This was the chance for Glittershield.  With a dash so swift that all the rings on his body—­red, white, and black—­melted into one purple flash, he seized Old Rattler by his throat.  He carried no weapons, to be sure.  He had neither fangs nor venom.  He won his victories by force and dash, not by mean advantage.  He was quick and strong, and his little hooked teeth held like the claws of a hawk.  Old Rattler closed his mouth because he couldn’t help it, and the fangs he could not use were folded back against the roof of his jaw.

The King Snake leaped forward, wound his body in a “love-knot” around Old Rattler’s neck, took a “half-hitch” with his tail about the stomach, while the rest of his body lay in a curve like the letter S between the two knots.  Then all he had to do was to stiffen up his muscles, and Old Rattler’s backbone was snapped off at the neck.

[Illustration:  “HE SEIZED OLD RATTLER BY HIS THROAT.”]

All that remained to Glittershield was to swallow his enemy.  First he rubbed his lips all over the body, from the head to the tail, till it was slippery with slime.  Then he opened his mouth very wide, with a huge snaky yawn, and face to face he began on Old Rattler.  The ugly head was hard to manage, but, after much straining, he clasped his jaws around it, and the venom trickled down his throat like some fiery sauce.  Slowly head and neck and body disappeared, and the tail wriggled despairingly, for the tail of the snake folk can not die till sundown, and when it went at last the fifteen rattles and the button were keeping up an angry buzz.  And all night long the King of Snakes, twice as big as he ought to be, lay gorged and motionless upon Old Rattler’s rock.

And in the morning the little chipmunk ran out on a limb above him, pursed up his lips, and made all kinds of faces, as much as to say, “I did all this, and the whole world was watching while I did it.”

[Illustration:  KING SNAKE.]

THE STORY OF A STRANGE LAND

(FROM SCIENCE SKETCHES.)[9]

BY DAVID STARR JORDAN.

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD, JUNIOR, UNIVERSITY.

[9] Copyright, 1896, by A. C. Mclurg & Co.

“In one strange land,
And a long way from home,
I heard a mighty rumbling, and I couldn’t tell where.” 

          
                                                                      —­NEGRO MELODY.

[Illustration]

It happened a long time ago, it may be fifty thousand years in round numbers, or it may have been twice as many, that a strange thing took place in the heart of the Great Mountains.  It was in the middle of the Pliocene epoch, a long, dull time that seemed as if it would never come to an end.  There was then on the east side of the Great Divide a deep, rocky basin surrounded by high walls of granite gashed to the base by the wash of many streams.  In this