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Page 81
She drank hurriedly. Thereafter she yawned and made her little
pretense of increased drowsiness.
"It's been such a long day," she said. "You'll forgive me if I tumble
right straight into sleepy-land?"
Again they said good night and she left him, going down among the eerie
dancing shadows to her own quarter, drawing his moody eyes after her.
When she had gone, he threw down his own blanket across the main
entrance of the King's Palace, filled his pipe again, and sat staring
out into the night.
The fire cast up its red flare spasmodically, licked at the last of the
dead branches which, rolling apart, burned out upon the rock floor.
The darkness once more blotted out all detail saving the few
smouldering coals, the knobs of stone in the small flickering circles
of light, the quiet form of the man silhouetted against the lesser dark
of the night without. Virginia, rigid and motionless at the spot to
which she had stolen noiselessly, watched him breathlessly.
For only a little he sat smoking. Then, as though he experienced
something of that weariness of which she had made pretense, he laid his
pipe aside and stretched out upon his blanket, leaning upon an elbow.
She heard him sigh, vaguely made out when he let his head slip down
upon an arm, saw that he had grown still, and was lying stretched out
across the main threshold.
Now she must stand motionless while every fibre of her being demanded
action; now she must curb impetuosity to the call of caution. As the
seconds passed, all but insupportable in their tedious slowness, she
stood rigid and tense, waiting. But soon she knew that the drug had
had its will with him, that he was steeped in deep sleep, that no
longer must she wait, that now at length she might act.
Carrying her saddle-blanket she came to him and stood quietly looking
down into his upturned face. At last she could let the tears burst
into her eyes unchecked, now she could suddenly go down on her knees
beside him, for an instant laying her cheek lightly against his in the
first caress. Would it be the last? He stirred a little and sighed
again. She drew back, still upon her knees again breathlessly rigid.
But his stupor clung heavily to him, and she knew that it would hold
him thus for hours.
A score of burning questions clamoring in her mind she disposed of
briefly, since time was of the essence.
"If I let you have your way, Rod Norton," she whispered, "you will go
on from crime to tragedy. If I hand you over to the law, I will be
betraying you for no end; for your type of man finds the way to break
jail and so force his own hand to further violence. There is the one
way out. . . . And God help me to succeed. God forgive me if I fail!"
She stole by him and stepped upon the outer ledge. She was leaving him
helpless . . . the thought presented itself that she would have another
thing to answer for if one of the many men with such cause to hate him
should come upon him thus. Well, that was but one of the more remote
chances she must take. There was scant enough likelihood that any one
should come here before she could race into Las Estrellas and back.
Then it was that she saw Patten. She did not know at first that it was
Patten, but just that within a few feet of her upon the ledge which she
must travel to the steps a man was standing, his body jerking back,
pressed against the rocks as he saw her. She drew back swiftly, her
blood in riotous tumult.
But now, above aught else, the one thought in her mind was that there
was no time for loitering, that the dawn would come all too soon, that
there must be no delay. She stooped quickly and drew from its holster
Norton's heavy revolver. Her saddle-blanket over her left arm, the gun
gripped in her right hand, she was once more upon the ledge, moving
cautiously toward the figure seen a moment ago, gone now.
That it was Patten she knew only when she had gone down the steps and
had overtaken him there. Retreating thus far, reassured when he had
made out that it was the girl alone, he waited for her. And as she
demanded nervously, "Who is it?" it was Patten's disagreeable laugh
which answered her.
"So," he jeered at her, "this is the sort of thing you do when you are
supposed to be out on a case all night!"
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