The defenseless girl watched furtively. When, at last, Hodges stirred from his indolent sprawl, knocked the dottle from his pipe, and looked up at her, she shrank visibly. The blood rushed back to her heart in a flood, leaving her pallid, and she was trembling. Even in the feeble light from the guttering candle, Hodges could perceive her disturbance. It gratified him, and he laughed, in sinister glee over her emotion.
"I 'low ye're gittin' some tame since yistiddy," he exclaimed. He got to his feet slowly, whereat Plutina looked toward the entrance cleft, ready if the need came, to fly from him to the more merciful abyss. But Hodges moved toward the back of the cave where he brought out a stone jug from its niche, and returned to the bed of boughs. Seated again, he filled the tin cup full of spirits, and drank it down. With the pipe recharged and burning, he continued to sit in silence, regarding the girl with an unswerving intentness that tortured her. At short intervals, he replenished the cup and quaffed it thirstily. He was rapidly compensating for his earlier abstinence. Plutina, studying him covertly, noted the beginnings of drunkenness and its various stages. There was gruesome fascination in her scrutiny; for she knew that her honor rested on the hazard of a sot's whim.
Suddenly, the girl knew that the peril was very close upon her. Hodges was staring at her from his reddened eyes with a rampant lustfulness that was unmistakable. Again, she measured the distances, to make sure that the last desperate means of escape from his embraces lay open still. She meant, in the final crisis, to spring to the crevice, before he could approach within reach of her. There, with the verge of the cliff only a step away, she would make her plea, with death in the gulf as the alternative of failure, the ultimate safeguard of honor.
There could be no doubt concerning the imminence of the danger. The usually red face of the outlaw was mottled purple, congested by the stimuli of liquor and passion. The thick under-lip hung slackly, quivering from time to time in the convulsive tremors of desire that ran over him. A high light fell on the man's neck, where the open shirt left it bare. Plutina's gaze was caught by the slight rise and fall of the flesh above the artery. The movement was made distinguishable across the cavern by the effects of light and shade. The girl found herself mechanically counting the throbs. The rapidity of them amazed her. They witnessed the fever raging in his blood--the fever that clamored for assuagement from her. The galloping pulse enthralled her with horror. It made visible the vile fires raging in him. So swift the rhythm grew that a hideous hope sprang up in the watcher--hope that an apoplexy might stretch the man dead at her feet.