A Girl of the Klondike

by Victoria Cross

"Go back," she said, with her lips on his ear, "unless you can find a pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door again.

She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the stove, and listened; there was still a scraping of feet and muttering of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side. Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the ball came through the window behind her and passed over her shoulder; there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side, a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart. She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with the sickness of the thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst them—and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed, roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room, he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a moment the three faces, all pale with fear and anxiety, not for themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.

"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I might kill you."

She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to reassure herself they were really there alive.

Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.

"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."

"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs together.

"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added, looking at her with admiring eyes.

"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.

Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred, as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen, reassured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then went over to him, putting an arm softly round his neck.