"Rattler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself: Samuel and all his Sons —how many, their mother only knows —and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 0084 , the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... supper," he went on, speaking low that he might not be overheard—and ridiculed—from the house, "I didn't know the whole outfit was making a practice of doing the same thing. I hadn't heard about the dead tarantula on your pillow, or the rattler coiled up on the porch, or any of those innocent little jokes. But if the rest are making it their business to devil the life out of you, why—common humanity forces me to apologize and tell you I'm out ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... that burned within him, was led away between Redmond and his deputy. There was a shuffling of feet and clinking of spurs as men rose from their seats. A buzz came from the crowd, as distinctly hostile as a rattler's whirr. Words were not distinguishable, but the sentiment could not have been any more distinctly indicated if the crowd had shouted ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... This year (1932) the eleven year old brother of a Hopi girl in the writer's employ went into his first snake dance, as a gatherer, and his sister (a school girl since six) was as solicitous as the writer whenever it was a rattler that Henry had to gather up. But we both felt that we must keep perfectly still, so our expressions of anxiety were confined to very low whispers. Henry was not bitten and if he had been he would not have died. It is claimed and generally believed that no priest has ever died from ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... young Indian woman, stepping upon a rattlesnake, was bitten, and died. One scene showed her walking along, with the papoose on her back, all unsuspecting of the danger that threatened. Then came a close-up showing the rattler coiled with head raised. The next full-sized scene showed the woman just about to step upon the snake concealed in the grass. In the second close-up which followed, showing only the snake and the woman's moccasined feet, the reptile struck with startling swiftness and savageness. The whole effect ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... should do injustice to the megatherium. But now I have given ear to him in his proper person, I find him really a sort of philosophical-allegorical-mystical believer, and yet with a sharp dialectic point, so that any argumentative rattler of peas in a bladder might soon be pricked in silence by him. The mixture may be one of the Jewish prerogatives, for what I know. In fact, his mind seems so broad that I find my own correct opinions lying in it quite commodiously, and how they are to be ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... t'other—the West, I mean. The islands and mountains we passed and went into in the Rattler; your honor was only a young gentleman then, but was too much aloft to miss the sight of anything—and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... were here at the Great Falls—I think they feared them more than they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plenty of them all. In one day Lewis was chased into the river by a grizzly, charged by three buffalo bulls, and nearly bitten by a rattler!" ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... the pigs, for our top hoverlooks the awful scene, I axed the young gentleman to let me come down to condole with your honour; and as they always lets me do as I axes, in such matters, why down I come. We has had one rattler in at our top, howsever, that came nigh lo clear ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... mid-summer months blue racers and rattlesnakes swarmed and the terror of them often chilled our childish hearts. Once Harriet and I, with little Frank in his cart, came suddenly upon a monster diamond-back rattler sleeping by the roadside. In our mad efforts to escape, the cart was overturned and the baby scattered in the dust almost within reach of the snake. As soon as she realized what had happened, Harriet ran back bravely, caught up the child and ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of the most diabolical imaginable. Among the reptiles of Patagonia, Sir Henry, there is one, a species of black adder, known in the country as the Mynga Worm whose bite is more deadly than that of the rattler or the copperhead, and as rapid in its action as prussic acid itself. It has, too, a great velocity of movement and a peculiar power of springing and hurling itself upon its prey. The Patagonians are a barbarous people in the main and, like all barbarous people, are vengeful, cunning, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Hunted twice but impossible to track them in this stony soil Bud followed trail, found them 2 mi. east of here in flat sound asleep about 3 P.M. At 6 went to flat 1/4 mi. N. of camp to tie Pete, leading Monte by bell strap almost stepped on rattler 3 ft. long. 10 rattles & a button. Killed him. To date, 1 Prairie rattler, 3 Diamond back & 8 sidewinders, 12 in all. Bud ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... "A good, healthy-lookin' rattler, his