“Can I do anything for you?”
“Yes; hellup me outsite, vere de tent vos, und ve see if ve can get it up, und you take dis dollar und get some dinner.”
“We’ll get the tent up. I had a fine dinner. Did you kill many men?”
“I hope not, Loney, but I feel awful sick, und I must get in bet.”
But it was Shoshone and Dan who set the tent where Morris was laid to sleep the night of his initiation.
CHAPTER VII.
While the events in the preceding chapter were taking place, upstairs in the room given to Muriel and Dora a very different state of affairs existed. Dora, young as she was, was literally worn out from the unaccustomed fatigue, lack of her regular meals, and made dull and languid by the sleeping-potion which Pierson had forced Muriel to give her. So the poor girl fell heavily on the bed and slept almost at once.
Muriel was glad of this, for it kept her mind continually on the alert trying to answer Dora’s questions as to where Bennie and her father were. The young girl, with Bennie’s name upon her lips, constantly kept Muriel in a nervous tremor. Muriel knew well that Pierson intended to kill Dora as soon as he could do so with safety, and she was also well aware of what he intended to do with herself, for she understood his vicious nature as his own mother never had.
So Muriel kept always on the alert to watch for John’s murderous intentions, scarcely ate and was afraid to sleep, lest he should come, with his fell determination, and kill them both while asleep.
So weary was Dora that she knew nothing of the noise in the bar-room just beneath her. Muriel heard the shots plainly, but, hearing the noisy bursts of laughter, she judged the matter rightly. She knew something of the habits of the rough but good-hearted men in this region. She was much more afraid of John Pierson and his villainous ally, Dopey, than of all the wildest cowboys or miners in the State.