 You are standing at the doorway of a cabin on Cacier Creek. Upon the ridge, the bloodhounds have your scent. And between you and a fortune, between you and escape, you're on the white jaws of a deadly cottonmouth. Escape. Produced by William N. Robeson and carefully contrived to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure. Tonight, we escape to the worn-out acres of a poor white-rash farmer somewhere in the southern mountains, in Ervin S. Cobb's great tale of vengeance. Snake Doctor. This story is about snakes and two men. One man was afraid of snakes, and the other wasn't. The one who wasn't was known along Cacier Creek as Snake Doctor. His cabin was near the creek bottom land where there was a powerful lot of cotton mouths. And he earned his meager living by rendering down their soft fats and bottling oil and selling it. For everyone knew there was no remedy for rheumatism like snake oil. Snake Doctor was harmless enough. But there was folks who honestly believed that he was a colleague of Beelzebub just cause he wasn't afraid of snakes. That's not all they believed about him. Now, the man who was afraid of snakes was J. F. Mauna, who was Snake Doctor's nearest neighbor. J. F. was the kind of man we all know who suspected, feared, and hated anything he didn't understand. And he understood neither cotton mouths nor the Snake Doctor. In short, J. F. was honor, ignorant, and shiftless. He'd rather shoot squirrels and chop cotton. He'd rather fish than hold corn. And that's just what he's doing now, fishing down to big hole with his son and heir, Finny, who's old enough but not quite bright enough to handle a gun. Missed him, Doc! Finny, you plain fool! I told you not- Ah, Trump on him before he gets in the creek! What? The cotton man! Trump on him in front of you! What a bummer! Yeah, he's got him! Get your foot on him while I get a stick! You don't need to, son! He's dead. Now, come here. Pa, I can't ever hit anything that rightful, Pa. I had a bee drawn on him right in front of me. You dumb fool! Oh, Pa. Fine off with a blame snake while I saw some fishing. Heck, you were sonny yourself, not more than there to you. How'd you like to get yourself a beer? There won't be no fish around here. It'll plunderation after all that racket. Well, come on home. Let's go get some vittles. J.F. Marner tossed his bait can into the creek and threw a stick after it. He stood there, watching the stick drift slowly toward the big hole, where the creek widened behind a jam of driftwood. J.F. watched as the eddy caught the stick and sucked it beneath the dam. J.F. was curious. He moved downstream a rod or two and waited, watching the water boil up from under the driftwood. But the stick didn't come up. That was strange. Must have caught under there in a tangle of water-soaked and sunken logs. Probably it stayed there for months. Maybe. Stay there always. J.F. considered this and an idea began to form in his slow mind as he and Finney started for home. Hey, Pa, how much oil you reckon's in this one, Pa? Pa? What you jarring about? It's old cotton man. How much oil do you reckon? Throw it down. Throw it down? Why? Throw it down like I say. I'll make you wish it. Oh, Pa, I was aiming on rendering the old cotton man's fat like the snake doctor doesn't sell and make myself some money. I don't like the squirming things around me. Yeah, buddy, leave it. Leave it. Where'd you drop, Finney? Now, come on home. You scared of cotton man's, Pa? I know better than to get myself bit by him. Tip Bailey know the fella got his eff bit once. He won a draper liquor for miles. So he goes to work and he cuts open a little old-life chicken and puts it on his leg where the bite was and the fella lived, too. Wrecking Mr. Rives ever gets himself bit by handing cotton man's like he does? Who? Mr. Rives. Who? Mr. Rives, old snake doctor's real name. Morse says I oughtn't call him snake doctor. Never mind what your Morse says. Nobody in my family's calling old snake loving scum Mr. Rives. Heck, that's what I say, Pa. We'll just see what you do. Sure, Pa. You know, I could've made myself some money rendering that cotton man's fat down in awe. Why don't you reckon old snake doctor makes out in the oil he sells? I don't know. Tip Bailey says old snake doctor's got more than maybe a thousand dollars hit away some as in his cabin. More than that, most likely. Cussed old marja don't spend nothing. Ain't got nothing to save that old rackabones man. Tip Bailey says whenever old snake doctor sets foot out in his place he's got the granddaddy of all cotton man's that he leaves out in the cabin to stand