"No," declined Gowan. "I've got my own notion of what he is. There's just one way to deal with skunks, and that is, don't fool with them."

The cowman accepted this as conclusive. But when, a little later, Ashton met Gowan at the supper table he was rendered uneasy by the cold glint in the puncher's gray eyes. As nothing was said about the postmaster's receipt, he could conjecture no reason for the look other than that Gowan was planning to render him ridiculous with some cowboy trick.

Isobel had a.s.sured him with utmost confidence that the testing of his horsemanship by means of Rocket had been intended only as a practical joke, and that Gowan would never have permitted him to mount the horse had he considered it at all dangerous. Yet the fellow might next undertake jokes containing no element of physical peril and consequently all the more humiliating unless evaded.

In apprehension of this, the tenderfoot lay awake most of that night and fully half of the next. His watch was fruitless. Each night Gowan and the other men left him strictly alone in his far dark corner of the bunkhouse. In the daytime the puncher was studiously polite to him during the few hours that he was not off on the range.

The third evening, after supper, Gowan handed Isobel the h.o.r.n.y, half-flattened rattles of an unusually large rattlesnake.

"What is it? Do you wish me to guess his length?" she asked, evidently surprised that he should fetch her so commonplace an object. "I make it four feet."

"You're three inches short," he replied.

"Well, what about it?" she inquired.

"Nothing--only I just happened to get him up near the bunkhouse, Miss Chuckie. Thought I'd tell you, in case he has a mate around."

"We must all look sharp. You, too, Mr. Ashton. They are more apt to strike without warning, this time of year."

"I know," remarked Ashton. "It's before they cast their old skin, and it makes them blind."

"Too early for that," corrected Knowles. "I figure it's the long spell of the summer's heat. Gets on their nerves, same as with us."

"They sh.o.r.e are mighty like some humans," observed Gowan. "Look at the way they like to snuggle up in your blankets on a cool night.

Remember how I used to carry a hair rope on spring round-up?"

"I remember that they used to crawl into the bunkhouse before the floor was laid," said Isobel. She smiled at Ashton. "That was the Dry Mesa reptilian age. I first learned to handle a 'gun' shooting at rattlers. There were so many we had to make it a rule to kill everyone we could. But there hasn't been one killed so near the house for years."

"They often go in pairs. This one, though, may have been a lone stray," added Gowan. He looked at his employer. "Talking about strays, guess I'd best go out in the morning and head back that Bar-Lazy-J bunch. I can take an iron along and brand those two calves, same trip."

Knowles nodded and returned to his Government report. The two young men and Isobel began an evening's entertainment at the piano. Ashton enjoyed himself immensely. Though so frank and unconstrained in manner, the girl was as truly refined as the most fastidiously reared ladies of the East.

At the end of the delightful evening he withdrew with Gowan to the bunkhouse, reluctant to leave, yet aglow with pleasure. Isobel had so charmed him that he lay in his bunk forgetful of all else than her limpid blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. But after his two nights of broken rest he could not long resist the heaviness that pressed together his eyelids. He fell asleep, smiling at the recollection of the girl's gracious, "Good-night and pleasant dreams!"

With such a kindly wish from her, his dreams certainly should have been heavenly. Yet he began the night by sinking into so profound a sleep that he had no dreams whatever. When at last he did rouse to the dream-state of consciousness, it was not to enjoy any pleasant fantasy of music and flowers.

He was lying in Deep Canon, down at the very bottom of those gloomy depths. About him was an awful stillness. The river of the abyss was no longer roaring. It had risen up, up, up to the very rim of the precipices--and all the tremendous weight of its waters was above him, bearing down upon him, smothering him, crushing in his chest! He sought to shriek, and found himself dumb.

Suddenly an Indian stood over him, a gigantic Indian with feet set upon his breast. The red giant was a medicine man, for he clashed and rattled an enormous gourd full of bowlders.

The rattle sounded sharper, shriller, more vibrant in the ears of the rousing sleeper. His eyelids fluttered, rose a little way, and snapped wide apart. His eyes, bared of their covers, glared in utter horror of that which they saw. Their pupils dilated, their b.a.l.l.s bulged as if about to burst from the sockets.

