Well the snake was running for his very life--being tumbled and tossed this way and that way. Joel saw the snake, so he ran way over to the right to avoid him. About that same time, the snake tumbled out from under the unfriendly harrow, still fighting for survival. And he didn't care which direction he went, so long as it was away from the harrow, so he too, shot out to the right. Now, when the snake got tangled up with Joel's bare feet, there were about two or three seconds when it was hard to tell whether the boy or the snake was trying the hardest to get away from the other. They both succeeded--momentarily. But as soon as Joel could stop the horses and tie up the lines, he went back and demanded that the snake pay the supreme penalty. Not that Joel didn't appreciate the fact that the snake had not bitten him, nor did Joel have anything personal against the snake. It was just that, since the snake was a snake, he had to go. Earl, Joel, Clarence (that's me) and Albert were generally spoken of as the four boys in our family. Ollie Mae was younger than Albert, and since she was a girl, she was sort of a different kind of link in a long chain of boys. And William Robert was much too young to be in our group. So we were the four boys. Looking back, I am amazed that we four all reached adulthood. I don't mean from germs we got from not washing our plates--I mean because of guns and knives and rattlesnakes and wild horses and cows. For instance, we boys were roping and riding horses one Sunday in our horse lot. We had one little mule colt about a year old that was a real pet, and at times somewhat of a pest. He was gentle and liked to be curried and petted. And naturally we enjoyed feeding and petting him. But on this particular day we were roping and riding and, in general, scaring the horses, and some of the time the horses were scaring us. When the going got too rough for the little mule colt, he took off and jumped the fence. Now we didn't want him to run away, we wanted him back in the pen. So we thought we'd better get after him in a hurry. But our hurrying wasn't necessary. Before any of us could even get out of the pen, he was back at the gate, looking over it and wanting back in. We opened the gate and let him in and the fun started all over again.