She was looking at him with that admiration, so essentially feminine, of his valor, his ready hand, his fierce spirit. "So ye j'ined in?" she said, smiling.
"Ef firin' a dozen pistol-shots be j'inin' in," he replied, his eye alight at the recollection.
She changed color. "War ennybody hurt?" she quavered.
"Listen at the female 'oman!" he exclaimed, in exasperation, because of the contradictions of sentiment she presented. "Fairly dotes on the idee o' other folks a-fightin', an' yit can't abide the notion o' nobody gittin' hurt! The Guthries hev the name o' shootin' straight, Litt Pettingill, an' I'd be powerful 'shamed ef in twelve shots I done no damage. 'Tain't been my policy nor my practice ter waste lead an' powder."
He stood leaning against the post, vainly speculating concerning the probable execution of his revolvers when he had escaped, firing them with both hands. It was for a moment with absent, unseeing eyes that he mechanically regarded her, but the image that had so great a fascination for him presently broke through the absorptions of his retrospect, and asserted itself anew—so dainty, so blithe, so bird-like, so lightly swaying as she sat in the rocking-chair.
Her association with these incongruous elements of suspected fraud, and ill-favored deeds, and unfitting companions seemed a profanity, and his eager wish to have her removed far from them, shielded, inaccessible, was renewed.
"Mr. Shattuck hain't got no need o' you-uns, Litt, ter pertect him," he urged, suddenly. "He'd laff at the idee, ef he warn't ashamed of it; ennybody o' yer size an' sex a-settin' out ter pertect a able-bodied man from rifle-balls."
He looked down at her with a laugh of ridicule and a sneering eye, calculated to put out of countenance her valorous intention.
She said nothing; but determination, immobility, could hardly have had more adequate expression than in her face, her soft and delicate lips closed fast, her eyes bright and fearless.
"But shucks!"—he sought to make light of it—"Shattuck ain't a-goin' ter kem agin ter the Leetle People's buryin'-groun'—leastwise not when Mis' Yates be out an' stirrin'." A dim prospect of organizing a nocturnal expedition for Shattuck's assistance was shaping itself in his mind. "She can't be on watch night and day."