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Sought Refuge Among Snakes.

Published in The Lake County Independent, Libertyville, Illinois on 01/21/1902.

Story of Judge Baker, a Recent Appointee of Roosevelt.

     Judge Baker, who has been appointed to the supreme bench of New Mexico, had as exciting adventure with Indians near Caridon twenty years ago, and when he emerged from a cave, where he had taken refuge with a companion, “Bill Liddiard, his hair had turned from jet black to grey.

     Baker and Liddiard were chased for a score by redskins and would have lost their scalps but for a hole in the ground into which they crawled and which proved to be the entrance to a small cave.

     But in the underground chamber they found a nest of snakes. Liddiard advised that he and his companion feign death, because of the theory of the plains that snakes attack only the living. The story goes that they lay there for hours while rattlers crawled over their bodies.

     When they emerged Baker’s hair had changed color and Liddiard had gained the sobriquet of Rattlesnake Pete,” which sticks to him to this day.

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