Belle had stayed with Lizzie for almost a week when she woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a horse neighing just outside the soddy. She knew Lizzie’s animals were secure in the barn, so the visitor must be Frank. Or Papa. They would be bringing bad news. Good news would have waited until morning.
She climbed out of bed, hoping she wouldn’t wake Lizzie, but Lizzie put her hand on Belle’s arm and whispered, “Wait.”
The dog began to growl.
“It’s all right, Grover. I think it’s Frank,” Belle said.
“I’m not so sure,” Lizzie told her.
The two sat on the edge of the bed. Belle listened as hard as she could for someone to knock, while Grover whined to go outside. After a moment, she decided Lizzie was right. The horse’s neigh didn’t sound like Catsup’s. Besides, if Papa or Frank had come, they would have called out. Instead, except for the horse, everything was silent.
“It might be somebody needing help. Maybe one of the Rileys or the Hansons,” Belle whispered.
“If it was, he’d call, ‘Hello, the house.’”
In a minute, they heard someone at the door. Whoever it was didn’t knock. Instead it seemed that he was trying to be as quiet as snow as he opened the door. But the door held. There were brackets on the inside wall on either side of the door, and Lizzie had put a board through them, barring the door. Still, Belle was aware that with enough force, the brackets could pull out of the sod wall. She hoped the man didn’t know that.
“It’s someone up to no good,” Lizzie said. She stood and quickly went to a trunk and opened it. She lit a candle. Then she took out a shotgun and began loading it. Her hands were shaking. When she was finished, she called, “Git, you! My husband and I have guns.”
“Then open the door. I got a sick woman out here.”
Maybe we are wrong, Belle wondered. What if someone really is sick?
But Lizzie whispered, “Don’t fall for that. I’m sure he’s alone. Can you peek out the window?”
Belle went to the window and drew aside the curtain and peered out. The man was indeed alone. In the moonlight, he looked familiar, but she wasn’t sure where she had seen him. And then she remembered. “He was one of the strangers at the school at Christmas.”
“He’s after my jewelry. When he admired my ring, I thought I was foolish to wear it. He gave me a bad feeling,” Lizzie said.
“You ain’t got a husband in there. You’re a spinster lady,” the man called. He turned and looked directly at Belle before she could drop the curtain. “Looks like you got a little girl with you. You don’t want her to get hurt, so you open that door. If I have to break it down, you won’t like it.” The man reached into his saddlebags, and when he turned toward the house, he had a gun in one hand and a hammer in the other. “Girlie, you open that door. Ain’t nobody here to protect you.”
“What do we do?” Belle looked at Lizzie, then glanced at Sage. She was grateful he was asleep in his cradle.
“I don’t know,” Lizzie whispered. “He means to harm us.”
“This is your last chance,” the man called.
Belle glanced again at Lizzie. “Will you really shoot him? Papa says a gun is for shooting coyotes and rattlesnakes, not people.”
“That man’s no better than a rattlesnake. Besides, he could hurt you. Or Sage. I can’t let him do that. Blow out the candle.” When the soddy was dark, Lizzie told Belle to pull back the curtain.
Belle hesitated. “Maybe he’ll ride away.”
“He won’t.”
Belle pushed aside the curtain.
“Get out of the way,” Lizzie ordered Belle. She aimed the shotgun at the window and pulled the trigger.
Glass from the window shattered and there was a scream. The two knew Lizzie had hit the man. Lizzie began shaking. “I only wanted to scare him and make him ride off,” she said.
Belle was too frightened to look outside. Although the man was bad, she hoped he was all right. “Don’t die. Please don’t die,” she muttered.
“He won’t die,” Lizzie said, pushing Belle aside so that she could peer out the window. “Look, he’s getting on his horse.”
The man put his foot into the stirrup and swung his other leg over his horse. Then he picked up the reins, using only one arm. The other hung down at his side.
“I think I shot him in the arm,” Lizzie said as the man rode off.
Belle wanted to go outside, to make sure the man was gone, but Lizzie told her to wait until dawn.
Neither of them went back to sleep. After a time, Lizzie built up the fire in the stove and made coffee. This time, Belle liked its strong flavor. When daylight finally came, they opened the door and looked around. There were horse tracks in front of the soddy, and they found drops of blood in the snow. But there was no sign of the man.
“We have to tell your parents. You were very brave. He might have murdered us—and Sage,” Lizzie said, glancing at the baby, who had slept through the entire ordeal.
“No, we can’t tell them. Mama would be frightened. Carrie, too. And after I go home, they would worry about you being here alone.”
Lizzie thought that over. “We’ll have to inform the sheriff. We don’t want that man hurting anyone else.”
So after they fed Sage, they wrapped him in a quilt and hitched the horses to the wagon. They stopped at the soddy to tell Papa they had broken the window and needed to replace it. Then they rode into Mingo to the sheriff’s office. Lizzie explained what had happened the night before.
When she was finished, the sheriff said, “I don’t think you have to worry about him coming back. A man rousted out Doc early this morning, told him his gun had gone off and hit him in the arm. Doc fixed him up, then said he had to tell me about it, because it didn’t look like any gun accident to him. The man got on his horse and rode out of here as fast as an antelope. My guess is he’s halfway to Denver by now.”
The sheriff agreed not to tell anyone what had happened. “It wouldn’t serve any purpose to put a scare in your folks, Belle—or in any other lady homesteaders,” he said. And then he told Lizzie, “Sister, that was mighty fine shooting. Next time I get up a posse, I just might ask you to join.”