12 
CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
a deposit of grass and leaves that he may leave no trail. Ex¬ 
ercising still more caution, he does not permit his body to con¬ 
tact the floor of the hole for two and one-half or three feet 
down the hole. The result is that no one but this old snake 
chaser would ever observe his sign or detect his presence. 
From his early experience he stood convinced that his chosen 
adversary possessed intellectual keenness far greater than one 
would expect in any form of animal life, save man. Little 
wonder that Uncle Dave came around to the point of view 
that back of his every move or action there was some carefully 
determined motive. Little by little he learned to speak their 
language, read their thoughts, and to correctly interpret their 
every secret deed. 
Once he permitted to grow up in the center of a large field 
he was cultivating, a spot of rough, untilled acreage. It was 
well covered with plum shrubs, briars, cactus, etc., so that no 
animal or man found it an inviting spot. During the spring of 
the year, when he had commenced the cultivation of his crop, 
he took notice of one’s trail leading out from a rough fence 
row in the direction of this rough spot already described. 
Abandoning the task which was engaging his attention at that 
time, he followed the trail, but before he had covered one-half 
of the distance intervening between the rough fence row from 
which the trail led and the rough center, the trail came to an 
abrupt end—and there was no snake there, either. This was 
something new in his experience. How could he, even allowing 
for the fact that he was a true wizard, make a trail into the 
center of the field and then completely vanish? There was no 
indication whatever that a tragedy at the end of the trail had 
wrought his undoing. It would bear looking into most care¬ 
fully. Much as Mr. Rattler would have liked to conceal such 
fact, yet evidence was visible to his discerning eye that he had 
done “about-face” and had retraced his course back to the 
rough spot from whence he came. Now it would have satisfied 
the average person to know just what had happened at this 
point, but not this old gentleman. What he wanted to know 
next was “Why did he do it?” This-necessitated some clear 
thinking. Then he remembered that he had shrubbed out this 
