Broncho Billie kept on “rooting,” for he always loved to “browse around” as he called it, in every old place he could find, looking for curious things to add to the collection he was making of strange objects calculated to astonish his boy friends at home in the East, when he returned there later on.
“I’ve heard a heap about that blessed Gila Monster,” he had told the others on several occasions since starting out on this day’s gallop and climb; “and perhaps now we might run across a single specimen, where there are so many venomous toads and rattlesnakes and such. Oh! don’t shake your wise old heads, and look at me in that way. Just you make sure I ain’t going to touch anything like _that_! I’ve been duly warned by Si Ketcham the ranch foreman, and also Harris over here at the Red Spar Mine, to keep my distance. But if I could only get a specimen, and stuff it, I’d be a happy Broncho Billie.”
Ten minutes afterward the two who were resting heard him calling to them.
“Oh! just come over here and see the rattlesnake cage I’ve struck, fellows! Must be a regular nest of the varmints, dozens and dozens asunning themselves down in this rocky pit.”
“Hold on there, be careful, Billie, what you do!” called Donald, as he and his chum scrambled to their feet; but it was only to hear a wild screech from the fat boy; and then followed a terribly significant rattling of shale that struck them with a cold chill.
“Oh! Billie’s fallen down in that rattlesnake den!” gasped Adrian, even while he and Donald were jumping over the rocks as fast as their legs would carry them, and headed in the direction where just ten seconds before they had seen the fat chum waving his arms excitedly to attract their attention, only to suddenly slip and disappear from view.
In all their experiences with the clumsy Billie, the two boys probably never had such a sensation of absolute horror sweep over them as at that particular minute.
They must have pictured all sorts of terrible results springing from this weakness on the part of Billie to do just the very thing he should have avoided. For him to make a misstep, and fall into that hole in the rocks where he had just told them dozens of poisonous snakes were coiled, and wriggling about, was possibly the greatest calamity that could have happened to him. And it might be the last mistake poor clumsy Billie was ever apt to make in this world of woe.