He stepped boldly around the green barrier, and his first glance told him she was lying there still asleep; but the consciousness of another presence held him from going away.  There, coiled on the ground with venomous fangs extended and eyes glittering like slimy jewels, was a rattlesnake, close beside her.

For a second he gazed with a kind of fascinated horror, and his brain refused to act.  Then he knew he must do something, and at once.  He had read of serpents and travellers’ encounters with them, but no memory of what was to be done under such circumstances came.  Shoot?  He dared not.  He would be more likely to kill the girl than the serpent, and in any event would precipitate the calamity.  Neither was there any way to awaken the girl and drag her from peril, for the slightest movement upon her part would bring the poisoned fangs upon her.

He cast his eyes about for some weapon, but there was not a stick or a stone in sight.  He was a good golf-player; if he had a loaded stick, he could easily take the serpent’s head off, he thought; but there was no stick.  There was only one hope, he felt, and that would be to attract the creature to himself; and he hardly dared move lest the fascinated gaze should close upon the victim as she lay there sweetly sleeping, unaware of her new peril.

Suddenly he knew what to do.  Silently he stepped back out of sight, tore off his coat, and then cautiously approached the snake again, holding the coat up before him.  There was an instant’s pause when he calculated whether the coat could drop between the snake and the smooth brown arm in front before the terrible fangs would get there; and then the coat dropped, the man bravely holding one end of it as a wall between the serpent and the girl, crying to her in an agony of frenzy to awaken and run.

There was a terrible moment in which he realized that the girl was saved and he himself was in peril of death, while he held to the coat till the girl was on her feet in safety.  Then he saw the writhing coil at his feet turn and fasten its eyes of fury upon him.  He was conscious of being uncertain whether his fingers could let go the coat, and whether his trembling knees could carry him away before the serpent struck; then it was all over, and he and the girl were standing outside the sage-brush, with the sound of the pistol dying away among the echoes, and the fine ache of his arm where her fingers had grasped him to drag him from danger.

The serpent was dead.  She had shot it.  She took that as coolly as she had taken the bird in its flight.  But she stood looking at him with great eyes of gratitude, and he looked at her amazed that they were both alive, and scarcely understanding all that had happened.

The girl broke the stillness.

“You are what they call a ‘tenderfoot,’” she said significantly.

“Yes,” he assented humbly, “I guess I am.  I couldn’t have shot it to save anybody’s life.”