“All right,” said Lucia, though her pale face did not bear testimony to her words. “I ought to have used my knife to open up the place a little. You do it, Marcella! No, you’d hate to hurt me, wouldn’t you?”
Bracing up with her words, Lucia drew a little pearl-handled knife from her other pocket and carefully enlarged the punctures made by the snake. She paid not a bit of attention to Betty or the struggles of the snake caught by the stone.
Betty, who had seen Dick kill snakes but had always felt rather sorry for the snake and had never killed one herself, was bracing herself to finish what she had begun. But when she cleared away the leaves with her stick and could see the results of her throw, she saw that the stone had crushed the snake’s head and that the demise would not take long. Nothing more was necessary and she turned from the painful sight to Lucia, who had succeeded in what she had attempted. My, but Lucia was brave!
“I can’t be sure, girls, that that was the snake that bit me,” said Lucia, “so I’ll just do everything, just as if it were something very poisonous. There isn’t any of the venom that’s very good to get into your system, I imagine. Can we sit down somewhere?”
The girls helped Lucia to a spot safe and clear where the hill began to rise. None of the others were in sight, though it had been only a few minutes since they had separated from several of them. Mathilde, to be sure, was there, but useless.
“You feel all wobbly, I know, Lucia,” said Betty, her arm around Lucia, who sat without a word, though her brows were drawn together in a frown.
“Yes, yes. It is painful. Betty, you could loosen the tourniquet now, I’m sure, and suppose you tie it again a little higher up.”
“Oh, I wish we had some way of getting you home,” said Marcella. “I’ll watch and hail somebody. Lean over on Betty, Lucia.”
Marcella was afraid that Lucia was going to faint. But that did not happen. “I do feel a bit sick, Marcella, but I never fainted in my life and I’ll not begin now. I can walk home. It isn’t so much, but not being sure what sort of a bite it is, I’ve had to hurt myself more, you see. I’d rather look for flowers and birds, Betty, than for snakes. I thought I saw a flower under the leaves and stooped for it—and found a snake instead!”
“Oh, it’s just too bad—your first hike and everything!” Betty was loosening the tourniquet and making ready to put it on again. Marcella had run around the hill.