Had it been Jackson, the door would have been thrown open immediately. Turning his head away, Sevier fiercely whispered—
“On the bed.”
And plucking a knife from his belt he tossed it on the straw.
“I can make you out now!” hissed Polcher, reaching his pistol far between the bars. “—— you! This is where I win!”
He fired and found his arm caught in an iron grip. A hand was fumbling at his head. He essayed to throw it off but decided its efforts were weak and futile, and he believed he had wounded his man. To make sure he reached his free hand for his second pistol. The grip on his right wrist was amazingly strong for a wounded man. A panic seized him as the pistol caught. Then something touched the back of his neck, pressed against the sides, began crowding his Adam’s apple. He tried to shriek. From a great distance came Sevier’s metallic voice, crying:
“So you’ll bother Bonnie Kate, eh? You killed an eagle out of season. It spoiled your medicine. The noose, you know—”
McGillivray of the Creeks stood in front of the big house when a muffled shot rang out. There followed no outcry, yet the shot was a sinister omen to the emperor’s moody train of thought. He could not locate the sound but believed it came from the direction of Sevier’s cabin. He walked in that direction until he met a warrior. Of him he asked—
“Where is the man Polcher?”
“He stands at the window of the cabin, talking with the white man,” answered the warrior. “I heard a gun shoot. I ran to look and found him. I spoke and asked him if anything was the matter. He didn’t speak. Just stood with his face against the bars. There were no other guards there.”
Instantly suspicious that the tavern-keeper was planning to play him false, having been won over by the borderer’s magnetism, the emperor ordered: