“Shall he now, Thomas Kite, shall he?” answered the long scarecrow eagerly. Bending with a grotesque writhe, he jerked himself suddenly stiff again, a staring smile on his face. “Cometh our chance long sought, Thomas Kite,” he whispered. “Shall the Cuckoo always claim the Cuckoo’s share? Not if one be quick and clever, gossip.”
He squeaked, and leaping, dodged and screwed behind the other. The Queen, knife in hand, her teeth set, her muscles rigid, was almost upon them. As she lifted her arm, the stubby rogue ran under, and caught her round the waist.
She struck and struck at him, but her shortened blows fell harmless. She could not get one home so long as he held her thus, and he knew it and cried out, straining:
“Cut me the whelp’s throat, Jake Andrews, and so get behind her.”
The boy, terror-struck and whimpering, held to his mother’s skirts. With a mortal effort, she wrenched herself free from her captor, and, throwing down her blade, which Jake instantly secured, seized the child convulsively into her clutch.
“No, no!” she cried, “I am disarmed. In God’s name spare him! See, we will stand like the wretched sheep, dumbly beseeching your mercy. There, take all I have—my jewels——”
She began, with feverish fingers, to unclasp the collet from her neck. Jake, leering and humping his shoulders, stopped her mid-way.
“What now,” growled the Kite; “shall they not be ours, then?”
“Patience, good gossip, patience!” said the other softly in his ear. “Would not the Cuckoo, returning, note at once their absence, and so be moved to fury? No suspicion, Thomas Kite—none. Lull him, lull him, and then—one blow, and all is ours—wine, jewels, gold, and—hum!” He hugged himself, gluttonously contorted. “Is not a half share better than a third,” he said, “or none at all? And as for the little pretty, pleasant tit-bit——”
The Kite roared out suddenly on the captives: