Reaching the cabin, Sally went first to the kitchen room. She opened a cupboard and, taking the cork from the bottle, placed the whisky on the top shelf and closed the wooden door.

She crossed the dog-trot to the sleeping-room; a spitting snarl greeted her entrance. In the centre of the bed crouched the yellow cat, its eyes gleaming, every muscle over its bony frame drawn taut, ready for the spring. The woman, startled, drew back. The cat moved on stiff legs nearer. Unflinchingly they glared into each other’s eyes.

“Git out of hyar afore I kill yer! You yaller devil!” Sally’s voice rang hard as steel.

The cat stood poised at the edge of the bed, its glistening teeth showing in its wide mouth. Without an instant’s shift of her defiant stare, Sally wrenched a shoe from her foot. The animal with spread claws sprang straight for the woman’s throat. The cat and the heavy brogan crashed together in mid-air. Together they fell to the floor; the cat landed lightly, silently, and bounded through the open door.

Sally fell back against the log wall of the cabin, feeling the skin at her throat with trembling fingers.…

“Jim! Oh-h, Jim!” Sally called from the cabin. “Come on in, yer supper’s ready.”

“He ain’t took nothin’ to drink to-day,” she thought. “It’s nigh three months now, he’ll be ’most crazy.”

The man took a few sticks of wood from the ground, and came on dragging feet through the gloom. As Sally watched his listless approach she felt in full force the oppressive melancholy of her dismal surroundings. Awakened by the boy’s enthusiastic plans, imagination stirred within her. In the distance a girdled pine stood clear-cut against the horizon. Its bark peeled and fallen left the dead, naked trunk the colour of dried bones. Near the stunted top one bare limb stretched out. Unnoticed a thousand times before, to the woman it looked to-night a ghostly gibbet against the black sky.

Sally shuddered and went into the lighted kitchen.

“I jes’ kilt a rattler down by the wood-pile.” Jim threw down his load and drew a splint-bottomed chair to the table.

“Ground-rattler, Jim?”

“Naw, sir-ee! A hell-bendin’ big diamond-back.”

“Did you hurt the skin?” Sally asked quickly.

“Naw. I chopped his neck clean, short to the haid. An’ I done it so durn quick his fangs is a-stickin’ out yit, I reckon.”

“Did he strike at you?”

“Yes, sir-ee, an’ the pizen came out of his mouth jes’ like a fog.”

“Ah, you’re foolin’ me!”

“No, I ain’t neither. I’ve heard tell of it, bit I never seed it afore. The ground was kinda black whar he lit, an’ jes’ as I brought the axe down on him, thar I seed a little puff like, same as white steam, in front of his mouth.”

“How big was he, Jim?”

“ ’Leven rattle an’ a button.”

“Did you skin him?”