“Don’t cry out, don’t speak!” she said in a whisper.
The woman dropped her arms and turned her head away with a startled and terrified expression on her careworn face.
“Don’t be frightened,” said Esmeralda in the lowest of whispers. “I am not going to shoot you—but you can pretend I am—I mean to escape, and you may as well help me, while pretending not to. Don’t speak! You’re a woman like myself; think of what your friends would be suffering if you had been carried off as I have been—if you were in the same danger as I am! It is of them I am thinking more than myself, and I mean to get away.”
The woman trembled, though more in fear of the men than Esmeralda, as Esmeralda felt.
“You can’t,” she said, hoarsely. “There’s the man outside.”
Esmeralda backed behind the door, still covering the woman with the revolver.
“Call him in,” she said in a whisper. “Offer him supper, a drink.”
The woman stood stolidly silent for a moment, and Esmeralda watched her with a fast-beating heart. Was she going to refuse, or going to give the alarm? It was a moment of suspense which seemed to spin into years, for she knew that if her attempt failed her life would pay the forfeit. Her eyes were fixed upon the woman’s face with an imploration in them more eloquent than any spoken prayer could have been; it was woman pleading to woman for help against their natural foe—man.
The struggle that was going on within the woman’s mind was clearly depicted on her face. She hesitated for another moment, then she said in a voice of affected carelessness:
“Bill, you’d better come in and have something to eat and drink.”