Speaker 1: The Adventures of Christopher Wells program formerly scheduled at this time,
Speaker 1: is now broadcast at a new time on Tuesday evenings
Speaker 1: Tunion for the Adventures of Christopher Wells Next Tuesday and
Speaker 1: every Tuesday at nine thirty p m. Eastern Standard Time.
Speaker 2: You were standing at the doorway of a cabin on
Speaker 2: Cashier Creek, upon the ridge the bloodhounds of cottcher scent,
Speaker 2: and between you and the fortune, between you and escape
Speaker 2: on the white jaws of a deadly cotton mouth.
Speaker 1: Escape reduced and directed by William N. Robeson, and carefully
Speaker 1: contrived to for you from the four walls of today
Speaker 1: for a half hour of high adventure.
Speaker 2: Tonight we escaped to the worn out acres of a
Speaker 2: poor white trash farmer somewhere in the southern mountains. In
Speaker 2: urbanesque Cub's great tale of vengeance, Snake Doctor. This story
Speaker 2: is about snakes and two men. One man was afraid
Speaker 2: of snakes and the other wasn't.
Speaker 3: The one who wasn't was known along Cashier Creek as
Speaker 3: Snake Doctor. His cabin was near the creek bottom land,
Speaker 3: where there's a powerful lot of cotton mouths, and he
Speaker 3: earned his meager living by rendering down their soft fats,
Speaker 3: bottling the oil and selling it for Everyone knew there
Speaker 3: was no remedy for rheumatism like snake oil. Snake Doctor
Speaker 3: was harmless. But there were folks who honestly believed that
Speaker 3: he was a colleague of Bielzebub just because he wasn't
Speaker 3: afraid of snakes.
Speaker 2: And that's not.
Speaker 4: All they believed about him.
Speaker 3: Now, the man who was afraid of snakes was Jaf Mourner,
Speaker 3: who was Snake Doctor's nearest neighbor. Jaffe was the kind
Speaker 3: of man we all know who suspected, feared, and hated
Speaker 3: anything he didn't understand, and he understood neither cotton mouths
Speaker 3: nor the snake Doctor. In short, Jaff was on her,
Speaker 3: ignorant and shiftless. He'd rather shoot squirrels and chopped cotton.
Speaker 3: He'd rather fished and whole corn. And that's just what
Speaker 3: he's doing now, fishing down the big hole with his
Speaker 3: son and heir. Finney, who's old enough but not quite
Speaker 3: bright enough to handle a.
Speaker 5: Missed him.
Speaker 6: Dobby, Benny, you play pool, gets in the creek, the
Speaker 6: cotton mouth tramp on him in front of it.
Speaker 5: You got him, He caught him. Keep your foot on
Speaker 5: him while I finish the stick. You don't need to son.
Speaker 2: Hey, he's dead, now come here.
Speaker 5: How can you hear anything of that rifle?
Speaker 4: Paul?
Speaker 5: I had to be draught on him riding I.
Speaker 2: Could turn fool flame snake whilst I'm a fishing Heck, you.
Speaker 6: Were, sonny itself? Not more than to there from you?
Speaker 6: How'd you like to get yourself?
Speaker 5: Bit?
Speaker 2: Won't be no fish roundhead of funderation after all that record. Well,
Speaker 2: come on, let's go home and get us some fiddles.
Speaker 3: Jeef Mourner tossed his bait can into the creek and
Speaker 3: threw a stick after it. He stood there watching.
Speaker 4: The stick slowly taught the big.
Speaker 3: Hole where the creek widened behind a jam of drift wood.
Speaker 3: Jake watched as the edd he caught the stick and
Speaker 3: sucked it beneath the dam. Jeff was curious. He moved
Speaker 3: downstream a rod or two and waited, watching the water
Speaker 3: boil up from under the drift wood. But the stick
Speaker 3: didn't come up.
Speaker 4: That was strange.
Speaker 3: Matched cord under there, in a tangle of water, soap,
Speaker 3: and sunken logs, probably had stayed there for months. Maybe
Speaker 3: stay there always, Jee considered this, and an idea began
Speaker 3: to form in his slow mind as he and finished
Speaker 3: out at home.
Speaker 5: Hey, Paul, how much joy you reckons? And this one? Paul?
Speaker 4: Paul?
Speaker 2: What you join about?
Speaker 4: Son?
Speaker 5: It's old cotton man? How much ore it down? Go down?
Speaker 2: Why go down? Like I say, I'll make your wish.
Speaker 5: I was even on rindom you cotton mouse fat like
Speaker 5: the snake doctor. Doesn't. Maybe sell it and make myself
Speaker 5: some money.
Speaker 2: I don't like a squirming things around me, but it's dead.
Speaker 2: Leave it word dropped. I've come on home.
Speaker 5: You were scared on cotton mouse?
Speaker 4: Paul?
Speaker 2: I know better than to get myself bit by him?
Speaker 5: Tip Bailey.
Speaker 6: Know the fella got hisself fit once and there weren't
Speaker 6: a drop of liquor for myus. So he goes to
Speaker 6: work and cuts open the live chicken and puts it
Speaker 6: by his leg where the bite was, and fella lived too. Reckon,
Speaker 6: Mister Rives, ever gets yourself bit, Paul handling cotton mouths
Speaker 6: like he does?
Speaker 5: Who mister Rives?
Speaker 3: Who?
Speaker 5: Mister Rives?
Speaker 6: That's old snake Doctor's real name, Mar says, I oughtn't
Speaker 6: to call him snake doctor.
Speaker 2: Never mind what Jr. Mar says, nobody in my family's
Speaker 2: calling nose snake loving scum. Mister ride.
Speaker 5: Heck, that's what I say.
Speaker 2: Wanna see what you do?
Speaker 6: Sure, Paul, you know I could have made myself some
Speaker 6: honey renting that cotton mouse fat down into oil.
Speaker 5: How much you reckon Old snake Doctor makes out in all?
Speaker 2: He says, I don't know.
Speaker 6: Tip Bailey says, Old snake Doctor's got more than a
Speaker 6: thousand dollars hit away somewhere as in his cabin.
Speaker 2: More night, most likely cut it, Old miser, don't spend nothing.
Speaker 2: I ain't got nothing say about old rack of bones.
Speaker 7: Man dip Bailey says, whenever Old snake Doctor sets foot
Speaker 7: out in his place, he's got the granddaddy of all
Speaker 7: cotton mouse that he leaves out in the cabin to
Speaker 7: stand god on his money. M dip Bailey says he
Speaker 7: see the old snake Doctor put him in his pocket,
Speaker 7: live cotton mouse.
Speaker 2: Snake Doctor ain't fitting a belive itself.
Speaker 5: Or mar says he ain't bad, says he don't mean nobody.
Speaker 2: Hih, you mall better be careful who she's so satan with.
Speaker 5: She says he don't have good sense.
Speaker 6: Had the fever too much, He says, you ever been
Speaker 6: the snake Doctor's cabin.
Speaker 2: Paul, I don't have nothing more I have to to
Speaker 2: do with that snake loving hodoo.
Speaker 6: Tip Bailey says he bet wouldn't be no task all
Speaker 6: for something no good. Poke around in the snake doctor
Speaker 6: shack and find all the money and make off with it.
Speaker 2: Hm.
Speaker 6: Oh, this blames and durnire, rendering me down. Look in
Speaker 6: my head full of sweat, Paul, here, look here, Mmm
Speaker 6: see durn there, God full of sweat, Come off me?
Speaker 6: Why it turned down that way?
Speaker 5: Paul? It's come on noon dinner, be most ready.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell a snake love and hoodoos that there's
Speaker 2: some of them cotton miles on the criickside of deadn't.
Speaker 5: Oh here kenos.
Speaker 2: Then I'm gonna tell him he's got my leave to
Speaker 2: catch him. You don't need to come along if you
Speaker 2: don't want it.
Speaker 5: Well, if you're going over to his place, I'd kind
Speaker 5: of like to see it my own set.
Speaker 3: Going in, Paul.
Speaker 5: He ain't to whom else? He to showed himself now,
Speaker 5: I reckon, So can you see any of the snakes?
Speaker 2: I told you to keep an eye out for him.
Speaker 5: I bets in one of them chinks, Paul, I bet
Speaker 5: the money.
Speaker 2: I ain't a looking for no money. Huh, must be
Speaker 2: a dang snake itself living in a place like you, Paul.
Speaker 6: I know you ain't looking for any money, But if
Speaker 6: in you was, wouldn't you're looking at chink.
Speaker 5: Right up there?
Speaker 2: Oh where sir?
Speaker 5: Right there? Second dog by the fireplace on the right.
Speaker 5: You see that the hole?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I reckon, I would look up there. Well, since
Speaker 2: we're here, might as well see for myself.
Speaker 5: Oh, I wouldn't be a much surprised if old snake
Speaker 5: doctor somebody's out on the porch. It's a snake doctor.
Speaker 3: You're looking for something, Jae morning.
Speaker 2: Eh, yeah, I was looking for you?
Speaker 3: What yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Look here you'll holdo what side there snaking up on
Speaker 2: folks who took a trouble to come all the way
Speaker 2: down here to do you a favor?
Speaker 6: Well, sirl Like it's not that old snake doctor. I
Speaker 6: had a dang moccasin swretching around in his pocket. We'll
Speaker 6: still's talking to your Paul. Did you mind how his
Speaker 6: eyes was when he come in? M dang, if it
Speaker 6: wasn't blazing like like when you run across a little
Speaker 6: rabbit or cat in the dars giving me out of
Speaker 6: ten years gross?
Speaker 5: Dang if you didn't and did you mind?
Speaker 6: I kept looking up at the war where I said,
Speaker 6: I bet he had the money between the chinks out it. Huh?
Speaker 2: Then they don't you say nothing to your more about
Speaker 2: us being at the snake Doctor's. Please you understand?
Speaker 5: Why should I just don't? Andy?
Speaker 2: Don't you go night again? Because old vomit? You'd have
Speaker 2: thought we was prowlers the way he acted?
Speaker 5: Yup, mom? Then about riding?
Speaker 4: Come?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Have I time enough for dinner? To go down
Speaker 5: the spring? Get me some more cold water? And even
Speaker 5: you tell you some hurry up? Son, I'm hungry.
Speaker 8: Mm can'tch anything?
Speaker 4: Jay?
Speaker 2: How you think I can catch fish with finny? Fine?
Speaker 2: Off my gun at cock miles all the time.
Speaker 8: He's this heat on the body, can bear?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 8: Any cooler of the creek. Now they poured on his rids.
Speaker 8: Come by here, spare to go? My knife shook the
Speaker 8: pieces with a chill.
Speaker 2: Oh he come by?
Speaker 4: Did he?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 2: Did he come in just for a minute, just for minyity?
Speaker 8: What do he want he wanted? Could I gave him
Speaker 8: something for his ailman.
Speaker 9: He just buy a drag one side foot for the
Speaker 9: other barely could make it.
Speaker 8: Up here from his place. I reckon he must be
Speaker 8: down bed with the fever.
Speaker 9: But now I tell her by the touch was rising
Speaker 9: anyone that left here and started back home again. I'll
Speaker 9: give him my dogs out in now butler's aggre drops.
Speaker 9: I would have give him a little smidge and liquor.
Speaker 10: Oh you would, please don't jake, don't don't want me
Speaker 10: for fries, mister Rives, mister Ves.
Speaker 2: How many times I gotta tell you that the old
Speaker 2: hoodle's name is snake doctor.
Speaker 8: You don't mean nobody.
Speaker 2: Know emitted skin of loss for its hide and teller.
Speaker 2: And you calling him mister Rives, you'll be calling him
Speaker 2: honey and sugar next well without I learn you please
Speaker 2: please paid names? Huh tell brother that could you? Well?
Speaker 5: I am to love.
Speaker 2: What's his name? Now? Well? What's ship for? Mister Rives?
Speaker 11: Me?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 4: Nay?
Speaker 3: Dogged kiss him on her, rubbed the ugly red welt
Speaker 3: on her scrawny arm, and gave the frying panful of
Speaker 3: sizzling side made a hopeless nudge. She prayed that the
Speaker 3: weight of the victuals might take theirge off Jaff's temper.
Speaker 3: Phini slouched in from the spring, saw the mark on
Speaker 3: her arm.
Speaker 5: Poppy wamping you again, mam.
Speaker 3: She didn't answer, what you do this time? She silently
Speaker 3: dished up the hog back and corn bread for two men,
Speaker 3: and while they sat at table, she ate on her feet,
Speaker 3: serving them between bites, as was the custom in the
Speaker 3: morning household. After dinner, Phinish stretched out under the china
Speaker 3: berry tree, and Kissy sat on the porch, fanning herself
Speaker 3: and dipping snuff with a peach twig, scouring it back
Speaker 3: and forth on her gums. Jeff took his ees on
Speaker 3: the floor of the back room, but he didn't sleep.
Speaker 3: One thing he'd seen that day and another thing he
Speaker 3: had heard. He was adding them together. That stick that
Speaker 3: had disappeared under the log jam, and the snake ducked
Speaker 3: his money. It was four o'clock before any of them stirred,
Speaker 3: And then Jeff spoke to his wife for the first
Speaker 3: time since noon.
Speaker 2: Where's that the violet drinking liquor?
Speaker 9: Because he by the wind and took it out in
Speaker 9: here parking after he laid down.
Speaker 6: I ought to carry a violet drinking liquor with me, mam,
Speaker 6: I might just bit by no marcus as through's Paul.
Speaker 8: Wood ain't been all. Let me catch you if I
Speaker 8: find a jay.
Speaker 2: I just remembered, i'mon't be needing to toe no splits
Speaker 2: along with me while I'm going.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't take no chance. Just one cotton half bike.
Speaker 2: Cotton mouse aw down slashes else along a creek. Well,
Speaker 2: I'll be this evening's up on Bailey's Ridge in the
Speaker 2: high ground is vixing the girl shooting. I aimed to
Speaker 2: gun me a chance of young squalls between non dust.
Speaker 5: Time reckon, I'll come along. Paul.
Speaker 2: You're staying here, son?
Speaker 5: Oh dang, it be steaming in the place when the
Speaker 5: rain comes down. Paul, you might be needing you stay here?
Speaker 2: Oh, Paul and Kizzy set me up a snack of
Speaker 2: cold sup on a shelf. Likely I won't get back
Speaker 2: to his plumped u.
Speaker 3: Jeff Marner turned north through his struggling corn rows, and
Speaker 3: in a minute he was lost from side. He kept
Speaker 3: on for nearly a mile until he came to a
Speaker 3: wild red mulberry tree. Where mullberrys are, they're bound to
Speaker 3: be squalled. Very neatly, he shot two young grays through
Speaker 3: the head. But Jeefe was a master marksman and UH
Speaker 3: unsuspected by any who knew him. Chief had another quality
Speaker 3: denied most of his kind. He had an imagination today
Speaker 3: it was an excellent working on her. He tied the
Speaker 3: brain squirrels together and swung him over his shoulder. If needed,
Speaker 3: they would be his alibi. Then he sat down under
Speaker 3: a tree.
Speaker 2: Awhile, yeah, I got plenty of time. Don't need to
Speaker 2: get down the snake Doctor's place about dusk when he
Speaker 2: comes out to feed that sweep back Mary his mist dive.
