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Dey called 'im in to 'scribe for us. I was snake-bit when I was eight year old. Dey used to be a medicine named 'lobelia. De doctor give me dat an' whiskey. My ma carried me up to de Big House ever' mornin' an' lef' me, an' carried me home at night. Old Mis' 'ud watch over me in de day time. "My young marster tol' me dat when I got to be ten year old, I'd have a snake coiled up on my liver.
Ann and her baby returned to the house, but Uncle Snake-bit Rob, long after the sun went down, still sat on his little bench in front of his shop, his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands; and when it grew quite dark he rose, and put away his splits and his baskets, saying to himself, "Well, I know wat I'm gwine do; my min' hit's made up."
Death Valley himself was reposing in an armchair with one leg wrapped up in a white bandage and as she stopped the grinding phonographs and made a grab for the demijohn he held up two fingers reprovingly. "I'm snake-bit," he croaked. "Don't take away my medicine. Do you want your Uncle Charley to die?" "Why, Charley!" she cried, "you know you aren't snake-bit!
After the hymn, Uncle Snake-bit Bob led in prayer, and what the old man lacked in grammer and rhetoric was fully made up for in fervency and zeal. The prayer ended, Uncle Daniel arose, and, carefully adjusting his spectacles, he opened his Bible with all the gravity and dignity imaginable, and proceeded to give out his text.
The rattlesnakes are all holed up now." "Yes holed up," he nodded; "that's how I got snake-bit. It was fourteen years ago, this month. Didn't you ever hear of my snake-mine it was one of the marvels of Arizona a two-foot stratum of snakes.
Then there was Aunt Nancy, the "tender," who attended to the children for the field-hands, and old Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who could scarcely walk at all, because he had been bitten by a snake when he was a boy: so now he had a little shop, where he made baskets of white-oak splits for the hands to pick cotton in; and he always had a story ready for the children, and would let them help him weave baskets whenever Mammy would take them to the shop.
Despite all their efforts to hurry up Mammy, it was nearly nine o'clock before the children could get her off; and even then she didn't want to let Cherubim and Seraphim go, and Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who was driving the wagon, had to add his entreaties to those of the little folks before she would consent at all; and after that matter had been decided, and the baskets all packed in, and the children all comfortably seated, and Dilsey and Chris and Riar squeezed into the back of the wagon between the ice-cream freezer and the lemonade buckets, and Cherubim and Seraphim in the children's laps, and Mammy and Aunt Milly on two split-bottomed chairs, just back of the driver's seat, and Uncle Snake-bit Bob, with the reins in his hands, just ready to drive off whom should they see but Old Daddy Jake coming down the avenue, and waving his hat for them to wait for him.
"Well, he ain't got ter be lef'," said Mammy; "I wuz allers larnt ter 'spect ole folks myse'f, an' ef'n dis wagin goes, why den Daddy Jake's got ter go in it;" and, Major and Mrs. Waldron having gone, Mammy was the next highest in command, and from her decision there was no appeal. "How come yer ter git lef', Daddy," asked Uncle Snake-bit Bob, as the old man came up hobbling on his stick.
"My friend, I would be glad to help you, but it is impossible for me to let you have a drink of spirituous liquor unless you have a doctor's certificate or have been snake-bit." At the last-mentioned suggestion, the face of the man of repeated disappointments measurably brightened, and he eagerly inquired where he could find a snake.
He made all of the baskets that were used in the cotton-picking season, and had learned to mend shoes; besides that, he was the great horse-doctor of the neighborhood, and not only cured his master's horses and mules, but was sent for for miles around to see the sick stock; and then too, he could re-bottom chairs, and make buckets and tubs and brooms; and all of the money he made was his own: so the old man had quite a little store of gold and silver sewed up in an old bag and buried somewhere nobody knew where except himself; for Uncle Snake-bit Bob had never married, and had no family ties; and furthermore, he was old Granny Rachel's only child, and Granny had died long, long ago, ever since the children's mother was a baby, and he had no brothers or sisters.
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