"I know that," said the boy, a little scornfully. "That's what the name centipede means, isn't it, a hundred feet?" "Yes, and some of them can beat out their name." "But they can't sting with their feet." "They do, just the same," replied the older man. "You see the feet of a centipede are like the paws of a cat, all furnished with claws, which are drawn in while the creature is walking about, but which can be extended and fixed firmly if disturbed. For example, if a centipede is walking over your hand and you go to brush him off, no matter how fast you strike, the moment your other hand has touched the little hairs all over his body that very instant all those little claws in each of his hundred feet sink deep into your skin, and Mr. Centipede can't be pried off with anything short of a crowbar. "As a matter of fact, if you try to tear him off, the chances are that you will pull until you break the claws off, leaving them in the skin--for he will never let go--and then you will have an awful time. I don't know for sure if there are little poison sacs at the base of the claws or whether it is just blood poisoning that sets in, due to the fact that the centipede lives on decaying flesh, and his claws are covered with germs, but I do know that if the claws are broken in, it means trouble. If you leave the thing alone, however, and can keep from trying to annoy him, if there is no need for him to stick his claws into you, it is no worse than having a caterpillar crawl over your hand." "But is it fatal if he gets his claws in?" asked the boy. "I wouldn't say that it was. It often means the amputation of a limb though, and I suppose if it was on the body it might end in a case of blood poisoning that might prove fatal. But at best it makes a deep sloughing sore, which gets bigger and bigger all the time, the skin seeming to die about the edges. Of course, injury from a centipede is comparatively rare, as he is generally found about carrion, and in this kind of climate no one keeps carrion any nearer to the camp than he has to." "Then there's the Gila monster," suggested the boy, "they were telling stories about them on the train coming down." "He looks ugly, and I have been told some very bad things about him," said the chief gravely, "but so far as I am concerned, I have seen no warrant for them. I can hardly see how so lazy and sluggish a creature as a Gila monster can be called dangerous. I have tried to provoke them by shoving sticks down their throats in order to find out how they behaved when angry, but I have never been able to make them show fight." "Only just the some times," put in the Mexican, who had followed the conversation with intense interest, "there is justa the five, six days in eacha year, the Gila is moocha bad, other times, nothing at all."