“Uncle Hank’s baby! Did he scare her most to death? You ain’t hurt, Pettie. Look. See what it was I killed.”
She opened unwilling eyes, first at the clouds that still ran circles above her in the blue sky; then she saw Uncle Hank’s eyes, almost as blue, and full of the same fathomless kindness.
“Over there by the milkweed you was goin’ for—look, Pettie.”
And now she held herself erect a moment, and saw the brown, rusty coil, the shattered diamond-shaped head, of the rattlesnake Uncle Hank had shot. She hid her face against the blue flannel sleeve and trembled.
It was afterward—after he’d gone over to make sure the snake was dead—when she could get her breath easily again, and was climbing up on Buckskin with him, that the old man, looking down at the little foot set on his boot-toe, whispered:
“Barefoot!”
They rode a moment in tremulous silence, then he said sternly, “Never let that happen again, Pettie. You wear your shoes.”
“I love to go barefoot.”
“Pettie,” he turned and looked at her, “I don’t like that. Your pa’s daughter ought to be brought up a lady. She ain’t got no place in the barefoot brigade. You mind what I say about the shoes. Keep ’em on.”
“All day? In the house?”