guard on his money. Yeah, Tip Bailey says he eats the old snake doctor put him in his pocket. Live cotton man's. Snake doctor ain't fitting to be live except. Oh, my, says he ain't bad. Says he don't mean nobody, huh? You more better be careful who she's so sickin' with. She says he doesn't have any good sense. Had the fever too much. You ever been in the snake doctor's cabin, Pa? I don't have nothing more than I have to do that snake loving hoodlum. Tip Bailey says that he better ask a tall for some no good to poke around in the snake doctor's shack and find all the money and make off within' it. Well, these blamesons have done their rendering me down. Look at my head, Pa. It's all full of sweat. Look it. See, there's all full of sweat. There's only a gourd full of sweat comin' off. Why turnin' down that way, Pa? Comin' onin' dinner bein' most ready. I'm gonna tell that snake loving hoodlum that there's some of them cockmars on the crickside of a dead man. Heck, he knows that. I'm gonna tell him he's got my leave to catch him. You don't need to come along if you don't want to. If you're goin' over his place, I'd kinda go and see it for myself. He ain't to whom else why is he to show himself by now? I reckon so. Pa, can you see any snakes? I told you to keep an eye out for her. I bet it's in one of them chinks, Pa. Pa, I bet the money's up in one of them chinks. Must be a dang snake itself livin' in a place like this. Pa, I know you ain't lookin' for any money, but if you was, wouldn't you look in that chink right up there? Hmm. Where's somethin'? Right there, second log above the fireplace. On the right, you see that there hole? Yeah. Yeah, I reckon I would look up there. Well, since we're here... Might as well see for myself. Pa, I wouldn't be a might surprise if it was a snake doctor. Pa? Somebody's out on the porch. It's a snake doctor. Well, you're lookin' for something, Chief Marner? Yeah. I was lookin' for you. I watch it. Yeah. Yeah. Look here, you all hoodoo. What's the idea of sneakin' up on folks who took the trouble to come all the way down here and stout onto a six-acre detonin'? They walked silently, unnerved by their encounter with the snake doctor. Finally, it was Finney who broke the silence. Yes, sir. Like it's not that a old snake doctor had a dang marcusine squinchin' around in his pocket whilst he was talkin' to ya. Do you mind how his eyes was when he come in? Dang it, it wasn't blazin' like when you run across a rabbit or a cat in the dark. Skid me out of ten years' gross dang, if you didn't. And do you mind how he kept lookin' up at the war where I said I bet he had his money between the ching? Finney, don't you say nothin' anymore about us being at that snake doctor's place. You understand? Why should I? Just don't. Don't you know, go night again. Cuss so vomit you to the thought we was prowlers where you act. Yeah, if I time enough for dinner to go down to the spring and get me some cold water. Heard up, son, I'm hungry. How you think I can catch fish with Finney fine off my gun and cotton miles all the time? Ain't just heat more than a body can bear. Yeah. Any cooler by the creek? Yeah. Poor old Miss Ryves come by here spell ago. My knife shook the pieces with the chair. Oh, he come by, did he? Well, did he come in? Just for a minute. Oh, just for a minute, eh? What do you want? He wanted, of course, I'd give him some for his ailment. Just by could drag one side foot for the other. Barely could make it up here from his place. Reckney must be down bed with the fever by now. The tell by the touch was rising in him when he left here and started back home again. I give him a dose starting our butler's acre drive. Would give him a little smidgen liquor. Oh, you would, huh? Oh, please don't, Jeff. Don't, Jeff, don't walk me. Just pour on Miss Ryves. Miss Ryves. Miss Ryves. How many times I got to tell you that their old hoodoo's name is straight, doctor? He don't mean nobody, no huh. He made his skin alias for its hide and taller and you calling him Miss Ryves. You'd be calling him honey and sugar necks without I'll learn you better. Please, James, please. Paid names, huh? Tell by the touch, could you? Well, I aim to learn you. What's his name now? Well, what's your poor Miss Ryves name now? Kizzy Mauna rubbed the ugly red welt on her scrawny arm and gave the frying pan full of sizzlin' side meat a hopeless nudge. She prayed that the weight of the vitals might take the edge off Jeff's temper. Finne slouched in from the spring and saw the mark on her arm. Pa been wampin' you again, ma? She didn't answer. What'd you do this time? She silently dished up the hogback and cornbread for her two men and while they sat at table, she ate on her feet, serving them between bites as was the custom in the Mauna household. After dinner, Finne stretched out under the china berry tree and Kizzy sat on the porch, fanning herself and dipping snuff with the peach twig, scouring it back and forth on her gums. Jeff took his ease on the floor of the back room but he didn't sleep. One thing he had seen that day and another thing he had heard. He was addin' them together. That stick that had disappeared under the log jam and the snake doctor's money. It was four o'clock before any of them stood and then Jeff spoke to his wife for the first time since noon. Where's that violent drinkin' liquor, Kizzy? I was out in your pocket before you laid down. I oughta carry a violent drinkin' liquor with me. I might get bit by a Marcus as soon as Paul would. You better not let me catch you. You find it, Jeff? I just remembered I won't be needing to tow no space along with me while I'm going. I wouldn't take no chance, Jeff. There's one cottonmouth. Cottonmouth is all down the slashes else along the creek. Well, I'll be this evening as up along Bailey's Ridge in the high ground. You fixin' to go shootin'? Reckon, I'll come along, Paul. You stay in here. Oh, dang it, it'd be steamin' in the place when the rain comes down. Paul, you might be needing me in case... You stay here, Paul. Kizzy set up a snack of colesup on a shelf likely I won't get back with his plum dark. Chief Monor turned north through his struggling cornrows and in a minute he was lost from sight. He kept on for nearly a mile until he came to a wild red mulberry tree. Where mulberries are, there's bound to be squirrels. Very neatly, he shot two young greys through the head. But Jeff was a master marksman and unsuspected by any who knew him. Jeff had another quality denied most of his kind. He had an imagination. Today it was in excellent work and order. He tied the brain squirrels together and swung them over his shoulder. If needed, they would be his alibi. He sat down under a tree a while. I got plenty of time. Don't need to get on the snake doctor's place. It's about dust when he comes out to feed that sway back mare, isn't it? Ha! Mr. Rives. He sat out two brisk thundershowers in the intervals between them. Then he started off in a wide arc down Bailey's branch along the skirts a little cypress slash to the sunken flat's edge took Maughan an hour of careful traveling before he came to his destination. A screen of horror bushes less than 50 yards behind the snake doctor's cabin. No matter how ill any of you get up and come out to feed that rack of boon's mare Mr. Rives. Well, I learned him to go colleagueing around another man's woman. Jeff Maughan let his jealousy heat him to a white hatred. He was avenging his honor. Thus was spared the embarrassment admitting to himself that the real reason he was here was the snake doctor's money hidden behind the log by the fireplace. Home loving, snake loving, bombing. Ten minutes from now chunk him down a big hole in the creek like I did that stick this morning. He'd go down, never come out. Nobody'll miss him. Nobody'll know he's gone for at least twice a week, maybe a month. If I get around to it I might come back this way someday. Poke around that cabin of his. Jeff Maughan's speculations were cut short. The cabin door opened and a figure stepped out into the growing dusk and walked toward the stable. He saw the snake doctor's loppy old straw hat and his dark coat drawn over a pair of hunched narrow shoulders. At this distance he couldn't miss. And he didn't. The figure jerked backwards and then went face forward. Jeff started for him and then he stopped. His eyes bugged. His mouth formed a scream that he couldn't utter. His rifle dropped to the ground. He had just killed the snake doctor. Killed him dead with a 32 caliber slug through the head. And there on his door sill stood snake doctor, whole and sound and staring at him. Jeff Maughan, what you done? The scream came at last for Jeff Maughan who had seen the devil. This snake doctor who rose alive from his bullet riddle body. Jeff whirled and ran into the deep darken and woods whimpering like a whipped puppy as he tore through the brush. Escape. He must escape. He must get under the shelter of a sound roof, have the protection of four walls around him. So he ran and ran for hours. It was close to midnight when he came out on a dirt road a short distance southeast of his dead man. Beyond the next bend he'd be inside a home. Then he stopped. Around the bend, come and taught him was a juggling light, a lantern hanging on a buggy. Jake flattened himself in a clump of brush to hide until the traveler passed. And then, just as the rig was opposite of him, he heard a call coming from the other direction. Who's he juggling? Yeah, whooping it out from the junction. Tolerable tired if anybody should ask you. What brings you out this time of night, David? Somebody seek that? Nothing. There's been hella popping in these here bottoms. Now what you mean? A killing. That's what I mean. That dirty cold blooded killing if there ever was one. Don't say. Who's got a killer? Well, I'm a-fixing to tell you now. It happened just around dusk time when old snake doctors play. Yeah? Or is Tim was killed? Now, just give me time. Seems like snake doctor's been a-killing lately. He's pretty bad off today. I mean yesterday. So, along about five o'clock when the rain was a-lulling a little bit, Miss Kizzy Morris, she fudged it down from her place to his and fetching some physics with her to a hot bed. I miss Morris, the mighty thoughty one for doing things with folks. Don't you want to hear this? Go ahead, go ahead. Well, it seems like she wasn't the fear of the snake doctors play. Well, I'd have been all over that. Well, pretty soon after she got there, seems like he tried to get up out of his bed and go feed that old crow bait and egg of his. Yeah? Rain had started then again, but then just pouring down hard. So, she made him stay where he was at and she put on his old hat and no more and she got outside and a shot come from the edge of the wood and down she went with a bullet through her brain. A-killed her? Dead and a-doll. But who done? That low-flung husband of hers, doesn't it? That's who, doesn't it? He must have followed her down to snake doctors and just laid them wait for her. And it certain was him then, huh? Sure a thing. Snake doctor jumped up when he heard the shot and he catched a quick look at Jeep over the fence. Catch him? No, but they will. Some things that he made for the slashes and hid out there. Tracks let old fat away. Or they'd be a line of men throwed all the way around Little Cypress for slunning them. Now, chef got there yet? No, but he's doing a minute with his pack of dogs. They telephoned in from Gallup Mills that he's on his way. Good. Trail ought to lay good to the ground being damp like it is. Old snake doctor, he's crying on and raving around they put more in his place being dependent on them in their bloodhounds. On them first and then maybe on a stout plow line in a limb of a tree. Yeah, that's more certain. I'm just putting out from my place to fetch my oldest boy. I wouldn't want him to miss a Lincoln. Always a good-sized crowd up there already. I'll go up and join him. I've got a pistol here on my hip pocket. No. Call me this morning. She's always a good-hearted, hard-working woman. Kizzy. She's dead. I shot Kizzy. Did you hear something just then? Can't see the dead. Probably a rabbit breaking through the bridge. Listen, listen, listen. Oh, a sheriff's coming. You can hear them hounds leshing. I've got the hurry. Get up there. I'll see you back in the morning. Oh, you sure will. Jave didn't have time to waste mourning his dead wife. He was even a little relieved to know that the snake doctor wasn't the devil incarnate. He had a chance against a lynch mob with a pack of bloodhounds. This was the kind of antagonist he could understand and outsmart. Jave's imagination went to work again as he backtracked along the creek bottom in the spotted moonlight. Got to throw them dogs off the tree. Got a way to creek even if it is full of cotton mines. Must be all around me then, huh? Folks say they don't strike in the water. Well, I hope them folks is right. Got to get back to snake doctors. Get his money while he's still up at my place with Kizzy's remains. Get his money and then the rest will be easy. I'll make for the deep timber. Cross country to the river. Make it by tomorrow's sundown. Hire me a shanty boat in a family to the Arkansas site. Get me a hair clip and catch a train for some as else. But got to get snake doctors' money first. Snake doctors' cabin was dark and empty when Jave reached it. And he needed light for his search. There were a few dull embers in the fireplace and he threw on some kindling. But it didn't light. It didn't light. Very well. He knew where the chink was. He'd find it in the dark. He scrabbled at the logs, felt some bark. He felt the claymore to crumble under his fingernails. Here it was. A hole big enough for a man's arm. He plunged his hand into it, touched something slick and smooth