"Oh, I can advertise, all right!" retorted Julie. "I'll take a great bucket of whitewash and a calcimine brush; then on every flat-faced rock along the trail, up one side and down the other, I'll slap a hand-painted sign on every one of them: 'This is Juliet's Peak,' and the finger in ghostly white will point to my peak."
Her ridiculous explanation caused every one to laugh, but when Jolt turned and opened his jaw wide to emit the grating sound "Hee--haw! Hee--haw!" the riders declared it was screamingly opportune of the mule.
Late in the afternoon, the second day from Flat Top, the scouts had their first battle with a rattlesnake. It is claimed that one never sees a rattler on the east slope of the Rockies,--why, it is not stated. But one certainly encounters many of them on the west side and on other ranges in Colorado.
They were jogging along comfortably when Julie's horse suddenly leaped aside and climbed a steep bank beside the trail. The other horses trembled, and instantly the warning rattle sounded. Tally hurried back and saw a huge reptile coiled at one side of the trail, half-hidden under a bush.
He jumped from the saddle and snapped a hickory stick from a young sapling nearby. Then he whipped the rattler over the back. He could not break its back as the bush fended the blows. But Omney and Tally could so tire the reptile with blows that kept its head swinging from side to side, that finally they might jump on it.
The scouts sat and watched this interesting fight, the rattler darting its forked tongue venomously at the sticks, and in so doing having to turn its head from one to the other. This defence kept it from uncoiling and gliding away. Neither could it spring from the coil to strike while its head was so busy.
At last it showed signs of weariness, and once, when it momentarily forgot to strike at Tally's whip but struck twice in succession at the stick Omney wielded, the former took instant advantage of it, and in another moment his heel was planted upon the flat head.
Then the guides dragged the sinuous reptile out and measured it. It was fully five feet long, from head to tip of tail where ten rattles were attached. Tally removed these, and with a bow presented them to the Captain,--an honor shown all Tenderfeet in the Rockies, if a rattler is encountered by the natives.