The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island | Page 7

as he turned his attention to what Max was doing;
"some fellers get fun out of mighty little things, sometimes."
A minute or so later they heard Bandy-legs laugh again.
"Say, let up with that silly play, and come in," called Steve, testily;
"we're 'bout ready to load up again and go on."
"You'd die laughing to see her try to get a whack at me," called back
Bandy-legs. "It's the mother of all them little snakes, I reckon. My! but
she's mad though; just coils up here, and jumps out at me every time I
touch her with my stick!"
Max felt a shudder pass through his person as he looked at Owen. For
suddenly he seemed to realize that the rattling sound, which he had of
course thought was caused by a noisy locust on a nearby tree, was in
fact the deadly warning that an enraged rattlesnake gives when striving

to strike its fangs into an enemy!
CHAPTER III.
ON THE ISLAND WITH THE BAD NAME.
"Keep back, Bandy-legs; that's a rattlesnake!" shouted Max, and some
of the others turned white with sudden alarm, as they also noted for the
first time the incident buzzing sound from a point nearby.
Immediately every one started toward the spot where the foolish
Bandy-legs was standing, holding a rather short stick in his hand, with
which he had doubtless been tormenting the larger snake just as he had
previously annoyed her young brood.
He was now seemingly turned into stone, although fortunately enough
he had managed to spring back a pace upon hearing the dreadful words
shouted by his chum.
"Get clubs, and make them as long as you can!" called out Owen. "Be
careful how you let her have a chance to reach you when she springs
out. A rattlesnake can sometimes strike as far as her own length, they
say."
Immediately a scene of great excitement followed. Each fellow ran
around, trying to find a suitable stick, that would be stout enough to do
execution, and at the same time have sufficient length. For now that
they knew what its species was, the coiled serpent looked terribly ugly,
as, with head drawn back, she waited for another attack, all the while
sounding her rattle like a challenge to battle.
Steve happened to be the first to find a stick that he thought would do
the business, and he immediately rushed forward.
"Slow, now, Steve!" warned Max, fearful lest the natural headstrong
nature of the other might get him into trouble.
Just then Owen also picked up a long pole, and advanced from the

opposite side. The badgered snake, only intent on defending her young,
thinking that here was a chance to get away from all this turmoil, had
slipped out of coil, and even started to glide off; but as Steve made a
wild swoop with his pole, she again flung herself into coil, ready to
fight to the end.
Nobody spares a rattlesnake, however much they might wish to let an
innocent coachwhip or a common gartersnake get away. From away
back to the Garden of Eden times the heel of man has been raised
against venomous serpents. And somehow the close call their chum had
just had from a terrible danger, seemed to arouse the hostility of the
chums against this snake in particular.
When both Max and Toby came up, each, with a part of a hickory limb
in their hands, the destiny of that snake was written plainly, strive as
she might to escape, or reach one of her human tormentors.
Whack! came Steve's pole down across the reptile's back, and from that
instant the fight was taken out of the scaly thing.
"Wow! this is what I call rushing the mourners!" gasped Bandy-legs,
after they had made sure that the rattler was as dead as might be
expected before sundown; for Owen declared that he had some sort of
belief in the old saying that "cut up a snake as you will, its tail will
wriggle until sunset."
"I should say yes," added Steve; "and you're bent on bein' in the center
of every old thing that happens. First you shout out your boat's sinking,
and while we're fixing her you wander out and stir up a hornets' nest
about your ears."
"Say, it did sound like it, sure as anything," admitted the repentant
Bandy-legs. "I'm sorry I gave you all so much trouble, boys; next time I
run across a litter of little snakes, it's me to the woods. Wonder what
became of the beggars? They disappeared about the time the mother
came tootin' up."
"Mebbe they ran down her throat," suggested Owen; "some say snakes

can hide their young that way, but I never believed it."
"Well," remarked Max, who was examining the dead