"Only in the head, and it's easy to cut that off. Now, look yonder;
there lie four fine fat rattlers, fast asleep on that patch of sand.
We're not exactly short of food, but a little extra would be very
useful, and as rattlers are so plentiful it seems almost a pity that we
can't make them good to eat, and knock over all we come across."

"How can you talk in that horrid way, Griggs!" cried Chris, with a
shudder.

"I don't see nothing horrid about it. Snake's a nice clean enough sort
of thing; and, as I say, it's all a matter of habit. They tell me frogs
are delicious, but I'd as soon eat snake."

"Reptiles! Ugh!" cried Ned.

"So's turtle reptile," said Griggs. "Nasty-looking thing too. Might
just as well eat alligator. I've a good mind to get down and cripple
two or three of those rattlers, so as to try how they eat."

"No, no, don't!" cried the boys in a breath, and before the others
grasped what he was about to do, Chris pulled up, slipped off his
mustang, gathered up a handful of small stones, and sent a shower
amongst the sleeping reptiles.

In an instant there was a scattering of sand and a rush for safety, the
snakes taking refuge amongst the brush around, leaving not a sign of
their presence.

"There goes dinner for six," said Griggs dryly. "I say, there's plenty
of those creeping gentry about here."

"Almost the only inhabitants," said Chris. "Well, if we do have to come
to eat 'em, perhaps we shall get monuments set up to us in our honour
for introducing a new kind of useful food of which there's plenty being
wasted in the far west. Pity they're so small. They'd shrink too in
the cooking. Why, a hungry man would be able to polish off one easy."

"Do you want to make me ill, Griggs?" said Ned, shuddering.

"Certainly not, my lad."

"But I say, Griggs," cried Chris, "how big do those things grow--how
long were the largest you ever saw?"

"Oh, they don't come quite up to boa constrictors. Let me see, the
largest I ever saw measured was--was--"

"Twenty-five feet?"

"Nay, nay, nay, not quite as long as that, but quite six feet, which is
bigger than I like, after all. Most of 'em's little, like those.
Dangerous sort of things, and don't the horses and mules understand!
Don't catch them going near a rattler if they know it."

"My nag has shied four times this morning at the poisonous brutes," said
Chris.

"Seems to me," said Griggs, "that they like this part of the country.
I'd be