 Suspense, which is usually heard at this hour on Thursday nights, is taking its customary summer holiday. Suspense returns to the air two weeks from tonight, on Thursday, September 1st. You are standing at the doorway of a cabin on Cassia Creek. Upon the ridge the bloodhounds have caught your scent. And between you and a fortune between you and escape, you're on the white jaws of a deadly cottonmouth. We offer you escape designed 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 farm somewhere in the southern mountains, with Irvin S. Cobb's great tale of vengeance. Snake doctor. Far back in the southern mountains it's quiet and hot and lonely. Irvin Pine's Scott Hill is very much like the next, and one wind and creek differs little from another. The area through which Cassia Creek twisted was the same as all the rest, except for the snakes. Deadly, venomous, cottonmouths, moccasins. There are probably more snakes along Cassia Creek than anywhere else. Most people lived in constant deadly fear of these snakes, but there was one man who even seemed to like them. They called Snake Doctor. His cabin was near the creek bottom where the cotton mouths were the commonest, and he earned his meagre living by rendering down his soft fats, bottling the oil and selling it. Snake Doctor seemed harmless enough, but there was one man who believed he was a colleague of the devil, who hated him, because he wasn't afraid of the snakes. This man was J.F. Morener, the Snake Doctor's nearest neighbor. J.F. was that dangerous kind of man who suspected, feared, and hated anything he didn't understand, and he understood neither cotton mouths nor the Snake Doctor. J.F. was ornery, ignorant, and shiftless. He'd rather shoot squirrels and chop cotton. He'd rather fish than hoe corn, and that's what he's doing now. Fishing down at the big hole with his son and heir Finney, who's old enough, but not quite bright enough to handle the gun. Missed him, doggie. Finney, you're playing fool. I told you not to touch my gun. Tromp on him, Pa, before he gets in the creek. What? The cottonmouth. Tromp on him in front of you. Cottonmouth. Vomit. Unusly vomit. You got it, Pa. That's a stick. You don't need to, son. He's dead. Now, come here. Finney's been with that rifle. I had a big draw right on him, and I... Don't do that for Pa. Just turn up that filthy snake whilst I'm a-fishing. Heck, he was sunning himself that mornin' two feet from you. He was just two feet from you. Never mind that kind of talk. Won't be no fisher on little thunderation after all that racket. Well, come on, let's go home and get us some fiddles. J.F. mornin' 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 jammer 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 to and waited, watching the water boil up from under the driftwood. But the stick didn't come up. That was strange. He must have caught under there in a tangle of water soaked in sunken logs. Probably he'd had stayed there for months. Perhaps stayed there always. Let's get some fiddles, Pa. J.F. thought about this, and an idea began to form in his slow mind as he and Finney started for home. How much oil you reckons in this, Pa? Daddy? What you joinin' about? This old cuttin' man. How much oil you reckons in? Throw it down. Throw it down? Why, Pa? I'm goin' down. Throw it down like I say. Pa, I was aiming on rendering the old cottonmouths fat like the snake doctor does. I was in the cellar and make myself some money. I don't like to squirmin' things around me. But it's dead. Leave it where it dropped. You scared on cottonmouths, Pa? I know better than to get myself bit by them. Tipped Bailey and older fella got his self bit one. We're in a draper liquor for miles. He goes to work and he cuts open a live chicken. And he put it on his leg where the bite was. Bella lived, too. Wrecking Mr. Rives ever gets his self bit? I mean, handling cottonmouths like he does? Who? Mr. Rives? Who? Mr. Rives. That's old snake doctor's real name. Ma says I oughtn't call him snake doctor. Never mind what your Ma says. Nobody in my family's callin' those snake-lovin' scum Mr. Rives. Heck, that's what I say. All right. But I made myself some money rentin' that cottonmouths fat down in the oil. How much your wreck an old snake doctor makes out in the oil he sells? I don't know. Tipped Bailey says old snake doctor's got more than a thousand dollars hid ways somewhere's in his cabin. More than that, most likely. Cussing old mice that don't spend nothin'. Ain't got nothin' to save that rackabones mare, isn't it? Tipped Bailey says whenever old snake doctor sets foot out in his place, he's got the granddaddy of all cotton mouths that he leaves out in the cabin to stand guard over his money. Tipped Bailey says he'd see that old snake doctor put him in his pocket. Live ones, too. Snake doctor ain't fittin' to be live his self. Ma says he ain't so bad. Says he don't mean nobody harm. Your Ma better be careful who she's associatin' with. She says he just don't have good sense. Had the fever too much. Daddy? You ever been in snake doctor's place? I don't have nothin' more than I have to to do with that snake-lovin' hoodoo. Tipped Bailey says he'd bet it wouldn't be no task at all for somethin'. No good to poke around the snake doctor's shack. He may be finin' all the money and make off with it. Blame his sons during their rendering me down. Look at my head. Full of sweat. Look, daddy. See? Full of sweat. During your guard full of sweat, come on. Why turnin' down that way, Pa? Comin' our noon dinner bein' most ready. I'm gonna tell the snake-lovin' hoodoo that there's some of them cotton miles on the crick side of our deaden. Yeah, he knows that. I'm gonna tell him he's got my leave to catch him. You don't need to come along. Well, if you're goin' over to his place, I'd kinda like to see it for my own sayin'. He ain't a home. Elsewise, he'd have showed himself by now. I reckon. Can you see any snakes? I told you to keep an eye out for... I bet it's in one of them chinks, Pa. Pa, bet the money's in one of them... I ain't lookin' for no money. Must be a dang snake itself livin' in a place like this. I know you ain't lookin' for any money, Pa, but ifin' you was, wouldn't you look at that chink right up there? Where? Right there, second log by the fireplace on the right. You see that, that hole? Yeah. I reckon I would look up there. I think we're here. I might as well see for myself. Pa, I wouldn't be a much surprise if those snake doctor had him... Pa? Pa? Was you lookin' for something, Jake Mauna? Snake doctor? Yeah. I was lookin' for you. I want here. Yeah, yeah. Look here, you old hoodo. I got up on folks who's took a trouble to come all the way down here to do you a favor, huh? Eh, come on, Fennie. We gettin' out of here. Yes, sir. Like it's not, they had a dang ol' Marcus in the squinchin' round in his pocket whilst he was talkin' to you. Daddy? Do you mind how his eyes was when he come in? Do you mind how I kept lookin' up at the wall where I said I bet he had the money between the chinks? Don't you say nothin' to your Ma about us being at the snake doctor's place, you understand? Why should I? Well, just don't. And don't you go nigh it again. Cuss ol' vomit. You thought we was prowlers where he acted. Yeah, prowlers. Ma, stand up already! You poor wits, if you stir your stumps, you can... catch innocent deep. You think I can catch fish with Fennie to find off my gun that cutin' miles all the time? He ain't this heat more than a body can bear. Ain't it cool to butt the crick that poor old miss Ryves come by here spell ago and might nigh shook the pieces with a chill? He come by, did he? Well, did he come in? Just for a minute. Just for a minute, eh? What'd he want? He wanted to give him some first ailment. He'd drag one side for the other. Barely could make it up here from his place. I'd give him a toast out in our butler's egg of drops. Would've give him a little smidgen of liquor only I could... Oh, you would, eh? Please don't, Jeff. Don't walk me... Don't, Jeff. Don't walk me. Just put on, Mr. Ryves. Mr. Ryves. Mr. Ryves. How many times I gotta tell you those names are snake doctor. Nobody know how? Hear me to skin a lost wits hide and tell her and you call her name Mr. Ryves. Eh. You'll be calling them honey and sugar next. Without I... Please, Jeff, please. Bad names, eh? Well, I aim to... What's his name now? Well... What's your poor Mr. Ryves name now? Kizzy mourn her rubbed the ugly red weld on her scrawny arm and gave the frying pan full of sizzling side meat a hopeless nudge. She prayed that time and food might take the edge off Jeff's temper. Fini slouched in from the spring, saw the mark on her arm. Pa, I've been warping you again, Ma. What'd you do this time? She silently dished up the hogback and cornbread for her two men. While they sat at table, she ate on her feet, serving them between bites, as was the custom in the morning household. After dinner Fini stretched out under the Chinaberry tree, Kizzy sat on the porch, fending herself and dipping snuff with a 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. The meanness was stirring in him and his hatred of the man he couldn't understand, the man who'd got rich off a cotton mouse. His mind was working on something he'd seen that day and another thing he'd heard, he was adding them together. That stick could have disappeared under the log jam and the snake ducked as money. It was four o'clock before any of them moved and then Jeff spoke to his wife for the first time since noon. Kizzy, where's that vial of drinking liquor? By the window. You took it out in your pocket before you laid down. I ought to carry a vial of liquor with me. I might get bit by a Markersons soon as Paul would. You better not let me catch it. You find it, Jeff? I just remembered. I won't be needing this toad no spits along with me while I'm going. I wouldn't take no chance, Jeff, just one cotton mouse by... I'll be all this evening up along Bailey's Ridge in the high ground. You fixing to go shooting? I'm the gummy a chance of young squirrels twixin' on dust time. I heard them barkin' all around me this mornin'. Rick, can I come along, Paul? You stayin' here, son. Oh, dang it. It'd be steamin' in the place when the rain comes down. Paul, you might be needing me, Jeff. You stay here. Kizzy, you set me up a snack of cold supper on the chef. Right, Claire. We'll get back to this plum duck. In just a moment, we'll return to the second act of escape. But first, that wonderful variety show with a purpose, CBS's one-hour-long program, This Is Broadway, will be round again tomorrow night on most of these same stations. Comedian Abe Burroughs, Broadway playwright, George S. Kaufman, master of ceremonies, Clifton Fatiman will all be here, playing host to the top stars of show business. Hear these top stars and their top acts. Then listen closely, as the expert showman on This Is Broadway help them with show business problems. And now, we return to the second act of escape. And tonight's story, Snake Doctor. Jeff Mourn had turned north through his struggle in cornrows, and in a minute, he was lost from sight. He kept on for nearly a mile till he came to a wild red mulberry tree. Where there are mulberries, there are bound to be squirrels. Very neatly, he shot two young greys right through the head. But Jeff was a master marksman, and unsuspected by any who knew him, Jeff had another quality, one that made him more dangerous than the rest of his kind. Jeff had an imagination. Today, it was an excellent work and order. He tied the brain squirrels together and swung them over his shoulder. Then he sat down under a tree for a while. Got plenty of time. Don't need to get on the Snake Doctor's blaze with about dust. When he comes out to feed that sway back mare, he hasn't missed a ride. He sat out two brisk thundershowers in the intervals between them. Then he set off in a wide arc down Bailey's branch along the skirts a little cypress slashed down to the sunken flat-sedge in Cassier Creek. It took more than an hour a careful travelin' before he came to his destination. A screen of whorebushes, less than 50 yards behind the Snake Doctor's cabin. No matter how ill he is, you'd get up and come out to feed that racobones mare. Mr. Ives. Well, I'd learn him to go colleaguein' around another man's woman. J. F. Moreno let his jealousy heat him to white hatred. At this moment, he was avenging his honor. Didn't admit even to himself that the real reason he was here was the Snake Doctor's money hidden behind the log by the fireplace. Home-breaking snake-loving farmer. Ten minutes from now, I'll chunk him down a big hole in the creek like I did that stick this morning. Then he'll go down and never come up. And nobody will miss him. Nobody will know he's gone for at least twice a week, maybe a month. And maybe if I get around to it, I might come back his way someday. I'll poke around that cabin of his and just to see if it's true his havin' all that money hid away. J. F. Moreno's speculations were cut short. The cabin door opened and a figure stepped out into the growin' dust and walked toward the stable. He saw the Snake Doctor's loppy old straw hat and his dog coat drawn over a pit. At this distance, he couldn't miss. And he didn't. The figure jerked backward and then went face-forward. J. F. started for him, 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 a Snake Doctor, killed him dead with a 32-caliber slug through the head, and there on his door still stood Snake Doctor, whole and sound, staring at him. J. F. Moreno, what have you done? The scream came at last, but J. F. Moreno had seen the devil, the Snake Doctor who arose alive from his bullet-riddled body. J. F. Whirled and ran into the deep darken in woods, whimpering like a whipped puppy as he tore through the brush. Escape. He must escape this thing. He must get under the shelter of a sound roof. He must have the protection of four walls around him. He ran. He ran for hours. It was close to midnight when he came out on a dirt road a short distance southeast of his own land. Beyond the next bend, he'd be inside a home, and then he stopped. Around the bend, coming toward him was a juggling lighter, lantern hanging on a buggy. Jake flattened himself in a clumper brush to hide until the traveler passed, and then, just as the rig was opposite him, he heard a call coming from the other direction. Oh, there. Oh, shitty boy. Me, Davis Ware. That you, Tip Bailey? What brings you out this time of night, Davis? Somebody sick? Sick nothing. There's been a parcel of trouble of popping in these bottoms tonight. Stitty boy. Stitty. What do you mean? A killing. That's what I mean. You don't say. Who got killed? My fixin' to tell you. It happened just around dusk, time at down a old snake doctor's place. Yeah? Was it him who was killed? Give me time, Tip. It seems like snake doctor's been a chillin' lately. It was pretty bad off today, so Miss Kizzy Marner, she footed it down from her place to Hison, fetchin' some physics with her, and a plate of hot vitals. You might've thought it, Miss Marner. You wanna hear this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go out. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Well, pretty soon after she got there, it seemed like he was tired, and he tried to get up out of his bed to go and feed that old crow-bait nag of Hison. Uh-huh. It started in again by then pourin' down hard, so she made him stay where he was, and she put on his old hat and throwed his old coat around her. And he wanted to keep out of the wet, and no more, and she got outside, and a shot came from the edge of the woods, and down she went with a bullet through her brains. Killed her? Kizzy. Kizzy. Was that low-flung husband of hers done it? They shot him for him? Sure thing. Oh, boy. Sure thing, there's certain. Snake Doctor jumped up when he heard the shot, and he catched a quick look at J.F. over the fence. Uh-huh. There was no long streak in Kizzy's arm where he must've whopped her during the day. Why, hanging's a sight too good. Did they catch him? No, but they gonna. Chef, get there yet? No, but he's due any minute with his pack of hound dogs. Oh. He's got a leg good. Ground being damp the way it is. Oh, Snake Doctor, he's a-sayin' the Lord's gonna strike the murder down in his track. Amen. But Mia, I'ma put my main dependence on them bloodhounds. Oh, poor Miss Monor. She always was a good-hearted, hard-working woman. Kizzy. And mildly put her pack by that scum. She's dead. I shot Kizzy. Say, did you hear something just there? Say, I did. Oh, probably a rabbit breakin' through the brush. Listen. The sheriffs are comin'. Can you hear them hounds or hisons? Oh, just for sure. I gotta hurry. I'll see you back at the Monor. Yes, sure will. In waste no time more than his dead wife. He had a chance against a pack of bloodhounds if he started right away. But Jave's imagination went to work again as he backtracked along the creek bottom in the spotty moonlight. He tried to throw those dogs off the trail. He got away to the creek. Even if it is full of cotton mounds. Must be all around me now. Folks say it won't strike in the water. Hope him folks is right. I gotta get back to the snake doctors. Get his money while he's still up at my place where Kizzy's remains. Get his money and the rest will be easy. Now, make for the deep timber. Cross country to the river. Make it by tomorrow morning. Find me a shanty boater to ferry me to the Arkansas side. I'll get me a haircut and catch me a train for somewhere else. I gotta get snake doctors money first. Snake doctors' cabin was dark and empty when Jave reached it. Only a few dull embers in the fireplace. But he knew where the chink was. He'd find it in the dark. He scrambled the logs, felt some block. He felt the clay mortar crumble on his fingernails. There 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. At that moment, the fire flickered to life. Jave yanked his hand out of the hole, saw two tiny bleeding punctures in his thumb. 