Vic had hobbled obligingly down there to get cool water for the plump lady who was Holman Sommers’ sister, and he had nearly stepped on a sleepy rattler stretched out in the sun.  Vic was making a collection of rattles.  He had one set, so far, of five rattles and a “button.”  He wanted to get these which were buzzing stridently enough for three snakes, it seemed to Vic.  He was hopping around on his good foot and throwing rocks; and the snake, having retreated to a small heap of loose cobblestones, was thrusting his head out in vicious little striking gestures, and keeping the scaly length of him bidden.

“Wait a minute, I’ll get him, Vic,” called Helen May, suddenly anxious to show off her newly acquired skill with firearms.  Starr had told her that lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off.  She wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two.  So she rode up as close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound; pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired at the snake’s head.

You have heard, no doubt, of “fool’s luck.”  Helen May actually tore the whole top off that rattlesnake’s head (though I may as well say right here that she never succeeded in shooting another snake) and rode nonchalantly on to the cabin as though she had done nothing at all unusual, but smiling to herself at Vic’s slack-jawed amazement at seeing her on horseback, with a gun and such uncanny skill in the use of it.

She felt better after that, and she rather enjoyed the plump sister of Holman Sommers.  The plump sister called him Holly, and seemed to be inordinately proud of his learning and inordinately fond of nagging at him over little things.  She was what Helen May called a vegetable type of woman.  She did not seem to have any great emotions in her make-up.  She sat in the one rocking-chair under the mesquite tree and crocheted lace and talked comfortably about Holly and her chickens in the same breath, and frankly admired Helen May’s “spunk” in living out alone like that.

“Don’t overlook Vic, though,” Helen May put in generously.  “I honestly don’t believe I could stand it without Vic.”

The plump sister seemed unimpressed.  “In this country,” she said with a certain snug positiveness that was the keynote of her personality, “it’s the women that have the courage.  They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t have.  Think how close we are to the Mexican border, for instance.  Anything that is horrible to woman can come out of Mexico.  Not that I look down on them over there,” she added, with a complacent tolerance in her tone.  “They are victims of the System that has kept them degraded and ignorant.  But until they are lifted up and educated and raised to our standards they are bad.

“You can’t get around it, Holly, those ignorant Mexicans are bad!” She had lifted her eyes accusingly to where Holman Sommers sat on the ground with his knees drawn up and his old Panama hat hung upon them.  He was smoking a pipe, and he did not remove it from his mouth; but Helen May saw that amused quirk of the lips just the same.