When at length the wide circle through the woods had been safely accomplished and Eve was moving out through the thickening ranks of tamarack, her heart, which seemed to suffocate her, quieted; and she leaned against a shoulder of rock, strangely tired.
After a while she drew from her pocket _his_ handkerchief, and looked at it. The square of cambric bore his initials, J. S. Blood from her lip remained on it. She had not washed out the spots.
She put it to her lips again, mechanically. A faint odour of tobacco still clung to it.
By every law of loyalty, pride, self-respect, she should have held this man her enemy. Instead, she held his handkerchief against her lips,--crushed it there suddenly, closing her eyes while the colour surged and surged through her skin from throat to hair.
Then, wearily, she lifted her head and looked out into the grey and empty vista of her life, where the dreary years seemed to stretch like milestones away, away into an endless waste.
She put the handkerchief into her pocket, shouldered her rifle, moved on without looking about her,--a mistake which only the emotion of the moment could account for in a girl so habituated to caution,--for she had gone only a few rods before a man's strident voice halted her:
"Drop that rifle!" came another voice from behind her. "You're covered! Throw your gun on the ground!"
She stood as though paralysed. To the right and left she heard people trampling through the thicket toward her.
"Down with that gun, damn you!" repeated the voice, breathless from running. All around her men came floundering and crashing toward her through the undergrowth. She could see some of them.
As she stooped to place her rifle on the dead leaves, she drew the flat packet from her cartridge sack at the same time and slid it deftly under a rotting log. Then, calm but very pale, she stood upright to face events.
The first man wore a red and yellow bandanna handkerchief over the lower half of his face, pulled tightly across a bony nose. He held a long pistol nearly parallel to his own body; and when he came up to where she was standing he poked the muzzle into her stomach.
She did not flinch; he said nothing; she looked intently into the two ratty eyes fastened on her over the edge of his bandanna.