“But I’ve talked long ’nough ’bout him, and jist for amusement, I’m a goin’ to tell ye a story ’bout a rattlesnake, and you may put it in the book, or not, jist as ye like.
“We lived, as I was a tellin’, in a dreadful wild country, and ’twas full of all kinds of wild varmints—wolves, and panthers, and bears, was ’mazin plenty, and rattlesnakes mighty thick; and so one day, as we comes into dinner, mistress seemed to be rather out of humor, and she sets the baby down on the floor in a pet, and he crawls under the bed, and begins to be very full of play. He’d laugh, and stick his little hands out, and draw ’em back, and, as my place in summer was generally on the outside door, on the sill, I happened to look under the bed, and there I see a bouncin’ big rattlesnake, stickin’ his head up through a big crack, and as the child draws his hands back, the snake sticks his head up agin’. I sings out, with a loud voice, and says I, ‘master, there’s a rattlesnake under the bed.’ ‘You lie,’ says he; and says I, ‘why master, only jist look for yourself,’ and, at that, mistress runs to the bed, and snatches up the baby, and it screamed and cried, and there was no way of pacifyin’ on it in the world. Well, master begins to think I speaks the truth, and we out with the bed, and up with a board, and there lay five bouncin’ rattlesnakes, and one on ’em had twenty-three rattles on him; and so we killed all on ’em. Now that rattlesnake had _charmed_ that child, and for days and days that child would cry till you put it down on the floor, and then ‘twould crawl under the bed to that place, and then ‘twould be still agin’; and it did seem as though it would never forget that spot, nor snake, and it didn’t till we got into the new house.
“Well, this winter we went to scorein’ and hewin’ timber for the new house, and I followed three scores with a broad-axe, and the timber had to be _hewed_ tu; and I was _so tired_ many a time, that I wished him and his broad-axe 5000 miles beyond time. Well, I was a hewin’ one of the plates, and as ’twas very long, I got one on ’em a leetle windin’ and master see it, and he comes along and hits me a lick with the sharp edge of a square right atwixt my eyes, and cut a considerable piece of a skin so it lopped down on my nose, and on a hewin’ I had to go when the blood was a runnin’ down my face in streams; and, finally, one of the men took a winter-green leaf, and stuck it on over the wound, and it stopped bleedin’ and it healed up in a few days. This warn’t _much_, but I tell it to show the natur’ of the man; for any body will abuse power, if they have it to do just as they please.