one guide up there who
kept one in a cage, and it would take a mouse from his fingers."

"I wouldn't chance it," shivered Ted.

"Oh, this one would glide up flat on the floor of the cage. They can't
strike unless they're coiled."

"I suppose he caught it before it was old enough to be poison," said
Pedro.

"A rattlesnake can strike from the moment it's born. It's perfectly
independent a few hours after birth."

"Ugh! Bet I dream of them now." But such was their healthy out-of-door
fatigue that they all slept like logs.

It was only the next day, however, that the two boys, Ace and Ted, poking
exploratively into a deep cleft in a rock ledge, were startled by an
abrupt, ominous rattle, and beheld in their path the symmetrical coils of
the sinister one. The inflated neck was arched from the center of the
coil and the heart-shaped head, with red tongue out-thrust, waved slowly
as the upthrust tail vibrated angrily. A flash of that swift head would
inject the deadly virus into the leg of one of the intruders. Yet Ted
knew the reptile would never advance to the attack.

Dragging Ace b