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. If only he had some liquor. He had some chicken to slap on the wound, but he had nothing. Then a sharp, horrible pain wrenched his heart. And then a second, an air in the firelight, the huge cottonmouth poised in its crevice. Jave leaped out of the shack, started blinding it for the timber. He staggered, stumbled, then he pitched forward on his face his open mouth full of weeds and muddy grass stems. The cramping fingers of his outstretched right hand almost touched a reddish black smear on the wet, trampled grass. Written by Gravy, I'd call it that, wouldn't you, Doc? I reckon there's a sort of rough justice in the way he died. Look, his hand reaching out, just about touching the blood where his woman fell. Hmm. But in all my life, I've never known but two or three people actually was bitten by water moccasins. And until tonight, I've never had personal knowledge of anybody dying from the bite of any kind of snake. Here's the fact. I'm gonna take that rifle off of you, Fitty Marner. I'm gonna kill the dang repertile and kill my paw. That Marner's boy kicking up the first? Yep, and no good like his paw. Let go of me. I'm my own boss, man. What's the trouble, Tip? Oh, Finney here's went out in his haze. I'm gonna kill the snake that bit my paw. Then I'm gonna give that snake, Doc, a bumpin' for keeping a repertile in his place. Your paw got what was his due, Finney. Snake doctor ain't to blame. He's a hoodoo devil. Look here, boy. Mr. Rives give me all his savings, nearly $100 to pay for bearing your mother decent. That's how much he thought about. Now go on home. Behave yourself. I'm gonna get it. Go on, Finney. There ain't no reason for you hanging around here. Somebody ought to kill a repertile. Doc, just a minute ago, you started to say something about snake bite not killin'. But how about them two marks on his thumb? Them snake's gashes like some I've seen. Oh, that don't explain how it... Huh? It's Finney Marner. He's in the cabin. That's a fool, kid. Come on, Doc. He's probably shocked. There were two fireballs. He said he shot us up in the cabin. Come on, Doc. Let's go see. All right. I don't see anything. Finney's had enough happen to him yesterday and today to upset even a brat, boy. So we can't... Oh, oh. There it is. What? That cotton mouth up there and that hole in the log. Oh, there. Snake Doctor told me about that vomit. Look at him closer, David. No, sir. Not me. Go ahead. It's just a stuffed snake. Stuffed? Mm-hmm. Snake Doctor believes in precautions because that hole's where he hides his money. That snake would scare away anybody who didn't know it was stuffed. But just to be sure, Old Snake Doctor lined the hole with coils of barbed wire. Oh, I see. You mean them marks and Jay's thumb was got off the barbed wire. That's right, sir. Lot's stronger hearts than Jay's mourners would stop beating at a scare like that. Well, I'll be switched. Old Snake Doctor's a cute one, ain't he? Escape, produced and directed by Norman McDonnell. Tonight brought you Snake Doctor by Irvin S. Cobb, adapted for radio by Fred Howard, starring Bill Conrad as Jay with Paul Freese as Finney. Featured in the cast where Ira Grocelle as an narrator, Bill Lally, Ruth Parrot, Wilms Herbert, and Edgar Berrier. Music is conducted by Wilbur Hatch. Next week, you are groping through the midnight dimness of a gigantic department store, and suddenly you realize that a hundred eyes are staring at you from the shadows and a hundred hands are reaching for your throat, and your most urgent desire is to escape. Next week we escape with John Collier's story, Evening Primrose. Be with us next week at the same time when once again we offer you Escape. Ethelbert is at the bar, and Ann and Casey are about to enter on another thrilling crime photographer adventure. Tonight it's a story entitled Big Danger, and it'll be along on most of these same CBS stations in just a moment. This is John Jacobs speaking. This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.