After much turning about, I suspended myself by the hands
from a hanging branch, and allowed myself to drop down. My left foot
fell flat, but under the soft sole of my right mocassin I felt something
alive, heaving or rolling. At a glance, I perceived that my foot was on
the body of a large rattle-snake, with his head just forcing itself from
under my heel.
Thus taken by surprise, I stood motionless and with my heart throbbing.
The reptile worked itself free, and twisting round my leg, almost in a
second bit me two or three times. The sharp pain which I felt from the
fangs recalled me to consciousness, and though I felt convinced that I
was lost, I resolved that my destroyer should die also. With my
bowie-knife I cut its body into a hundred pieces; walked away very sad
and gloomy, and sat upon my blanket near the fire.
How rapid and tumultuous were my thoughts! To die so young, and such a
dog's death! My mind reverted to the happy scenes of my early youth,
when I had a mother, and played so merrily among the golden grapes of
sunny Frances and when later I wandered with my father in the Holy Land,
in Italy and Egypt. I also thought of the Shoshones, of Roche and
Gabriel, and I sighed. It was a moral agony; for the physical pain had
subsided, and my leg was almost benumbed by paralysis.
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