"Rattler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of a striking rattler he launched himself full upon Sabor's back, his strong young arms seeking and gaining a full-Nelson upon the beast, as he had learned it that other day during his bloody, wrestling victory ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was lucky not to get killed," said the landlord, laughing. "He fought with the Yankees, and they do say that Little Compton was a rattler." ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... next chapter, contained a scene in which a 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 ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... and laugh, and ask Marster Sam how he felt. Marster Sam kinda frown and say: 'Damn I feels like hell! Git up dat tree! Don't you see dat 'possum up dere?' I say: 'But where de snake, Marster?' He say: 'Dat rattler done gone home, where me and you and dat 'possum ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... before his time, and he had to encounter a more than usual amount of official conservatist obstruction. For years the veteran officers who advised the Admiralty opposed and ridiculed the invention. When at last it was fitted to a gunboat, the "Rattler," it was obvious that it provided the best means of applying steam propulsion to the purposes of naval war. The propeller was safe under water, and the engines could be placed low down ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... 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. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... broken and crumbled to sea level, was the entrance to the crater itself, which constituted the harbour. Thus, Fuatino was like a rugged horseshoe, the heel pointing to the west. And into the opening at the heel the Rattler steered. Captain Glass, binoculars in hand and peering at the chart made by himself, which was spread on top the cabin, straightened up with an expression on his face that ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... to look out for those snakes," said the driver. "That's a rattler, and poisonous. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... 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, and let's ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... followed from the swamp to the woods, when suddenly a 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 ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... another publisher led to his writing his first book for boys—"Snowflakes and Sunbeams, or The Young Fur Traders." That story showed he had found his vocation, and he poured forth its successors to the tune in all of some fourscore volumes. "Martin Rattler" appeared in 1858. In his "Personal Reminiscences" Ballantyne wrote: "How many thousands of lads have an intense liking for the idea of a sailor's life!" and he pointed out there the other side of the romantic picture: the long watches "in dirty unromantic weather," ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the 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
... 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
... on, though there are some novices almost every year. 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 ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... the right ear and another on the left. The boy 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 ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... of the tale who saves himself from cobra or rattler by letting the serpent crawl its slow way over his perfectly controlled body might have withheld even a quiver of the flesh, but I am no Spartan. At my convulsive shudder each horrid claw gripped a death-hold. In one swift motion I seized a corkscrew that lay nearby, pried loose ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... 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
... what is't? The snakes of the prairies are harmless, unless it be now and then an angered rattler and he always gives you notice with his tail, afore he works his mischief with his fangs. Lord, Lord, what a humbling thing is fear! Here is one who in common delivers words too big for a humble mouth to hold, so much beside himself, that his voice is as shrill ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... deed, the indefatigable house again bestirred 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 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... 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 eight or ten ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... more future promise about Sauvage's work on the screw- propeller than about his physionotype, but he himself did not reap the benefit accruing from it. It became public property. The English built a trial ship, the Rattler, and the Americans another, the Princeton. But the Napoleon was earlier than these, and besides was more successful than either of them. She was originally ordered as a mail steam-packet, from a ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... 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 ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... ole Rattler from de bo'n. Here Rattler! Here! He'll drive de cows out'n de co'n, ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... 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
... now in his exposure. "Crotalin," he continued, "is one of the new drugs used in the treatment of epilepsy. But it is a powerful two-edged instrument. Some one who knew the drug, who perhaps had used it, has tried an artificial bite of a rattler on Veda Blair, not for epilepsy, but for another, diabolical purpose, thinking to cover up the crime, either as the result of the so-called death thought of the Lodge or as the bite of the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... name listed either as stockholder, bondholder or director, but you might find the First National Bank of El Toro, represented by the cashier or the first vice-president of that institution. Also, if I were you, I'd just naturally hop the rattler for San Francisco, hie myself to some stockbroker's office to buy this stock, and while buying it look over the daily reports of the stock market for the past few years and see if the figures suggested anything ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... his journal tells how bad they 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
... 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
... The Rattler was at length tried in a water tournament with the paddle-steamer Alecto, and signally defeated her. Francis Pettit Smith, like Gulliver, may be said to have dragged the whole British fleet after him. Were the paddle our only means of propulsion, our whole naval force would ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... (she wore, in general, a black straw, perched as a matter of convenience on the top of her head), and send it spinning across the yard. I have indeed. And once, when he did this in a manner that amounted to personal, I should have given him a rattler for himself, if Mrs Boffin hadn't thrown herself betwixt us, and received flush on the temple. Which dropped her, Mr Lightwood. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... (WHIP.) 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.
... and 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 ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... half an hour he had seen nothing unusual. Here and there he had noticed a rattler lurking in the shade of a rock or partly concealed under the thorny blade of a sprawling cactus; and he had seen a sage hen nestling in the hot sand. But these were fixtures—as was also the Mexican eagle that winged ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 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 need it, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... spoke a soldier. "Any snake'd be discouraged at them shanks. A seven-year rattler'd ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and Leslie's Weekly in the barber shop, as 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 snare the attention ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... 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 ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... 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 ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... taught 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Aud and Thorstein went into the Sudreyjar (the Hebrides). There Thorstein married Thorid, daughter of Eyvind the Easterling, sister of Helgi the Lean; and they had many children. Thorstein became a warrior king, and formed an alliance with Earl Sigurd the Great, son of Eystein the Rattler. They conquered Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and Moray, and more than half Scotland. Over these Thorstein was king until the Scots plotted against him, and he fell there in battle. Aud was in Caithness when she heard of Thorstein's death. ...
— Eirik the Red's Saga • Anonymous
... that rattler was a gin-u-ine one. Ding baste my skin if I didn't. Seemed to me I heard him rattle. Look at the blamed, unconverted insect a-layin' under that pear. Little more, and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... but one day I dropped one and he bit me on the leg, and it's been bad that same month ever since. Would you like to see the bite? There's the pattern of a diamond-back just as plain as anything, so I know it must have been a rattler." ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... like a plummet into the grass. I tramped about, parting the tangles, Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. I reached my hand, but saw no brier, But something pricked and stunned and numbed it. And then, in a second, I spied the rattler— The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, A circle of filth, the color of ashes, Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves, I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... shrank, too, when the buckboard passed the skeleton of a steer, its bleached bones 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 a strange fascination for her, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... snow everywhere—and we 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
... 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 tail ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... suggested that he should construct a book based on these letters. Three of his most enduring books were written over the next decade, "The Young Fur Traders", "Ungava", "The Hudson Bay Company", and were based on his experiences with the HBC. In this period he also wrote "The Coral island" and "Martin Rattler", both of these taking place in places never visited by Ballantyne. Having been chided for small mistakes he made in these books, he resolved always to visit the places he wrote about. With these books he became known as a great master of literature intended ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... his 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 ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... who hated Lincoln. The name came from copperhead-snakes, which are worse than rattlers, for rattlers rattle and give warning. A rattler is an open enemy, but you never know that a copperhead is around until he strikes. He lies low in the swale and watches his chance. "He is the worstest ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... we see the static embodiment of perfect 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 when Bow Bells were chiming the small hours. Nor do ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... mind telling you. I have no batteries to mask. I don't care how much you know about my resources; so I'll tell you what I see, Mr. Quarrier. I see a parody of the popular battle between razor-back and rattler. The rattler only strives to strike and kill, not to swallow. Mr. Quarrier, that old razor-back isn't going ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a rather 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, as always, as ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... way that a rattler'll never strike before giving you warning, 'fire damp' always gives you ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... 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
... life before Burns began to think very highly of Fox: he had hitherto spoken of him rather as a rattler of dice, and a frequenter of soft company, than as a statesman. As his hopes from the Tories vanished, he began to think of the Whigs: the first did nothing, and the latter held out hopes; and as hope, he said was the cordial of the human heart, he continued ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... gave you full plenipotentiary powers, so I suppose we'll have to stand behind your agreements—especially in view of the fact that we'll undoubtedly be blown into atoms if we don't. But from what you say, I'd rather be in bed with a rattler than have a treaty with a Vegan. They sound ungodly murderous to me. There are too many holes in that protection plan of yours. It's only a question of time before they'll find some way around it, and ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher
... might have missed my aim?" said Kiddie. "Not very complimentary to my shootin'. Why did I let it go loose? Well, I jest notioned it would be some cowardly ter shoot while I held the brute that way. Beside, I didn't want ter shatter the skull too much. Biggest rattler I've seen—seven feet long if it's an inch, and worth preservin'. Say, those bees look like givin' us trouble. Best hustle through with breakfast, and then get along to the traps. The honey c'n wait. That sulphur of yours is goin' ter do ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... dust cloud and decide which gray, plodding horseman alongside the herd was Robert Birnie. Far across the sluggish river of grimy backs, a horse threw up its head with a peculiar sidelong motion, and Ezra's eyes lightened with recognition. That was the colt, Rattler, chafing against the slow pace he must keep. Hands cupped around big, chocolate-colored lips and big, yellow-white teeth, Ezra whoo-ee-ed the signal that called the nearest riders to the wagon that held the ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... aware of all this, and when he dropped the rattler from his teeth he was careful to do so in such a way that the creature would touch the ground with considerable violence. Then he allowed it to wriggle about until in time its head faced the Englishmen. That was ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... after midnight when the blowing of a hoarse buffalo horn announced the approach of those who were to perform the fifth dance, the tcòhanoai alili or sun show. There were twenty-four choristers and a rattler. There were two character dancers, who were arrayed, like so many others, in little clothing and much paint. Their heads and arms were adorned with plumes of the war eagle, their necks with rich necklaces of genuine coral, their waists with valuable silver studded belts, and their loins with bright ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... it! You try anything with me," Jerry chattered, in a simian frenzy. "You've got a bad reputation at home; you're a malo hombre—a side-winder, you are, and your bite is certain death. That's what they say. Well, ever see a Mexican hog eat a rattler? That's ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Exchequer, but the right to sit opposite to the Treasury Box and to consider himself for the time the principal spirit in that chamber was at last assigned to Sir Orlando Drought. "It will never do," said Mr. Rattler to Mr. Roby. "I don't mean to say anything against Drought, who has always been a very useful man to your party;—but he ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... she did not know how they originated. She had thought all of them came from cases spun on trees or against walls or boards. She had seen only enough to know that there were such things; as a flash of white told her that an ermine was on her premises, or a sharp "buzzzzz" warned her of a rattler. ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... that Barkley lived, for the resort to weapons was the 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 ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... 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 Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... listened to that sinister voice and wondered what the face behind the mask looked like. The bandit leader had no more soul than a rattler, and one might expect more mercy from a wolf. And Kid Wolf already knew whom The Terror meant when he spoke of "our man." Anger shook the Texan from head to foot. He had learned enough. The bandits were already about to mount their ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... the evening, until by midnight it blew a rattler; but, thank Heaven, we are clear of the mud; no more lead-lines bandying ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... makes it dead wrong for you to take a hand. If it's necessary to get Marsh, I'll do it alone. With him out of the way, I think you can make a go of it. He's like a rattler—somebody's got to stomp on him. Now I'm off for the trap. Let me know ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... civilization to civilize. This is seen chiefly in the vicinity of the Grand Canon of the Colorado. Venomous rattlesnakes are used in the dance, which is an annual affair. Hundreds of snakes are caught for the occasion, and when the great day arrives the devotees rush into the corral and each seizes a rattler for his purpose. Reliable authorities, who have witnessed this dance, vouch for the fact that the snakes are not in any way robbed of their power to implant their poisonous fangs into the flesh of the dancers. It even appears as though the greater ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... some of the first settlers—if he hear a rattle behind him, you will see him gently turn his head; if he be passing a tavern at the time he pays little attention, and refrains from laying the whip upon the "creatures," seeing that he is morally certain that the rattler will stop to take "a grog" at the tavern; but if no such invitation present itself, and especially if there be a tavern two or three miles a-head, he begins immediately to make provision against the consequences ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... 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
