Part 11

And as soon as I had said it I was overtaken with a swift certainty. This secret way by which Ravenutzi and the girl had gone must be the same one the wife had come through with her torn hands, venturing so much to ease her need of him by talking to me. I was so struck by the idea that, by just the time she had taken to wait for me at Windy Covers she had missed seeing Ravenutzi help the girl tenderly over that same trail, that I began at once to tell Herman about it, to his great amazement.

“You did that,” he said; “you talked to her and let her go, knowing what harm she had in her mind to do?”

“She was a desperate woman; she could have killed me before help came if I had given the alarm. In any case,” I protested, “I would not have given it, because she trusted me. But no harm will come to the Outliers. This is a private quarrel.”

“That poor girl,” he said, “if she should find her!”

“In that case,” said I, “would you back Ravenutzi to back his wanton or his wife?”

“Mona—you have no proof!”

“You said—the day she came out of the woods by Leaping Water—that she was the sort to do anything for the man she loved. Well—she is that sort.”

“Mona!”

“Perhaps it was not for love then. You said she could appreciate—things. Perhaps Ravenutzi promised her a——”

“Mona! Mona!” he said, with so sharp an anguish that if I had not felt I owed it to all honorable women to show him where he stood, I should have left him to his dear illusion. Yet to see him so excusing treachery for the sake of a tinted cheek or the way a wrist was turned, set me white hot and throbbing.

“Would you rather,” I said, “she had done it for love, or for the King’s Desire?”

I could not see his face, but his voice was troubled with amazement.

“Mona—I—I was not prepared for this.” It was too dark to see, but I guessed the pauses to be the swallowings of his throat. “I thought you would be glad to have me go to that poor girl and make things as easy for her as I could. You never seem to think how she must have suffered before she came to this.”

“She hid it well. And depend upon it, Herman, whatever sufferings a woman has in such a case, whatever struggles, they are _toward_ the thing she would do, not away from it.” I do not know how I knew this, but the moment I had spoken I was quite sure. “If she struggles,” I said, “it is to justify her right to do it, to quiet compunction, to appease her fears. Zirriloë came to the end too quickly to have suffered much.”

We were both still after that, while the heavens whitened and showed me a little of how worn he was and what marks of the trail were on him. I suppose he must have felt the melting of my mood toward him, for presently his hand stole toward me and began to finger the loose end of my cougar skin.

“You never seem to think, Mona”—he hesitated—“what this might mean to me.”

“Well, what does it mean?”

I tried, I think I tried, not to make my voice sound so yielding that he should suppose me softened toward the shame and wrong of it, nor so hard that he might imagine the hardness grew out of my caring what it meant to him. I must have fallen a little to one side or the other, for it was a long time before he began again.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I am hardly sure myself. There was a time before we came to Outland—how long ago was that, Mona?—when I fell short of much that you said and thought. There was something in books and poetry and music, especially in music, that you were always expecting me to understand, and the expectation irritated me. I fell into the way of denying and despising that something, and trying—I am afraid succeeding, too, in making myself feel that it sprang from some superiority in me not to understand.... Are you listening, Mona?”

“Yes, Herman.”

“It was not that I felt the want of it so much in myself, but other people—you, Mona—missed it in me. There was a door to all that, about to swing upon the latch ... and I could never swing it. And then we came to this free life ... and Zirriloë.... Did you think I was in love with her, Mona?”

“Were you in love with her?”

“I don’t know ... she made the door swing back ... she had such a way of walking ... and that little smile of hers coming and going ... she was all those things made manifest. A man would understand. I liked to do things for her. It was a way of serving all the loveliness of women ... it was serving you, Mona....”

“Ah,” I said, “I would have understood better if the service had been paid in person.”

“I suppose so.”

He was both humble and reluctant in his acknowledgment, and paused so long a time after it that I could mark the ebb of the dark from the highest hills and the full slopes emerging rounded with verdure. But I found I had nothing to say to him in all this, and perhaps he expected nothing.

“If she could have stayed so ...” he began again, “as long as she stayed so, I could feel ... what was it you used to say? ... the roll of the world eastward.... But to have it end like this ... in meanness and betrayal ... I wish I might have brought her back with me!”

“Better that you did not, considering what she would come back to meet. If she loved Ravenutzi she is having her happiness now. If she suffers at all it is not for what she has done but for what you may think of it. And if there is any deep-felt misery going on in this anywhere, it is on the part of Ravenutzi’s wife.”

“Ah, I had forgotten there was a wife.”

I meant he should not forget, nor lose for that shallow girl any of the deeper opprobriousness that should attach to the double betrayal. But I was taken by surprise to have him turned by that suggestion quite in another direction.

“A desperate woman, by your account of her,” he said. “Promise me, Mona, that you will not hold any further communication with her, and that you will not go out of the camp without an escort. It isn’t safe, and it isn’t quite fair, is it, to parley with the enemies of the Outliers?”

If he had stopped with the consideration of my safety, I should probably have consented meekly like any woman when any man takes an interest in her, but that suggestion of unfairness set me at odds again.

“I shall not do anything imprudent,” I said; “but as to the relation of my behavior to the Outliers, that is a matter which you must leave me to decide for myself.”

“I suppose so,” said Herman ruefully. “I beg your pardon. I don’t know how it is, Mona, I let other women do pretty much as they like with me, but I always find myself getting irritated if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

I was certain Herman had never said anything like this to me before, yet it had so familiar a ring to it that I found myself going back in my mind for the association. I recalled what Evarra said when she asked if Herman was in love with me, that if such were the case he would expect me to do as he said. I was so taken up with this possibility that I heard not too attentively the far cry of coyotes going by. There must have been some nuance in it not of the beasts’ cry, for the Outliers began springing up around us, listening and intent. It came again and one answered it. By such signs we were made aware it was Mancha returning from the Smithy.

XII HOW AN OUTLIER SAW A TALL WOMAN FOLLOWING A TRAIL AND MANCHA MET THE SMITH AGAIN

I have no notion how long we lay in the neighborhood of River Ward. By this time we had lost all track of the calendar, Herman and I, and the Outliers had none except the orderly procession of the season’s bloom and fruit and mating time. Great umbrageous clouds came up behind the hills and were cut down by the wind. Clear days succeeded one another, matched so perfectly for warmth and color that the consciousness took no account of the dividing nights. Crowns of foothills lying seaward showed increasing green and then faint flecks of poppy color. These were our quietest days, for though there was fighting and following, Herman and I had no active part in it. Consider how few we were in a great land, and no trumpeting, no shock of guns, no daily bulletin. Ten men would set out on the mere stirring of an animal sense that beyond a certain hill or in a known hollow lurked the breeders of offense. And then no news of them except as they came or did not come again. Companies of Far-Folk and Outliers would fence all day each to come at the other unsuspected: flights and evasions and sharp encounters took place in such deeps of leafage as dulled all sound. All this was covered, swept over as carefully as the wild creature hides its ways.

Often now, walking on the tawny-colored hill that sleeps above the bay with the Mission between its paws, I look back at the warm-tinted slopes, beyond the reach of the encroaching fogs, and wonder under what peaks, between what long blue ranges we lay that season. What tumult and warfare goes on in those still spaces unregarded? But we have never, as I said in the beginning, got any nearer to it than Broken Tree.

The Outliers stuck to the track of the Far-Folk, and had so much the better of them in readiness and organization that before long they had captured the most of their women. Under Mancha our men had sought out their homes, abandoned so hurriedly, in the shallow, brush-grown cañons, and had burned and broken what they found. That Ravenutzi had joined the Far-Folk we knew, for once when they had come to parley over a wounded man, they saw the hostage at Oca’s back directing the Council by such knowledge of the Outliers as he had acquired by long residence. Oca blew out his long beard, laughing as he listened.

I knew too from one of the captive women, that he still concealed from his wife the place where he had hidden the Ward. The explanation Ravenutzi had given to Oca of the use he should make of Zirriloë’s person in the game that was yet to be played, set that chief chuckling in his beard like a cataract.

But to his wife Ravenutzi had denied seriousness: laughed, kissed her burned throat, blinded, bound her with an ingenuity of charm and tenderness until she grew tame under his hand. Then she would rage the more bitterly when he was away, suspecting him with the girl in hiding; flaming with jealousy until his return found her burned out, white and faint, creeping humbly to his caress.

This, I say, I had from one of the captives, for I talked of her to the Outliers only with Trastevera. I think the woman’s story was known to them. She was seen often flitting from some post of observation when they came with prisoners, and though it was certain she had been twice inside the Ledge seeking the place where Zirriloë lay hidden, no motion was made to take her. They judged her no doubt hunted by a more remorseless enemy; the same that drove on Mancha’s trail and wasted him in the night. It was strange to me at first when I looked on the Hammerer’s passion-hollowed face, to see how it was contradicted by the youthful fuzziness of his blond hair and the round stalwartness of his frame, until I realized that he tried to make his body what his hammer was, the instrument of his satisfaction, and nursed it carefully to that end. But here the invisible enemy had him at point. Eat he could, and bathe, and exercise himself and rough the handle of his hammer to his grasp, and tighten the thongs. But in the night sleep and jealousy contended, and he turned in his bed and set his teeth upon his hands. His eyes reddened at the lids, and when he would be sitting among us, his attention would be forever wandering, and there would be a half inadvertent movement of those same hands as if to rend and tear. It was plain that he came but half out of some burning preoccupation to attend to whatever his men brought to his notice, and slipped back into it even between the utterance of two words, like a drowned insect in a glass. He was seldom at River Ward, seeming easier to be on the trail and in action. That there was only one trail that interested him was perfectly evident. He cared nothing whatever for the recovery of the Treasure if only he might get at Ravenutzi and find where the Ward was hidden. And as often as Outliers and Far-Folk came together in running fights, his men fell apart tacitly to afford him the craved-for opportunity. As we knew afterward, by Oca’s express direction, the Far-Folk closed round the smith to oppose him. As often as Mancha came back unslaked, his new whetted fury turned on himself. Bitter as these frustrated encounters were, they were less so than those times when they surprised their enemy and found Ravenutzi not with them. Where was he then but lingering in some shut quarter with the Ward! One would know that this had occurred when the Hammerer sat upon the edges of his bed the night long goading himself with recollections.

