"Hello!" said the younger stranger, "I thought you were carrying a child. It's a woman!"
An hour passed. The woman in the corner seemed to sleep; Celeste, too, slumbered. When I asked Suzanne, softly, if she was asleep, she would silently shake her head. The men went on with their task, not speaking. At last they finished, divided the balls between them, put them into a leather pouch at their belt, and the father, rising, said:
"Let us go. It is time."
Maggie raised her head. The elder man went and got his gun and loaded it with two balls, and while the younger was muffling himself in an old blanket-overcoat such as we give to plantation negroes, moved towards the door and was about to pass out. But quicker than lightning Maggie had raised the window, snatched a pistol from her belt, and fired. The two men stood rooted, the elder frowning at Maggie. Tom rose and showed two rows of teeth.
"What did you fire that pistol for? What signal are you giving?"
"That is understood at the flatboat," said Maggie, tranquilly. "I was to fire if you left the house. You started, I fired, and that's all."
"——! And did you know, by yourself, what we were going to do?"
"I haven't a doubt. You were simply going to attack and rob the flatboat."
A second oath, fiercer than the first, escaped the man's lips. "You talk that way to me! Do you forget that you're in my power?"
"Ah! Do you think so?" cried Maggie, resting her fists on her hips. "Ah, ha, ha!" That was the first time I ever heard her laugh—and such a laugh! "Don't you know, my dear sir, that at one turn of my hand this dog will strangle you like a chicken? Don't you see four of us here armed to the teeth, and at another signal our comrades yonder ready to join us in an instant? And besides, this minute they are rolling a little cannon up to the bow of the boat. Go, meddle with them, you'll see." She lied, but her lie averted the attack. She quietly sat down again and paid the scoundrel not the least attention.