Dammit, short story, you are not a book.
When it was all over and done with, Tabetha allowed herself to be impressed by how fast the party could move that night. Maybe it was the example of Rex. Maybe it was the first really decent amounts of food and water in days. And maybe it was all those damned snakes taking up the rear.
The snakes definitely took getting used to. Tabetha wasn’t scared of individual snakes, aside from the sensible fear that any person might feel about a reptile that could kill her with a single bite. But rattlers were supposed to have a sensible fear of human beings, too. These didn’t: they’d come right up to Tabetha, completely bold as brass. When the group stopped for a quick breather, one snake even went so far as to crawl up the pack Tabetha had put down and wrap itself around the top. It took a lot of self-control for her to put that pack back on.
But she did. And, wouldn’t you know it? Five minutes later Tabetha had half-forgotten that there was a rattler in her pack. Even scary things stop getting really scary when nothing bad happens, and the snakes didn’t even rattle at the humans. They just stayed out of the way of people’s feet, and kept on going.
It was at the next stop that Tabetha realized that the snakes were actually moving a little more slowly than they should have been. It took her a minute to figure out why, and she swore when she did. Then she started rounding up people to begin picking up the damned snakes.