"I guess he's afraid of the bigness of things," Anna concluded. "And he's got no call to run away. Papa threatens him, but he's never laid hand on him yet. I s'pose it's on account of the bath he ran away."
There was no Willie at the bathing-pool. The checked gingham shirt fluttered lonesomely where she had that morning placed it.
Some minutes later, shuffling deliciously among the dappled leaves of a hill trail, she sprang aside in quick dismay.
"Goodness!" What had seemed to be a bunch of dry leaves and grass coiled swiftly, with the rattling whir that goes straight to the fear center of the human heart. In a flash Anna's hands were full of rocks. The first article in every California mountain child's education is to destroy every rattlesnake that comes in sight. Anna dodged the first strike of the snake, and before he could get nearer she began a fusillade of such efficiency that the reptile enemy sought retreat.
Then Anna was privileged to witness a strange thing—a very strange thing; so unusual, in fact, that when reported to the head of the zoological department of the State university that conservative gentleman would have given the story little credence had it not been for the unimpeachable authority of a celebrated naturalist, who had reported it as occasionally occurring among the large, much-to-be-dreaded species of the Eastern States—the Crotalus horrible, or banded rattler.
To Anna's unutterable surprise, the snake turned for refuge to a near-by oak-tree. Perhaps he came against it unintentionally, as the rattlesnake sees badly by daylight. At any rate, he reared his head against it much as he would have done in ascending the side of a sunny boulder in the early days of his chilled awakening from his winter sleep.
He writhed spirally but slowly up its rough trunk, which seemed from eighteen to twenty inches in circumference. When the rocks ceased flying he would halt, evidently not half-liking his task, to wave his bluntly triangular head in the direction where the moving shadow indicated to his blurred vision the position of his enemy. But on the resumption of active hostilities, he would begin again his painful ascent.
"Ow-w-w-ch!" sounded a howl from above.
Looking up at the cry, Anna discerned among the clustering leaves of the black oak a huddled figure, with raccoon-like eyes, peering down at the mounting snake, to escape from which he had, in fact, climbed the tree.
"Willie," she shouted, "jump! The snake's coming! Jump!"