1 I followed with the spade over my shoulder, dragging my snake.
2 A snake of his size, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle.
3 I whirled round, and there, on one of those dry gravel beds, was the biggest snake I had ever seen.
4 He did not say anything for a minute, but scratched his head and turned the snake over with his boot.
5 Cautiously we went back to the snake; he was still groping with his tail, turning up his ugly belly in the light.
6 I had been adequately armed by Russian Peter; the snake was old and lazy; and I had Antonia beside me, to appreciate and admire.
7 I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin.
8 He beckoned to the little boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with a paper snake, gently, so as not to startle him.
9 That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of the neighbours came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattler ever killed in those parts.
10 In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Antonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father's grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky-line.