Unexplored! Part 20

"I'll tell you after supper," Norris promised them.

Pedro had been out with his trout rod. Descending to the river, which here circled around a huge bowlder from which he thought he could cast, he had a string in no time.

Now Pedro was thoroughly well liked, with his Castilian courtesy and his ever ready song. The lack of physical courage had been his greatest drawback. Always had the fear been secret within him that at some crucial moment he might show the white feather. His experience with the Mexicans had removed that, but he was still mortally afraid of three things,--bears, rattlesnakes, and thunder storms,--that is, real wild bears, not the half tame kind that haunt the Parks.

Still, he had not noticed the furry form that stood neck-deep in the riffles, fishing with his great, barbed paw,--so perfectly did he blend into the background.

The shadow of the canyon wall had made twilight while yet the sun sent orange shafts through the trees on the canyon rim. Suddenly around the turn of the trail rose a huge brown form that gave a startled grunt, rising inquiringly on its s.h.a.ggy hind legs and swinging its long head from side to side. Pedro's heart began beating like a trip-hammer. (He wondered if the bear could hear it).

He wanted to run, to scream,--a course that would have been most ill-advised, for the bear might then have given chase. As it was, the boy remembered that the animal was probably more afraid than he,--or more likely merely curious at this biped invasion of his wilderness,--and would not harm him if no hostile move were made. The cinnamon bear of the Sierras, like his blood brother, the New England black bear, is a good-natured fellow.

With an iron grip on his nerves, he forced himself to stand stock-still, then back--ever so amenably--off the trail. The bear, finding no hostility intended, turned and lumbered up the mountainside.

"'Minds me of one time,' said Long Lester, when he heard the story, 'I was down to the crick once when I was a shaver, and along came a big brown bear. The bear, he stood up on his haunches, surprised like, and just gave one 'woof.' About that time I decided to take to the tall timber." (At this, Pedro looked singularly gratified.) "Well, that bear, he took to the same tree I did, and I kept right on a-climbin' so high that I get clear to the top,--it were a slim kind of a tree,--and the top bends and draps me off in the water!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Around the turn of the trail rose a huge brown form.]

"What became of the bear?" Pedro demanded.

"I dunno. I didn't wait to see. But Mr. Norris here were a-sayin' there's nothin' in the back country a-goin' to hurt you unless'n it's rattlesnakes. Now when I was a-prospectin' I allus used to carry a hair rope along, and make a good big circle around my bed with it. The rattler won't crawl over the hair rope."

The boys thought he was joshing them, but Long Lester was telling the literal truth. "Once I was just a-crawlin' into bed," he went on, "when I heard a rattle," and with the aid of a dry leaf he gave a faint imitation of the buzzing "chick-chick-chick-chick-chick" that sounds so ominous when you know it and so harmless when you don't. "I flung back the covers with one jerk, and jumped back myself out of the way. There was a snake down at the foot of my blankets. They are always trying to crawl into a warm place."

"Then what?" breathed three round eyed boys.

"First I put on my shoes and made up a fire so's I could see, 'n' then I take a forked stick and get him by the neck, and smash his head with a stone."

"And yet I've heard of making pets of them," said Norris.

"They do. Some do. But I wouldn't," stated Long Lester emphatically. "Ner I wouldn't advise any one to trust 'em too fur, neither."

"They say a rattler has one rattle on his tail for every year of his age," ventured Pedro.

"A young snake," spoke up Ted, "has a soft b.u.t.ton on its tail. And then the rattle grows at the rate of three joints a year, and you can't tell a thing about its age, because by the time there are about ten of them, it snaps off when it rattles."

"Down in San Antonio," said Ace, "we had an hour between trains once, and we went into a billiard parlor where they had a collection of rattlesnakes, stuffed. And they showed some rattles with 30 or 40 joints to them."

"Huh!" laughed Ted. "That's easy! You can snap the rattles of several snakes together any time you want to give some tourist a thrill."

"You seem to know all about it," gibed Ace. "They had 13 species of rattlesnakes down in this--it used to be a saloon. And ten of them Western. They had a huge seven foot diamond back, and they had yellow ones and gray ones and black ones and some that were almost pink. I mean, they had their skins. All colors----"

"To match their habitat," supplemented Norris. "Our California rattler is a gray or pale brown where it's dry summers, and in the Oregon woods where it's moist, and the foliage deeper colored, it's green-black all but the spots. _I've_ seen them tamed. There was one guide up there who kept one in a cage, and it would take a mouse from his fingers."

"I wouldn't chance it," shivered Ted.

"Oh, this one would glide up flat on the floor of the cage. They can't strike unless they're coiled."

