Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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The prairie pool patronized most, if it were not filled with soil, as are all the other pools now, would be close to the public road, on the Grant Dale forty acres—open territory then. Directly north of this was the Barney Peters forty-acre isolated prairie farm. We could always count being accompanied by one or more of the four Peters — Bill, George, Jim, and John. And on rare occasions two Peters girls, Bertha and Mary, would invade our privacy.

The pool was about 50 by 25 feet in dimensions with a minimum depth of eight feet. It was edged with a sort of “greasewood” growth of brush which grew in clusters at the water’s edge three feet below the rim. Often water snakes could be seen sunning themselves on branches which curved out over the water. It was a most disquieting feeling to have one of those four-foot fellows slither across one’s back. They were not poisonous. Still they were snakes.

The Peters girls did not often come upon the scene. But when they did, it was more disturbing than to be raked over the back by those snakes. The south side of the pool offered the best place for the snakes to sun themselves — and as soon as the water was agitated by the bathers coming in from the north side, as they always did, the snakes would drop off into the water and make, blindly, for the opposite side and disappear under the north bank. Some of the snakes seemed to sleep more soundly than others, and, on a good day, the snake parade to the north side, while not continuous was, seemingly, never ended. Were it true, as claimed in the old days, that those snakes passing over one’s back would make hair grow wherever they touched the bare skin, I would have more hair on my back than I now have on my head.