“Give over; give up,” cried Trastevera to him. “She never thought of you; and what do you but suck poison from the thought of her?”

“And what,” said he, “shall I think of, if I do not think of her? Do you advise me to think of _him_?”

“Think of your work, how you are to win back the King’s Desire for us.”

“And how shall I think to win the King’s Desire and not think of how it was lost?” And so having worked round in a circle again he did think of it; what looks and sighs and wooing touches had gone to that betrayal.

“If I could get at him,” he cried, “if I could only get at him”; and groaned and struck with his stone hammer deep into the soft earth.

It was difficult for Trastevera, who alone partook of his stormy confidences, to be patient with his consuming thought, since she was herself the happier, free of the obsession of Ravenutzi. For the Outliers remembered now how she had been against him in the beginning, and blamed themselves for overriding with their weighty reasons that delicate presentiment. Warmed by this support, all her power of foreseeing put forth again and promised them success. She burned with foreknowledge that kept time like a poised and constant needle with what went on afar behind wooded hills and in secret valleys. Often as we lay in the chaparral and heard the bees fumble at the flagons of the wild currant, and saw the young rabbits rising to drink delicately of dew in the shallow cup of leaves, she would start up bright and hot, sniffing battle. As she drooped and grieved, or snatches of triumphant song burst from her, we guessed what went on between our men and Oca’s a day’s journey south and west.

It was in that quarter they defended themselves for as long as enjoyment of the King’s Desire exceeded all other considerations. It was a region of high hills, set close, well covered; narrow cañons choked with chaparral; rain-fed springs, trailless steep barrancas. Here they kept like foxes, quick and slinking, and the Outliers hunted them, not often with success. The cover was too thick for slings, and the ways too steep to give free play with the hammers. The enemy showed themselves and ran, involving the Outliers in a maze of blind gullies, and came out unscathed and mocking on hills above them. They made elaborate false clues and set traps which at the last moment they wanted the courage to spring, but never came to any open issue because of the King’s Desire. They had the Treasure in hand at last, and could not be persuaded to leave it. Where it was they hung like flies at a honey-pot. You could never find the Far-Folk very far nor very long from one another. They would have out the jewels and gloated upon them, tracing the patterns, holding them this way and that to catch the light, tried on the collars and the armlets, pranked in the crowns, fed upon the mere sight of them as an antidote to defeat. All this was very well for a time, but the drawing of their forces together about the King’s Desire served their enemies more than it served them. Threescore men in a camp were easier hunted than two or three. By keeping in close order they left betraying traces in the forest, and brought down Mancha’s hammerers. To avoid this they made longer flights, swift, uncalculated leaps. Their women and children, unable to keep up with them, were gathered in by the Outliers and carried to River Ward. It began to appear that they must make temporary disposition of their trove until they had possession of their families again, and could make off with both into that wooded country south where there were no man traces and no Outliers could come.

They buried the Treasure once, and then the whole party sat upon the place like brooding quail, and betrayed it by their guarding. So they had it up again, and Ravenutzi and Oca made a plan between them. They were to send the jewels on south under convoy, then by means of the person of the Ward they were to draw Mancha off from River Ward. Then with a free field left the main body of the Far-Folk were to raid the camp at River Ward and recapture their women.

This was the plan: An old man was to have himself captured by Mancha’s men in order to convey to the women news of the rescue waiting them. The Ward, who lay still in some secret place of Ravenutzi’s contriving, was to be brought up to that quarter where it was to their advantage to have Mancha get word of her. A good plan, and worthy of the smith who planned it. It was well agreed to except in one point. No one of them trusted another one to take away the Treasure. So after much argument they fell upon the notion of dividing it. It was evident that as long as it remained in the common custody, no man was free to fight and run, according to his fighting humor or his chances. But give every man his own to carry about with him and he would know what he was fighting for, not with one eye over his shoulder to see how the common object fared. Good logic and sound, answering in many a better case; singularly not in this. Settling on a division of the King’s Desire proved a much easier matter than dividing it. They were two days wrangling over the manner of the division, and another trading and bargaining and matching lots among themselves. Then followed the period of inaction, planned to give the Outliers the impression that they had withdrawn from that part of the country. The next move was to have the Mancha sent seeking in the direction where it was to be made known through the captives the Ward was to be found. Ravenutzi had gone to prepare her for her part in it. Poor child, if it were willingly or not, if she consented at all, or even if she had any clear idea what was required of her, who can say?

