"Will it be alive—or dead?"
"Dead, if he resists, at daybreak, in an hour. Then they will come for him; it is arranged. And take him—doubtless slay him. What matter? The reward is the same. 'Alive or dead,' says the paper—they showed it me at La Poste—'one hundred gold pistoles.' And the horse will be ours, too."
"How will they do it?"
"Hist! Listen. And get you to bed before they come. You need not be in it. I have arranged it, je te dis."
"But how—how—how?"
"I will awake him, bid him hurry; tell him he is discovered, lost, unless he flies. Then, doubtless, he will rush to the door, and, poof! they will cut him down as he rushes out. I have told them he is violent. They must strike at once. Tu comprends?"
"Yes," and it seemed to the listener as if the woman had answered with a shudder.
"And," the man said again, "the horse will be ours, too. I have not told them of that. No! we shall have that and the pistoles. Now, get you to bed. They will be here ere long. The day is coming. His last on earth if he runs out suddenly or resists."
The listener heard a moment or two later a stealthy tread upon the stairs outside—a tread that passed his door and went on upstairs and was then no more apparent. It was the woman withdrawing from the place where he was to be slain.
To be slain! Possibly. Yet, he determined, not as the man had arranged it. To be slain it might be, but not without a struggle, an attempt for life; without himself slaying others.