"You'll eat with a fork, Molly," said Plimsoll. "Those steel knives are too handy for you. There's a nasty look in those blue eyes of yours that will have to be tamed—have to be tamed," he repeated as he took a demijohn from a corner and poured out a liquor that sent the reek of its raw strength sickeningly through the cabin. "Here's to your health, Molly—Molly Mine!"
The others laughed and drank their share before they ate the food that Cookie placed before them, talking louder, growing flushed with the crude whisky, while Molly sat facing the door, striving to catch something that might help, might give some clue. But the talk was all of the brawl at the Waterline with contemptuous mention of Wyatt and the rest. They seemed by common consent to ignore her once she had refused the food.
This attitude weakened her resistance though she strove against it. She had nerved herself to meet action. Now she seemed to count for little more than a bundle, of more or less value, that, having been secured, could wait its time for utility. Yet, before she had telescoped her vision to extend through and beyond Plimsoll, she had seen devils looking from his eyes, smug devils, but none the less menacing, risen from the man's own private hell pit.
Plimsoll looked at his watch.
"The horses should be showing up pretty soon," he said and rose, a little unsteadily. The effects of the liquor were patent on all of them. "Butch, you and Hahn go down with Cookie and keep 'em down at the south end. Get 'em to turn the horses loose. And get them out of the place as soon as you can after they've eaten. Better take what stuff you want, Cookie."
"I suppose you'd be jealous if we stuck around," said Butch, leering now at Molly. The whisky seemed to have been an acid test for his features, dissolving all that was not brutal. Hahn's cold sneering face was none the less evil.
"How long do you want us to give you, Plim?" asked the dealer. "No sense in our sticking round here that I can see."
"We've got to get the boys out of the way, haven't we? Keep your eyes peeled on Cookie," Plimsoll said in a lower voice as the ranch chef went out of the door with his arms piled with provisions. "He might take a notion to talk too much. We had to let him in, but he don't have to stay in. Soon as the boys are away you come back and we'll go out again this end, if all is clear."
"Where are you going to stow her?" asked Hahn "Leave her here in Split Rock Cave?"
The callous reference to her as if she was something inanimate chilled Molly. If only she had a gun! She had laughed at Donald's tenderfoot insistence upon carrying the one he had brought west as a part of his outfit and had never attempted to use. The cook's too well thrown rope would have probably thwarted any move of hers if she had had a weapon. Her fingers crept up toward her throat touching a slender chain upon which, ever since she had returned to the Three Star, hung a gold disk, the coin with which Sandy had gambled, the luck-piece. To Molly, even now, it was a talisman that held promise. If they left her behind them, somehow Sandy would unearth her. But that hope died.