“Didn’t I tell you he wouldn’t stand any of your nonsense, M’liss?” said the guard testily.
M’liss only repeated her question.
“And what if I did kill him?” said the prisoner savagely; “what’s that to you, you young hell-cat? Guard!—damnation!—what do you let her come here for? Do you hear? Guard!” he screamed, rising in a transport of passion, “take her away! fling her downstairs! What the h—ll is she doing here?”
“If you was the man that killed McSnagley,” said M’liss, without heeding the interruption, “I’ve brought you something;” and she drew the bottle from under her apron and extended it to Waters, adding, “It’s brandy—Cognac—A1.”
“Take it away, and take yourself with it,” returned Waters, without abating his angry accents. “Take it away! do you hear?”
“Well, that’s what I call ongrateful, dog-gone my skin if it ain’t,” said the guard, who had been evidently struck with M’liss’s generosity. “Pass the licker this way, my beauty, and I’ll keep it till he changes his mind. He’s naturally a little flustered just now, but he’ll come round after you go.”
But M’liss didn’t accede to this change in the disposition of the gift, and was evidently taken aback by her reception and the refusal of the proffered comfort.
“Come, hand the bottle here!” repeated the guard. “It’s agin rules to bring the pris’ner anything, anyway, and it’s confiscated to the law. It’s agin the rules, too, to ask a pris’ner any question that’ll criminate him, and on the whole you’d better go, M’liss,” added the guard, to whom the appearance of the bottle had been the means of provoking a spasm of discipline.
But M’liss refused to make over the coveted treasure. Bill arose half jestingly and endeavored to get possession of the bottle. A struggle ensued, good-naturedly on the part of the guard, but characterized on the part of M’liss by that half-savage passion which any thwarted whim or instinct was sure to provoke in her nature. At last with a curse she freed herself from his grasp, and seizing the bottle by the neck aimed it with the full strength of her little arm fairly at his head. But he was quick enough to avert that important object, if not quick enough to save his shoulder from receiving the strength of the blow, which shattered the thin glass and poured the fiery contents of the bottle over his shirt and breast, saturating his clothes, and diffusing a sharp alcoholic odor through the room.
A forced laugh broke from his lips, as he sank back on the mattress, not without an underlying sense of awe at this savage girl who stood panting before him, and from whom he had just escaped a blow which might have been fatal. “It’s a pity to waste so much good licker,” he added, with affected carelessness, narrowly watching each movement of the young pythoness, whose rage was not yet abated.