Speaker 3: He sat out two brisk thundershowers and the intervals between them.
Speaker 3: Then he started off in a wide arc down Bailey's Branch,
Speaker 3: along the skirts, a little cypers slash to the sunken
Speaker 3: flat's edge and cash Hare Creek. Took more than an
Speaker 3: hour careful traveling before he came to his destiny. UH
Speaker 3: screening of hall bushers less than fifty yards behind the
Speaker 3: snake Doctor's cabin.
Speaker 2: No matter how hellen he is, he'll get up and
Speaker 2: come out to feed that rack of bones.
Speaker 4: Mare.
Speaker 2: Miss the rimes, UH learn him to go colleaking around
Speaker 2: another man's woman.
Speaker 3: James Marner let his jealousy heat him to a white hatred.
Speaker 3: At this moment, he was a venge in his honor,
Speaker 3: and thus was spared the embarrassment of admitting to himself
Speaker 3: that the real reason he was here was a snake
Speaker 3: doctor's money hiding behind the log by the fireplace.
Speaker 2: The homewreck in snake love and vomit. Ten minutes from now, I'll
Speaker 2: chuck him down the big hole in a creek like
Speaker 2: I did a stick this morning, and he'll go down
Speaker 2: and never come out, and nobody will miss him. Nobody'll
Speaker 2: know he's gone for least by his a week, maybe
Speaker 2: a month. And maybe if I get around to it,
Speaker 2: might come back this way some day. Poke around that cabining.
Speaker 3: Jaff Mourner's speculations were cut short. The cabin door opened
Speaker 3: and a figure stepped out into the grown dusk and
Speaker 3: walked toward the stable. He saw the snake doctor's lop,
Speaker 3: the old straw hat, and his dark coat drawn over
Speaker 3: a pair of hunched, narrow shoulders. At this distance he
Speaker 3: couldn't miss, and he didn't. The figure jerked backward and
Speaker 3: then went face forward. Jeff started for him, and then
Speaker 3: it stopped. His eyes bugged, his mouth formed a scream
Speaker 3: that he couldn't utter. His rifle dropped to the ground.
Speaker 3: He had just killed the snake Doctor, killed him dead
Speaker 3: with the thirty two caliber slugs through the head, and
Speaker 3: there on his doorsill stood snake dot the.
Speaker 5: Hole and sound and staring at him. Jaif Murny, what
Speaker 5: you doing?
Speaker 3: The scream came at last for jaf Murner had seen
Speaker 3: the devil. His snake Doctor arose alive from his bullet
Speaker 3: riddled body. Chath whirled and ran into the deep, darkening woods,
Speaker 3: whimpering like a whipped puppy as he tore through the brush.
Speaker 4: Escape.
Speaker 3: He must escape, He must get under the shelter of
Speaker 3: a sound roof, have the protection of four walls around him.
Speaker 3: So he ran and ran falls. It was close to
Speaker 3: midnight when he came out on a dirt road to
Speaker 3: short this in southeast of his deadman. Beyond the next bend,
Speaker 3: he'd be inside of home. Then it stopped. Around the bend.
Speaker 3: Coming toward him was a joggling light, a lantern hanging
Speaker 3: on a buggy. Jake flattened himself in a clump of
Speaker 3: brush to hide until the traveler passed, and then just
Speaker 3: as the rig was opposite him, he heard a call
Speaker 3: coming from the other direction.
Speaker 12: Jug high hard out there he hurt me and David Ware,
Speaker 12: Thank you, Kip Billy Yep, opening it out from the junction,
Speaker 12: tolerable tide.
Speaker 2: If anyone should ask you what brings you out this
Speaker 2: time a night, David, somebody say, cettin up and there's.
Speaker 12: Ben hella popping in these hair bottoms tonight. Teddy boy
Speaker 12: asked that, now what you mean killing? That's what I mean,
Speaker 12: our dirty, cold blooded killing. If ever was wanting on shy,
Speaker 12: who's gotten kidded? I'm fixing the teniu. It happened just
Speaker 12: around dust time at Old Snake Doctor's play.
Speaker 2: Him was kid, I just give me time.
Speaker 12: Many It seems like Snake Doctor's been a chilling late.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 12: It's pretty bad off today, Yeah, I mean yesterday and
Speaker 12: so long. About five o'clock when the rain was a
Speaker 12: lotting a little bit, why miss Kiddy warning see she
Speaker 12: she flooted it down from her place to his and
Speaker 12: fetching some physic wear her. He had to play the
Speaker 12: hot vettal. Miss Morning's a mighty as hearty one for
Speaker 12: doing things for folks. Don't you want to hear this
Speaker 12: go ahead, go ahead. Well, it seems like she she
Speaker 12: wasn't the fear of the snake Doctor's play. Well, I'd
Speaker 12: have been all over that well. Pretty soon after she
Speaker 12: got there, seems like he tried to get up out
Speaker 12: of his bed to go feed that old crow bait niaga.
Speaker 12: His uh huh rain has started in again. But then
Speaker 12: it's pouring down hard. So she she made him stay
Speaker 12: where he was at, and she put on his old
Speaker 12: hat and throat his old coat around her to keep
Speaker 12: off the worst of the wetting. Then she he started
Speaker 12: out the back door to do the feeding. His sound
Speaker 12: and no more. She got outside and a shot come
Speaker 12: from the edge of the woods, and down she went
Speaker 12: with a bullet through her brain. Killed it, dead as
Speaker 12: a dog.
Speaker 8: But who doneies?
Speaker 12: Went that little flung husband heard done it? That's who
Speaker 12: He must have followed her down to snake Doctor's and
Speaker 12: then just laid in wait for they certain twash him. Then,
Speaker 12: why sure thing snake doctor jumped up when he heard
Speaker 12: the shot, and he catched a quick looking Jeff over
Speaker 12: the fence.
Speaker 5: Dead.
Speaker 12: Yeah, there was a long streak on Ki's arm where
Speaker 12: he must have whooped her out during the day. Well,
Speaker 12: hanging his sight too good for him to catch it all,
Speaker 12: but they will. Some thinks that he's made for the
Speaker 12: slashesn't hit out there tracks, let off that away, uh huh,
Speaker 12: or they'd be a line of men throat all the
Speaker 12: way around little Cypress for son Sheriff. Got tell you yet, No,
Speaker 12: but he's doing any minute where there's pack of dogs.
Speaker 12: They telephoned in from Gallop Mills that he's on his way.
Speaker 12: That trail oughts lay good ground being damped like it is,
Speaker 12: so should old snake doctor. He's crying on and raving
Speaker 12: around it with Mourner's pleas that the lord's gonna strike
Speaker 12: the murder down his track. I'm putting my incompass in
Speaker 12: bloodhounds on them first, and then maybe on a stout
Speaker 12: plow line and limb betray.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's more certain.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I'm just putting that for my place to fetch
Speaker 12: Molder's boy. I wouldn't want him to miss a lyncheon.
Speaker 12: It's a good side crowded for already. I go up
Speaker 12: and join him.
Speaker 2: I got officially here on a.
Speaker 12: Hip pocket for miss Morning.
Speaker 2: She always watched she's dead a shot, Kesy said, you hear.
Speaker 12: Something just then I can't say I did. Probably a
Speaker 12: rabbit breaking through the bri Listen, listen, sheriffs are coming.
Speaker 12: You can hear them, hounds of hells. Not got to hurry,
Speaker 12: get up there by to you back the boy?
Speaker 5: Are you sure will?
Speaker 3: Jeff didn't have time to waste morning his dead wife,
Speaker 3: and he was even a little relieved to know that
Speaker 3: the snake Doctor wasn't the devil in Connor. He had
Speaker 3: a chance against lynch mob and a pack of bloodhounds.
Speaker 3: This was the kind of antagonist he could understand and
Speaker 3: out smart. James's imagination went to work again as he
Speaker 3: backtracked along the creek bottom the spotted moonlight. Gotta throw
Speaker 3: them dogs off a trail, got away the creek, even
Speaker 3: if it is full of cotton mouths.
Speaker 2: They must be all around me. Now the folks says
Speaker 2: they don't strike the water.
Speaker 4: Well, I hope them folks is right.
Speaker 2: Gotta get back to the snake doctors, get his money
Speaker 2: while he's still up at my place with kisses remains,
Speaker 2: and get his money. Then the rest would be easy.
Speaker 2: Make for the deep timber cross country river, make it
Speaker 2: for tomorrow sundown. Hire a shanty boarder to ferre me
Speaker 2: to the Arkansas side. They get a hair cut and
Speaker 2: catch a train for some of his house. Gotta get
Speaker 2: snake Doctor's money first.
Speaker 3: Snake Doctor's cabin was dark and empty when Jay reached it,
Speaker 3: and he needed light for his search. There were a
Speaker 3: few dull embers in the fireplace. He threw on some kindling,
Speaker 3: but it didn't lie very well. He knew where the
Speaker 3: cheek was. He'd find it in the dark. He scrambled
Speaker 3: at the logs, felt some barkive, felt the clay order
Speaker 3: crumble under his fingernails. Here it was a hole big
Speaker 3: enough for a man's arm. He plunged his hand into it,
Speaker 3: touched something slick and smooth, and then something sharp plunged
Speaker 3: into his thumb. On the fire flickered to life. Jaf
Speaker 3: yanked his hand out of the hole, saw two tiny
Speaker 3: bleeding punctures in his thumb. At the mouth of the
Speaker 3: hole stretched the wide open jaws of a cotton mouth.
Speaker 2: It worked fast.
Speaker 3: He felt the pain leaping from his thumb to his hand,
Speaker 3: seeping up his arm. If he only had some liquor,
Speaker 3: he had a fresh killed chicken to slap on the wound.
Speaker 3: He had nothing. Then a sharp, horrible pain wrenched his heart.
Speaker 3: And a second and then in the firelighte the huge
Speaker 3: cotton mouth poised in its crevice. Jay fleeped out of
Speaker 3: the shack and started blindly for the timber stagger, stumbled
Speaker 3: and pits forward on his face, mouth full of weeds
Speaker 3: and muddy grass, stands the cramping fingers of his outstretched
Speaker 3: right hand almost touching a reddish black smear on the wet,
Speaker 3: trampled grass.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 2: Yes, good ribbons. By gravy has good ribbons.
Speaker 12: I'd call it that, wouldn't you, Doctor Bradshaw?
Speaker 2: Well, I reckon he's short of a rough justice in
Speaker 2: the way he died.
Speaker 11: Look look his hand reaching out just about touches the
Speaker 11: blood where his woman fell. Ah, this has been quite
Speaker 11: a night, Davis. I've just examined the body of a
Speaker 11: man who appears to have been killed by snake bite.
Speaker 2: Killed good and quick too, judging by the evidence.
Speaker 12: Well, now, ain't that the way a cotton mouth always
Speaker 12: dust killing? Mam sudn't like I always hear? Tell never
Speaker 12: mind what you heard.
Speaker 1: I'm going by the facts.
Speaker 11: I've been practicing medicine in this county for going on
Speaker 11: to forty six years, and I tell you that in
Speaker 11: all my life, I've never known but two or three
Speaker 11: people actually being bitten by water moccasons, And until tonight,
Speaker 11: I never had the personal knowledge of anybody dying from
Speaker 11: a bite of any kind of a snake.
Speaker 5: As I had a facort.
Speaker 12: Hey, what's going on over, Doc?
Speaker 11: And that Mourner's boy kicking up the first Yeah, he's
Speaker 11: no good, just like his poem, what's.
Speaker 6: Your trouble, tipping head, I'm gonna kill a snake and
Speaker 6: bitting my paw.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 7: Need give that old snake doctor weapon for keeping a
Speaker 7: reptile in this place?
Speaker 12: Here Paul godes Waters his de f any snake doctor
Speaker 12: rank to blame.
Speaker 5: Now, so who do that?
Speaker 11: I look a here boy, mister Rives promised all his
Speaker 11: savings nearly one hundred dollars to pay for burying your
Speaker 11: maw decent.
Speaker 2: Oh that's how much he thought of her. Now I'll
Speaker 2: go on home behavior show.
Speaker 5: Hit my paw.
Speaker 12: Hey, Doc, yes, the man ago you started to say
Speaker 12: something about snake by not killing U? How you account
Speaker 12: for Jay here?
Speaker 11: Well, the late Jaff Mourner had a rotten bad heart, Davis,
Speaker 11: Oh he sure did.
Speaker 2: Yes, he proves that. No, I don't mean in that sense.
Speaker 11: I mean there was an organic weakness, a curious thing,
Speaker 11: though there was no swelling anywhere.
Speaker 12: Well, there's them two marks on his thumb, them snake
Speaker 12: gashes like some of are seen.
Speaker 2: That dude is flean, what's.
Speaker 12: It's many morning?
Speaker 2: He didn't care, fool kid.
Speaker 12: Come on, doctor's probably shot somebody.
Speaker 10: I shot at it.
Speaker 5: I shot at it, but I didn't hit it. It's
Speaker 5: gonna get me like a docker boy.
Speaker 12: I've come on, he said he was he shot of
Speaker 12: something in the cabin.
Speaker 2: Uh. I don't see anything.
Speaker 12: Oh pH, And he's had enough happened to him yesterday
Speaker 12: the day to upset even my bright boy.
Speaker 3: So we can't.
Speaker 12: Oh oh here it is what at cottonmouth up trying
Speaker 12: to hold out long?
Speaker 11: Oh oh that the snake doctor told me about that
Speaker 11: varmit look at him closer, David, Not sorry, nothing my head,
Speaker 11: go ahead. It's just a stuffed snake. Stu snake doctor
Speaker 11: believes in precautions because that holes where he hides his money.
Speaker 11: That snake could scare anybody away. Didn't know it was stuffed,
Speaker 11: but just to be sure, old snake doctor lined the
Speaker 11: hole with.
Speaker 5: Coils of barbed wire.
Speaker 12: Oh oh, oh, I see you think it? Then marks
Speaker 12: On James thumb was got off of the barbed wir huh,
Speaker 12: it could be lots stronger hearts and JAF mourners would
Speaker 12: have stopped beating at their scary like that.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll bestweed.
Speaker 5: Old.
Speaker 12: Snake Doctor's a cute one n.
Speaker 1: Escape, produced and directed by William M. Robson has Brought
Speaker 1: You Snake Doctor by Ervan S. Cobb, adapted for radio
Speaker 1: by Fred Howard who also played Doc Bradshaw, with Bill
Speaker 1: Conrad as JAF, Paul Frees as Finney, Ruth Parrott is
Speaker 1: Kissy Barton Yarborough played Davis, Louis van Ruten played Snake Doctor,
Speaker 1: and Tip Bailey. The original musical score was conceived and
Speaker 1: conducted by cy Fure.
Speaker 5: Next week, you are.
Speaker 2: Alone in a remote Old World village inhabited by cat people,
Speaker 2: and you were desired by a beautiful cat girl who
Speaker 2: wants your soul.
Speaker 1: Next week we escape with Algernon Blackwood's eerie story titled
Speaker 1: Ancient Sorcerers.
Speaker 4: Good Night.
Speaker 1: Then until the same time next week when we.
Speaker 5: Again offer you escape.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is CBS, where ninety nine million people gather every
Speaker 1: week the Columbia broadcasting system