... 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 of one struck. But all bitten do not die equally soon. I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... all right!" I butts in quickly. "Don't let's have no violence. Show us what makes that shop go, and we'll grab the next rattler for New York. Y'know the Kid fights Battlin' Edwards on ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... 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 the place ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... 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, and subtle. ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... full particulars of my illness; and I was horrified to find that I had been for nearly eight months completely out of my mind. It seemed that the raft had drifted before the wind until—missing Saint Domingo altogether—it had reached the Windward Channel, where it was fallen in with by the "Rattler" sloop-of-war; the skipper of which picked us up, and finding that we were still alive took the greatest care of us, cracking on until he reached Port Royal. Hawsepipe and the seaman had sufficiently recovered by that time to be able to narrate all the circumstances ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... I ask him to take me and the snake on home in the cart with him?" exclaimed Mary, as she lifted the rattler into the surrey by means of the lasso, and took the reins from the new boarder's uneasy hands. "Even if you can't drive, Bogus could take you to the ranch all right by himself. Lots of times when ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... yonder you're liable to meet up with a rattler too smart for your whip, account of his freckles. 'Twon't do you no harm to spend a few ca'tridges, so you'll be ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... seemed to be leaping when his first rattler disputed the trail with him, but he mustered courage to attack it with his club. After its head had been crushed, he mastered an Irishman's inborn repugnance for snakes sufficiently to cut off its rattles to ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... 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 ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... his ''good intentions " by vigorously shaking him off, I turn 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 roads all down the Platte. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... 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
... one wild time," grinned a dark-haired, blue-eyed youngster called Broncho. "Gabby's about as sociable as a rattler. I wouldn't change places ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Cheyenne. "There's a rattler in this here cave. I can hear him singin'. I'm comin' ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... not much else 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 ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... hot wave means another rattler, I should guess," he declared when discussing the ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... big feet—a great man for dress—wore top-boots, white neckcloth, long blue coat, with all the et-ceteras, and used hair-powder. He was, withal, very clever, and had an immensity of mother-wit. He rode the best horse in the country, kept greyhounds, and galloped a horse he called the "Rattler." The rides he took with this animal are the talk of the country to this day. The Rattler was very fast, and would jump over anything. There was no end to the hares Milner killed. He was tenant not only of Tillyriach, which was ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... heart did not quicken nor his pulse increase so much as a beat. He was cool, implacable, and dangerous as a rattler waiting for the opportune moment to spring. He looked neither to right nor left. He was deaf, impervious. He was there to win. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... through the winter." He wanted to tell William Louisa that he was some cowman himself, these days. He thought he had made a pretty good showing in the last twelve months; for when he first met her, at the Cedar Creek ford, he hadn't owned a hoof except the four which belonged to Rattler, his horse. He thought that maybe, if the play came right and he didn't lose his nerve, he might tell William Louisa something else! It seemed to him that he had earned the ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... 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
... mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart. When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five-foot rattler killed in Squire Pettigrew's ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... emperor, with a sudden burst of feeling, "you would rattler be obliged to the man whom you loved than to a stranger. Oh, if you but loved me, there would be no question of 'mine or thine' between us! It is said—I have betrayed myself, and I need stifle my passion no longer; for ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart. When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is Spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five foot rattler killed ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... 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 ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... notebook for the double-cross to his last sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare us your Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middleton challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip your seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; and evidently, if we condescended to it, we could do better than he. The critic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion. Judging by the smiles of the ladies, they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... replied Quilt. "But bring your glim this way. I've a couple of kinchens in yonder rattler, whom I wish to place under ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... light was 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 ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... hobbled obligingly down there to get cool water for the plump lady who was Holman Sommers' sister, and he had nearly stepped on a sleepy rattler stretched out in the sun. Vic was making a collection of rattles. He had one set, so far, of five rattles and a "button." He wanted to get these which were buzzing stridently enough for three snakes, it seemed to Vic. He ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... 