Floyd-Rosney’s head slowly turned, and his slumberous eyes, with a bated fury smoldering in their depths, looked their sneering triumph at his wife.
“That crack,--was it----?” he asked of Randal.
“A pistol ball, I think. I saw--I thought I saw a puff of smoke from the Cherokee hedge. My head feels hot yet. For simple curiosity look at my hat.”
Floyd-Rosney removed the hat from the head of the man by him. He turned it in his hand and his eyes glittered. Then he held it out for Ducie’s observation.
There was a small orifice on one side, and a corresponding rift, higher, on the other. Evidently, the ball had passed through.
“Thirty caliber, I should judge,” Floyd-Rosney ventured.
“But why--_why_----” exclaimed Paula, “should Randal be shot at--he might have been killed--oh, any of us might have been killed!”
“The story of the treasure trove--out already, I suppose,” suggested Floyd-Rosney.
“And it is believed that I have it now in my possession, carrying it to a place of safety,” said Ducie.
“Just as well for you to get to town as speedily as possible,” remarked Floyd-Rosney.
To have escaped an attempt at highway robbery is not an agreeable sensation, however futile and ill advised the enterprise. This possibility had not occurred to Floyd-Rosney, yet he perceived its logic. It was obvious that the rich find of gold and jewels must be removed from Duciehurst, and by whom more probably than their owner? Doubtless, the miscreants had expected Ducie to be accompanied only by the groom, perhaps a party to the conspiracy, and albeit this supposition had gone awry, there was only one unarmed man beside himself to contend against a possible second attack. Floyd-Rosney would be glad to be rid of Ducie on every account. No such awkward association had ever befallen him, significant at every turn. But, when actual physical danger to himself and his family was involved in sitting beside him, he felt all other objections frivolous indeed, and it was in the nature of a rescue when the fast horse drew up beside the platform of the little station near Glenrose, where the train was already standing.
The _congé_ was of the briefest, although Randal omitted no observance which a courteous voluntary host might have affected. He left the horse in charge of an idler about the station, assisted Mrs. Floyd-Rosney into the coach, where, to her husband’s satisfaction, the stateroom was vacant and they might thus be spared the presence of the vulgar horde of travelers. He shook hands with both husband and wife, only leaving the train as it glided off. Paula, looking from her window, had her last glimpse of him, standing on the platform, courteously lifting his hat in farewell. She had a wild, unreasoning protest against the parting, her eyes looked a mute appeal, and she felt as if delivered to her fate.