Ben kept the weapon in his cartridge belt, but the extra pistol shells were among the supplies.  They could easily be procured.  It would also be necessary to induce him to fire away the few shells that he carried in the pistol magazine; but this would likely be easy enough to do.  He put little reliance on the weapon, trusting rather to his rifle both for the impending war and the procurance of big game; and he would not harbor the pistol shells as long as he had his rifle.

But the days were passing!  Any attempt at deliverance must be made before the food stores were further depleted.  They could not make the march without food.  Days and nights overtook her with her triumph as far distant as ever.  The moment of opportunity she had watched for, in which she might seize the cartridge belt and destroy it, had never come to pass.  The plans she had made while the night lay soft and mysterious in the solitudes had all come to nothing.  He had never, as she had hoped, removed his belt and forgotten to replace it, nor had his slumber ever been so deep that she could steal it from him.

His own triumph surely was almost at hand.  Surely his pursuers had almost overtaken him.  The stores had already fallen far below the margin of safety for the long journey home.  The thought was with her, and she was desperate one long, warm afternoon as she searched for roots and berries in the forest.  Edible plants were ever more hard to find, these past days; but what there were she gathered almost automatically, herself lost in a deep preoccupation.  And all at once her hand reached toward a little vine of black berries, each with a green tuft at the end, not unlike gooseberries in southern gardens.

As if by instinct, hardly aware of the motion, she withdrew her hand.  She knew this vine.  She was enough of a forester never to mistake it.  It was the deadly nightshade, and a handful of the berries spelt death.  She started to look elsewhere.

But presently she paused, arrested by an idea so engrossing and yet so terrible that her heart seemed to pause in her breast.  Had any rules been laid down for her to follow in her war with Ben?  Was she to consider methods at such a time as this?  Was she not a woods girl,—­a woman, not a child, trained and tutored in the savage code of the wild that knows no ethics other than might, whether might of arm or craft, of brain or fell singleness of purpose?  Should she consider ethics now?

Her father’s life was in imminent danger.  Another day might find him stretched lifeless before her.  Ben had not hesitated to use every weapon in his power; she should not hesitate now.  Ben had made his war; she would wage it by his own code.

For a moment she stood almost without outward motion, intrigued by the possibilities of this little handful of berries.  She shuddered once, nervously, but there was no further impulse of remorse.  Perhaps she trembled slightly; and her eyes were simply depthless shadows under her brows.