“Um-mmm!” with a heavy sigh and shaking her head forebodingly.  “You better go home, girl, as fast as you can and shut yourself up in the cabin all day.  Did you ever see anything like that?” pointing to the cards.  “Trouble, trouble, nothin’ but trouble.  If it ain’t actual murder an’ death, it’s too near it to be any joke.  Look how them spades turns up every whipstitch.  How can folks doubt!”

But the cards of evil omen lying there on the board before had roused all of Pearl’s inherent superstition and stirred her swift anger against Mrs. Nitschkan.  “Parrot-croaker!” she exclaimed angrily, and followed this with a string of Spanish oaths and expletives.  “Trouble is over for me.”

Mrs. Nitschkan was on her feet in a minute.  The board and the cards fell unheeded to the ground.  Her small, quick eyes began to roll ominously and show red, and her relaxed figure became immediately tense and alert as that of a panther on guard.

“Trouble’s just beginnin’ for you,” her voice was a mere guttural growl.  “A little more sass from you, you double-j’inted jumpin’-jack dancer, and I’ll jerk you to the edge of that cliff yonder and throw you down.  I’m feelin’ particularly good right now,” rolling up her sleeves and showing the great knots of swelling muscles on her arms.  “Get out of my way.”

With one big sweep of her arm she brushed her companion aside as if she had been a fly; but with incredible rapidity Pearl recovered herself and sprang directly before her.

“Then get me out,” she taunted, “try it, try it.  I’d slip through your fingers like oil.  It’s no good to flash your over-sized man-muscles on me; I’m made of whip-cord and whalebone.  Do you get that?”

Mrs. Nitschkan’s courage sprang from a sense of trained and responsive muscles and of tremendous physical strength, but at the sound of that cool voice, those mocking, unwavering eyes, there swept over her an awe of the slighter woman’s far higher courage.  It was an almost superstitious fear and respect which chilled the hot blood of her passion, the instinctive obedience of the flesh to the indomitable spirit.  Reluctantly, against her will and in spite of her anger, the fighting gipsy paid deference to the steel-like, unflinching quality of the Pearl, when, rising above her slender physique, she faced unafraid the brute strength which threatened her, and dominated the situation by sheer consciousness of power.

The gypsy, chilled and subdued, confused by forces she could not understand, fell back a step or two and Pearl seized this opportunity to slip away, calling a careless good-by over her shoulder.

But the depression which had touched her from the time she wakened now lay heavier on her spirit.  Her mind reverted to the cards of ill omen and she shivered with a faint chill of apprehension.  And as she walked on it seemed to her that the atmosphere was in tune with her mood.

The air was soft, and yet sharp enough to quicken the color in her cheeks, but still indefinably wistful.  The song of the wind among the pines, that mountain wind which never ceases to blow, had a sort of sighing pensiveness in its falling cadences.  The deep, blue sky dreamed over the russet tree tops and the yellow leaves filled the forest with their flying gold.