and then something sharp plunged into his thumb. That moment the fire flickered to life. Jave yanked his hand out of the hole, saw two tiny bleeding punctures at his feet. He saw two tiny bleeding punctures at his thumb. And at the mouth of the hole stretched the wide-open jaws of a cottonmouth. It worked fast. He felt the pain leaping from his thumb to his hand, seeping up his arm. He only had some liquor. He had a fresh-killed chicken to slap on the wound. He had nothing. Then a sharp, horrible pain wrenched his heart. And a second, and there in the firelight the huge cottonmouth poised in its crevice. Jave leaped out of the shack and started blindly for the timber. Staggered, stumbled, and pierced forward on his face. His open mouth full of weeds and muddy grass and stems. The cramp in fingers of his outstretched right hand almost touching a reddish black smear on the wet trampled grass. If I'd call it that, wouldn't you, Dr. Bradshaw? Well, I reckon there's sort of a rough justice in the way he died. Look, his hand reaching out just about touches the blood where his woman fell. This has been quite a night, Davis. I just examined the body of a man who appears to have been killed by a snake bite. Good and quick, too, judging by the evidence. Well, Doc ain't that the weird cottonmouth always does kill a man, doesn't he? Never mind what you hear. I'm going by the facts. I've been practicing medicine in this county for going on for 46 years. And I tell you that in all my life I have never known but two or three people actually being bitten by water moccasins. And until tonight, I never had personal knowledge of anybody dying from a bite of any kind of a snake. And what's going on over there? Is that morning boy kicking up that bush? Hey, what's your trouble, Chip? Fanny has went out in his head. I'm going to kill a snake and bit him up on. And then I'm going to give that snake doctor a whooping for keeping a reptile in his plate. Here, Paul got just what it is to you, Fanny. That snake doctor ain't to blame now. He's a hoodoo devil. Now, look here, boy. Mr. Rives promised all his savings nearly $100 to pay for burying your mother decent. That's how much he thought of her. Now, now go on home and behave yourself. Now, go on, Fanny. There ain't no reason for you to hang on there. Somebody ought to kill her. Hey, Doc, just a minute. Go, you start to say something about snake bite and not kill him. Well, how do you account for Jafer? Well, a late Jafer mourner had a rotten, bad heart, David. Oh, he sure did. Yesterday proves that. I don't mean in that sense. I mean there was an organic weakness. I'm saying, though, there was no swelling anywhere. Well, as him, too, marks on his thumb and snakes' gashes, like I've seen. Well, that don't explain how... Huh? What's it? That fool kid. Come on, Doc. He probably shot somebody. I shot at him, but I didn't hear it. He's gonna get me like it got my balls. Come on, Doc. Come on. He said he shot at something in the cabin. Come on. I don't see anything. Well, Fanny's had enough happening to him yesterday and today to upset even a bright boy. So we can't... Oh, where it is? That what? That cotton mouth. Well, burn that hole in the log. Huh? Oh, who's that? A snake doctor told me about that vomit. Look at him closer, David. Oh, no, sir, he's nothing. Go ahead. Go ahead. It's just a stuffed snake. Stuffed? Yeah. Snake doctor believes in precautions because that hole's where he hides his money. Well, that snake could scare away anybody who didn't know it was stuffed. But just to be sure, snake doctor lined the hole with coils of barbed wire. Oh. Oh, I see. What, you think it then marks on Jeff's thumb he got off of the barbed wire, huh? There could be. A lot stronger hearts than Jeff Morners were to stop beating and to scare like that. Well, I'll be swatched. Oh, snake doctors are cute. Escape, produced by William M. Robson and directed by Norman McDonald, today brought you Snake Doctor by Irvin S. Cobb, adapted for radio by Fred Howard, with Bill Conrad as Jeff, Paul Fries as Fennie, Ruth Parrott as Kizzy, Barton Yarbrough as Davis, Louis van Rooten played Snake Doctor and Tip Bailey, while Fred Howard was the doctor. Alan Reed was heard as the narrator. The original musical score was conceived by Psy Fuhr with Eddie Dunstetter at the console. Next week, you were alone in a remote old-world village inhabited by cat people, and you were desired by a beautiful cat girl who wants your soul. Next week, we escape with Algernon Blackwood's iris story titled Ancient Sorceries. This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.