“One whose authority is sufficient for me.”
“But not for me,” she cried. I turned, and found to my surprise that she had come to my side, and was staring with fixed intensity into the man’s face. “Not for me,” she repeated.
“You must be prepared to accompany me, madame, nevertheless, and I trust you will come at once, and without causing trouble. We are three to one, sir, and fully armed; resistance will be useless,” he added to me.
“If you were thirty to one I would not give way unless you produced your authority,” I answered, my blood beginning to heat under his manner and tone.
“I ask you for the last time, madame, to come with me,” and, with a sign to the others, he made ready to attack me.
“Aye, for the last time,” said my companion, between her teeth, and before I could guess her intention, she gave a startling proof of her desperate resource and deadly recklessness.
With a suddenness that took me entirely by surprise, she snatched the revolver from me, and levelling it with quick aim, she fired two shots in rapid succession with deadly effect, for the two men standing near us fell dead at our feet, shot through the head. The third, who had kept near the door, with a coward’s prudence, took to his heels incontinently, and left us alone with the dead.
“Good God! what have you done?” I cried, aghast at her deed. “These men were soldiers.”
She laughed into my scared face.
“You don’t suppose death counts for much in this country. This is only spy carrion,” and with the utmost sang-froid she stooped and rifled the pockets of the dead leader, turning the body over for the purpose, and took from his pocket a paper which she held up for me to read. “I was sure of it.”