trader's eyes narrowed in crafty calculation. He looked about at the
snake and then down at the slaughtered horse. A sudden grin twisted his
coarse mouth.

"You're right, son," he chuckled. "Why split the twenty with a dam'
Apache? Ain't time now to make the Hole 'fore dark, anyhow--and here's
our rawhide. We'll try out that science experiment right here."

He signed for the man with the snake to go on down into the canon bed.
The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered
a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language.
They at once started to flay the pony.

Slade led Lennon's mount down where the snake holder had halted beside a
sangre de dragon tree. One of the Indians followed and began to cut
stakes from the tree. The sap of the tree was as red as blood and so
astringent that when Slade dabbed a little on his cheek the wound at
once ceased to bleed.

The flayers soon came with the limp rawhide. Slade turned along the
canon to a spot where the rays of the low western sun still slanted down
between the cliffs. He spoke again in the Navaho tongue. The Indians
drove a stake firmly into the sand and tied the rattlesnake to it with a
three-foot thong cut from the pony skin.

Lennon was now pulled from his pony and stretched out, face down, just
beyond reach of the snake. Regardless of the bandage on his hand, his
arms were jerked out sideways and fastened with yard-long thongs to
stakes driven at right angles to a point a foot or so in front of his
head. From stakes set on the opposite side of the snake several lines
cut from the raw pony hide were flung across past the snake and bound to
Lennon's arms at the shoulder.

By hauling on the lines from ahead, the Indians dragged Lennon an inch
at a time toward the snake. He heard the sharp ominous rattle, and
twisted his head up out of the sand to face the danger. The snake had
coiled in front of the first stake. Though its venomous head was drawn
back, the long curved fangs of the gaping jaws were less than three feet
before Lennon's eyes.

Even as he looked up, the reptile shot forward straight at his face. He
involuntarily blinked. In the same instant a drop of fluid spattered
against his closed eyelid and he heard a soft thud in the sand close
before his chin. A puff of dust whiffed up into his nostrils. It clotted
the dew-like drop of liquid on his eyelid.

He opened his eyes in a wide stare. The head of the bi