The Rattler

Paragraph 1

1. After sunset…I walked out into the desert….
2. Light was thinning; the scrub’s dry savory odors were sweet on the cooler air.
3. In this, the first pleasant moment for a walk after long blazing hours, I thought I was the only thing abroad.
4. Abruptly, I stopped short.

Paragraph 2

1. The other lay rigid, as suddenly arrested, his body undulant; the head was not drawn back to strike, but was merely turned a little to watch what I would do.
2. It was a rattlesnake…and knew it.
3. I mean that where a six-foot blacksnake thick as my wrist, capable of long-range attack and armed with powerful fangs, will flee at sight of a man, the rattler felt no necessity of getting out of anybody’s path.
4. He held his ground in calm watchfulness; he was not even rattling yet, much less was he coiled; he was waiting for me to show my intentions.

Paragraph 3

1. My first instinct was to let him go his way and I would go mine, and with this he would have been well content.
2. I have never killed an animal I was not obliged to kill; the sport in taking life is a satisfaction I can’t feel.
3. But I reflected that there were children, dogs, horses at the ranch, as well as men and women lightly shod; my duty, plainly, was to kill the snake.
4. I went back to the ranch house, got a hoe, and returned.

Paragraph 4

1. The rattler had not moved; he lay there like a live wire.
2. But he saw the hoe.
3. Now indeed his tail twitched, the little tocsin sounded; he drew back his head and I raised my weapon.
4. Quicker than I could strike, he shot into a dense bush and set up his rattling.
5. He shook and shook his fair but furious signal, quite sportingly warning me that I had made an unprovoked attack, attempted to take his life, and that if I persisted he would have no choice but to take mine if he could.
6. I listened for a minute to this little song of death.
7. It was not ugly, though it was ominous.
8. It said that life was dear, and would be dearly sold.
9. And I reached into the paper-bag bush with my hoe and, hacking about, soon dragged him out of it with his back broken.

Paragraph 5

1. He struck passionately once more at the hoe; but a moment later his neck was broken, and he was soon dead.
2. Technically, that is; he was still twitching, and when I picked him up by the tail, some consequent jar, some mechanical reflex made his jaws gape and snap once more—proving that a dead snake may still bite.
3. There was blood in his mouth and poison dripping from his fangs; it was all a nasty sight, pitiful now that it was done.

Paragraph 6

1. I did not cut off the rattles for a trophy; I let him drop into the close green guardianship of the paper-bag bush.
2. Then for a moment I could see him as I might have let him go, sinuous and self-respecting in departure over the twilit sands.