THE HERO
Then he saw. A dozen feet or so ahead of him stood Hope Stillmore, her
form in an attitude of recoiling, her face depicting an unspeakable
terror, as she tried to drag her foot out of one of those piles of
tangled brush. Her dainty silk stocking was torn and her ankle was
bleeding. Her recoiling posture, as she tugged and wrenched was
appalling to witness. Such panic fright Pee-wee had never seen on human
countenance before.
Sticking right up out of the middle of the pile and swaying menacingly
was a hissing snake with tongue darting like forked lightning. Its
motion was backward and forward and the noise it made was like escaping
steam. Each forward movement of that supple, loathsome body seemed to
shorten the distance between the flat, scaly head with its little, beady
eyes, and the frantic, terror-stricken, struggling girl. And all the
while the rattling sound continued, muffled somewhat by the pile in
which it was embedded. There was no doubt that the reptile was about to
spring; each movement seemed to leave the attack for the next movement.
The girl’s struggles and suspense were heart-rending.
“Look away and don’t move,” Pee-wee said excitedly, at the same time
pulling his khaki shirt up over his head.
“I can’t! _I can’t!_” Hope cried frantically; “I’m caught! Oh, help,
_help_!”
“Don’t look at him and stop calling; look away,” Pee-wee said.
She averted her head but kept tugging. She was conscious of Pee-wee
moving. Her heart beat like a hammer. Suddenly she heard the hissing
louder, then it ended in a kind of smothered spasm. She thought that her
little comrade had been bitten till she heard him say, cheerily:
“Now I’ve got him; _oh, boy_, I’ve got him good! That shows you that I’m
a scout all right,” he added with frank vanity.
The girl, half dead with fright, looked around and beheld a strange
sight. With his left hand Pee-wee was holding a long stick on the end of
which was wound his shirt. It looked like a mop. In this were buried the
fangs of the deadly reptile. But its death-dealing power was over. Its
venom was spent for the time being, on the khaki negligee of Pee-wee
Harris, scout of the first class.
It might have bitten the girl and left no more than a smarting cut after
that. But even that balm was denied it, for while the sturdy little
scout let it spend its poison on the proffered bait, he struck blow
after blow with an end of a branch which he wielded with his right arm.
The whole thing happened all in an instant and left Hope Stillmore
gasping.
“You—you—did you—you—kill it?” she panted, looking in fearful horror at
the results of Pee-wee’s merciless attack. Her chest was heaving, and
she could hardly speak. “Are you—you—sure—you—he’s dead?”
“_Sure_, he’s dead. Gee whiz, he couldn’t be deader. Don’t you know you
must never look straight at a rattlesnake? He would have gone away only
he probably has a nest there. He didn’t bite you, did he?” he added
anxiously, looking at her cut ankle.
“No, oh no,” she said, exhausted and almost reeling from fear. “Help me
out, I’m going to fall.”
He parted the tangled brush into which her foot had sunken and been held
as in a trap. And she leaned on him, small though he was and thus walked
a few paces and sat down all but hysterical upon a log. Perhaps she
_would_ have given way to hysterics, but seeing her sturdy little
rescuer standing before her, still armed with his implements of war,
which he evidently cherished, she was moved to laughter. And so she
laughed and cried at the same time, which was a stunt that neither
Pee-wee nor any other boy could do.
“Oh, you look so _funny_!” she said, smiling while her eyes streamed.
Perhaps he did look funny, standing there like some doughty knight of
old, minus his shirt, but with the look of a hero on his countenance,
and his mop and his deadly cudgel over his shoulder. But anyway, Hope
Stillmore laughed while she still gulped and cried.
For just as I told you, it was the fate of Pee-wee to be laughed at.
People never thought of what he did, but how he looked. He was amusing,
above all. Perhaps if Straw-hat Braggen had killed the snake (if you can
imagine such a thing) pretty Miss Hope Stillmore would have been soberly
grateful and called him “just simply wonderful” and a hero. But she
laughed at Pee-wee.
And there you are.