Did he fight
hard?'
Antonia broke in: `He fight something awful! He is all over Jimmy's
boots. I scream for him to run, but he just hit and hit that snake like he
was crazy.'
Otto winked at me. After Antonia rode on he said: `Got him in the head
first crack, didn't you? That was just as well.'
We hung him up to the windmill, and when I went down to the kitchen, I
found Antonia standing in the middle of the floor, telling the story with a
great deal of colour.
Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me that my first encounter
was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old, and had led too
easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived there
for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a
sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that
the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting
trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a mock
adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as it probably was for many
a dragon-slayer. I had been adequately armed by Russian Peter; the snake
was old and lazy; and I had Antonia beside me, to appreciate and admire.
That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of the
neighbours came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattler ever
killed in those parts.
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