And one man said, "Their horses were faster than ours."
"Not one!" The woman in black drew herself up proudly. "Yes, one; better than killed. Wait." The women shrunk from her as she darted up the stair. They looked at each other wonderingly. The woman returned with something in her grasp. She flung it on the table. "It is an Indian's hand. His arm will shrivel to the bone. They will leave him some day to die in the sand." The women shuddered and drew back; the men crowded round, but they did not touch the hand.
"Are you afraid?" said the woman in black. "Afraid of that thing!"
She bent back the fingers and looked in it with a smile of contempt. Her face took an ashen hue: the hand struck the table edge and fell upon the floor. She seemed to be trying to think for a second, then she gave one awful cry, and leaned her face against the wall, with her hands hanging at her side.
The pale woman tried to go to her, but her husband drew her back, and, with a silent crowd around, slowly picked up the hand.
For a second he hesitated, then did as she had done, but gently. He bent back the fingers of the severed hand and read its history written there, "S S, 64," in white letters on the palm.
He remembered then how, twenty years ago, when she brought the child to him, he had tied its little hand in cooling salve.
It was larger now.
The whisper went around, "It is her boy's hand," and they crept toward the door.
The pale woman took a flower from her dress, one she had put there hours before, and placed it in the brown fingers on the table and went out.