"I suppose he caught it before it was old enough to be poison," said Pedro.

"A rattlesnake can strike from the moment it's born. It's perfectly independent a few hours after birth."

"Ugh! Bet I dream of them now." But such was their healthy out-of-door fatigue that they all slept like logs.

It was only the next day, however, that the two boys, Ace and Ted, poking exploratively into a deep cleft in a rock ledge, were startled by an abrupt, ominous rattle, and beheld in their path the symmetrical coils of the sinister one. The inflated neck was arched from the center of the coil and the heart-shaped head, with red tongue out-thrust, waved slowly as the upthrust tail vibrated angrily. A flash of that swift head would inject the deadly virus into the leg of one of the intruders. Yet Ted knew the reptile would never advance to the attack.

Dragging Ace back with him, he instantly placed at least six feet between them, so that, should the snake charge, it could not reach them. But with the enemy obviously on the retreat, the snake glided to cover in a tumbled ma.s.s of rocks at one side.

"Gee! We nearly stepped on him!" the ranch boy exclaimed, with a voice that was not quite steady. "Next time we go poking into a place like that, let's poke in a stick first, or throw a stone, to make sure there's 'n.o.body home.'"

"Wish I'd a brought a hair rope," mused Ace. "We might have had one that would go clear around all our sleeping bags. First chance we get, I'm going to buy one."

"Naw! We won't need one. Did you ever see a rattler catch a rabbit?"

asked his chum.

"No, d'you?"

"Once I was going along when I noticed the trail of some sort of snake going across the road. Next thing I heard a rabbit squeal, and by the time I spotted the snake it had a hump half way down its throat, and it was swallowing and swallowing trying to get that rabbit down whole."

"I consider the possibility of rattlesnake bite the one biggest danger in the whole Sierra," declared Norris, one night, lighting each step carefully over the rocks. "And he does his hunting by night."

"Considerate of him!" laughed Ace, "seeing that campers do most of theirs by day. But why is it such a danger? I've heard opinions pro and con."

"Rattlesnake venom disintegrates the blood vessels, makes the blood thin and unable to clot. I knew a man who was struck in the ankle, and they had to amputate the leg, and the very bones of that leg were saturated with the blood that had seeped through the weakened walls of the blood vessels."

"How does it feel to be struck, I wonder?" the boy shuddered.

"This man's ankle became discolored practically immediately and began to swell. Of course the bite was through his sock, which must have kept a little of the poison out of it, and it fortunately did not happen to penetrate an artery. We could have cut and kneaded the wound instantly to clear out as much as possible of the venom before it had time to enter the blood system, but the fellow refused such heroic measures. We should have taken him by force; it would have saved his leg, likely, for ordinarily this, and a ligature, will do the work.

"Or we could have burned it clean, or injected the serum if we'd had it. But as I was about to explain, he soon became dull and languid, breathing noisily, for the poison affected heart and lungs. It was then that he let us get to work,--almost too late,--or rather, that he ceased his protest. His whole leg swelled and turned black, clear up, he got feverish and nauseated, and for hours he kept swooning off, while we worked over him, almost giving up hope, and one of our men had gone post-haste for an old guide who made the serum,--anti-venom serum."

"Did he finally pull through?"

"With the loss of a leg. If he hadn't had that off p.r.o.nto, gangrene would likely have set in and he'd have gone."

"But this serum--where do you get it?"

"I don't know. We got it of a man who made it. First he injected into a mule a tiny drop of the venom."

"How did he get the venom?"

"Killed a snake. You know the poison is in a tiny sac at the root of each fang. Well, after he had given the mule the first dose and he had recovered, he tried a larger one, then a still larger one, and so on, every few weeks for a year or more, until the mule's blood serum had developed enough anti-toxin to make him immune to rattlesnake bite."

"But then what?"

"He let some of the mule's blood, separated the serum, sterilized it, and put it up in sealed tubes, which he kept in the cellar. This serum is injected into the victim's blood with a hypodermic syringe, and if it is used before he has collapsed, it will cure him every time. We really ought to have brought some along, just in case of extreme emergency. I have, however, a bottle of permanganate of potash crystals," and he showed a little hard rubber tube two and a half inches long, one end of which contained the crystals and the other a well sharpened lancet, as the stuff has to be put right into the wound. This outfit, he explained, had only cost a dollar, and was so tiny it could be carried right on the person when in danger of being snake bitten. However, it has to be used instantly, (within three or four minutes at the outside), "if it is to neutralize the corroding acid of the poison and do any good."

That night a bon-fire built up into a log cabin with a tepee of pine fringed poles atop sent the sparks flying, but was not uncomfortably hot except on their faces. These they shaded with their hat brims.