The outlaw came up out of the cellar, and rummaged where Judy had said. Securing several small pieces of silverware, he came back into the front room. Then for the first time he noticed the gun, with its bright mountings, which stood in the corner, and walking towards it, he remarked, “That gun’s mine.”
“No,” replied Widow Molly, her affection rising as she thought of him to whom the gun belonged. “You can have anything else. That’s a friend’s gun.”
He took it, and Widow Molly, who had already stepped across the room, seized the gun, and with one strong, quick twist, wrested it from him. Setting it back in the corner, she replied, “That you can’t have as long as I can defend it.”
One of the outlaws who had been keeping her prisoner now tried the same game. All the woman’s soul again stirred within her. She wrested the gun from him, but the struggle was hard and long.
“I tell you,” she said, as she fell back with the gun in her possession—“I tell you,” she repeated between breaths, “that’s a friend’s gun, and I’ll defend it. You can’t have it.”
Then with the gun in her hand she walked directly across the room into an adjoining one, and set the gun behind the door.
In the meantime the leader passed from room to room to see what valuables had been found. The outlaws put into their pockets a few nondescript articles that struck their fancy, but nothing of any great value, and they had searched through everything. For some time there had been cursing at their want of luck, but now that it had become disappointment, their blasphemy was frightful. The whole gang came tramping down the stairs, swearing and threatening in ugly mood, and filed into the front room. Widow Molly, who stood at the farthest side, grew deathly white.
They will now, thought she, resort to some desperate scheme. She took a long, deep breath, and then caught it to stop the flutter of her bosom. “And no one comes!” she almost said aloud in her emotion.
All through the time of their ransacking, she had felt that they would be surprised in their robbery by a company of the townsmen, or that, perchance, some body of horsemen would ride up. Now that hope was wholly gone.