“I have killed many. I am not afraid. Always one must kill the snake. It is the sign of the enemy. One kills; so one conquers. Comprende?”
The girl shook back her black hair, her red lips parting in a smile that lighted her somber face into sunshine. Patsy thought it quite the prettiest thing she had ever seen.
Very cautiously the intrepid little hunter began to circle the thicket, poking her impromptu weapon into it with every step she took.
“Ah!”
She uttered a shout of triumph as the sinister, buzzing sound Patsy had so lately heard began again.
Having located her quarry, the girl proceeded to dispatch it with the fearlessness of those long used to the wilds. Her weapon firmly grasped in determined hands she rained a fury of strong, steady blows upon the rattler. Finally they ceased. Giving his snakeship a final contemptuous prod with the branch, she called across the thicket to Patsy:
“Come. You wish to see. He is a very large one. Of a length of eight feet, quisas. Wait; I will lay him straight on the earth.”
Approaching, Patsy shuddered as her rescuer obligingly poked the dead reptile from the spot where it had made its last stand. She shuddered again as a small brown hand grasped the still twitching tail and straightened the snake out.
“It is the diamond back,” the girl calmly informed. “See.” She pointed with the branch, which she still held, to the diamond-shaped markings on the snake’s back. “He carried the death in his sting. So we shall bury the head, for the sting of a dead snake such as this is safer covered.”
“It’s horrible!” shivered Patsy. “It was coiled up in the thicket. I must have disturbed it when I fell. I don’t see how I escaped being bitten.”