The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 21, 1917, Page 15

BY J. H. BARTLETT LL THIS happened down in South Dakota in the early days, when our neighbors and e ourselves were proving upon e our claims on the virgin land. They were a fine bunch, those pioneers, In the main. Just once in a while, not very often, there was & bad egg among them. There was such a one who filed on €@ homestead joining our old place on the east. Wood, we will call him, old Bill Wood, about the meanest old snake who ever filed on a government claim, Joining Wood on the north and cor- nering our place on the northwest was another homesteader, “Rattlesnake Ole.” It wasn’t his real name, just a nickname, and he wasn't - a snake either, not by a long shot. I'd pick ‘Wood as the snake every time. The way Ole got his name was different. You have heard, probably, that a snake will break out of its pen to kill a snake any time it can get the smell or hear the rattle. Well, we never kept Ole in & pen but if we had I would bet that he would break out to get the “sneak,” as he would call it. He could find a snake where nobody else would ever think of looking for anything but flowers. I believe Ole could smell snakes. Certain am I that he could hear a rattler farther than I could and I prided myself then on my hearing. KEPT HIS COLLECTION IN ONE-GALLON PAIL (T One Sunday morning I strolled over to Ole's cabin as I had often done, and coming up over the bank of a little slough that lay between our places, I saw Wood going toward his own cabin carrying what I took to be a rope, and as he looked toward me I waved my hand and went on. Ole was sitting on a bench out in front of his shack and when I came up he told me that he had got another rattler that morning, but as he hadn’t caught it on his own place he had to give it up. Wood had demanded its return and had just gone home with it. But Ole had cut off the rattle and he told me to come in and see it'and then I got the surprise of my life. In a one-gallon syrup pail Ole had his collection. - The pail was nearly half full of, rattles of all sizes and ages and on top lay the “Wood rattle,” freshly cut off, as I could see. Ole told me he had caught about half of them here in “dis” country, but had brought a good many of,the rattles with him from Minnesota, where he had lived a few years before South Dakota began to be settled. “But this one here,” he said, holding up Wood’s, was the only one he had to give back to the “rightful owner.” ‘“‘But ay feex old Voodpile some day for dat,” he said, and that was the only time I ever saw Ole show the least sign of anger and then it was " only for a moment till his habitual grin returned. I don’t believe he could carry- a grouch very long, not even against old Wood. HEARD A YELL IN OLE’'S DIRECTION Late that fall Ole came over one morning and asked us if he could leave his oxen with us for a few days as he wanted to go down to Mitchell to gee a sister whom -he had not seen since coming to the territory. Dad told him to turn them out.in the yard and we would look after them if he wanted to stay all winter, and I asked him if he was suré it was a sister he was going to see. I had noticed several times during the summer that he geemed absent minded and had a far- away look in his good-natured blue eyes and I'd got a hunch that Ole was tired of living alone. But he only grinned and then I told him he had better bring over what things he had that people were likely to need and we would stow them away in the gran- ary till his return with his “sister.” ° He grinned again and said he would put everything in his cabin and put a good “lock” on it and added that he wasn’t afraid of anyone but Wood anyway, “and ay feex him alright.” Not long after Ole’s departure I had been away one Sunday evening and, coming home rather late, when good people should have been in bed (never mind where I'd been, she's looking over my shoulder right now), I was surprised and not a little scared to hear somebody yell over in the direc- tion of Ole’s cabin. I thought it sound- ed like old Wood and he was yelling for help. I ran into the house ang, without making any more noise than. possible, I got my gun and started off across the field in the direction of the voice I had heard I had only gone a little ways till I heard him yell again and I also heard that he was running for all he was worth and yelling at every jump. Maybe if I hadn't been sure it was Wood I would have hurried a little more than I did, but I'd gotten over a good piece of the way when I heard gomebody plunge into the slough. I knew that was where he had landed because there was a thin coat of ice on it and I was close enough so I heard it break. WENT TO BORROW MATCHES, HE SAID I lit out then and when I got up close enough to see there was old ‘Wood up to his neck in that icy water and yelling “Snakes” for all his lungs would stand. He told me through his chattering teeth that he had gone to Ole's shack to “borrow” a few matches and the house was full of rattlers and he had at least a dozen down the back of his neck and had plunged into the slough to drown them. Well, I remembered Ole’s syrup pail about that time and I also remembered what he had said when he went away, about “fixing old ‘Woo4d,” and I thought I might be able to guess what the trouble was. So I told Wood to stay where he was till he was sure the snakes were all dead. I thought I was so far away that he couldn’t hear me snicker but I guess he did for he only stayed a few minutes and when he came out on the bank and I helped him get his coat off, out fell two loose rattles. ‘When I peeled off his shirt there were two more that had got down néxt to his skin and had “bit” him, Wood said. WOOD NEVER SPOKE TO OLE AFTER THAT The next morning I went over to Ole’s shack and there I found out what kind of a “lock” he had put on his door. The syrup pail was lying on the floor in front of the door, where it had fallen when Wood had opened the door. Ole had fixed the pailful of rattles above the door in such a way that when the door was pushed open it had tipped over and a part at least had gone down old Wood’s neck. With the noise and surprise, of course, he thought that the rattlers had used Ole’s deserted cabin for their winter quarters. The minute he felt the rattles he had started for the slough to “drown” them, yelling like a Sioux. I think, if I hadn’t happened to hear him he would have been there yet, for his teeth weren’t chattering from the cold altogether. Ole came back about a week later and, sure enough, I had made a good guess. He brought a little woman with him over to our cabin and introduced her as his wife. They stayed with us the first night after their arrival and when I told Ole about Wood's bath he only grinned and said: “Maybe he let me ketch all the.snakes I want to on his claim, now.” ‘Wood left the country rather hur- riedly about a year after, but up to the time of his departure he never spoke to either Ole or his wife and he would go a mile - out of his way to avoid meeting me. NO MISTAKE IN BAER. In the endorsement of John M. Baer for congress in the First congressional district, the Nonpartisan league has made no mistake. Mr. Baer is one of the most widely known men in the state today, due largely to his justly celebrated cartoons in the Nonpartisan Leader, which have particularly en- deared him to the hearts of the produc- ing classes, and more especially the farmers. From the standpoint of fit- ness for the job of congressman, Mr. : Baer is amply qualified and fully com- petent, and if elected,’ as now seems highly probable, he will be a credit to the state and an honest and conscien- tious representative of at least eighty- five per cent of her population—and that's a darned sight nearer than most of 'em ever get. Personally, John Baer is one of the most likeable fellows on the face of the globe, and his friends are legion. The race in the First dis- trict wilt be pulled off on .Tuesday, “July 10—and the editor of the Palla- dium confidently predicts that the tal- ented nephew of James Whitcomb Riley, the immortal Hoosier bard, will gallop under the wire an easy winner. —BISMARCK (N. D.) PALLADIUM. PLOW TAME SOD EARLY. Tame sod plowed when the grass is growing will produce a better crop next year than if it is plowed in Sep- tember or October. If the moisture conditions permit, plow bromus, tim- othy and clover sod soon after the hay crop 1s cut. AD TISEMENTS You need a new SEPARATOR "NOW lst If you are still using some gravity or setting — process of creaming— BECAUSE YOUR WASTE IS greatest and quality of product poorest in mid-summer when the milk supply is heaviest. BECAUSE TIME IS OF GREAT- est value on the farm at this season and the time and labor saving of the good separator counts for most. BECAUSE THE SKIM-MILK IS poorest without a separator in hot weather and often more harmful than helpful to calves. BECAUSE THE WORK OF A New De Laval Cream Separator is as perfect and its product as superior with one kind of weather as with another. : If you have a very old De Laval or an 2“_‘1 inferior separator of any kind— BECAUSE THE LOSSES OF THE poor separator from incomplete skim- ming and the tainted product of the hard-to-clean and insanitary separator are the greatest at this season. BECAUSE OF THE GREAT economy of time at this season in having a separator of ample capacity to do the work 80 much more quickly. 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