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He was too earnest to think of trivial things, and he sloshed through the swamp without thought of the swaying heads of little speckle-bellies in his path, or the great, ugly cotton-mouth moccasins that moved slowly aside as he wallowed through their lairs.
And at the odor his fists tightened in new fear. For no serpents give off that peculiar odor. except members of the pit-viper family. "They're not rattlesnakes," he told himself. "For a scared or angry rattler would have this room vibrating with his whirr. We're too far south for copperheads. The the only other pit-viper I ever heard of in Florida is the cotton-mouth moccasin!"
How strong the feeling is my boatman gave me proof within ten minutes after his failure with the cotton-mouth. He had pulled out into the middle of the river, when I noticed a beautiful snake, short and rather stout, lying coiled on the water.
"That?" "Yes. It's as thick as a man's arm." "Is it a moccasin?" "It is; a cotton-mouth." The guide drawled: "Ah reckon he's asleep, Miss Cahdhoss. Ah'll make him rare up 'f yew say so." "Make him rear up," suggested Gray. "And stand clear, Hamil, because Shiela must shoot quick if he slides for the water."
We were both old hands at the business, had each in our time suffered the "cotton-mouth" thirst, and the memory of it outweighed any desire for treasure. But Schwartz was money-mad. Left to himself he would have staid on that sand flat to perish, as certainly as had poor Billy.
What does the humming-bird's nest look like? What's the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What's the difference between the ironweed and the aster?" Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had the answers at his finger-tips.
It acted as if life were dear to it, and for aught I knew it had as good a right to live as either the boy or I. No such qualms disturbed me a few minutes later, when, as the boat was grazing the reeds, I espied just ahead a snake lying in wait among them. I gave the alarm, and the boy looked round. "Yes," he said, "a big one, a moccasin, a cotton-mouth; but I'll fix him."
The horny head and neck of the huge black beetle, commonly known to negroes as the black Betsy Bug; the rattle and button of a rattlesnake; the fang-tooth of a cotton-mouth moccasin, the left hind foot of a frog, seeds of the stinging nettle, and pods of peculiar plants, all incased in a little sack made of a mole's hide.
"I don't want to go swimmin' in no creek full of moccasins I'd rather sleep with rattlers or copperheads. Every time I sees a cotton-mouth I feels like I had just sit down on one. "I'll flip a coin to see whether yu comes or not," proposed Hopalong.
I watched out for the ugly things and it kept me on the jump, but Chris marched straight ahead and paid no attention to them, excepting once when a big cotton-mouth that was coiled on top of a stump struck at him. Then he fell over backward into the mud, and I had a good laugh at him afterwards. Chris killed that snake.
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