Miss Schuyler followed her to the table, where several rifles were lying beside a big box of cartridges, and Hetty took one of them up.
“You push this slide back, and drop the cartridge in,” she said. “Now it has gone into this pipe here, and you drop in another. Get hold, and push them in until you can’t get in any more. Why—it can’t hurt you—your hands are shaking!”
There was a rattle, and the venomous, conical-headed cartridge slipped from Miss Schuyler’s fingers. She had never handled one before, and it seemed to her that a horrible, evil potency was bound up in that insignificant roll of metal. Then, while the rifle click-clacked in Hetty’s hands, Torrance stood by the window holding up a handkerchief. He called out sharply, and there was a murmur of derision in the darkness outside.
“Come out!” said a hoarse voice. “We’ll give you a minute. Then you can have a sleigh to drive to perdition in.”
The laughter that followed frightened Miss Schuyler more than any threats would have done. It seemed wholly horrible, and there was a hint in it of the fierce exultation of men driven to desperation.
“That wouldn’t suit me,” said Torrance. “What do you want here, any way?”
“Food,” somebody answered. “You wanted to starve us, Torrance, and rode us out when we went chopping stove wood in the bluff. Well, you don’t often miss your supper at the Range, and there’s quite enough of it to make a decent blaze. You haven’t much of that minute left. Are you coming out?”
“No,” said Torrance briefly, and, dropping the handkerchief, moved from the window.
The next moment there was a flash in the darkness, and something came whirring into the room. The girls could not see it, but they heard the thud it struck with and saw a chip start from the cedar panelling. Then, there was a rush of feet, and twice a red streak blazed from the window. A man jerked a cartridge, which fell with a rattle from his rifle, and a little blue smoke blew across the room. Flora Schuyler shivered as the acrid fumes of it drifted about her, but Hetty stood very straight, with one hand on the rim of the table.
“Got nobody, and they’re into the shadow now,” said a man disgustedly, and Flora Schuyler, seeing his face, which showed a moment fierce and brutish as he turned, felt that she could not forget it, and most illogically hated him.