"Ten o'clock."
"Then we've got just about an hour, eh?"
"Just about. But we're a long ways off yet. Git all y'u can out o' them mules. Kill 'em if y'u have to get them there on time."
"They're doin' all they can. Y'u don't want me to kill them before we get there, do y'u?" asked the driver crossly.
"No, but if y'u miss the bunch y'u know what will happen. Shan ain't much on the sweet temper since the kid bumped him so hard, an' he don't like y'u too well, nohow. I'm just givin' y'u a friendly tip."
"Keep it. I ain't so stuck on Shan myself as I used to be."
"Only don't let him know it. We ain't none of us in love with him, an' yet we come up an' eat out o' his hand when he calls us, just like a lot o' hound dogs."
The conversation told Stella the truth she had dreaded. She had been captured by Shan Rhue's ruffians, and she knew that she was in a precarious predicament, for she could hope for no mercy from Ted's merciless and beaten enemy.
She would be used to punish Ted, and she sighed at the thought of what grief her disappearance would cause her aunt and the boys.
Suddenly the curtain on the window was drawn aside. It was bright moonlight without, and in it she saw the villainous face of a man looking in upon her.