Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.

The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and the early part of the afternoon had pa.s.sed away before he realised it.

In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day.

It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared, and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a glance to what order they belonged.

"As tough a crowd of claim-jumpers as I have seen," he murmured to himself as he watched their movements. They did not seem very decided or certain, nor well agreed amongst themselves. There were six in all, and they advanced towards the house in a loitering way, pausing once or twice to talk with each other, and glancing over the cabin. They were all dressed alike, in large slouch hats, thick boots and high leggings, and short coats with a belt round the waist, from which depended their enormous six-shooters. As they finally, in their loitering fashion, neared the door, Talbot walked to it, threw it wide open, and asked them what they wanted. They hung back from the door a little and looked at each other, and then one said he had a lease on the claims from General Marshall.

"I am the only person who has power or authority to give a lease on these claims," returned Talbot in a short, hard voice.

The men hesitated. Talbot looked pretty tough himself as he stood there facing them, clothed in buckskin from head to foot, his head nearly touching the lintel of the doorway above him, his revolver on his side, and behind him looming the tunnel, a gaping mouth of blackness.

The men shuffled their feet on the snow and grinned at each other uneasily. It did not seem they could work the game of bluff here that they had thought out in the town.

"Well, that's your opinion," returned the leader in a bantering tone, while the others closed in nearer the threshold in a jeering circle; "but a lease from General Marshall's good enough for us, and I guess we're coming in."

"You'd better try it," returned Talbot, and he slammed to the heavy door in their faces, and fastened it on the inside.

He expected them to force it, and he hastily dragged together some sacks of rich dirt that were lying in the tunnel and piled them up, forming quite a respectable barricade. Behind these he took his stand, his revolver in his hand. With six against one he felt they must win in the end, but he thought he could put a bullet through half of their number as they advanced, and he'd sell his claim and his life dear.

He waited some moments, but nothing happened. There was silence outside, and after a second or two he stepped back to his sitting-room and looked out of the window. A council of war was taking place seemingly. The men had all withdrawn to a little distance, where there was some old tin piping. They had seated themselves on this, and were now in earnest conversation. Talbot stood at the window and watched them with a dry smile. He could tell their talk almost from their expressions and their gestures. It was one thing to come up and bluff a man out of his property, and walk in and take it as he walked out; and another to force a narrow tunnel against the straight, steady fire of a fearless devil like this. They could overpower him in the end, there was no doubt of that; but then when they walked in it would be over his dead body, that was clear, and several others besides him, for he was known to be the quickest, straightest shot in the district, and could certainly get away with some of them. It was this part they did not like, for each man felt he might be the one to be picked off and stretched stiff in the tunnel.

So there was considerable parleying and hesitation amongst them, and Talbot stood motionless at the window watching them as they sat there, and noting the length of their six-shooters that dangled down the sides of their legs. At last there was a concerted movement amongst them: they got up with one accord, and without another glance at the cabin walked slowly away across the plateau in front of the house and round the corner of it towards the town trail, the way they had come. Talbot watched them disappear in the grey light of the gulch with surprise, and then drew a deep breath. He hardly knew whether he felt relieved or disappointed. His blood was up then, and he would have liked to send a bullet through a few of them. He roamed about restlessly for some time, and went to the back of the house to a little square window, and from there watched the last of them mount the trail and disappear from the gulch. Then all was silence and solitude again, in the swiftly falling darkness. He turned into his sitting-room, and stirred the fire into a blaze and lighted up the lamps--his lamps always burned well and brightly, being kept scientifically clean and trimmed with his own hands,--then he flung himself into a chair and sat there gazing into the flames, his revolver beside him on the table. He half expected the men to return, and his ears remained attentive to the slightest sound without. But there was nothing, absolute stillness reigned all around him; not a crackle of the frosted snow nor the fall of a leaf broke the grave-like silence.

When the other two came in, he told his afternoon's adventure in the quietest, simplest way possible, and the fewest words. The girl listened with flushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

"What fun!" she said at last when he had finished, and kicking off her snow-laden boots as she sat by the stove. "And you held off six men by the 'power of your eye?' what a convenient eye that is! I don't see you've any need to carry a six-shooter! I wish they'd come back to-night, we'd give them something of a reception."

Talbot laughed, and looked pleased at the praise from her bright young lips. Stephen only looked anxious.

That night they sat up rather later than usual, and Katrine was quite in a pleased state of expectation. No visitors made their appearance, however, and at last Talbot left to go to his own cabin.

"Now, if they come in the night," remarked Katrine, laughing, as she said good-night, "don't slay them all with your eye, mind, but give me a chance."

Talbot promised to use his eye mercifully, and Katrine and Stephen put their lights out and went to bed.

It seemed to Katrine she had been asleep some time, when she awoke suddenly and put her hand on her husband's arm. "Steve, I hear steps."

"Nonsense," murmured Stephen, drowsily; "it's your fancy. Go to sleep."

But Katrine's ears were like those of a wild animal, quick and not to be deceived.

"Go to sleep yourself, if you can," she retorted, and sprang up in the darkness, found her day clothes, and hustled them on. There was silence now outside, but Katrine hurried all she could, and then with one revolver in her belt and one in her hand went into the other room.

Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there was a crash, a sound of tearing and splitting wood, and the door was crushed inward, letting in a blast of icy air. There was pitch darkness within and without.

Katrine answered immediately by two shots fired in succession; there was a heavy groan, a muttered curse, and some shuffling of feet outside.

Katrine, standing flat against the wall to avoid offering a mark for wandering shots, chuckled inwardly and waited. A second later a shot came in return, but the bullet went high. Katrine heard it whizz into the wood somewhere between the wall and roof.

She stood motionless, listening. Just in front of her, on the other side of the room, was the stove, and in this there still glowed an unextinguished portion of log, making one small spot of blood red in the surrounding darkness. Katrine fixed her eye on this glowing spot. To enter farther into the cabin the men must pa.s.s between it and her. She raised one of her revolvers into a line with it. When that spot was obliterated, she would know, however silently they moved, the enemy had advanced, and in that second she meant to fire; the stove was high, and a man pa.s.sing in front of it would have that red spot in a line with his heart.

With her heart beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim part.i.tion on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession that tried to pa.s.s her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside and a trampling of feet on the broken wood of the door, and then suddenly the soft red fire spot was eclipsed in the total darkness around, and on the instant Katrine's finger had pulled the trigger.

There was no groan this time after the shot, only a heavy thud and a crash as a falling body struck some fire-irons by the stove. The red spot glowed out of the darkness again and stared Katrine cheerfully in the eyes. There was a confusion of voices outside: Katrine could hear the thick oaths and one man apparently enjoining another to come out of there and have done with the business. Katrine smiled as she heard. She guessed that the man addressed was the one that lay now between her and the stove, and his ears were for ever closed. In the same moment she heard the inner door open, and for an instant Stephen appeared, pale and in his night clothes and with a flaring candle in his hand. With a spring like a leopard Katrine had reached him and put her hand over the flame of the candle, crushing it out beneath her palm. The darkness she knew was their only shield. By their voices and their footsteps she could tell the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl, they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It was the fears of the besiegers now simply that was protecting the besieged.

"Go back," she said, with her lips on his ear, "unless you can find a pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door again.

She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the stove, and listened; there was still a sc.r.a.ping of feet and muttering of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side.

Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the ball came through the window behind her and pa.s.sed over her shoulder; there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side, a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart.

She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with the sickness of the thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst them--and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed, roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room, he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a moment the three faces, all pale with fear and anxiety, not for themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.

"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I might kill you."

She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to rea.s.sure herself they were really there alive.

Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.

"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."

"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs together.

"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added, looking at her with admiring eyes.

"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.

Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred, as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen, rea.s.sured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then went over to him, putting an arm softly round his neck.

"What is it, Steve, dear? you weren't hurt, were you?"

"Oh, to have killed him! to have killed a man, how horrible!" muttered Stephen, without lifting his head.

Katrine looked amazed. "Well, but he would have killed us if he could,"

she answered. "You kill a mosquito if it annoys you, and that's right.

You only kill a man if he tries to kill you, that's quite fair."

"But a murderer!" and Stephen shuddered. She felt the shiver of horror under her hand.

"Isn't it better to be a murderer than murdered?" she asked, with a little smile, feeling she had an unanswerable argument.

"Murdered, your body is killed, murderer, your soul," came back in the same stifled voice.

Katrine was silent. She was thinking what a nuisance it was to have a soul that needed so much looking after, never seemed to do any good, and was always obtruding itself and spoiling your best moments of fun in this life.

"We'll take him away," she said softly, after a minute, noticing that Stephen kept his fingers closely locked over his eyes, as if to shut out some fearful sight. "Talbot, let's take him out," she said to their companion, who stood with his back to the fire watching them. Stephen made no sign.

Talbot and the girl walked over to the body. It was stiffening rapidly, and the wide-open eyes glared up gla.s.sily to the black rafters of the cabin.

"Might this be useful?" said Talbot, stooping over the man and half drawing the second large revolver from his belt.

"No, take nothing," answered Katrine, hastily; "we want nothing."

Talbot let the weapon slide back to its place, and they both bent down and lifted the corpse between them. Talbot walked backwards over the cabin door behind him. It was dark outside--a thick, pitchy darkness, with only a grey glare close to the ground from the snow.