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 Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... have levered it out of his rifle, after the shooting, and it fell into that hole. You see,"—he could not resist making the triumphant point once more,—"if I hadn't stopped to look for another rattler, I never would have found it. Just that chance—just a little chance like that—throws the biggest criminals. Funny, ain't it?" But she was too preoccupied with the importance of the discovery to dwell on ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... 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. Lew ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... menace in our lives, the snake! During 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 brought ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... that was almost triumphant. "Yet, I'd rather be out there where the starving coyotes howl the night through, where the great, gaunt gray wolves loom up in the night seeking what they may kill and eat, or where a step in the dark may be your last should you tread on a desert rattler. I'd rather be there and face all of that, and the peril of dying from thirst, than be anywhere else in the world," he concluded, and then lapsed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... about the snakes here. The records of the entire Union show few deaths in a year, and yet there's no scarcity of rattlers, copperheads, and moccasins in this Republic of ours. I know a man, an ornithologist, who for twelve years has wandered about the Florida woods and never saw a rattler. And yet, the other night a Northern man, a cottager, lighted his cigar after dinner and stepped off his veranda on to ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... blessing that 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
... about other animals' dwellings," Lee addressed him as he arrived, wet from an immersion in the creek and panting from his run. "Some day a rattler in a hole you're digging into will nip you on the nose and you'll wish you'd been more polite. Come along now and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Miss Slack, and Miss Trotter, and Mr. Skimpole (a lineal descendant of the urbane Harold), and Mr. Looseley, and Mr. Rattler, and Striker, and Bluffer, and Smiley; all these took a hand at the mill that was rolling out the character of "Dodd" Weaver, and there are marks of their varied crankings upon him ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... several generations were apt to throw back to the black-and-tan, grey, or brindle colouring. Play Boy and Poppy were the best of Erin's first litter. The dog's beautiful ears, which were left as Nature made them, were transmitted to his son Bogie Rattler, who was sire of Bachelor and Benedict, the latter the most successful stud dog of his time. Poppy had a rich red coat, and this colour recurred with fair regularity in her descendants. Red, which had not at first ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the possibility of disturbing a torpid rattler. He slid feet first into the cave, found that he could all but stand ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... slapping against me," he argued; "too darned hot! And there's nothing to use a gun on up on Sentinel.... Oh, well!" He threw the holster upon his bunk and dropped the automatic into the pack he was rolling. "I'll take it along. Might meet up with a rattler." ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Seeing how things was a going on, among 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 us all out ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that is left of him, beneath that greatcoat," returned the guide, who then briefly related the manner of the Lieutenant's death. "The Tuscarora was as venemous in his blow as a rattler, though he failed to give the warning," continued Pathfinder. "I've seen many a desperate fight, and several of these sudden outbreaks of savage temper; but never before did I see a human soul quit the body more ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... there was a crawler on my chest. 'For God's sake, Pete!' says I to Antelope Pete, who was rolled up next me, 'come take my friend away!' and I didn't holler very loud, neither. Pete was chain lightning in pants, and he grabs Mr. Rattler by the tail and snaps his neck, but I felt lonesome in my inside till dinner time. You bet! I know just how you feel, exactly. I didn't have a man's sized night's rest whilst we was in that part of ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... "Scabbard-rattler!" he mumbled derisively, as an officer approached. "Clicks his spurs to get attention! Wants you to look at him. Don't you do it. I never do." He closed his eyes ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... 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 ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... five minutes to tell Suds about Donnegan. Then Suds let out a grunt and started down the trail for the old dad. Missed him. Dad had got out of the Jungle and copped a rattler. Suds come back half green ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... 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
... the rattler meant I should. But the words have stayed by me, the more persistently that observation bears me out in the suspicion that the merry speaker only uttered the thought of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... was something more than usually early, and when she came out she found him reading his paper. "It's all settled now," he said. "Grey has applied for the Hundreds, and Mr. Rattler is to move for the new writ to-morrow. It has come rather sudden at last, as these things always do after long delays. But they say the suddenness is rather in ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... he wanted to 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 recognized, well—he ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck |
