"Rattler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... snake is his enemy," said another to me. "Ever seen a buck circling round and round a rattler?" ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... a black straw, perched as a matter of convenience on the top of her head), and send it spinning across the yard. I have indeed. And once, when he did this in a manner that amounted to personal, I should have given him a rattler for himself, if Mrs Boffin hadn't thrown herself betwixt us, and received flush on the temple. Which dropped her, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... gorging more than his share, and not "taking a 'poon as me do." It is needless to say that this incautious caution fired Peggy's adventurous spirit. SHE took a bowlful of milk to the haunt of a "rattler" near her home, but, without making the pretense of sharing it, generously left the whole to the reptile. After repeating this hospitality for three or four days, she was amazed one morning on returning to the house to find the snake—an elderly one with ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... sir, but t'other—the West, I mean. The islands and mountains we passed and went into in the Rattler; your honor was only a young gentleman then, but was too much aloft to miss the sight of anything—and all along ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... warm, yielding, coiling thing slipped under Mickey's feet. With a wild cry he leaped across the body of a big rattlesnake that had been coiled in the path. As he arose, clear cut against the light launched the ugly head and wide jaws of the rattler, then came the sickening buzz of its rattles in mad recoil for ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... stranger's folly. But, most of all, he wanted to drop the casual information, which he should assume to have heard on the train, that Samson South was returning, and to mark, on the assassin leader, the effect of the news. In his new code it was necessary to give at least the rattler's warning before he struck, and he meant to strike. If he were recognized, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons—how many, their mother only knows—and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the same ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... twice but impossible to track them in this stony soil Bud followed trail, found them 2 mi. east of here in flat sound asleep about 3 P.M. At 6 went to flat 1/4 mi. N. of camp to tie Pete, leading Monte by bell strap almost stepped on rattler 3 ft. long. 10 rattles & a button. Killed him. To date, 1 Prairie rattler, 3 Diamond back & 8 sidewinders, 12 ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... is of the cuckoo family of birds. It seldom flies, but runs swiftly along the roads, or in the desert, and is said to kill rattlesnakes by placing a ring of thorny cactus leaves around the snake as it lies asleep. The rattler is then pecked to death, since it cannot get out of its prickly cage. This fowl is like a ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... found a rattler, he would creep up to him, and the snake, seeing him, would throw itself into a coil to strike. The cat would hold up a paw and the snake would strike at it. But the cat was too quick and would dodge the stroke. Then, before the snake could coil up again, the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... was not all gone and he knew just where to look, he saw the rattler slipping away across the sand. He thrust his gun down as close as he dared and with the first shot blew the sinister, flat head off the ugly thick body. Then he went forward, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... no associates except when we patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal of sport to us. He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind. He never got his sea legs on, either. And I never shall forget how we all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string, and—But you know that time-honored joke. And then we had such a splendid lark with him. Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the sight of him, and we used to make Fagg think that ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... hot! And there's nothing to use a gun on up on Sentinel.... Oh, well!" He threw the holster upon his bunk and dropped the automatic into the pack he was rolling. "I'll take it along. Might meet up with a rattler." ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... vigorously shaking him off, I turn my "barker "loose on him, and quickly convert him into a "goody-good snake; " for if "the only good Indian is a dead one," surely the same terse remark applies with much greater force to the vicious and deadly rattler. As I progress eastward, sod-houses and dug-outs become less frequent, and at long intervals frame school-houses appear to remind me that I am passing through a civilized country. Stretches of sand alternate with ridable roads all down the Platte. Often I have to ticklishly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and crush his wiry opponent; the Ramblin' Kid, with lips curled back from white teeth, like a pure-bred terrier circling a mastiff, bent forward, every muscle tense as drawn copper, his eyes cold as a rattler's as he searched for a ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... before the impending tragedy, and their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler. One can kill a rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned goods. But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and away better ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... trouble you, but I was just coming along down from up there," he pointed back across the river, "and saw a—a lady suddenly jump up as though she was scared some, and run on down the hill toward this house. I guessed it must have been a—a rattler or—or maybe a bear, or something had scared her, so I jumped in to—to find it. I was too late, however. Couldn't find it. Only found these two books instead. I just followed the lady on down here, and—well, I brought ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... here at the Great Falls—I think they feared them more than they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plenty of them all. In one day Lewis was chased into the river by a grizzly, charged by three buffalo bulls, and nearly bitten by a rattler!" ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... more in that locality. Judge, then, of our dismay, locally, at learning, not a fortnight later, from a fellow employee of Mayme's, that she had been met at closing time by a swell young guy in a cherry-colored rattler, who took her away to dine with him. Catechized upon the point, later on, by a self-appointed committee of two consisting of the Little Red Doctor and myself, Mayme said vaguely that it was all right; we didn't understand. This is, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... himself. "For a scared or angry rattler would have this room vibrating with his whirr. We're too far south for copperheads. The—the only other pit-viper I ever heard of in Florida ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... 'For God's sake, Pete!' says I to Antelope Pete, who was rolled up next me, 'come take my friend away!' and I didn't holler very loud, neither. Pete was chain lightning in pants, and he grabs Mr. Rattler by the tail and snaps his neck, but I felt lonesome in my inside till dinner time. You bet! I know just how you feel, exactly. I didn't have a man's sized night's rest whilst we was in ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... rattles, but with less passion. The boy had often been told never to leave a rattlesnake alive and he looked around until he found a stick about five feet long, with which he returned to the field of his fright. The rattler had uncoiled and was creeping away when Ned rushed up and struck at him. The snake coiled like a flash and striking back, sunk his fangs in the stick within a foot of the hand of the boy. Again Ned struck, ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... "Well," he said, "we gave you full plenipotentiary powers, so I suppose we'll have to stand behind your agreements—especially in view of the fact that we'll undoubtedly be blown into atoms if we don't. But from what you say, I'd rather be in bed with a rattler than have a treaty with a Vegan. They sound ungodly murderous to me. There are too many holes in that protection plan of yours. It's only a question of time before they'll find some way around it, and then—poof—we'll all ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher
... his lines—"thought that rattler was a gin-u-ine one. Ding baste my skin if I didn't. Seemed to me I heard him rattle. Look at the blamed, unconverted insect a-layin' under that pear. Little more, and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... based on these letters. Three of his most enduring books were written over the next decade, "The Young Fur Traders", "Ungava", "The Hudson Bay Company", and were based on his experiences with the HBC. In this period he also wrote "The Coral island" and "Martin Rattler", both of these taking place in places never visited by Ballantyne. Having been chided for small mistakes he made in these books, he resolved always to visit the places he wrote about. With these books he became known as a great master of literature intended for teenagers. He researched ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... and his heart did not quicken nor his pulse increase so much as a beat. He was cool, implacable, and dangerous as a rattler waiting for the opportune moment to spring. He looked neither to right nor left. He was deaf, impervious. He was there to ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson |
