She seized the nearest heavy piece of rock. She dared not pitch it at the snake—the chance of missing the target was too great. But with the dornick in both hands she crept one—two—three steps toward the rock. The missile was poised over her head. It was all that Dorothy Dale could hold steadily.
Down came the heavy piece of rock, just as the rattlesnake darted its head forward. Its diamond pointed head had been on a level with Tavia’s chin, for it was a huge fellow.
Dorothy had stopped it in midflight. Scared she most certainly was—her very soul seemed filled with horror of the poisonous creature. But Dorothy Dale could not fail her chum in this time of awful peril.
She struck the snake down. Its head and the upper part of its writhing body was smashed under the rock Dorothy held. She had put her whole force into the blow and she fell across the rock and the coiling and uncoiling snake just as the boys came whooping and yelling into view.
As for Tavia, she went quietly off into a faint, and she did not revive until Ned and Nat carried her up the steep path and laid her down beside Lost River, from which water was taken to bathe her wrists and brow.
CHAPTER XVII
FLORES
“I never want to hear even a baby’s rattle again,” sobbed Tavia, after she and Dorothy were alone in their room at the ranch house. “Anything from the rattle of a dry seed in a pod to a load of bricks being dumped on a cement walk, will remind me of that dreadful snake.
“Why, I had a little stick in my hand, and I poked it into that crack in the rock to see if there was anything there, and up darted that rattler’s head!
“Oh, dear, me, Doro! if you hadn’t come as you did, I would have been bitten all to pieces!”