| OCR Text |
Show 36 I was always his helper in every project. We tried weed seeds and cedar bark. Nothing tasted good. Miraculously, we never set ourselves on fire. We climbed Grandpa's Peak and had the run of the valley, except the Ranger Station. Mama was deathly afraid of that place. Between our place and there was a hollow with a little stream running down it. On the other side of the stream were rattle snakes. The ranger told us they killed forty rattlers when they fenced it, and Mama never went there without finding at least one rattler, having a narrow escape. We found them on our side, too, sometimes, like under the step when we had been away, or coiled in a sagebrush halfway from the house to the corral. We were instructed what to do: get for home as fast as our legs could carry us. Never stop to tease one. We learned to walk with one eye on the flat boulders which floored the valley, out from under which rattlers could strike at our bare legs. Uncle Will came home white and shaking one day from an encounter with a blue racer, more deadly than the rattler. He said it struck at him time and again as he retreated down hill. "A child could have never gotten away from it, " he said. We thought we were safe. There was an erroneous belief that a rattler always gives warning before it strikes. Eldon taught me how to whistle and I taught Revo how to talk that summer she was two. I tended her while Mama, Uncle Ase, Uncle Will and Papa milked cows, twenty of them, by hand. These were not jerseys, holsteins, nor any of the known brands, but common range cows, pressed, often against their will. |
