Once more Anna crouched and shot upward. Her right hand caught the projecting stump, her left easily followed. Clasping the decreasing trunk of the tree with her slim, muscular legs, hanging also by her hands, she dropped her head backward to take observation. The snake hung out, also, toward her, from his tree, then resumed his deliberate climbing. Evidently the task was neither easy nor to his liking.
Anna hitched breathlessly up toward the coveted limb. Reaching it, she took out her jack-knife,—inseparable companion,—scientifically cut a wedge from a short limb above her, and broke off the weakened branch. Recovering her balance, she reached out with this flexible club, but could not touch the snake, now roused to accelerated activity.
Holding her weapon between her teeth, Anna worked her way nearly to the end of her tough support. Throwing out her right hand, she was able to catch the big limb, at the base of which Willie, almost insensible, still huddled. Then she swung, pendulum-like, by her hands, increasing her momentum. At the right moment she released the redwood bough and flung her light body full upon the young oak. Grasping the limb with both hands, she hauled herself up beside the terrified boy.
The snake, shaken by the tumult above, wavered and stopped. As a rule, a rattlesnake, conscious of his defense, makes a good fight; but here the conditions were unusual and confusing. On level ground, where he could have coiled, and where his sensitive under surface could have slid comfortably over smooth earth, he would not have shirked combat when cornered. Now, with his enemy mysteriously above, his one idea seemed to be escape.
Willie jabbered an idiotic welcome.
"He can't strike until he gets clear here," Anna reassured him. "He can't coil."
Her rapid blows still further dismayed her antagonist. He bit viciously at the stick, touching it more than once; for the rattler's strike is deadly swift, despite his languid locomotion.
At last Anna, settling herself firmly on the limb, raised her club with both hands and delivered a slashing blow on the neck of her foe, breaking, as they afterward found, his vertebral column.
The darting head hung limp; a progressive loosening ran through the mottled coils; there was a slight rasping sound, a thud, and then a whitish heap on the ground, which Anna cleared when, swinging down by her hands to a safe distance, she leaped lightly to the ground.
Willie followed, dazed and fearful. He helped round up the cows, casting furtive glances ahead and on each side at every footstep. Before entering the house, he slunk, although still agonized with fear, through the golden twilight to the abhorred bathing-pool and the languidly fluttering cross-bars of the repudiated gingham shirt.