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Updated: May 1, 2025
I used to be afraid to git out of bed at night without puttin' on my boots, but if any old rattler crawls under my cot now it's good-bye, Mr. Snake. Tommy is right there with the goods and he ain't been bit yet, neither. He killed three side-winders last Summer didn't you, Tom, Old Socks? and if any sheep-herder's dog comes snoopin' around the back door he'll mount him in a minute.
Not at men, especial," he grinned, "but you'll run across things a wolf, mebbe, that'll get fresh with you, or a sneakin' coyote that'll kind of make the hair raise on the back of your neck, not because you're scared of him, but because you know his mean tricks an' don't admire them, or a wildcat, or a hydrophobia polecat, ma'am," he said, with slightly reddening cheeks; "but mostly, ma'am, I reckon you'll like shootin' at side-winders best.
He lounged on a bench beside the door and told me tales of the range and the round-up, of herds of cattle stampeded by the smell of water, of long rides in blinding sand storms, of the taking in of the tenderfoot, of centipedes and side-winders, of Indian fights and narrow escapes. "Were you ever in one of these Indian attacks yourself?" I asked, for his Indian yarns had been about other men.
His large heavy shoes retarded him; he removed them, tucked them under his arm and with a lofty disdain of tarantulas and side-winders fled barefooted. Three- quarters of an hour from the time he had first seen the signal-fires, the mozo was kneeling beside the stricken Desert Rat, who lay unconscious close to one of the fires.
Bud liked it all except the blistering heat and the "side-winders" and other rattlers. He did not bother with trying to formulate any explanation of why he liked it. It may have been picturesque, though picturesqueness of that sort is better appreciated when it is seen through the dim radiance of memory that blurs sordid details.
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