In the meantime there were the Far-Folk lying separate, very quiet, every man with his treasure in his bosom to finger and fondle, with the south open before him and the spring coming on by leaps and bounds. Everywhere there were the smell of sap, the mating cry of quail and poppy fires kindling seaward; not much to put the fighting humor in a man.

But the Outliers were not quite in the same case. They were wronged, robbed, betrayed, they distrusted every move of their enemies, kept watches out. From the meeting of the river and the Ledge to the Gap, where the dip of the ranges east began, there was a line of solitary outposts, patrolling all the passages. While the Far-Folk played fox in the thorny covers south, there was in reality a stopped earth between them and their women and the places they had known.

The posts beat eastward half a day each from his own station to the next and back. One of these, going as still as a snake, saw a tall woman with long, coiling hair wrapped about her body, wasted and lovely, following a track in the woods. She followed so patiently, and with so much intention and such sureness, poring above it as though every footprint stabbed her and she hugged the stabbing to her breast; urged forward on it with such anguished purpose, held back from it by such torturing fears! Who else but a jealous woman follows in such fashion on the trail of the man she loves? The Outlier counted himself a poor guesser if this were not Ravenutzi’s wife following Ravenutzi. He followed, too, at a discreet distance. He might, perhaps, have come alongside her without attracting her attention, so intently was it fixed upon what lay before her, what she could not withhold herself from seeking, and was afraid to find. Now she hurried on with a kind of fury of discernment. Now she turned aside to compose her anguished bosom the better to read its traces where the trail looped and turned to baffle and bewilder. He followed. Trees gave place to scrub, and that to knee-high chaparral, and that to open hill crowns and broken stony ledges. Here he must skulk behind hills and at a considerable distance, because of the betraying openness. Presently he lost her. He had made sure that she was headed for a certain sag in the crest of a hill, and that by coming around the brow of another one he would have full sight of her again, that he was astounded and chagrined to discover, as it seemed, that she had sunk into the earth. There was no cover and no woman. Below him lay a slight hollow full of loose boulders. Toward this the trail, if trail there was, must have led, and he would have hurried on except for being so sure she had not had time to make it. He lay still where he was, under the jut of a bald hill, and considered.

Presently he saw a fox come out of its hole on the opposite side and begin to trot across the hollow; it started between tall boulders, but swerved, went sidewise, muzzle pointed with suspicion. Within the ring of boulders then lay something that was neither stick nor stone. From his post the watcher could not say very well what it was until the shadows had shrunk by about an hour. And then he saw the woman. She lay flat, face downward, waiting.

“If you wait, my girl,” said he to himself, “it is because he you follow is at the end of his trail and returns upon it soon.”

The Outlier saw the tortured woman writhing with impatience, saw the shadows shorten toward noon, and crows flying over, and then he saw Ravenutzi. The smith came over the sag of the hills, walking steadily, with apparently nothing on his mind but to get on to the place where he was going. He passed the woman lying among the boulders. The Outlier saw her crowding her face in the dust as he went by, as if she feared she must have cried out and run to him if she had looked. He passed the hill where the watcher lay, and struck into his former trail, deeply cogitating, looking neither down nor about to discover if he had been followed. When the smith was quite out of the hollow the woman rose and ran the way he had come, and the watcher considered. He thought most likely the Ward was at the end of that trail, but he had no particular interest in her, it was Ravenutzi who bred mischief and must be looked after. Accordingly he kept the smith in sight. As they passed the neighborhood of River Ward going back, the Outlier whistled one of his fellows out of the wood and sent word to Mancha.

That was how it happened when the Far-Folk came together to have their last direction from the smith, that there was an Outlier tracked him quite to that place. Behind him, following a slot of bent twigs and broken leaves, were Prassade and Persilope with the slingsmen and Mancha with the hammerers.

It was late of the afternoon and the light low enough to dazzle in the eyes. The place was rather level and open, with thin-branched pines and scant fern; behind it a sharp hill breaking abruptly. Oca sat below the hill where a glade opened, and the thick locks of his beard, heavy and waved like sculptor’s work, were gathered in his hand. He had on his head the circlet of fire-stones that gleamed as he turned, red, blue and green like some strange insect’s eyes. His body was half bare and his arms from the elbow up were banded with circles of beaten gold. The smith whispered behind him, and as the chief nodded, the eyes of his circlet changed from blue to green and red again as though they took their color from his thought.