She broke off panting, her breast rising and falling tumultuously. Her eyes were bright and hard, her tanned cheeks flushed.
“She’d drive a knife into a man sleeping and never turn a hair!” was Sheldon’s silent comment.
“I tell you to go!” she flung at him again. “Before I have you killed like the others. What do you want here? What is here that belongs to you? You are looking for gold. I know! That is what the others wanted. Do you want to die as they died?”
“Listen to me!” interrupted the man sharply. “I didn’t come here to hurt you. I didn’t come for gold. I came because I lost the trail.”
“Liar!” she cried out at him.
Silenced, he could but stand and stare at her. And slowly all sense of anger at her words died out of him and into his heart welled a great pity. For no longer did he wonder if she but played a part or was mad.
Again, through the brief silence, there came to him faintly the sound of something stirring within the cabin. He listened eagerly, hoping to guess what it was moving beyond the door she guarded so jealously. But the sound had come and gone and it was very still again.
Was there one person in there? Or were there two? Or more? Man or woman? Surely there was some one, surely there could not be two mad people here! Then why did the one in there hold back, letting her dispute entrance to the stranger? Why was there not another face to show at a crack of the door or at a window?
Questions, questions, and questions! And no one to answer them but a mad girl who said that she was Paula, daughter of King Midas! No; not even Paula to answer. For suddenly she had jerked the door open, slipped inside, and Sheldon heard the sound as of a heavy bar dropping into wooden sockets.
He was quite alone in the empty street of a town that had lived and died and been forgotten. And never in all his life had he been more uncertain what next to do.