After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and how he was killed, but Jim didn’t want to. It would bring bad luck, he said, and the man might come back as a ghost. So I didn’t say any more, but I kept wondering who shot him and why.
In an old coat from the house we found eight dollars in silver, sewn inside the cloth.
“You think it’s bad luck,” I said, “but what did you say when I brought in that snake-skin I found on the hill? You said touching a snake-skin was the worst bad luck in the world. Well, here’s your bad luck! I wish we had bad luck like this every day, Jim.”
“Never mind, honey, never mind. Don’t get too happy. It’s coming. You remember what I say, it’s coming.”
And it did come. A few days later I found a rattlesnake in the cave. I killed it and curled it up on Jim’s blanket, so it looked alive. I thought there would be some fun when Jim found it. But by night I forgot all about it. Jim threw himself down on the blanket, and the snake’s mate was there, and it bit him on the heel.
He jumped up yelling. I killed the second snake with a stick, and Jim grabbed Pap’s whiskey jug and began to drink. It was all my fault. I forgot what people say: when you leave a dead snake somewhere, its mate always comes and curls up around it. Jim told me to cook a piece of the snake and tie its rattles around his wrist, and he said that would help cure him. Then I went out quietly and threw both snakes far away into the bushes. I didn’t want Jim to find out it was my fault, not if I could help it.
Jim drank and drank, and now and then he went out of his head and yelled. His foot and his leg got very big. He was in bed for four days and nights. Then the swelling was gone and he was up again. I decided I would never touch a snake-skin with my hands again, now that I saw what came of it. Jim said maybe we hadn’t come to the end of that bad luck yet.
The river went down again, and the days got slow and dull. I said I wanted to go across the river and find out what was going on in town. Jim liked the idea, but he said I must go after dark. Then he thought about it and asked why I didn’t put on some of those old clothes and dress up like a girl.
That was a good idea. We made one of the old dresses shorter, and I rolled my trousers up to my knees and got into it. I put on the sun hat and tied it under my chin. Jim said hardly anyone would know me, even in the daytime. I practiced all day, but Jim said I didn’t walk like a girl, and I must stop pulling up my dress to get at my trouser pocket. I did better after that.
After dark I paddled up the river and crossed over to the town. A light was burning in a little old house that nobody had lived in for a long time. I looked in at the window. A woman of about forty was knitting by a candle. She was a stranger, because there wasn’t a face in that town I didn’t know.
That was lucky, because I was getting scared. People might know my voice. But if this woman had been in our little town two days, she could tell me everything I wanted to know. So I knocked at the door and told myself not to forget that I was a girl.