Dunwody, in his own room, was looking into the seriousness of his injury, with the old trapper Eleazar, once more summoned as readiest physician.  Eleazar shook his head when he had stripped off the first bloody bandages from the limb.  “She’ll been broke,” was his dictum.  “She’ll been bad broke.  We mus’ have docteur soon.”  For half an hour the old man did the best he could, cleansing and rebandaging.

“We mus’ have docteur!” complained he, mindful of Jamieson, far away, busy with cases as bad as this.

For half an hour or so Josephine remained in her own room above, having done all she could to establish some sort of order.  All at once to her strained senses there seemed to flash some apprehension of a coming danger.  She rose, tiptoed to her door, looked down.  A moment later she turned, and caught up an old pistol which hung on the wall near the door in the narrow hallway.  Silently and swiftly she stepped forward to the head of the stair.

What she saw now was this:  Carlisle and Kammerer, themselves now armed with weapons carelessly left in the lower hall, had passed unnoticed from the dining-room, and now were tiptoeing down the hall toward the door of Dunwody’s apartment.  Clayton and his men, dulled with loss of sleep, had allowed them to leave the main room, and these two, soldiers by training, had resolved to turn the tables and take possession of the place.  Their plans were at the point of success.  They had almost reached the door of Dunwody’s room, weapons in hand, when from above they heard a sharp command.

“Halt, there!” a woman cried to them.

They turned and looked up, arrested by the unmistakable quality in the tones.  They saw her leaning against the baluster of the stair, one arm bound tightly to her side, the other resting a revolver barrel along the baluster and glancing down it with a fearless eye.  She took a step or two lower down the stair, sliding the weapon with her.  “What are you doing there?” she demanded.

A half-humorous twist came to the mouth of Carlisle.  He answered quietly, as he raised a hand for silence: 

“Just about what you might expect us to do.  We’re trying to take care of ourselves.  But how about yourself?  I thought you were with us, Madam.  I had heard that you—­”

“Come,” she answered, lowering the weapon and stepping swiftly down the stairs.  “Come outside, where we can talk.”

The three now passed out the open front door to the wide gallery, which lay in the dim twilight untenanted.  Kammerer kept his eyes still on the muzzle of the revolver.  Carlisle laughed.  “That’s right, Kammerer,” said he.  “Be careful when a woman gets the drop on you.  She’ll shoot quicker than a man, because she doesn’t know any better.  I don’t doubt you had a reason for stopping us, Madam,” said he; “but what?—­that puzzles me.”

“How came you here?” she demanded.  “You left me.  I don’t know anything about what’s going on.  I’m all at sea.”