That was all right, up to a certain point.  Rabbit was a perfectly dependable little range horse, and sensible beyond most horses.  He was ambling along at his easy little fox-trot that would carry Starr many a mile in a day, and he had his eyes half shut against the sun glare, and his nose almost at a level with his knees.  I suppose he was dreaming of cool pastures or something like that, when a rattlesnake, coiled in the scant shade of a weed, lifted his tail and buzzed as stridently, as abruptly as thirteen rattles and a button can buzz.

Rabbit had been bitten once when he was a colt and had gone around with his head swollen up like a barrel for days.  He gave a great, horrified snort, heaved himself straight up in the air, whirled on his hind feet and went bucking across the scenery like a rodeo outlaw.

Starr did not accompany him any part of the distance.  Starr had gone off backward and lit on his neck, which I assure you is painful and disturbing to one’s whole physical and moral framework.  I’ll say this much for Starr:  The first thing he did when he got up was to shoot the head off the snake, whose tail continued to buzz in a dreary, aimless way when there was absolutely nothing to buzz about.  Snakes are like that.

Starr was a little like that, also.  He continued to cuss in a fretful, objectless way, even after Rabbit had stopped and waited for him with apology written in the very droop of his ears.  When he had remounted, and the horse had settled again to his straight-backed, shuffling fox-trot, Starr would frequently think of something else to say upon the subject of fool horses and snakes and long, dry miles and the interminable desert; but since none of the things would bear repeating, we will let it go at that.  The point is that Starr was no saint.

He knew of a spring where the water was sweet and cold, and where a lonesome young fellow lived by himself and was always glad to see some one ride up to his door.  The young fellow was what is called a good feeder, and might be depended upon to have a pot of frijoles cooked, and sourdough bread, and stewed fruit of some kind even in his leanest times, and call himself next door to starvation.  And if he happened to be in funds, there was no telling; Starr, for instance, had eaten canned plum pudding and potted chicken and maraschino cherries and ginger snaps, all at one sitting, when he happened to strike the fellow just after selling a few sheep.  Thinking of these things, Starr clucked to Rabbit and told him for gosh sake to pick his feet off the ground and not to take root and grow there in the desert like a several-kinds of a so-and-so cactus.

Rabbit twitched back his ears to catch the drift of Starr’s remarks, rattled his teeth in a bored yawn, and shuffled on.  Starr laughed.