CHAPTER 8We crawls over the top of them rocks, out through the fissure and glides down the other side. Then we crawls on our hands, knees and belly until our shirts are on a par with our knees and seats. We reaches the other side of the hill and angles through the rocks, until we’re working around behind a sort of cliff. Then a danged rattlesnake has to plant himself right in our trail. Ornery son of a gun wouldn’t budge and we didn’t want to shoot him for fear of letting folks know where we were.
There wasn’t a loose rock in reach, so Hashknife takes off his belt, slips his holster off and then he slams Mr. Snake with the buckle-end. It sure was effective. Windy collects the rattles as we go past. We gets almost around the cliff and then gets to our feet and peers around.
“Got to get up
