Again, while clerking in the Morris store I was put to the test—and though this has nothing whatsoever to do with the free grass range, I am sure you will observe that it is neatly wrapped in fast green. A Miss Sumerville, a relative of the Zabel’s, visiting in Wetmore—I believe she was from Pennsylvania—asked for variegated yarn. I told her we didn’t have that kind, but I would show her what we had. I admit that I was not very bright on some matters — but at that, I wasn’t as dumb as one of the standbys that I could have named.
Morris said, “Show her what you have in that drawer over there,” indicating the drawer holding the variegated yarn. After I had made the sale, Morris complimented me for selling the little lady a lot of something she didn’t want. He said, “When you don’t have what they want, always try to sell them something else.” He henkie-henkie-henkied in a manner which passed as a derisive laugh. “Keep awake, young man,” he said, “and you’ll make a salesman in time — maybe as good as Cawood here,” indicating Chuck.
With George Cox and his two sons, Bill and young George, I helped build that Holland corral earlier mentioned — and a small bunk house. And it was here where I mixed it with the rattlesnake I had been admonished so often to keep a sharp eye out for. Note Note how well young America obeyed the injunction. I saw the rattlesnake coiled by the roadside as we were coming in after the day’s work, with ox-team, piloted by a Mr. Green who had brought the outfit up from Atchison to haul the lumber out from town. I jumped out of the wagon, and hit the snake with a rock. It flopped, then lay still. I thought it was dead but to make sure I prodded it with a stiff prairie weed—and learned pronto that the stick was a mite too short on one end. That rattler lashed out at me, overreaching by the fraction of an inch, with its neck or body falling across my wrist. My hands were scratched and blood-stained from handling the rough pine boards—fencing came in the rough in those days — and Mr. Green insisted that he saw the snake bite me “with my own eyes.” And to prove it, he spotted a snagged place on my hand where he was sure the snake’s fangs had struck.
Mr. Green crowded those normally slow plodding oxen, and we actually came to town by fits and spurts on the gallop. He wanted to buy whisky for me, and seemed awfully distressed when I refused it. He was so exercised over the matter that one easily could have believed that it was he who was in need of a generous slug of the stuff — and I’m not so sure that he didn’t get it. Anyway, I was ready to go out on time the next morning. Mr. Green was not. And you can bet your life I never again tried to poke a diamondback with a stick too short on one end.