If the hunter had any further reflections to give tongue to, they could not have been heard: for at that moment there arose a confusion of noises that must have startled every living creature on the Alamo, and for miles up and down the stream.
It was a human voice that had given the cue—or rather, a human howl, such as could proceed only from the throat of a Galwegian. Phelim O’Neal was the originator of the infernal fracas.
His voice, however, was soon drowned by a chorus of barkings, snortings, and neighings, that continued without interruption for a period of several minutes.
“What is it?” demanded his master, as he leaped from the catré, and groped his way towards his terrified servitor. “What the devil has got into you, Phelim? Have you seen a ghost?”
“Oh, masther!—by Jaysus! worse than that: I’ve been murdhered by a snake. It’s bit me all over the body. Blessed Saint Pathrick! I’m a poor lost sinner! I’ll be shure to die!”
“Bitten you, you say—where?” asked Maurice, hastily striking a light, and proceeding to examine the skin of his henchman, assisted by the old hunter—who had by this time arrived within the cabin.
“I see no sign of bite,” continued the mustanger, after having turned Phelim round and round, and closely scrutinised his epidermis.
“Ne’er a scratch,” laconically interpolated Stump.
“Sowl! then, if I’m not bit, so much the better; but it crawled all over me. I can feel it now, as cowld as charity, on me skin.”
“Was there a snake at all?” demanded Maurice, inclined to doubt the statement of his follower. “You’ve been dreaming of one, Phelim—nothing more.”
“Not a bit of a dhrame, masther: it was a raal sarpint. Be me sowl, I’m shure of it!”
“I reck’n thur’s been snake,” drily remarked the hunter. “Let’s see if we kin track it up. Kewrious it air, too. Thur’s a hair rope all roun’ the house. Wonder how the varmint could ha’ crossed thet? Thur—thur it is!”
The hunter, as he spoke, pointed to a corner of the cabin, where the serpent was seen spirally coiled.
“Only a chicken!” he continued: “no more harm in it than in a suckin’ dove. It kedn’t ha’ bit ye, Mister Pheelum; but we’ll put it past bitin’, anyhow.”
Saying this, the hunter seized the snake in his hands; and, raising it aloft, brought it down upon the floor of the cabin with a “thwank” that almost deprived it of the power of motion.
“Thru now, Mister Pheelum!” he exclaimed, giving it the finishing touch with the heel of his heavy boot, “ye may go back to yur bed agin, an sleep ’ithout fear o’ bein’ disturbed till the mornin’—leastwise, by snakes.”
Kicking the defunct reptile before him, Zeb Stump strode out of the hut, gleefully chuckling to himself, as, for the third time, he extended his colossal carcase along the sward.
Chapter Eight.
The Crawl of the Alacran.
The killing of the snake appeared to be the cue for a general return to quiescence. The howlings of the hound ceased with those of the henchman. The mustangs once more stood silent under the shadowy trees.
Inside the cabin the only noise heard was an occasional shuffling, when Phelim, no longer feeling confidence in the protection of his cabriesto, turned restlessly on his horseskin.
Outside also there was but one sound, to disturb the stillness though its intonation was in striking contrast with that heard within. It might have been likened to a cross between the grunt of an alligator and the croaking of a bull-frog; but proceeding, as it did, from the nostrils of Zeb Stump, it could only be the snore of the slumbering hunter. Its sonorous fulness proved him to be soundly asleep.
He was—had been, almost from the moment of re-establishing himself within the circle of his cabriesto. The revanche obtained over his late disturber had acted as a settler to his nerves; and once more was he enjoying the relaxation of perfect repose.
For nearly an hour did this contrasting duet continue, varied only by an occasional recitative in the hoot of the great horned owl, or a cantata penserosa in the lugubrious wail of the prairie wolf.
At the end of this interval, however, the chorus recommenced, breaking out abruptly as before, and as before led by the vociferous voice of the Connemara man.
“Meliah murdher!” cried he, his first exclamation not only startling the host of the hut, but the guest so soundly sleeping outside. “Howly Mother! Vargin av unpurticted innocence! Save me—save me!”
“Save you from what?” demanded his master, once more springing from his couch and hastening to strike a light. “What is it, you confounded fellow?”
“Another snake, yer hanner! Och! be me sowl! a far wickeder sarpent than the wan Misther Stump killed. It’s bit me all over the breast. I feel the place burnin’ where it crawled across me, just as if the horse-shoer at Ballyballagh had scorched me wid a rid-hot iron!”
“Durn ye for a stinkin’ skunk!” shouted Zeb Stump, with his blanket about his shoulder, quite filling the doorway. “Ye’ve twicest spiled my night’s sleep, ye Irish fool! ’Scuse me, Mister Gerald! Thur air fools in all countries, I reck’n, ’Merican as well as Irish—but this hyur follerer o’ yourn air the durndest o’ the kind iver I kim acrost. Dog-goned if I see how we air to get any sleep the night, ’less we drownd him in the crik fust!”
“Och! Misther Stump dear, don’t talk that way. I sware to yez both there’s another snake. I’m shure it’s in the kyabin yit. It’s only a minute since I feeled it creepin’ over me.”
“You must ha’ been dreemin?” rejoined the hunter, in a more complacent tone, and speaking half interrogatively. “I tell ye no snake in Texas will cross a hosshair rope. The tother ’un must ha’ been inside the house afore ye laid the laryitt roun’ it. ’Taint likely there keel ha’ been two on ’em. We kin soon settle that by sarchin’.”
“Oh, murdher! Luk hare!” cried the Galwegian, pulling off his shirt and laying bare his breast. “Thare’s the riptoile’s track, right acrass over me ribs! Didn’t I tell yez there was another snake? O blissed Mother, what will become av me? It feels like a strake av fire!”
“Snake!” exclaimed Stump, stepping up to the affrighted Irishman, and holding the candle close to his skin. “Snake i’deed! By the ’tarnal airthquake, it air no snake! It air wuss than that!”
“Worse than a snake?” shouted Phelim in dismay. “Worse, yez say, Misther Stump? Div yez mane that it’s dangerous?”
“Wal, it mout be, an it moutn’t. Thet ere ’ll depend on whether I kin find somethin’ ’bout hyur, an find it soon. Ef I don’t, then, Mister Pheelum, I won’t answer—”
“Oh, Misther Stump, don’t say thare’s danger!”
“What is it?” demanded Maurice, as his eyes rested upon a reddish line running diagonally across the breast of his follower, and which looked as if traced by the point of a hot spindle. “What is it, anyhow?” he repeated with increasing anxiety, as he observed the serious look with which the hunter regarded the strange marking. “I never saw the like before. Is it something to be alarmed about?”
“All o’ thet, Mister Gerald,”