“Thought what?”
“Of the name of it.”
“Oh, confound the name of it. It’s the game, and not the name, with which we are concerned just now. Bess has got a gun; don’t forget that—and she knows how to use it, too. And Cadillac is in love with her, up to his ears, if I am any judge of human nature. When he was our guest it was as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Yes; I thought so, too.”
“Well, as I said a minute ago, Bess knows how to use a gun all right, but if there is one thing which she knows how to make use of better than any other, it is a man who is in love with her. She can twist one of ’em around her fingers like straws, and I’ll bet a million that she’ll be doing the act for the modern red rover, as he calls himself, before he’s had her a prisoner an hour. She’ll be boss of the whole shooting match before she has been a day aboard the Shadow.”
“Perhaps she is dead, even now, while we are talking about her,” said Cora, shuddering.
“She is either in no immediate danger, or somebody is dead; you can bet on that, girl!”
“If only she did not faint away,” murmured Kane’s wife; and he looked at her strangely for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders as he replied:
“Bess isn’t one of the fainting kind, Cora. And now, don’t you think you had better go to your mother?”
“Yes, dear, but what shall I tell her?”