"I intend," she said severely, "to make escape impossible. If they fire, when taken by surprise, remember that they have only blank cartridges. I must say," she added with a confession of unusual weakness, "that I am glad the Indians escaped the other way. I would hardly know what to do with Indians, even quite tame ones. While I know a few letters of the deaf-and-dumb language, which I believe all tribes use in common, I fear that in a moment of excitement I would forget what I know."
The next step, she asserted, was to secure their weapons.
"After all," she said, "the darkness is in our favor. I intend to fire once, to show them that we are armed and dangerous. And if you two will point the guns Bill made, they cannot possibly tell that they are not real."
"But we will know it," Aggie quavered. Now that the quarry was in sight she was more and more nervous, sneezing at short intervals in spite of her menthol inhaler. "I am sorry, Tish, but I cannot feel the same about that wooden revolver as I would about a real one. And even when I try to forget that it is only wood the carving reminds me."
But Tish silenced her with a glance. She had strangely altered in the last few minutes. All traces of fatigue had gone, and when she struck a match and consulted her watch I saw in her face that high resolve, that stern and matchless courage, which I so often have tried to emulate and failed.
"Seven o'clock," she announced. "We will dine first. There is nothing like food to restore failing spirits."
But we had nothing except our sandwiches, and Tish suggested snaring some of the stupid squirrels with which the region abounded.
"Aggie needs broth," she said decidedly. "We have sandwiches, but Aggie is frail and must be looked to."
Aggie was pathetically grateful, although sorry for the squirrels, which were pretty and quite tame. But Tish was firm in her kindly intent, and proceeded at once to set a rabbit snare, a trick she had learned in the Maine woods. Having done this, and built a small fire, well hidden, we sat down to wait.
In a short time we heard terrible human cries proceeding from the snare, and, hurrying thither, found in it a young mountain lion. It looked dangerous, and was biting in every direction. I admit that I was prepared to leave in haste, but not so Tish. She fetched her umbrella, without which she never travels, and while the animal set its jaws in it--a painful necessity, as it was her best umbrella--Tish hit it on the head--not the umbrella, but the lion--with a large stone.