diamond-pattern back bright in the sun, come out of the crevice an' stopped on the shelf to take a ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... squealed, turned, clawing and kicking, on Tinker, and, in ten seconds of crowded life, had learned the true significance of those cryptic terms an upper-cut on the potato-trap, a hook on the jaw, a rattler on the conk, and a buster on the mark. He lay down on the path to digest the lesson, and his little ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... for me and brought to the door at half-past eleven, and I shall want Rattler saddled for Pym at the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... warm, yielding, coiling thing slipped under Mickey's feet. With a wild cry he leaped across the body of a big rattlesnake that had been coiled in the path. As he arose, clear cut against the light launched the ugly head and wide jaws of the rattler, then came the sickening buzz of its rattles in mad recoil for a ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of a—diamond-backed rattler, mother! But come on over to the table, son! She isn't as dangerous as she sounds!" The Squire ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... young chap, slim and quick as a rattler. He'd fool you on looks. Came from Louisiana, and gets his name from that and from a sort of coon song he was always singin'. Something about 'My Louisiana—Louisiana Lou!' Don't remember his right name except that it was something like Delaney. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Timothy had taken his seat, Mr. Rattler got up from the opposition bench to ask him some question on a matter of finance. The brewers were anxious about publican licences. Could the Chancellor of the Exchequer say a word on the matter? Notice had of course been given, and the questioner had stated a quarter of an hour previously ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... only remedy known in that land, and Dan Anderson knew the creed, as Barkley should have known it. His weapon leaped out in his hand as he drew back, his lean body bent in the curve of the fanged rattler about to strike. He did strike, but not with the point of flame. The heavy revolver came to a level, but the hooked finger did not press the trigger. Instead, the cylinder smote Porter Barkley full upon the temple, and he fell like a log. Dan Anderson checked ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... appearance, and, trotting slowly back with panting flanks and lolling tongue, throws himself on his side exhausted. His mouth is now carefully examined, and two fingers being inserted, scoop round the fauces. The test is successful; there are traces of blood and fluff. "Bravo! Rattler! Show him—good dog. Show him!" Rattler rises with an effort, and lazily strikes into the bush, to the right. We follow in Indian file, and at about half a mile distant we come upon the kangaroo lying ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... that more belligerent and pretentious donkey who presumes to do battle for "honest" thought and a "sound" ethic—the "forward looking" man, the university ignoramus, the conservator of orthodoxy, the rattler of ancient phrases—what Nietzsche called "the Philistine of culture." It is against this fat milch cow of wisdom that Huneker has brandished a spear since first there was a Huneker. He is a sworn foe to "the traps that ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... said, with grudging admiration. "But this-hyar time he's done left 'is mark fer my ole eyes to see. Now, you-all jest throw yer eyes o' vision up the side o' the cliff ag'in. If ye looks cluss, ye kin see a streak o' dampness on the rock. Hit's jet as if a mounting rattler mout 'a' dove down the rock right thar. But 'twa'n't thet. Thet-thar streak is the mark of a wet rope—er mebby a grape-vine. Thet's the way them devils git up an' down. I'll bet every stick o' my mounting timber them cusses got a cave up thar, offen the ledge. P'rhaps ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... ghastly in the sunlight, but she smiled when she saw a sea of soap-weed with yellow blossoms already unfolding, and she looked long at a mile-wide section of mesquite, dark and inviting in the distance. She saw a rattler cross the trail in front of the buckboard and draw its loathsome length into a coil at the base of some crabbed yucca, and thereafter she made grimaces at each of the ugly plants they passed. It was new to her, and wonderful. Everything, weird or ugly, possessed ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... also grew serious. "All the same, Hans, keep an eye out," he urged. "Abe is sure to make you trouble. He's started in drinking, and when he's drunk he's poisonous as a rattler." ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Pennsylvania Journal an article setting forth the propriety of choosing the rattlesnake to represent America. The style of the article and its keenness are like Franklin, but there is no proof that he was its author. Whoever did write it notes that the "rattler" is peculiar to America; that the brightness of its eyes and their lack of lids fit it to be an emblem of vigilance. It never begins an attack and never surrenders, never wounds till it has given warning. The writer had counted the rattles on the naval ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... just to the left? I dropped a big rock from the Point square on a rattler who was sunning himself there last spring. I can see a foothold all the way up the cliff. It can be done," he concluded, in a tone that made me turn sharply ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... hundred to one on Buttons eagerly offered, but no takers. Beppo jumped to his feet like a wild cat. Eyes encircled with ebon aurioles, olfactory quite demolished. Made a rush at Buttons, who, being a member of the Dodge Club, dodged him, and landed a rattler on the jugular, which again ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... passed on. The crowd split before him, for they had heard his name. There were brave men, he knew, among them. Men who would fight to the last drop of blood rather than be shamed, but they shrank from Donnegan without shame, as they would have shrunk from the coming of a rattler had their feet been bare. So he went easily through the crowd with big George in his wake, ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... retreating footfalls of the mustangs. She was too stunned to think, to realize the horrible fate that had befallen her. She crouched down against the wall of the cave nearest the light, her ear alert for the growl of a panther or the whir of a rattler's tail. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... drop the casual information, which he should assume to have heard on the train, that Samson South was returning, and to mark, on the assassin leader, the effect of the news. In his new code it was necessary to give at least the rattler's warning before he struck, and he meant to strike. If he were ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the tree-trunk. "Go on if you like, but I'm here to enjoy myself. If you meet a rattler on the way, have ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... shifted uneasily before the impending tragedy, and their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler. One can kill a rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned goods. But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and away better than no vegetables at all, the Happy Family ate ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... can trail him like a hound dawg trailing a rabbit. And I think I know where he 's bound for. Whatever that was you said about Crazy Laura hit awful close to home. It ain't going to be hard to find that rattler!" ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... learned to be patient with the children. I try to soften and placate her with the gift of trinkets, for there is enough Redskin in her to make her inordinately proud of anything with a bit of flash and glitter to it. But she is about as responsive to actual kindness as a diamond-back rattler would be, and some day, if she drives me too far, I'm going off at half-cock and blow that ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... been counsel between his young commander and himself. This night there had been none. Instead, only half an hour after the exciting episode at the commanding officer's and the despatching of the intruding rattler, 'Tonio had been summoned to the adjutant's office and then questioned by Lieutenant Willett, with cargador Munoz, not Lieutenant Harris, serving as interpreter. Hitherto 'Tonio had conducted ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... day he was eating his noon luncheon on a pine log when he saw a big rattler coiled a few feet in front of him. He eyed the serpent and began to lift his legs over the log. He had barely got them out of the way when the snake's fangs hit ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... what I call rushing the mourners!" gasped Bandy-legs, after they had made sure that the rattler was as dead as might be expected before sundown; for Owen declared that he had some sort of belief in the old saying that "cut up a snake as you will, its ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... we Took the old gun-barrel road back to Colorado. We camped one evening in Rattlesnake gulch; about midnight I heard a buzz I arose rather suddenly layed back the cover and saw within six inches of my son's face a large old diamond back rattler. It was close and short work to dispatch him but I succeeded, the report of my gun brought all hands to their feet they examined the headless reptile, and were soon again lost in slumber. after while we arrived safely at Fort Collins ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... Walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left. There was the first man's pistol which we'd forgot to return him, lyin' on the stone bench. Mankeltow puts his hand on it—he never touched the trigger—an', bein' an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off—spiteful as a rattler! ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... to read the character of the stallion. He knew, for instance, the insatiable curiosity with which the chestnut studied his wilderness and its inhabitants. He had seen the trail looping around the spot where the rattler's length had been coiled in the sand, or where a tentative hoof had opened the squirrel's hole. On a night of brilliant moonshine, he had watched through his glass while Alcatraz galloped madly, tossing head and tail, and neighing at ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... time," grinned a dark-haired, blue-eyed youngster called Broncho. "Gabby's about as sociable as a rattler. I wouldn't change places with yuh for ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... out for rattlers." His voice was so cheery that one might have thought these snakes well worth meeting for their companionship. "This is the season for 'em, Davy—real rattler season, and you're sure to see some." To make his warning more impressive, the squire gave a leap backward which could not have been more sudden or violent had he heard the dreaded serpent stirring in the ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... constructed and largest crabs, Q and R, headed at full speed to meet the Llangaron, who, as she came on, opened the ball by sending a "rattler" in the shape of a five-hundred-pound shot into the ribs of the repeller, then at least four miles distant, and immediately after began firing her dynamite guns, which were of limited range at the roofs ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... quickly replied. "Sometimes leave sore, not soon heal up. But weuns have medicine tuh take when cotton-mouth or moccasin hit in leg with fangs. We splash when we go through water in swamp, and skeer away. No bother much 'bout moccasin. But rattler more trouble. Two year I get bit, and McGee have much hard time keepin' ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... to it, West. A little after one o'clock the shadow phoned in from the Union depot that Hobart had just purchased two tickets for Patacne. We hustled over, but were too late to catch that train, but learned the girl had accompanied him on the trip. We caught another rattler two hours later, and got off at Patacne, which is about three miles west of here. It is not much of a job to gather up gossip in a small burg, and, inside of ten minutes, I had extracted all I needed from the station agent. It seems this outfit was the summer sensation ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... 'em: Shunkalutah, him the Red Dog; Brave Bear, Montaohetekah; Setting Bear, Maktohutakah; Rock Bear, Live Bear, Long Bear, Short Bear, Little Bear, Yellow Bear, and Bear Skin, Keyalutah, Red Fly—Shoo Fly! Dahsanowee, White Cow Rattler, Pahgee, Shunkmonetoohakah, Shatonsapah, Maktohashena, Kokepah, Ocklehelutah, Newakohnkechaksaheuntah, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... curious thing that one is reminded at times of Ballantyne's "Martin Rattler," written very much earlier, even down to to the presence of a "recluse". That doesn't mean you won't enjoy the book just as much as you might have enjoyed "Martin Rattler." Best, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... shoulder he fired, seemingly without taking aim. His bullet sped true to the mark and severed the head of the now thoroughly angered rattler. He was just in time, for already the muscles of steel had started to launch the ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... not want to waken and frighten the boy. He managed to slip his arm out without disturbing the sleeper. But now! There wasn't a club around except the short sticks of the fire. A two-foot stick is not the proper equipment for rattler hunting, except to those born with nerves so strong that they do not hesitate to catch Mr. Crotalus by the tail and ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... was Donald's turn to make this trip; on other days Sandy or Bernardo went. As there was always the chance of meeting a grizzly or a rattler the journey was not without ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the neighborhood come here to drink, and the rattlesnakes come here to catch them." I then began to cast my eye along the channel, perhaps instinctively feeling a snaky atmosphere, and finally discovered one rattler between my feet. But there was a bashful look in his eye, and a withdrawing, deprecating kink in his neck that showed plainly as words could tell that he would not strike, and only wished to be let alone. I therefore passed on, lifting my foot a little higher than usual, and left him to enjoy ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... wisdom and perfect righteousness. We take him at his own valuation, humbly. Yet we have a queer instinct that there was a time when he did not diffuse all this cold radiance of good example. Something tells us that he has been a sinner in his day—a rattler of the ivories at Almack's, and an ogler of wenches in the gardens of Vauxhall, a sanguine backer of the Negro against the Suffolk Bantam, and a devil of a fellow at boxing the watch and wrenching the knockers ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... public comment in Delhi, while the knowing ones winked significantly at the almost triumphal departure of Madame Berthe Louison, whose special car and ample retinue made her a modern European Queen of Sheba. "Tell you what, fellows," said "Rattler" Murray, otherwise known as "Red Eric, of the Eighth Lancers," "the old Commissioner will return superbly 'improved and illustrated' with her, a new edition of the standard old work. You see, there's a French Consul-General ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... not all gone and he knew just where to look, he saw the rattler slipping away across the sand. He thrust his gun down as close as he dared and with the first shot blew the sinister, flat head off the ugly thick body. Then he went forward, calling soothingly ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... my "barker "loose on him, and quickly convert him into a "goody-good snake; " for if "the only good Indian is a dead one," surely the same terse remark applies with much greater force to the vicious and deadly rattler. As I progress eastward, sod-houses and dug-outs become less frequent, and at long intervals frame school-houses appear to remind me that I am passing through a civilized country. Stretches of sand alternate with ridable ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... success of the Archimedes, the Admiralty ordered the Rattler to be fitted with a screw, and it was no small satisfaction to find that her double-cylinder engines could be easily adapted to the new propeller. She is of 888 tons, and two hundred horse-power, and was launched in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... good old packhorse, named Rattler, knocked up, and I reluctantly gave orders to leave him behind, when Whiting, the old guardsman, volunteered to remain with him, and bring him on after he had rested: this in the face of both hunger and danger I duly appreciated, and long remembered, to his advantage. We soon after ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... said that shaking the rattles had a strange effect on certain animals. A canary bird sings and a rattler rattles. Perhaps they both think they are improving the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... Quite the thing, hellish fine. Well done. Compleat. Dashing. In a handsome stile. A bang up cove; a dashing fellow who spends his money freely. To bang up prime: to bring your horses up in a dashing or fine style: as the swell's rattler and prads are bang up prime; the gentleman sports an elegant ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... "When he found a rattler, he would creep up to him, and the snake, seeing him, would throw itself into a coil to strike. The cat would hold up a paw and the snake would strike at it. But the cat was too quick and would dodge the stroke. Then, before the snake could coil up again, ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... see," rejoined the girl. "But look in the lower jaw. Trouble is, you science sharps expected to find hollow fangs and the sacs above, like a rattler's. Do you know why a Gila monster flops on his back when he bites? It's to let the loose poison in his lower jaw drain into the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... the players in the room are blindfolded, except one, who is given a tin can in which is placed a loose pebble. He is known as the "rattler." The blindfolded players attempt to locate and tag the rattler by the rattle. The one successful takes ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... afraid of snakes, but soon learned that most of them were harmless. The only venomous species seen on our farm were the rattlesnake and the copperhead, one of each. David saw the rattler, and we both saw the copperhead. One day, when my brother came in from his work, he reported that he had seen a snake that made a queer buzzy noise with its tail. This was the only rattlesnake seen on our farm, though we heard of them being common on limestone hills ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... back the door, fashioned in one great slab from a forest tree. His welcome was an angry whir, and a huge yellow rattler lay coiled within, his head reared to strike. Polly Ann ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was mighty good, Mr. Kennedy. We practically wrote a scenario for those reptiles. Doctor Nagoya was down himself and for the better part of a day it wasn't possible to get a woman in the studio, for fear a rattler or something might ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... mellow laugh. "No, I don't. I think you are just a poor human. I was always powerfully fond of you, Lewis,—and I never could abide a rattler! There's the moon, and it's a long march to-morrow, and folks sit up late in Richmond! Unroll the blankets, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... man that moves," said The Spider in Mexican. And as he spoke his own hand flashed to his armpit, and out again like the stroke of a snake. Behind his gun gleamed a pair of black, beady eyes, as cold as the eyes of a rattler. The deputy read his own doom and the death of at least two of his men should he move a muscle. He had Young Pete covered and could have shot him down; Pete was unarmed. The ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... a rattlesnake has to coil before it can spring. No one has ever written up life from a rattler's point of view, although it has been unfeelingly stated that fear of snakes is an ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... of men as snake trappers. Their usual technique is to pin the rattler to the ground by means of a forked stick thrust dexterously over his neck, after which he is conveyed into a bag made for the purpose. Probably the cleverest of her trappers is a Mexican who has a faculty of catching these dangerous creatures with his bare hands. ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... off every day and practice. You hadn't ought to have missed that cottontail. What you want is to fire accurately, just as soon as yore gun jumps to the shoulder. I can teach you a wrinkle or two with a six-gun. Then every time you see a rattler, take a crack at it. Keep in form. You might need to bend a gun ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... instructions Nelson sailed again for the north, where the Virgin Islands, with those of Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Christopher, were put under his especial charge,—the sloop "Rattler," Captain Wilfred Collingwood, a brother of the well-known admiral, being associated with the "Boreas." At first the two officers confined their action to warning off American vessels, and at times forcing them to leave ports where they had anchored; but they found that either the vessels ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... rattlesnakes," he told himself. "For a scared or angry rattler would have this room vibrating with his whirr. We're too far south for copperheads. The—the only other pit-viper I ever heard of in Florida ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... boy of fourteen Tobacco Jim, who owned many dogs, Rose from the door of his tent And came to where we were running, Young Coyote, Rattler, Little Fox, And said to me in their hearing: "You are the fastest of all. Now run again, and let me see. And if you can run I will make you my runner, I will care for you, And you shall have pockets of ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... up, didn't he?" he declared, turning his eyes upon Glover. "As for renegades," he went on, beginning to deal the cards again, "I've knowed 'em—hull droves of 'em—to stampede on the whistle of a rattler." Evidently he was returning to ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... me that my first encounter was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old, and had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... varicolored flowers As a greeting to the trav'ler, Solace to the toilsome hours. Old Jack Rabbit hopped before him, Then sat up, to watch him pass, Dusky horned-toads scurried nimbly Through the withered buffalo grass. Here and there the buzzing rattler Whirred a warning, head alert, Then retreated from the snapping, Stinging strokes of Billy's quirt. Day by day the wild breeze flying, With'ring in its scorching heat, Hummed a tune to labored beating Of ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... she could frame, "but Captain Geismar and others have told me so much about you that I— I—" There Janice came to a halt, and then in English, colouring as she spoke, she went on, "'T is mortifying, but though I thought I had become quite a rattler in French, the moment I ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... to turn loose a rattlesnake that he had photographed, in the observance of his principle never to kill an animal whose picture he had taken. Subsequently it was gravely reported that one of the restive horses of the outfit had "accidentally" killed that rattler by stepping upon it. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... great rattler and all the little rattlers, he did it!" shouted Yellin' Kid, as he pulled his horse to a stop, an example followed by the others. For though they might all (save one, perhaps) have pulled out of the encircling ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... he's Marbolt's private hoss keeper. He's a half-breed. French-Canadian; an' tough. Say, he's jest as quiet an' easy you wouldn't know he was around. Soft spoken as a woman, an' jest about as vicious as a rattler. Guess you'll meet him. An' I 'lows ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... be far on our journey to-night," said the Rattler; "the long knives are ever on the watch for ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... useless in some cases. It all depends upon the kind of snake and where the person is struck. I never knew a case of a person recovering when hit by a genuine Florida rattlesnake. Puff adders and moccasins are deadly enough, but they are mild beside the rattler. The rattler's fangs are so long that they strike deep and the quantity of venom injected is enormous, some of it is almost instantly taken up by the veins punctured. I do not believe that anything but instant amputation would save the life ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and his brother, Wilfred Collingwood, in the RATTLER, actively co-operated with Nelson. The custom-houses were informed that after a certain day all foreign vessels found in the ports would be seized; and many were, in consequence, seized, and condemned in the Admiralty ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey |
