with my teeth an' everything fall out on the floor. I bane git knife in my teeth. I bane git point of knife in floor an' I cut my wrist free. I cut my legs free an' I grab my rifle an' run out.
"But they bane gone. It take too long for me to bane think of that knife. They bane gone! God damn them for dirty cowards!"
Her face had worked convulsively while she told her tale, the two men listening stern and silent. With her earnest, unblasphemous oath she controlled herself.
"I bane git mirror. I bane find code. Now you know. Now we git her back an'—kill—kill—kill!
The intensity of her quieter anger was terrific. So might some ancestress of hers, standing on the strand of some dark fiord, have sworn to revenge herself upon the slayers of her viking lover.
She turned and fetched her rifle, cramming her coat pockets with cartridges.
"You bane git my horse. Red," she said. "I do not think they bane take him. He is in the spring pasture." And, when he went to do her bidding, she quietly brought stockings from the room, removed her shoes, put them on, laced up her boots methodically. Her sweater was in a corner and she picked this up and went back into the bedroom with it, coming out again to Sheridan dressed for action, her braids coiled and pinned, her sombrero on her head.
"Now I bane ready," she said quietly, "when you are."
