“And you just naturally and truthfully tell me he is a king! What’s the use of this nonsense?”
She made no reply. There was a little silence before he spoke. There came to him clearly the sound as of some heavy object falling upon bare floor within the cabin.
“There is some one else in there!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Who is it? Why don’t they come out and answer me sensibly if you won’t?”
Positively now there was a quick look of alarm upon her face. For a second he thought that she was going to whisk back into the house. And then she cried hurriedly:
“He is in there—yes. The king! And Napoleon is there and Richard and Johnny Lee. Shall I throw open the door for them to put out their guns and shoot you?”
“Great Heavens!” gasped Sheldon. And to her, wonderingly, “Why should they shoot me? What harm am I doing any one?”
“I know!” Her voice, until now so quiet, suddenly rang out passionately. “You come from the world outside, from over there!” she threw out her arm widely toward the south. “You come over the mountains from the world outside where all men are bad! Where they fight like beasts for what we have here, where they steal and kill and cheat and lie and snatch from one another like hungry coyotes and wolves! You come here to steal and kill. I know! Haven’t others come before you, bad men creeping in from the outside?”
A strange sort of shiver ran through Sheldon’s blood. But, with quick inspiration, he asked her:
“And what has happened to them?”
“They died!” was the unhesitating answer. “As you, too, will die and quick if you do not go out and leave us. I should have killed you last night while you slept. But you startled me; I had never seen a man like you. The others had beards; you had no hair upon your face and for a little I thought you were a woman, another like me, and I was glad. And then you woke—and I ran. I should have killed you—”