For her, night was the danger time; she could not avoid, by flight across the river, the approach of any enemy from the south; and for an enemy to discover her sitting there in darkness, with lightwood in the house, was to invite suspicion. Yet her only hope, if surprised, was to play her part as keeper of Red Ferry.
So she sat mending, sensitive ears on the alert, breathing quietly in the refreshing coolness that at last had come after so many nights of dreadful heat.
The kitten, too, enjoyed it, patting with tentative velvet paw the skein of silk dangling near the floor.
But it was a very little kitten, and a very lonely one, and presently it asked, plaintively, to be taken up. So the Messenger lifted the mite of fluffy fur and installed it among the linen on the table, where it went to sleep purring.
Outside the open door the dew drummed loudly; moths came in clouds, hovering like snowflakes about the doorway; somewhere in the woods a tiger owl yelped.
About midnight, lying on her sack of husks, close to the borderland of sleep, far away in the darkness she heard a shot.
In one bound she was at the door, buttoning her waist, and listening. And still listening, she lighted a pine splinter, raised her cotton skirt, and adjusted the revolver, strapping the holster tighter above and below her right knee.
The pulsing seconds passed; far above the northern river bank a light sparkled through the haze, then swung aloft; and she drew paper and pencil from her pocket, and wrote down what the torch was saying:
“Shot fired at Muddy Ford. Look out along the river.”
And even as the red spark went out in the darkness a lonely birdcall floated across the river—the strange squealing plaint of the great cock-o’-the-pines. She answered, imitating it perfectly. Then a far voice called: