Nan looked searchingly into the gloomy interior of the hut. It was now no home, whatever it may have been in the past. It was only the wreck of a dwelling.
The girl could see little at first save the bare floor, the heaps of rubbish in the corners, and the fact that the rafters of the floor above were no longer covered with boards--if ever they had been.
The ladder which led to the loft was in the far corner. There was not a stick of furniture in sight.
Suddenly Nan saw something moving in a streak of dusty sunlight that penetrated the side window. It was a pair of child's thin legs kicking in the air!
Above the knees was the little torn frock, and, looking higher, and looking aghast, Nan saw that the tiny girl was hanging by her hands from the rafters.
"Oh, my dear!" she began, and stepped over the broken sill.
Then she halted--halted as though she had been frozen in her tracks.
From the floor, almost at Nan's feet, it seemed, came a quick rustle--then a distinct rattle. The flat, brisk sound can never be mistaken, not even by one who has not heard it before. Wide-eyed, her breath leashed tight behind her teeth, Nan Sherwood stared about the floor. It was there, the coiled rattlesnake, almost under the bare, twitching soles of the hanging child's feet.
In these few passing seconds the eyes of the girl from Tillbury had become so used to the semi-gloom that she could see the fear-stricken face of the imperiled child. Horror and despair looked out of the staring eyes. Her frail arms could not long hold the weight of her body.
She must drop, and the arrogantly lifted head of the rattlesnake, crested with wrath, was ready for the stroke.
In running up the ladder to the loft the child had doubtless dislodged the rattlesnake which, upon slipping to the floor of the hut, had assumed an attitude of defense. The victim, flinging herself down between two rafters to escape, at once was in imminent danger of falling upon the angry snake.
The drop to the floor of the shack would not necessarily hurt the child, for the rafters were low. But a single injection of the poison of the serpent might be fatal.
These facts and conjectures had rushed into Nan Sherwood's mind in a flood of appreciation. She understood it all.
As well, she realized that, if the child was to be saved, she must perform the act of rescue. Before she could summon help to the spot the child's hold would slip and her tender body fall within striking distance of the snake.
Indeed, it seemed to Nan as though the little brown fingers were already slipping from the rough rafter. Her body stiffened as though she would leap forward to catch the child in her arms, as she fell.
But such a move might be fatal to herself, Nan knew. The serpent would change its tactics with lightning speed. Indeed, it sprang its rattle in warning again as though, with its beady, lidless eyes, it read Nan's mind.
The seconds passed swiftly. The child did not scream again, but her pleading gaze rested upon Nan's face. Nan was her only hope--her only possible chance of escape.
Nor did Nan fail her.
One glance the girl gave around the doorway. Then she stooped suddenly, seized upon a huge stone and hurled it at the upraised, darting crest of the snake.
Down upon the writhing coils the stone fell crushingly. The head of the snake was mashed, and the stone bounded across the floor.
Yet, as Nan leaped in with a cry and caught the falling child in her arms, a horrible thing happened.
The writhing, twisting body of the already dead snake coiled around her ankle and for that awful moment Nan was not at all sure but the poisonous creature had bitten her!
She staggered out of the hut with the child in her arms, and there fell weakly to the ground. Professor Krenner had been watching her from the car window, wondering at her recent actions. Now he leaped up and rushed out of the car. Several of the train crew came running to the spot, too, but it was the odd instructor who reached the fallen girl first, with the sobbing child beside her.
"Snake! snake!" was all the little one could gasp at first.
A brakeman ventured into the hut and kicked out the writhing body of the rattlesnake.
"Great heavens! the girl's been bitten!" cried one man.
"And she saved the kid from it," declared another.
"It can't be," said Professor Krenner, firmly. "You're not bitten, are you?" he asked Nan.
"Oh! I--I--thought I was," gasped the girl. Then she began to laugh hysterically. "But if I was the snake was dead first."
"That would not be impossible," murmured the professor.
Then he glanced at the crushed head of the rattlesnake, and felt relieved. "That thing never struck after the stone hit it!" he declared, with confidence. "You are safe, my dear."
"But she's a mighty brave girl," cried one of the railroad men. "I was watching her at the door of that old shack, and wondered what she was doing."
Professor Krenner had helped the trembling Nan to rise and beat the dust off her skirt. The little girl's sobs soon ceased when she found she was not hurt.
"Here comes the rest of the train, Bill!" exclaimed one of the men.
"All back to the cars!" ordered Bill. "All aboard--them that's goin'!"
Nan stooped and kissed the tear-stained face of the child. "I don't know who you are, honey," she crooned, "but I shall remember all the term at Lakeview that down here at this junction is a little girl I know."
"No! no!" suddenly screamed the child, throwing her arms about Nan's neck. "I want you! I want you! I want my mom to see you!"
Nan had to break away and run for the train, leaving the child screaming after her. Professor Krenner was already at the car step to help her aboard. The two parts of the train had come gently together, and had been coupled. To Nan's amazement, as she approached the cars, she beheld her chum, Bess Harley, and the arrogant Linda Riggs, sitting comfortably together in a window of the chair-car, talking "sixteen to the dozen,"
as Nan mentally expressed it. So busy was Bess, indeed, that she did not see Nan running for the train.
When the train had started, however, Bess came slowly back into the day coach.
"Let's go into the other car, Nan," she said. "Why! how rumpled you look! Did you eat all that lunch?"
"Not all," Nan replied, rather seriously. Then, as she gathered their possessions together for transportation to the chair-car she, by accident, kicked her chum's hand-bag out into the aisle. "Why! what's this?" Nan cried.
"Oh! there it is," Bess said. "The horrid thing! I didn't know what had become of it. And I was so mortified when I came to pay for my tea."
Nan looked at her aghast. "Whatever did you do?" she asked.
Bess had the grace to blush a little. But then she laughed, too.
"I will tell you," she said. "That Riggs girl isn't so bad, after all.
She saw my difficulty and she just had my forty-five cents added to her check. It was real kind of her."
"Well! I never!" was all Nan could say.
She followed Bess forward to the other car in something of a daze, bearing the bulk of their impedimenta herself. Bess Harley hobnobbing with the rude girl who had accused her, Nan, of being a thief! It seemed impossible.
"Where are you going?" Nan asked, as Bess continued up the aisle. "Here are empty seats."