It
did not take long for the lieutenant's native soldiers to realize
that the authority that held them in service no longer existed and
that with it had gone the power to pay them their miserable wage.
Or at least, so they reasoned. To them Obergatz no longer represented
aught else than a powerless and hated foreigner, and short indeed
would have been his shrift had not a native woman who had conceived
a doglike affection for Jane Clayton hurried to her with word of
the murderous plan, for the fate of the innocent white woman lay
in the balance beside that of the guilty Teuton.
"Already they are quarreling as to which one shall possess you,"
she told Jane.
"When will they come for us?" asked Jane. "Did you hear them say?"
"Tonight," replied the woman, "for even now that he has none to
fight for him they still fear the white man. And so they will come
at night and kill him while he sleeps."
Jane thanked the woman and sent her away lest the suspicion of her
fellows be aroused against her when they discovered that the two
whites had learned of their intentions. The woman went at once to
the hut occupied by Obergatz. She had never gone there before and
the German looked up in surprise as he saw who his visitor was.
Briefly she told him what she had heard. At first he was inclined
to bluster arrogantly, with a great display of bravado but she
silenced him peremptorily.
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