The three who entered were:—a big, flashy, free moving, swaggering type of cavalryman, wearing a scarlet sash across his uniform: the big negro with the green feather, whom Hi had seen taking the Piranhas’ horses; and a woman, who also wore a scarlet sash across her shoulder.
“Gee, kid, there’s the were-wolf,” the American whispered to Hi. “Now there’ll be blood.”
“Who is she?”
“Anna, the were-wolf: an anti-cleric: been fighting the church all her life. She’s a Red from Medinas.”
“Then the Reds have won?”
“You bet your sweet life.”
The woman and the soldier seated themselves at the table with the prim-lipped man; the cavalryman asked some questions, the prim-lipped man seemed to be explaining about the foreigners. The woman looked through the registers: Green Feather, with a drawn sword, stood at the door. As the woman, Anna, sat nearest to Hi, in a good light, he had occasion to notice her very particularly.
She was perhaps seventy years old. She had a face without any mark whatsoever of kindness, or mirth, or hope, or charity. Her eyes were grey, hard and stony: her mouth was a slit, drooped at the ends: her ears were enormous: her hair, which was of a dirty grey, fell untidily about her brow; she kept thrusting it back with a fat red hand, the thick fingers of which were black at the end. She had ploughed and sowed against her enemies for fifty-three years of hatred: now she had her hour.
The prim-lipped man rose from his chair and called:
“Will those English and American subjects come forward?” When they had come forward, he said: