For a moment he brought himself back with a start, back to a full realization of the place. But again the drowsiness gained on him.
“We've got guns now; guns and ammunition,” thought he. “We--could pick them off--from the windows. Pick them--off--pick--them--off--”
He slept. Thus, often, wounded soldiers sleep, with troubled dreams, on the verge of renewed battle which may mean their death, their long and wakeless slumber.
He slept. And the girl, laying his gashed head gently back upon the pile of furs, bent over him with infinite compassion. For a long minute, hardly breathing, she watched him there. More quickly came her breath. A strange new light shone in her eyes.
“Only for me, those wounds!” she whispered slowly. “Only for me!”
Taking his head in both her hands, she kissed him as he lay unconscious. Kissed him twice, and then a third time.
Then she arose.
Quickly, as though with some definite plan, she chose from among their store of utensils a large copper kettle, one which he had brought her the week before from the little Broadway shop.
She took a long rawhide rope, braided by Stern during their long evenings together. This she knotted firmly to the bale of the kettle.
The revolvers, fully reloaded, she examined with care. One of them she laid beside the sleeper. The other she slid into her full, warm bosom, where the clinging tiger-skin held it ready for her hand.