I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it.
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.