A Girl of the Klondike

by Victoria Cross

Talbot laughed, and looked pleased at the praise from her bright young lips. Stephen only looked anxious.

That night they sat up rather later than usual, and Katrine was quite in a pleased state of expectation. No visitors made their appearance, however, and at last Talbot left to go to his own cabin.

"Now, if they come in the night," remarked Katrine, laughing, as she said good-night, "don't slay them all with your eye, mind, but give me a chance."

Talbot promised to use his eye mercifully, and Katrine and Stephen put their lights out and went to bed.

It seemed to Katrine she had been asleep some time, when she awoke suddenly and put her hand on her husband's arm. "Steve, I hear steps."

"Nonsense," murmured Stephen, drowsily; "it's your fancy. Go to sleep."

But Katrine's ears were like those of a wild animal, quick and not to be deceived.

"Go to sleep yourself, if you can," she retorted, and sprang up in the darkness, found her day clothes, and hustled them on. There was silence now outside, but Katrine hurried all she could, and then with one revolver in her belt and one in her hand went into the other room. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there was a crash, a sound of tearing and splitting wood, and the door was crushed inward, letting in a blast of icy air. There was pitch darkness within and without. Katrine answered immediately by two shots fired in succession; there was a heavy groan, a muttered curse, and some shuffling of feet outside. Katrine, standing flat against the wall to avoid offering a mark for wandering shots, chuckled inwardly and waited. A second later a shot came in return, but the bullet went high. Katrine heard it whizz into the wood somewhere between the wall and roof.

She stood motionless, listening. Just in front of her, on the other side of the room, was the stove, and in this there still glowed an unextinguished portion of log, making one small spot of blood red in the surrounding darkness. Katrine fixed her eye on this glowing spot. To enter farther into the cabin the men must pass between it and her. She raised one of her revolvers into a line with it. When that spot was obliterated, she would know, however silently they moved, the enemy had advanced, and in that second she meant to fire; the stove was high, and a man passing in front of it would have that red spot in a line with his heart.

With her heart beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim partition on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession that tried to pass her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside and a trampling of feet on the broken wood of the door, and then suddenly the soft red fire spot was eclipsed in the total darkness around, and on the instant Katrine's finger had pulled the trigger. There was no groan this time after the shot, only a heavy thud and a crash as a falling body struck some fire-irons by the stove. The red spot glowed out of the darkness again and stared Katrine cheerfully in the eyes. There was a confusion of voices outside: Katrine could hear the thick oaths and one man apparently enjoining another to come out of there and have done with the business. Katrine smiled as she heard. She guessed that the man addressed was the one that lay now between her and the stove, and his ears were for ever closed. In the same moment she heard the inner door open, and for an instant Stephen appeared, pale and in his night clothes and with a flaring candle in his hand. With a spring like a leopard Katrine had reached him and put her hand over the flame of the candle, crushing it out beneath her palm. The darkness she knew was their only shield. By their voices and their footsteps she could tell the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl, they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It was the fears of the besiegers now simply that was protecting the besieged.