The weight was still on his chest,--a weight far more to be dreaded than a canon full of water or the foot of an Indian t.i.tan. It was a weight of living, quivering coils. Above those coils, clearly illuminated in the full daylight that streamed through the open door of the bunkhouse, there upreared a hideous gaping maw, set with four slender curved fangs of dazzling whiteness.

The snake's eyes, green as emeralds, glared down into the face of the man with such intense malignancy that they seemed to stream forth a cold evil light. Fortunately he was paralyzed with fright. The slightest movement would have caused that fanged maw to lash down into his face.

Something partly obscured the light in the doorway. Ashton was too terrified to heed. But the snake was more sensitive to the change in the light. Without altering the deadly poise of its head, it again sounded its shrill, menacing rattle. The shadow pa.s.sed and the light streamed in as before. The rattling ceased. There followed a pause of a few seconds' duration--To the man every second was an age-long period of horror.

A faint metallic click came from across the room. Slight as was the sound, the irritated snake again set its rattle to quivering. The triangular head flattened back for the delayed stroke at the ashen face of the man. The billowing coils stiffened--the stroke started. In the same instant came a report that to the strained ears of the man sounded like the crashing roar of a cannon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: It sounded its shrill, menacing rattle]

The head and forepart of the snake's body shot alongside his face, writhing in swift convulsions. The first touch of its cold scales against his cheek broke the spell of horror that had bound him. He jerked his head aside, and flung out his left hand to push the hideous thing from him. As his fingers thrust away the nearest coil, the head flipped around on its half-severed neck, and the deadly jaws automatically gaped and snapped together. Two of the dripping poison fangs struck in the cushion of flesh on the outer edge of Ashton's hand. With a shriek, he flung the dying snake on the floor and put the wounded hand to his mouth.

"He struck you!" cried the voice of Isobel, "but only on the hand, thank goodness! Wait, I'll fix it. Lie still."

She came swiftly across the room, thrusting a long-barreled automatic pistol into its holster under a fold of her skirt. Her other hand drew out a locket that was suspended in her bosom.

"Whiskey! I'm bitten!" panted Ashton, sucking frantically at his wounds. "Quick! I'm bitten. Give me whiskey!"

"Steady, steady," she rea.s.sured. "It's not bad--only on your hand.

Give it to me. Here's something a thousand times better than whiskey--permanganate."

While speaking, she caught up his neckerchief from the head of the bunk and knotted it about the wrist of the wounded hand tightly enough to check the circulation.

"Now hold it steady," she directed. "Won't have to use a knife. You tore open the holes when you jerked off the horrid thing."

Obedient but still sweating with fear, he held up the bleeding hand.

She had opened her locket, in which were a number of small, dark-purple crystals. Two of the larger ones she thrust lengthwise as deeply as she could into the little slits gashed by the fangs. Another large and two small crystals were all that she could force into the openings.

"There!" she cheerily exclaimed. "That will kill the poison in short order, and will not hurt you a particle. It's the best thing there is to cheat rattlers,--just cheap, ordinary permanganate of potash. If people only had sense enough always to carry a few crystals, no one would ever die of rattlesnake bites."

"I've--I've heard that whiskey--" began Ashton.

"Yes, and far more victims die from the whiskey than from the bites,"

rejoined Isobel.

"But a stimulant--"

"Stimulant, then heart depressant--first up, then down--that's alcohol. No, you'll get only one poison, the snake's, this time. So don't worry. You'll soon be all right. Even had you been struck in the face, quick action with permanganate would have saved you."

He shuddered. "Ah!... But if you had not come!"

"It was fortunate, wasn't it?" she remarked. "I did not know you were in here. I was going up to the corral and heard the rattle as I came past. It was so faint that I might not have noticed it, had not Kid told of killing the rattler yesterday."

Ashton stared fearfully at his blackening hand. Isobel smiled and began to unknot the neckerchief.

"There is nothing to fear," she insisted. "That is due only to lack of circulation. You'll soon be all right. Come up to the house as soon as you can and get two or three cups of coffee. I'll tell Yuki."

She hastened out. When he had made sure that the still writhing snake was far over on the floor, he slipped from his bunk and dressed as quickly as was possible without the use of his numbed hand. Shirt, trousers, boots--he stopped for no more, but hurried after Isobel.

Whether because of the effects of the poison or merely as the reaction of the shock, he felt faint and dizzy. Several cups of hot strong coffee, however, went far towards restoring him.

CHAPTER X

COMING EVENTS