Half a block in your wake is the other ’bus, and occasionally jogs apace a carriage, with suggestive rattle of dishes and bulge of hamper.
Your vehicle rumbles over a creek bridge and slowly rounds a curve.
“I see it! I see it!” announces Billy, wriggling on his elevation.
You all stretch necks to “see it,” too. Yes, there, just before, in the woods to the right, are the forms of the earlier invaders—the good men and women constituting the volunteer band of provision-arrangers.
The ’bus turns to the roadside. Issues from the driver a long and relieved “Whoa-oa!” But, even as he says it, you and the other boys are out, over the sides. Under the fence you scoot, to race, madly whooping, up the wooded slope, fearful lest you are missing something. After you scamper, more timidly, the little girls, and last of all, ungallantly consigned to bring the picnic odds and ends, toil your elders.
The ’bus rolls back to town, carrying a man or so delegated to get inevitably forgotten articles.
Now all the wood is riotous with scream and shout. It is a wood filled with possibilities. Early somebody discovers a garter-snake, and at the rallying-cry destruction violently descends upon the harmless thing. Immediately, dangling from the end of a stick, it spreads confusion wherever feminine humanity may be encountered. At its approach the little girls squeal and run, the larger girls shriek and expostulate, and the various mothers shrink and glare indignantly. The superintendent it is who boldly interferes, takes the limp reptile, and throws it away.
“There!” sigh glad onlookers.
But Snoopie marks its fall, and presently recovers it; thereafter to carry it around in his pocket, intent upon sticking it down unsuspecting comrades’ backs.
In the ravine is the shallow creek. As a means of entertainment the creek is about as good as the dead snake. ’Tis jump it and rejump it; ’tis wade it with shoes on and ’tis wade it with shoes off; and ’tis splash far and wide, to see which boy shall get the wetter.