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.