it seized them and ate them. When hunters heard fawns bleat in the woods they never looked for them, but moved in the other direction. Up a hill or down it, nothing could escape the pursuit of the “foot snake,” but it could not go along the sides of ridges because the weight of its head broke the hold of the sucker feet when the creature moved sideways.     One morning a Shawnee hunter, working his way through the bushes at the base of what now is the barren knob, heard a fawn bleat in front of him. He guessed that it was the “foot snake,” but he made up his mind to see it. He went straight forward, and there was the monster, with his head as high in the air as the tops of the tallest trees. It saw him and moved toward him in jerky strides, every one of them longer than a tree trunk. The monster bleated as it came, because it saw that the hunter would make a satisfying breakfast.     He was frightened and started to run directly up the side of the hill. The snake came after him, gaining half a length of him every time that it took a fresh grip with its forefeet Then he remembered that the monster could not run on the sides of the hill and he changed his course. The snake began to lose ground. Every time that it raised itself the weight of its body threw it a little lower down the side of the knob. The hunter soon left the snake out of sight. Then he cautiously worked his way to the top of the knob, and, looking down, there was the “foot snake” working his way toward the summit.

Descending to the base of the knob the hunter set fire to the grass and to the leaves. The fire ran all around the base of the knob and began to climb upward. When the snake smelled the smoke and saw the flames approaching it, it forgot about the hunter and turned toward the very top of the knob. It reached the summit and got upon it but the fire followed. Presently the heat cracked its scales. Then taking a close grip on the summit with its hind feet the serpent raised Its body and attempted to swing across the wall of fire that surrounded it. But the smoke choked it, its hold loosened, and the “foot snake” fell among the blazing trees. It lay there until it was burned to ashes. Oil frying out of the carcass spread all over the knob, and to this day little or nothing will grow upon it.