ale woman came to her, but she pushed her aside, and wiped her face
with her sleeve.

"Are they killed? any of them?" she said. Her friend answered, "No,
Mary, not one." "No harm this time," said the bearded man. "Except
my house, it is burned," said the minister's wife. "We'll soon have
another."

"I don't mean _you!_" cried the woman in black. "I mean them--red
devils. Have you got any?--killed any? _You_"--this to Jim, who never
missed a shot--"you"--this to the bearded man--"have _you_ killed any?"

And the men answered, "No."

And one man said, "Their horses were faster than ours."

"Not one!" The woman in black drew herself up proudly. "Yes, one; better
than killed. Wait." The women shrunk from her as she darted up the
stair. They looked at each other wonderingly. The woman returned with
something in her grasp. She flung it on the table. "It is an Indian's
hand. His arm will shrivel to the bone. They will leave him some day
to die in the sand." The women shuddered and drew back; the men crowded
round, but they did not touch the hand.

"Are you afraid?" said the woman in black. "Afraid of that thing!"

She bent back the fingers and looked in it with a smile of contempt. Her
face took an ashen hue: the hand struck the table edge and fell upon the
floor. She seemed to be trying to think for a second, then she gave one
awful cry, and leaned her face against the wall, with her hands hanging
at her side.

The pale woman tried to go to her, but her husband drew her back, and,
with a silent crowd around, slowly picked up the hand.

For a second he hesitated, then did as she had done, but gently. He bent
back the fingers of the severed hand and read its history written there,
"S S, 64," in white letters on the palm.

He remembered then how, twenty years ago, when she brought the child to
him, he had tied its little hand in cooling salve.

It was larger now.

The whisper went around, "It is her boy's hand," and they crept toward
the door.

The pale woman took a flower from her dress, one she had put there hours
before, and placed it in the brown fingers on the table and went out.

The woman did _not_ stir from the wall. "Leave the hand," she said.

"It is there," and the bearded man closed the door gently behind him.

The woman in black turned. Her hard eyes were dim now.. She took the
hand from the table and undid her dress and placed it in her breast, and
went to the window, and watched, far off, a clou