That meal done and that station gone, our caboose took up again its easy trundle by the banks of the Yellowstone. The mutineers sat for a while digesting in idleness.
“What’s your scar?” inquired one at length inspecting casually the neck of his neighbor.
“Foolishness,” the other answered.
“Yourn?”
“Mine.”
“Well, I don’t know but I prefer to have myself to thank for a thing,” said the first.
“I was displaying myself,” continued the second. “One day last summer it was. We come on a big snake by Torrey Creek corral. The boys got betting pretty lively that I dassent make my word good as to dealing with him, so I loped my cayuse full tilt by Mr. Snake, and swung down and catched him up by the tail from the ground, and cracked him same as a whip, and snapped his head off. You’ve saw it done?” he said to the audience.
The audience nodded wearily.
“But the loose head flew agin me, and the fangs caught. I was pretty sick for a while.”
“It don’t pay to be clumsy,” said the first man. “If you’d snapped the snake away from yu’ instead of toward yu’, its head would have whirled off into the brush, same as they do with me.”
“How like a knife-cut your scar looks!” said I.
“Don’t it?” said the snake-snapper. “There’s many that gets fooled by it.”
“An antelope knows a snake is his enemy,” said another to me. “Ever seen a buck circling round and round a rattler?”
“I have always wanted to see that,” said I, heartily. For this I knew to be a respectable piece of truth.
“It’s worth seeing,” the man went on. “After the buck gets close in, he gives an almighty jump up in the air, and down comes his four hoofs in a bunch right on top of Mr. Snake. Cuts him all to hash. Now you tell me how the buck knows that.”
Of course I could not tell him. And again we sat in silence for a while—friendlier silence, I thought.
“A skunk’ll kill yu’ worse than a snake bite,” said another, presently. “No, I don’t mean that way,” he added. For I had smiled. “There is a brown skunk down in Arkansaw. Kind of prairie-dog brown. Littler than our variety, he is. And he is mad the whole year round, same as a dog gets. Only the dog has a spell and dies but this here Arkansaw skunk is mad right along, and it don’t seem to interfere with his business in other respects. Well, suppose you’re camping out, and suppose it’s a hot night, or you’re in a hurry, and you’ve made camp late, or anyway you haven’t got inside any tent, but you have just bedded down in the open. Skunk comes travelling along and walks on your blankets. You’re warm. He likes that, same as a cat does. And he tramps with pleasure and comfort, same as a cat. And you move. You get bit, that’s all. And you die of hydrophobia. Ask anybody.”
“Most extraordinary!” said I. “But did you ever see a person die from this?”
“No, sir. Never happened to. My cousin at Bald Knob did.”
“Died?”
“No, sir. Saw a man.”
“But how do you know they’re not sick skunks?”
“No, sir! They’re well skunks. Well as anything. You’ll not meet skunks in any state of the Union more robust than them in Arkansaw. And thick.”
“That’s awful true,” sighed another. “I have buried hundreds of dollars’ worth of clothes in Arkansaw.”
“Why didn’t yu’ travel in a sponge bag?” inquired Scipio. And this brought a slight silence.
“Speakin’ of bites,” spoke up a new man, “how’s that?” He held up his thumb.
“My!” breathed Scipio. “Must have been a lion.”
The man wore a wounded look. “I was huntin’ owl eggs for a botanist from Boston,” he explained to me.
“Chiropodist, weren’t he?” said Scipio. “Or maybe a sonnabulator?”
“No, honest,” protested the man with the thumb; so that I was sorry for him, and begged him to go on.
“I’ll listen to you,” I assured him. And I wondered why this politeness of mine should throw one or two of them into stifled mirth. Scipio, on the other hand, gave me a disgusted look and sat back sullenly for a moment, and then took himself out on the platform, where the Virginian was lounging.
“The young feller wore knee-pants and ever so thick spectacles with a half-moon cut in ’em,” resumed the narrator, “and he carried a tin box strung to a strap I took for his lunch till it flew open on him and a horn toad hustled out. Then I was sure he was a botanist—or whatever yu’ say they’re called. Well, he would have owl eggs—them little prairie-owl that some claim can turn their head clean around and keep a-watchin’ yu’, only that’s nonsense. We was ridin’ through that prairie-dog town, used to be on the flat just after yu’ crossed the south fork of Powder River on the Buffalo trail, and I said I’d dig an owl nest out for him if he was willing to camp till I’d dug it. I wanted to know about them owls some myself—if they did live with the dogs and snakes, yu’ know,” he broke off, appealing to me.
“Oh, yes,” I told
