At last a man snatched up a stick with a burning end. Instantly a dozen others followed his example. Loseis knocked out a pane of glass with her elbow; and put the barrel of her gun through the hole.
But the Slavis never reached the store. Something caused them to freeze where they stood. The whole mad, shifting scene suddenly became fixed like a picture. Then they dropped their torches and fled; vanishing in the silent manner peculiar to themselves. You could scarcely see how it happened; you looked again, and they were not there. A moment or two after the sound had reached their ears it came to Loseis within the house. It was the distant pounding of many hoofs on the trail.
When Gault and his men rode into the little square, Loseis was standing at the open door of the store. She still had the gun over her arm. Gault flung himself off his horse.
“Good God! what has happened?” he cried. “I heard the racket clear to my camp, and jumped on my horse. Are you hurt?”
Loseis slowly shook her head.
“Is any damage done?”
Loseis indicated the empty jugs lying scattered about. “None; except that my father’s whisky has been drunk up,” she said dryly.
“My God!” cried Gault. “The brutes! I hated to leave you this afternoon, but I didn’t expect to see my fears materialize this way. Now you see, don’t you, that I was right. You cannot be left here alone.”
Loseis did not speak. She looked at him steadily, her lips curving in a slow smile of scorn. She was thinking: Let him babble! It only makes him out a fool. I shall not tell him all I know. To keep silence gives me a power over him.