Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that
handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to
the end of it yet. He said he druther see the new moon over his left
shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his
hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've always
reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of
the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker
done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got
drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he
was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways
between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but
I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the
moon that way, like a fool.
Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks
again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks
with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a
man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds.
We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois. We
just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded.
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