Me Smith

where the clouds send messages, where the sun shines to warm us and the moon to light us. There’s antelope over there in the foothills, and elk in the mountains, and sheep on the peaks. You like to hunt, white man, same as us. Look long time on all—for you will never see it again!”
    The sun rose higher and hotter while the Indian talked. He had not finished speaking when Smith said:
    “God!”
    A look of indescribable horror was on his face. His skin had yellowed, and he stared into the crevice at his feet. Now he understood! He knew why they waited on the limestone hill! An odor, scarcely perceptible as yet, but which, faint as it was, sickened him, told him his fate. It was the unmistakable odor of rattlesnakes!
    The crevice below was a breeding-place, a rattlesnakes’ den. Smith had seen such places often, and the stench which came from them when the sun was hot was like nothing else in the world. The recollection alone was almost enough to nauseate him, and he always had ridden a wide circle at the first whiff.
    His aversion for snakes was like a pre-natal mark. He avoided cowpunchers who wore rattlesnake bands on their hats or stretched the skin over the edge of the cantle of their saddles. He always slept with a hair rope around his blankets when he spent a night in the open. He would not sit in a room where snake-rattles decorated the parlor mantel or the organ. A curiosity as to how they had learned his peculiarity crept through the paralyzing horror which numbed him, and as if in answer the scene in the dining-room of the ranch rose before him. “I hates snakes and mouse-traps goin’ off,” he had said. Yes, he remembered.
    The Indians looked at his yellow skin and at his eyes in which the horror stayed, and laughed. He did not struggle when they stood him, mute, upon his feet and bound him, for Smith knew Indians. His lips and chin trembled; his throat, dry and contracted, made a clicking sound when he swallowed. His knees shook, and he had no power to control the twitching muscles of his arms and legs.
    “He dances,” said Yellow Bird.
    As the sun rose higher and streamed into the crevice, the overpowering odor increased with the heat. The yellow of Smith’s skin took on a greenish tinge.
    “Ugh!” An Indian laid his hand upon his stomach. “Me sick!”
    A bit of limestone fell into the crevice and bounded from one shelf of rock to the other. Upon each ledge a nest of rattlesnakes basked in the sun, and a chorus of hisses followed the fall of the stone.
    “They sing! Their voices are strong to-day,” said Running Rabbit.
    The Indians threw Smith upon the edge of the crevice, face downward, so that he could look below. With his staring, bloodshot eyes he saw them all—dozens of them—a hundred or more! Crawling on the shelves and in the bottom, writhing, wriggling, hissing, coiled to strike! Every marking, every shading, every size—Smith saw them all with his bulging, fascinated eyes. The Indians stoned them until a forked tongue darted from every mouth and every wicked eye flamed red.
    The thick rope was tied under Smith’s arms, and a noose thrown over a huge rock. They shoved him over the edge—slowly—looking at him and each other, laughing a little at the sound of reptile fury from below. It was the end. Smith’s eyes opened before they let him drop, and his lips drew back from his white, slightly protruding teeth. They thought he meant to beg at last, and, rejoicing, waited. He looked like a coyote, a coyote when its ribs are crushed, its legs broken; when its eyes are blurred with the death film, and its mouth drips blood. He gathered himself—he was all but fainting—and threw back his head, looking at Bear Chief. He snarled—there was no tenderness in his voice when he gave the message:
    “Tell her , you damned Injuns—tell the Schoolmarm I died game, me—Smith!”
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    TITLES SELECTED FROM
    GROSSET & DUNLAP’S LIST
    May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.
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    THE SECOND WIFE . By Thompson Buchanan. Illustrated by W. W. Fawcett. Harrison Fisher wrapper printed in four colors and gold.
    An intensely interesting story of a marital complication in a wealthy New York family involving the happiness of a beautiful young girl.
    TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY . By Grace Miller White. Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy.
    An amazingly vivid picture of low class life in a New York college town, with a heroine beautiful and noble, who makes a