IN OUR NEIGHBOR'S DOOR-YARD. 187 



ranch alone he was glad of our society. Then 

 when I watched the bluebirds, he came and curled 

 down by my side, becoming so friendly that he 

 actually grew jealous of Billy, and turned to have 

 me caress him each time that the little horse 

 walked up to have the flies brushed off his nose, 

 or having pulled up a bunch of grass by the roots, 

 brought it for me to hold so that he could eat it 

 without getting the dirt in his mouth. 



Going home one day, Billy came upon a gopher 

 snake. Now Canello had been brought up in a 

 rattlesnake country, and was always on his guard, 

 but Billy was ' raised ' in the mountains, where 

 snakes are scarce, and did not seem to know what 

 they were. He had given me a good deal of anx- 

 iety by this indifference — he had stepped over a 

 big one once without seeing any need for haste 

 — and I had been expecting that he would get 

 bitten. Here, then, was my chance to give him a 

 scare. The gopher snake was harmless ; perhaps, 

 if I could get him so close to it that he would see 

 it wriggle away from under his feet, he might be 

 less indifferent to rattlers. 



The gopher snake was three or four feet long, 

 and lay as straight as a stick across our path. 

 As I urged Billy up beside it, he actually stepped 

 on the tip of its tail. The poor snake writhed a 

 little, but gave no other sign of pain ; its role was 

 to remain a stick. And Billy certainly acted as 

 if it were. I threw the reins on his neck, think- 



