“Can’t I go to bed? I am so tired. So very tired. I never used to be tired at home—I cooked and kept it all so nice and clean.”
“There! You see what I told you,” said John to Muriel, “she is beginning to remember!”
“No wonder, poor child! that you are tired after this last week of travel and hardships. Yes, dear, we will rest awhile. Here is a nice, soft bed. Lie down and I will cover you. John, you and Dopey can sleep outside, as you have been doing all last week. There is not room enough in here. Come, dear, lie down.”
With a bad grace, John and Dopey left the shack and laid themselves down beneath the stars to sleep, but both against the door, so neither of the prisoners could escape.
John had sent the Parthian shot after Muriel as he called through the door to advise her to “go to the devil, for all he cared.”
“When I leave you, John Pierson, I shall be going away from him as fast as I can. Understand that.”
“Say, boss, there’ll be something doing and dat pretty quick. Dat woman’s on her ear, and when wimmen gets on deir ears dey’s allus something doing. You’d better be on de lookout for her. She looks like dem she-tigers I seen in de circus once. De he-ones took t’ings easy-like, but de she-ones was allus on de lookout for a chance. An’ she is looking for her chance.”
“I know her like a book, Dopey, and she will get no mercy from me if she tries any monkey business. Yes, you are right. I don’t know why I have been such a tender-hearted idiot. I’ve had a couple of chances to kill them both, and wasted them. Self-defence is the first law of nature and our only safe way is to finish them both now, and be done with it!”
“Den youse is smokin’ the proper kind of dope, and de only kind dat will win out for us and keep us out of the fireworks settee. It is de only t’ing to do, and de sooner de quicker.”
John smoked in silence for awhile, stretched out full length on the ground, while Dopey lay wishing for his almost forgotten luxury. Finally John whispered to Dopey: