"Have a taste."
"Jove, that is good!" said Donald. "What are you going to do
with it?"
"Show you later," laughed Linda. "Think I'll take a sip myself."
Then by a roundabout route they started on their return to the
car. Once Linda stopped and gathered a small bunch of an
extremely curious little plant spreading over the ground, a tiny
reddish vine with quaint round leaves that looked as if a drop of
white paint rimmed with maroon had fallen on each of them.
"I never saw that before," said Donald. "What are you going to
do with it?"
"Use it on whichever of us gets the first snake bite," said
Linda. "That is rattlesnake weed and if a poisonous snake bites
you, score each side of the wound with the cleanest, sharpest
knife you have and then bruise the plant and bind it on with your
handkerchief, and forget it."
"Is that what you do?" inquired Donald.
"Why sure," said Linda, "that is what I would do if a snake were
so ungallant as to bite me, but there doesn't seem to be much of
the antagonistic element in my nature. I don't go through the
desert exhaling the odor of fright, and so snakes lie quiescent
or slip away so silently that I never see them."
"Now what on earth do you mean by that?" inquired Donald.
"Why that is the very first lesson Daddy ever taught me when he
took me to the mountains and the desert. If you are afraid, your
system throws off formic acid, and the animals need only the
suspicion of a scent of it to make them ready to fight.
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