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A straight broadsword, with a handle of box-wood and a sheath covered with snakeskin, was suspended from his waist. In his right hand he held a short javelin, with a broad, bright steel head, of a span in length, and in his left he led by a leash of twisted silk and gold a large and noble staghound.
He wished that he had a picture of Francesca to take its place. He unrolled the snakeskin and pinned it vertically to the wall by the steps, admiring the silver and ivory colors and the dark diamonds that had curled around the snake.
"Sir," replied the Naturalist, "I need a snakeskin for my collection, but if you had not explained I should not have interrupted you, for I thought you were at dinner." The Eligible Son-in-Law
As they went unpunished they grew ever bolder until at length one day their chief, Canonicus, sent a messenger to the Governor with a bundle of arrows tied about with a large snakeskin. This was meant as a challenge. But the Governor was not to be frightened by such threats. He sent back the snakeskin stuffed with bullets and gunpowder, and with it a bold message.
Round about the meteor stone which they called a god, each of them stirring a little gourd of medicine that was placed upon the ground before him, but uttering no word, were gathered Hokosa and his followers to the number of twenty. They were all of them arrayed in their snakeskin dresses and other wizard finery. Also each man held in his hand a wand fashioned from a human thigh-bone.
Her hair, which seemed of a copper red, darkened by rain, was blown about her shoulders, and her drenched blue gown, hitched at the waist with a snakeskin girdle, flapped about her as she turned to one or the other, using more play of hands than our home-bred ladies do.
As I searched around in the brush for likely pieces of firewood, my head bowed and my eyes upon the ground, I suddenly felt a great weight hurl itself upon me. I struggled to my knees and seized my assailant, a huge, naked man naked except for a breechcloth of snakeskin, the head hanging down to the knees. The fellow was armed with a stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet.
The city awoke with a murmur, from the lake came the sound of water beaten by ten thousand oars, as though myriads of wild-fowl had sprung suddenly from their reedy beds. Here, there, and everywhere torches flashed out like falling stars, wild notes were blown on horns and shells, and above all arose the booming of the snakeskin drum which the priests upon the teocalli beat furiously.
Often a professional entertainer sat cross-legged on the kang telling endless stories or singing for hours at a time in a high-pitched, nasal voice, accompanying himself upon a tiny snakeskin violin. It was like a stage drama of concentrated Chinese country life. Among this polyglot assembly perhaps there may be a single man who has arrived with a pack upon his back.
Now, vamos!" he continued, as Tom seemed to hesitate, "the big Stetson with the snakeskin onto it. "An' how be you stackin' up yours'ef?" observed the old gentleman, turning to me as his dark agent vanished in quest of head-bear. "Which you shorely looks as worn an' weary as a calf jest branded. It'll do you good to walk a lot; better come with me.
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