Spurred on by fear, and almost dreading to peer into the pit, the two boys reached the edge in a very few seconds. Both of them shut their teeth hard as they proceeded to thrust their heads out in order to look downward.
Billie was there, but he had not fallen all the way to the bottom of the hole, it appeared. His old lucky streak seemed to still hold good, for he had succeeded, somehow or other,—and Billie could never explain in what way it came about,—in clutching hold of the rocks as he fell, so that he was clinging there, with his fat legs kicking wildly in space, and not more than five feet from the bottom of the rocky pit.
And just as he had so exultantly shouted when he wanted to attract his resting companions to view the strange sight, the floor of the den seemed to be almost carpeted with squirming reptiles, as though this might be a regular breeding place for rattlesnakes.
They were some of them monsters, while others seemed to be of the smaller species so generally found on the plains, and usually inhabiting the burrows of prairie dogs; but which are just as deadly as their diamond-back cousins.
The dropping down upon them of numerous small fragments of rock, caused by the scrambling of Billie when he tried to keep from falling, had aroused many of the half dormant reptiles, so that they were making quite a din with their rattles just then, and showing signs of sudden anger, as they coiled, and waited for the intruder to land among them.
Billie had been looking down at them, but appearing to know that his chums must have arrived above, he turned a white, appealing face up toward them. Such fear the others had never seen in all their lives; but chances were their own faces must have been just as white at that same instant.
“Help me, boys, for goodness sake!” gasped poor Billie, as he squirmed there, unable to find the slightest perch for his dangling feet, so that all of his great weight came upon his arms alone, and they must have been sorely tried when he first clutched hold of the rough face of the rock to check his descent.
“Hold on like everything, Billie!” called Donald, excitedly.
“Ain’t I doing that same; but please get busy and start something to save me, boys!” groaned the one in peril. “It’s just awful hanging here, and listening to them use their old rattleboxes that way.”