The Stronghold of the Natchez

"She lies yonder against the wall at my left, and remains unhurt, I think. I will make effort to turn over, and have speech with her."

So securely had I been bound with coarse grass rope, I found it no small task to change the position of my body sufficiently to peer about the corner of intervening rock, and clearly perceive my lady. She was reclining in a half sitting posture well within the darker shadow, bound as were the rest of us.

"You remain uninjured, I trust, Madame?" I asked gently, and it heartened me to observe the smile with which she instantly glanced up at sound of my voice.

"No blow has touched me," was her immediate response, "yet I suffer noticing the stains of blood disfiguring both you and my husband. Are the wounds serious ones?"

"Nay, mere scratches of the flesh, to heal in a week. Why did you waste your last shot on that savage who would have struck me? It was not the will of De Noyan that it be expended thus."

"You must have formed a poor conception of me, Geoffrey Benteen," she answered, as if my words pained her, "if you suppose I value my life more highly than your own. But for my solicitation you would never have been in such stress, and, whatever else may be true, Eloise de Noyan is not one accustomed to deserting her friends."

"Yet there are fates possible to a woman more to be dreaded than death."