As Eunice stirred, Cricket turned, and even in her terror and excitement she laughed at the sight she saw. Mamie had lost her balance and plunged forward, but as she went over the sill, her stout gingham frock caught on a projecting nail a few inches down, and there she still hung, arms waving and legs wildly kicking, and sending out shriek after shriek. Below, the ugly cow was lowering her head and striking at the dangling feet, every now and then hitting them. “Pull me up, Cricket!” Mamie screamed, nearly in convulsions of terror, her struggling making the matter still worse.
As Cricket rose unsteadily to her feet, and saw the situation, the whole thing flashed into her quick brain. Mamie had been sent to tell them to keep out of the barnyard, because the new cow was ugly, and she had purposely given only half the message. And here was Eunice half-killed as a result. Of her own bruises she never thought.
“I don’t care!” she screamed, passionately, in answer to Mamie’s shrieks. “I don’t care if you’re all hooked up! You’ve killed my Eunice, and I hope you are satisfied,” and she knelt by her sister again.
“I’ll never be bad any more,” shrieked Mamie, at the top of her lungs. “Help—me—up,—Cricket.”
“I don’t care,” repeated Cricket, angrily, but really scarcely knowing whether to run for help, or stay with Eunice, or help Mamie. “That hateful, hateful little thing! Serves her right.”
But in a moment Cricket’s better self came to the front, at Mamie’s last piercing cry,—
“Ow! ow! she’s hurt my foot awful!”
Cricket sprang up and ran around to the barn-door. Her knee was cut and bleeding, but she did not heed it. She darted across the barn floor to the door at the back. It was not an easy matter to decide what she was to do, for Mamie, though she was slight and small, would be a dead weight on her as she pulled her up, and then also, she suddenly discovered that her left shoulder was strained and sore. But there was no time to hesitate, for Mamie’s position was dangerous as well as absurd. Her struggles might release her dress at any moment, and those angry horns and hoofs were waiting below.
Cricket grasped a stout, wooden staple at the side of the door-frame with her right hand, and, bending far over, she slipped her left arm around Mamie’s waist. Mamie clutched her instantly.
“Stop wiggling,” said Cricket, sharply. It was no small task for her, with her strained arm, to bring Mamie up even those ten inches, but with a desperate effort she drew her up to a sitting position on the door-sill, so the child could scramble in herself. For one second she felt as if her arm was being dragged out of her body, and only long practice in swinging off limbs of trees, and drawing herself up again, had made her muscles equal to the strain.