“Don’t know.” The woman backed into the doorway and glanced swiftly behind her. Then she faced the riders again. “Good-bye. Don’t come no closer as you go along. My finger ain’t as steady as it once was, an’ this gun might go off.”
Roy whispered to the others:
“Come on, let’s be going. We’re wasting time here. She’d just as soon pepper us as not. I’d like to come by here later, when she isn’t so lively.”
Teddy chirped to Flash. Slowly the five riders filed past the cabin. Their last vision of the woman was as she stood in the doorway, her rifle held in the crook of her arm, her lips compressed tightly. As they turned their backs to her, each felt a prickly sensation run up his spine, as if those black eyes were boring into him.
When they rounded a bend, out of sight and hearing of the cabin, Roy called a halt.
“Well,” he said, laughing shortly. “That’s that! What a friendly customer she was! What the mischief do you suppose she was afraid of? I wonder—” His face flushed, as an idea came to him suddenly. “Do you suppose—”
“I was supposin’ that all along,” Bug Eye answered dryly. “The girls! It sure looked like a likely place to hide ’em. But they’re not there—not now, anyways. I made sure of that. Unless they was tied up tight an’ couldn’t move,” he added, his face serious.
“I kind of thought you had an idea behind that crazy song of yours,” Teddy remarked. “And when you waved, too. But I couldn’t see a thing through those windows. I’m afraid there’s not much to it, Bug Eye. If I thought there was a possibility of Belle being hidden in there, I’d rush it, woman or no woman! But what’s the use? We’d only get into trouble and maybe some one would have his head blown off. That was a powerful gun she had there. Besides, if the girls were there, there’d be men about to prevent any rescue or escape. What do you think about it, Roy?”
“I’m willing to admit I didn’t get it at all,” his brother answered. “But now you speak of it, there’s nothing more likely than that the girls would be taken to some such place as that. Then with that old woman and all—you remember what Ike Natick said about the woman? There she was, as big as life, and then some. But I reckon it was another woman. That was a clever idea of yours, that song, Bug Eye. It proved one thing to me—that the girls are not there now, whether they will be later or not. Even if they were bound, they would have made some noise when they heard us. We came up too suddenly to allow that gunwoman any time to gag them. But it looks suspicious! As soon as we come into her yard, she’s out with her rifle and tells us to make ourselves scarce. What for? She must have had some reason!”
Teddy shook his head, and Nick said: