“There ought to be some flowers along the little stream, ought there not?” asked Lucia, whose English was often a bit formal.
“I think those frosts were pretty bad on the wild flowers, Lucia,” replied Marcella. But Lucia was strolling up stream along a low bank lined with bushes, and the other girls followed her. Betty heard another meadow lark and turned to follow with her eyes the course of a hawk that flew from a dead tree back from the stream. “That’s a marsh hawk,” she said, turning to Lucia, only to find Lucia rising with an exclamation from where she had been stooping close to Betty. She held up her hand, looking at it. “I’ve been bitten!” she exclaimed. “What sort of snakes do you have here, Betty?”
“Oh—a lot of them, most of them harmless!” said Betty, startled, but not wanting to frighten Lucia, who was white, yet with her lips pressed together in perfect self-control. She whipped out her handkerchief hastily. “We must make a tourniquet at once. Let me wipe this off—and I’ll suck out the poison, Lucia. I did once when Doris was bitten.” Betty’s memory went back to one awful experience alone in the woods with Doris.
“You will not,” firmly replied Lucia. “It is dangerous for you might have some broken spot in your mouth. Reach in my pocket, Betty. I carry stuff for this sort of thing. Mother told me to bring it.”
As she talked, Lucia, though white and trembling, was squeezing the wound, now bleeding a little, while Betty shakily was tying the handkerchief about Lucia’s wrist, just above the scars and stooped for a stick to draw it tightly. Marcella, meantime, was at hand without a word and reached in Lucia’s pocket instead of Betty.
“Look out!” cried Lucia as when Betty stooped there was a rustle in the grass and something long and slim darted across the little path between the thickly lined stream and other bushes at this point. It all happened almost too quickly to describe. Betty recoiled, Marcella snatching the little stick from her hand and not losing a minute in tightening the bandage or tourniquet.
“Lucia—I saw it! I think it’s only a garter snake!”
Betty gave one quick glance at Lucia, seeing that Lucia herself was pouring something from a tiny vial into the wound. The snake was lying under the fallen leaves, Betty thought, where a maple tree had been shedding its brown and golden foliage. There was a stone of good size at the very foot of the tree and this Betty seized, standing a moment to locate the snake if she could. She thought that she detected a slight movement under a pile of leaves and launched the stone, stepping back immediately after to pick up a branch, thick and broken, that also lay fairly near.
But the stick was not needed then. The stone, to Betty’s own surprise, had hit the mark. There was a great whipping of leaves for a few moments. In spite of weeds and other growth Betty could see the pattern on the little snake, not so long after all—oh, thanks be—it was a garter snake! Betty had dreaded its being either a rattler or a copperhead. There were what the boys called vipers, too, she had heard. How sensible of Lucia to have come prepared!
“You’ve got it, Betty,” said Marcella with excitement. “It’s only a garter snake, Lucia—I’m sure. How do you feel?”