“Well, I reckon his advice is sound,” laughed the colonel. “See you follow it, Archie.”
“Shall you hold up your hands, Uncle Bertie?” asked Archie.
“Much the wisest course; these fellows shoot.”
Archie looked disappointed. “I suppose so,” he sighed. “I’m afraid I’d want to, if they were pointing pistols at me. Lewis was on the train once when a man showed fight. He wouldn’t put up his hands, and the bandit plugged him, like a flash; he fell crosswise over the seat and the blood spurted across Lewis’ wrist; he said it was like a hot jet of water.”
The homely and bizarre horror of the picture had evidently struck home to Archie; he half shivered.
“Too much imagination,” grumbled the colonel to himself. “A Winter ought to take to fighting like a duck to water!” He betook himself to Miss Smith; and he was uneasily conscious that he was going to her for consoling. But he felt better after a little talk about Archie with her. Plainly she thought Archie had plenty of spirit; although, of course, he hadn’t told her about the bandits. The negro was “kidding” the passengers; and women shouldn’t be disturbed by such nonsense. The colonel had old-fashioned views of guarding his womankind from the harsh ways of the world. Curious, he reflected, what sense Miss Smith seemed to have; and how she understood things. He felt better acquainted with her than a year’s garrison intercourse would have made him with any other woman he knew.
That afternoon, they two sat watching the fantastic cliffs which took grotesque semblance of ruined castles crowning their barren hillsides; or of deserted amphitheaters left by some vanished race to crumble. They had talked of many things. She had told him of the sleepy old South Carolinian town where she was born, and the plantation and the distant cousin who was like her mother, and the hospital where she had been taught, and the married sister who had died. Such a narrow, laborious, innocent existence as she described! How cheerfully, too, she had shouldered her burdens! They talked of the South and of the Philippines; a little they talked of Archie and his sorrow and of the eternal problems that have troubled the soul of man since first death entered the world. As they talked, the colonel’s suspicions faded into grotesque shadows. “Millicent is ridiculous,” quoth he. Then he fell to wondering whether there had been a romance in Miss Smith’s past life. “Such a handsome woman would look high,” he sighed. Only twenty-four hours ago he had called Miss Smith “nice-looking,” with careless criticism. He was quite unconscious of his change of view. That night he felt lonely, of a sudden; the old wound in his heart ached; his future looked as bleak as the mountain-walled plains through which he was speeding. After a long time the train stopped with a jar and rattle, ending in a sudden shock. He raised the curtain to catch the flash of the electric lights at Glenwood. Out of the deep defile they glittered like diamonds in a pool of water. Why should he think of Miss Smith’s eyes? With an impatient sigh, he pulled down the curtain and turned over to sleep.
His thoughts drifted, floated, were submerged in a wavering procession of pictures; he was back in the Philippines; they had surprised the fort; how could that be when he was on guard? But they were there— He sat up in his berth. Instinctively he slipped the revolver out of his bag and held it in one hand, as he peeped through the crevice of the curtains. There was no motion, no sound of moving; but heads were emerging between the curtains in every direction; and Archie was standing, his hands shaking above his tumbled brown head and pale face. A man in a soft hat held two revolvers while another man was pounding on the drawing-room door, gruffly commanding those inside to come out. “No, we shall not come out,” responded Aunt Rebecca’s composed, well-bred accents, her neat enunciation not disturbed by a quiver. “If you want to kill an old woman, you will have to break down the door.”
“Let them alone, Shay, it takes too long; let’s finish here, first,” called the man with the revolver; “they’ll come soon enough when we want them. Here, young feller, fish out! Nobody’ll get hurt if you keep quiet; if you don’t you’ll get a dose like the man in number six, two years ago. Hustle, young feller!”
The colonel was eying every motion, every shifting from one foot to the other. Let them once get by Archie—