In another hollow, near the entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour, coffee, and sugar, the sticky contents of the latter still strewing the floor.

From this storehouse the young man drew a wicker flask of whiskey, and handed it, with a tin cup of water, to the woman.

She waved the cup aside, placed the flask to her lips, and drank the undiluted spirit.

Yet even this was evidently bravado, for the water started to her eyes, and she could not restrain the paroxysm of coughing that followed.
"I reckon that's the kind that kills at forty rods," she said, with a hysterical laugh.

"But I say, pardner, you look as if you were fixed here to stay," and she stared ostentatiously around the chamber.