“You push this here dingus,” said Simmy.
Carmel promptly pushed it.
Far down the street she heard a single shout, a few maudlin words of a lumber-camp song. She stepped to the door and peered up the shadowy thoroughfare. Across the Square and perhaps two blocks away she made out a number of dark figures, straggling toward her in midstreet. She could not count accurately, but estimated there were ten or a dozen of them. She crouched in the recess of the doorway and waited. Unreality was dispelled now. She was cognizant of fact—literal, visible, potent fact.
Her sensation was not fear, but it was unpleasant. It resembled nothing in her experience so much as the feeling one has in the pit of his stomach when descending rapidly in an elevator. She could feel her knees tremble. Always she had heard this spoken of as a symbol of cowardice, and she tried to restrain their shaking.... The men approached noisily.
“Light the lights,” she said to Simmy when the men were some fifty yards distant. This was instinct—the instinct for surprise. It was excellent strategy. The men had their directions how to proceed, but in these directions no account was taken of lights turning on unexpectedly. They had been led to expect a deserted office and no resistance. They stopped abruptly and gathered in a knot to inquire the meaning of this phenomenon.
Carmel did some calculation for the first time. To reach the office the men would have to cross the area of light passing through its windows. She, herself, was in the darkness beyond. This, she thought, was as it should be.... Presently the men surged forward again, keeping closely together. Carmel stepped out of the shadows into the light, where she and her weapon must be plainly visible, and paused.
“Stop,” she called, sharply.
They stopped, then somebody laughed. The laugh touched the fuse leading to the magazine of Carmel’s anger. She blazed with the explosion of it. The laugh was a slight thing, but it caused the difference between a mere young woman holding a gun in her hands, and a young woman holding a gun in her hands which she would shoot. She stepped backward into the shadows where she could not be seen.
“Go away,” she said.
“Li’l’ girl with li’l’ shotgun,” somebody said, in a tone of interest.