United States or Norfolk Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Alf howled with terror, and seemed in danger of falling from the stool. "You'll keep on hearing rattlers, I expect," grunted Reade, "when all the time it's nothing but the snapping of your nerves from smoking cigarettes. The next thing you know your brain will snap utterly." Click-ick-ick! On his stool Alf danced a mild war-dance from sheer nervousness.
It was a joyous day at Rattlers Ridge that was equally the advent of his change of heart and the first stagecoach that had been induced to diverge from the highroad and stop regularly at our settlement.
Tom was a slow-minded young man, who liked to have his thoughts well under control before he spoke. He was not one of your gay rattlers. Besides, there was something about this girl which confused him to an extraordinary extent. He was conscious of new and strange emotions. He stood staring silently. 'What's your name, anyway? He could answer that. He did so. 'Oh! Mine's Sally Preston.
I see the swale rocking, smell the sweetness of the blooming things, and the damp, mucky odor of the swamp; and I hear me birds sing, me squirrels bark, the rattlers hiss, and the step of Wessner or Black Jack coming; and whether it's the things that I loved or the things that I feared, it's all a part of the day.
The records of the entire Union show few deaths in a year, and yet there's no scarcity of rattlers, copperheads, and moccasins in this Republic of ours. I know a man, an ornithologist, who for twelve years has wandered about the Florida woods and never saw a rattler. And yet, the other night a Northern man, a cottager, lighted his cigar after dinner and stepped off his veranda on to a rattler."
One of 'em is behind us!" The others all took his word for it, and leaped to one side. True enough, a second rattlesnake had appeared, and now a third was coming to light, from under a rock near by. "It's a den of rattlers!" screamed Sid Todd. "Run for it, boys! No use of trying to kill 'em off! They are too many for us!" The boys were already running at top speed, and the cowboy joined them.
"That will kill the poison in short order, and will not hurt you a particle. It's the best thing there is to cheat rattlers, just cheap, ordinary permanganate of potash. If people only had sense enough always to carry a few crystals, no one would ever die of rattlesnake bites." "I've I've heard that whiskey " began Ashton.
There they were, in that vast, natural amphitheatre with food and water at hand, and, apparently, as content as when they grazed on the range of the boy ranchers. "By all the rattlers that ever rattled!" cried Snake. "We sure have found 'em!" "And they're all right, too!" added Yellin' Kid, as he gazed through the crack which had been opened when Bud pulled out the bush.
While he was with us alone, his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the recurrent phrase "that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers" gave us a mysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had secured a "mascot" in some zoological curiosity. This was further indicated by a singular occurrence.
He commenced explaining how the snakes were harmless, because their teeth had been pulled, and giving a lot of misinformation about them. The snake man listened until he couldn't stand it any longer and then he stuck his hand into the cage and grabbed one of the rattlers by the neck. "'Fangs pulled, eh? says he, and he made the rattler open his mouth and show a perfect pair of stingers.
Word Of The Day