"I shall be very, very careful not to meet any more snakes," he
shuddered, after getting the second dose down.

Now the squaw busied herself with spreading soaked herbs on a
piece of cloth that she had torn from one of Tom's white shirts'
to which she had helped herself from his dunnage box.

"What's a dollar shirt, anyway, when an interesting young man's
life is at stake" mused Reade. "Ow---ow---ooch!"

"You baby---papoose?" inquired the squaw calmly. She had slapped
on Tom's leg, over the bite, a poultice that, to his excited mind,
was four hundred degrees hotter than boiling water.

"Oh, no," grimaced Tom. "That's fine and soothing. But it's
growing cool. Haven't you something hotter?"

Just five seconds later Reade regretted his rashness, for, snatching
off the first poultice, the squaw slapped on a second that seemed,
in some way, ten times more powerful---and twenty times hotter.

"It's queer what an awful amount of heat a squaw can get out of
a kettle of hot water, thought the suffering boy. I'll wager
some of the heat is due to the herbs themselves. O-o-o-o-ow! Ouch!"

For now the third poultice, most powerful of all, was in place,
and Mrs. Squaw was binding it on as though she intended it never
to come off.