“Then do as I tell you,” snapped Stoneman.
Ben Cameron had kept indoors all day, and dined with fifty of the Western troopers whom he had identified as leading in the friendly demonstration to his men. Margaret, who had been busy with Mrs. Cameron entertaining these soldiers, was seated in the dining-room alone, eating her dinner, while Phil waited impatiently in the parlour.
The guests had all gone when two big negro troopers, fighting drunk, walked into the hotel. They went to the water-cooler and drank ostentatiously, thrusting their thick lips coated with filth far into the cocoanut dipper, while a dirty hand grasped its surface.
They pushed the dining-room door open and suddenly flopped down beside Margaret.
She attempted to rise, and cried in rage:
“How dare you, black brutes?”
One of them threw his arm around her chair, thrust his face into hers, and said with a laugh:
“Don’t hurry, my beauty; stay and take dinner wid us!”
Margaret again attempted to rise, and screamed, as Phil rushed into the room with drawn revolver. One of the negroes fired at him, missed, and the next moment dropped dead with a bullet through his heart.
The other leaped across the table and through the open window.