the long, white, glittering wall stretched east and west above the
brown woods. Beyond that lay Spain. Once across the border, I might be
detained, if no worse happened to me, as a prisoner of war; for we were
then at war with Spain on the Italian side. Or I might be handed over
to one of the savage bands, half smugglers, half brigands, that held the
passes; or be delivered, worse fate of all, into the power of the French
exiles, of whom some would be likely to recognise me and cut my throat.
‘It is a long way into Spain,’ I muttered, watching in a kind of
fascination Clon handling his pistols.
‘I think you will find the other road longer still,’ the landlord
answered grimly. ‘But choose, and be quick about it.’
They were three to one, and they had firearms. In effect I had no
choice.
‘Well, if I must I must?’ I cried, making up my mind with seeming
recklessness. ‘VOGUE LA GALERE! Spain be it. It will not be the first
time I have heard the dons talk.’
The men nodded, as much as to say that they had known what the end would
be; the landlord released my rein; and in a trice we were riding down
the narrow track, with our faces set towards the mountains.
On one point my mind was now more easy. The men meant fairly by me, and
I had no longer to fear, as I had feared, a pistol-shot in the back at
the first convenient ravine. As far as that went, I might ride in peace.
On the other hand, if I let them carry me across the border my fate
was sealed. A man set down without credentials or guards among the
wild desperadoes who swarmed in war-time in the Asturian passes might
consider himself fortunate if an easy death fell to his lot. In my case
I could make a shrewd guess what would happen. A single nod of meaning,
one muttered word, dropped among the savage men with whom I should
be left, and the diamonds hidden in my boot would go neither to the
Cardinal nor back to Mademoiselle--nor would it matter to me whither
they went.
So while the others talked in their taciturn fashion, or sometimes
grinned at my gloomy face, I looked out over the brown woods with eyes
that saw yet did not see. The red squirrel swarming up the trunk, the
startled pigs that rushed away grunting from their feast of mast, the
solitary rider who met us, armed to the teeth, and passed northwards
after whispering with the landlord--all these I saw. But my mind was not
with them. It was groping and feeling about like a hunted mole for
some way of escape. For time pressed. The slope we were on was growing
steeper. By-and-by we fell into a southward valley, and began to follow
it steadily upwards, crossing and recrossing a swiftly rushing stream.
The snow peaks began to be hidden behind the rising bulk of hills that
overhung us, and sometimes we could see nothing before or behind but the
wooded walls of our valley rising sheer and green a thousand paces high
on either hand; with grey rocks half masked by fern and ivy jutting here
and there through the firs and alders.
It was a wild and sombre scene even at that hour, with the mid-day sun
shining on the rushing water and drawing the scent out of the pines;
but I knew that there was worse to come, and sought desperately for some
ruse by which I might at least separate the men. Three were too many;
with one I might deal. At last, when I had cudgelled my brain for
an hour, and almost resigned myself to a sudden charge on the men
single-handed--a last desperate resort--I thought of a plan: dangerous,
too, and almost desperate, but which still seemed to promise something.
It came of my fingers resting, as they lay in my pocket, on the
fragments of the orange sachet; which, without having any particular
design in my mind, I had taken care to bring with me. I had torn the
sachet into four pieces--four corners. As I played mechanically with
them, one of my fingers fitted into one, as into a glove; a second
finger into another. And the plan came.
Before I could move in it, however, I had to wait until we stopped to
bait the flagging horses, which we did about noon at the head of the
valley. Then, pretending to drink from the stream, I managed to secure
unseen a handful of pebbles, slipping them into the same pocket with
the morsels of stuff. On getting to horse again, I carefully fitted a
pebble, not too tightly, into the largest scrap, and made ready for the
attempt.
The landlord rode on my left, abreast of me; the other two knaves
behind. The road at this stage favoured me, for the valley, which
drained the bare uplands that lay between the lower hills and the base
of the real mountains, had become wide and shallow. Here were no trees,
and the path was a mere sheep-track covered with short, crisp grass, and
running sometimes on this bank of the stream and sometimes on that.
I waited until the ruffian beside me turned to speak to the men behind.
The moment he did so, and his eyes were averted, I slipped out the scrap
of satin in which I had placed the pebble, and balancing it carefully on
my right thigh as I rode, I flipped it forward with all the strength
of my thumb and finger. I meant it to fall a few paces before us in the
path, where it could be seen. But alas for my hopes! At the critical
moment my horse started, my finger struck the scrap aslant, the pebble
flew out, and the bit of stuff fluttered into a whin-bush close to my
stirrup--and was lost!
I was bitterly disappointed, for the same thing might happen again, and
I had now only three scraps left. But fortune favoured me, by putting
it into my neighbour’s head to plunge into a hot debate with the
shock-headed man on the nature of some animals seen on a distant brow;
which he said were izards, while the other maintained that they were
common goats. He continued, on this account, to ride with his face
turned from me, and I had time to fit another pebble into the second
piece of stuff. Sliding it on to my thigh, I poised it, and flipped it.
This time my finger struck the tiny missile fairly in the middle, and
shot it so far and so truly that it dropped exactly in the path ten
paces in front of us. The moment I saw it fall I kicked my neighbour’s
nag in the ribs; it started, and he, turning in a rage, hit it. The next
instant he pulled it almost on to its haunches.
‘SAINT GRIS!’ he cried; and sat glaring at the bit of yellow satin, with
his face turned purple and his jaw fallen.
‘What is it!’ I said, staring at him in turn, ‘What is the matter,
fool?’
‘Matter?’ he blurted out. ‘MON DIEU!’
But Clon’s excitement surpassed even his. The dumb man no sooner
saw what had attracted his comrade’s attention, than he uttered an
inarticulate and horrible noise, and tumbling off his horse, more like a
beast than a man threw himself bodily on the precious morsel.
The innkeeper was not far behind him. An instant and he was down, too,
peering at the thing; and for an instant I thought that they would fight
over it. However, though their jealousy was evident, their excitement
cooled a little when they discovered that the scrap of stuff was empty;
for, fortunately, the pebble had fallen out of it. Still, it threw them
into such a fever of eagerness as it was wonderful to witness. They
nosed the ground where it had lain, they plucked up the grass and turf,
and passed it through their fingers, they ran to and fro like dogs on a
trail; and, glancing askance at one another, came back always together
to the point of departure. Neither in his jealousy would suffer the
other to be there alone.
The shock-headed man and I sat our horses and looked on; he marvelling,
and I pretending to marvel. As the two searched up and down the path,
we moved a little out of it to give them space; and presently, when
all their heads were turned from me, I let a second morsel drop under a
gorse-bush. The shock-headed man, by-and-by, found this, and gave it to
Clon; and as from the circumstances of the first discovery no suspicion
attached to me, I ventured to find the third and last scrap myself. I
did not pick it up, but I called the innkeeper, and he pounced upon it
as I have seen a hawk pounce on a chicken.
They hunted for the fourth morsel, but, of course, in vain, and in the
end they desisted, and fitted the three they had together; but neither
would let his own portion out of his hands, and each looked at the other
across the spoil with eyes of suspicion. It was strange to see them in
that wide-stretching valley, whence grey boar-backs of hills swelled
up into the silence of the snow--it was strange, I say, in that vast
solitude, to see these two, mere dots on its bosom, circling round
one another in fierce forgetfulness of the outside world, glaring
and shifting their ground like cocks about to engage, and wholly
engrossed--by three scraps of orange-colour, invisible at fifty paces!
At last the innkeeper cried with an oath, ‘I am going back. This must
be known down yonder. Give me your pieces, man, and do you go on with
Antoine. It will be all right.’
But Clon, waving a scrap of the stuff in either hand, and thrusting his
ghastly mask into the other’s face, shook his head in passionate denial.
He could not speak, but he made it as clear as daylight that if anyone
went back with the news, he was the man to go.
‘Nonsense!’ the landlord rejoined fiercely, ‘We cannot leave Antoine to
go on alone with him. Give me the stuff.’
But Clon would not. He had no thought of resigning the credit of the
discovery; and I began to think that the two would really come to blows.
But there was an alternative--an alternative in which I was concerned;
and first one and then the other looked at me. It was a moment of peril,
and I knew it. My stratagem might react on myself, and the two, to put
an end to their difficulty, agree to put an end to me. But I faced them
so coolly, and showed so bold a front, and the ground where we stood was
so open, that the idea took no root. They fell to wrangling again more
viciously than before. One tapped his gun and the other his pistols. The
landlord scolded, the dumb man gurgled. At last their difference ended
as I had hoped it would.
‘Very well then, we will both go back!’ the innkeeper cried in a rage.
‘And Antoine must see him on. But the blame be on your head. Do you give
the lad your pistols.’
Clon took one pistol, and gave it to the shock-headed man.
‘The other!’ the innkeeper said impatiently.
But Clon shook his head with a grim smile, and pointed to the arquebuss.
By a sudden movement, the landlord snatched the pistol, and averted
Clon’s vengeance by placing both it and the gun in the shock-headed
man’s hands.
‘There!’ he said, addressing the latter, ‘now can you do? If Monsieur
tries to escape or turn back, shoot him! But four hours’ riding should
bring you to the Roca Blanca. You will find the men there, and will have
no more to do with it.’
Antoine did not see things quite in that light, however. He looked at
me, and then at the wild track in front of us; and he muttered an oath
and said he would die if he would.
But the landlord, who was in a frenzy of impatience, drew him aside
and talked to him, and in the end seemed to persuade him; for in a few
minutes the matter was settled.
Antoine came back, and said sullenly, ‘Forward, Monsieur,’ the two
others stood on one side, I shrugged my shoulders and kicked up my
horse, and in a twinkling we two were riding on together--man to man.
I turned once or twice to see what those we had left behind were doing,
and always found them standing in apparent debate; but my guard showed
so much jealousy of these movements that I presently shrugged my
shoulders again and desisted.
I had racked my brains to bring about this state of things. Strange to
say, now I had succeeded, I found it less satisfactory than I had hoped.
I had reduced the odds and got rid of my most dangerous antagonists; but
Antoine, left to himself, proved to be as full of suspicion as an egg of
meat. He rode a little behind me, with his gun across his saddlebow, and
a pistol near his hand; and at the slightest pause on my part, or if I
turned to look at him, he muttered his constant ‘Forward, Monsieur!’
in a tone which warned me that his finger was on the trigger. At such a
distance he could not miss; and I saw nothing for it but to go on meekly
before him to the Roca Blanca--and my fate.
What was to be done? The road presently reached the end of the valley
and entered a narrow pine-clad defile, strewn with rocks and boulders,
over which the torrent plunged and eddied with a deafening roar. In
front the white gleam of waterfalls broke the sombre ranks of climbing
trunks. The snow line lay less than half a mile away on either hand; and
crowning all--at the end of the pass, as it seemed to the eye--rose the
pure white pillar of the Pic du Midi shooting up six thousand feet into
the blue of heaven. Such a scene so suddenly disclosed, was enough to
drive the sense of danger from my mind; and for a moment I reined in my
horse. But ‘Forward, Monsieur!’ came the grating order. I fell to earth
again, and went on. What was to be done?
I was at my wits’ end to know. The man refused to talk, refused to ride
abreast of me, would have no dismounting, no halting, no communication
at all. He would have nothing but this silent, lonely procession of
two, with the muzzle of his gun at my back. And meanwhile we were fast
climbing the pass. We had left the others an hour--nearly two. The sun
was declining; the time, I supposed, about half-past three.
If he would only let me come within reach of him! Or if anything would
fall out to take his attention! When the pass presently widened into a
bare and dreary valley, strewn with huge boulders and with snow lying
here and there in the hollows, I looked desperately before me, and
scanned even the vast snow-fields that overhung us and stretched away
to the base of the ice-peak. But I saw nothing. No bear swung across the
path, no izard showed itself on the cliffs. The keen, sharp air cut our
cheeks and warned me that we were approaching the summit of the ridge.
On all sides were silence and desolation.
MON DIEU! And the ruffians on whose tender mercies I was to be thrown
might come to meet us! They might appear at any moment. In my despair
I loosened my hat on my head, and let the first gust carry it to the
ground, and then with an oath of annoyance tossed my feet from the
stirrups to go after it. But the rascal roared to me to keep my seat.
‘Forward, Monsieur!’ he shouted brutally. ‘Go on!’
‘But my hat!’ I cried. ‘MILLE TONNERRES, man! I must--’
‘Forward, Monsieur, or I shoot!’ he replied inexorably raising his gun.
‘One--two--’
And I went on. But, ah, I was wrathful! That I, Gil de Berault, should
be outwitted, and led by the nose like a ringed bull, by this Gascon
lout! That I, whom all Paris knew and feared--if it did not love--the
terror of Zaton’s, should come to my end in this dismal waste of snow
and rock, done to death by some pitiful smuggler or thief! It must not
be. Surely in the last resort I could give an account of one man, though
his belt were stuffed with pistols.
But how? Only, it seemed, by open force. My heart began to flutter as
I planned it; and then grew steady again. A hundred paces before us a
gully or ravine on the left ran up into the snow-field. Opposite its
mouth a jumble of stones and broken rocks covered the path, I marked
this for the place. The knave would need both his hands to hold up his
nag over the stones, and, if I turned on him suddenly enough, he might
either drop his gun or fire it harmlessly.
But, in the meantime, something happened; as, at the last moment, things
do happen. While we were still fifty yards short of the place, I found
his horse’s nose creeping forward on a level with my crupper; and, still
advancing, still advancing, until I could see it out of the tail of my
eye, and my heart gave a great bound. He was coming abreast of me: he
was going to deliver himself into my hands! To cover my excitement, I
began to whistle.
‘Hush!’ he muttered fiercely, his voice sounding so strange and
unnatural, that my first thought was that he was ill; and I turned to
him. But he only said again,--
‘Hush! Pass by here quietly, Monsieur.’
‘Why?’ I asked mutinously, curiosity getting the better of me. For had
I been wise I had taken no notice; every second his horse was coming up
with mine. Its nose was level with my stirrup already.
‘Hush, man!’ he said again. This time there was no mistake about the
panic in his voice. ‘They call this the Devil’s Chapel, God send us safe
by it! It is late to be here. Look at those!’ he continued, pointing
with a finger which visibly shook.
I looked. At the mouth of the gully, in a small space partly cleared of
stones, stood three broken shafts, raised on rude pedestals.
‘Well?’ I said in a low voice. The sun, which was near setting, flushed
the great peak above to the colour of blood; but the valley was growing
grey and each moment more dreary. ‘Well, what of those?’ I said.
In spite of my peril and the excitement of the coming struggle I
felt the chill of his fear. Never had I seen so grim, so desolate, so
God-forsaken a place! Involuntarily I shivered.
‘They were crosses,’ he muttered in a voice little above a whisper,
while his eyes roved this way and that in terror. ‘The Cure of Gabas
blessed the place, and set them up. But next morning they were as you
see them now. Come on, Monsieur; come on!’ he continued, plucking at my
arm. ‘It is not safe here after sunset. Pray God, Satan be not at home!’
He had completely forgotten in his panic that he had anything to fear
from me. His gun dropped loosely across his saddle, his leg rubbed mine.
I saw this, and I changed my plan of action. As our horses reached the
stones I stooped, as if to encourage mine, and, with a sudden clutch,
snatched the gun bodily from his hand, at the same time that I backed my
horse with all my strength. It was done in a moment! A second and I had
him at the end of the gun, and my finger was on the trigger. Never was
victory more easily gained.
He looked at me between rage and terror, his jaw fallen.
‘Are you mad?’ he cried, his teeth chattering as he spoke. Even in this
strait his eyes left me and wandered round in alarm.
‘No, sane!’ I retorted fiercely. ‘But I do not like this place any
better than you do.’ Which was true enough, if not quite true. ‘So, by
your right, quick march!’ I continued imperatively. ‘Turn your horse, my
friend, or take the consequences.’
He turned like a lamb, and headed down the valley again, without giving
a thought to his pistols. I kept close to him, and in less than a minute
we had left the Devil’s Chapel well behind us, and were moving down
again as we had come up. Only now I held the gun.
When we had gone have a mile or so--until then I did not feel
comfortable myself, and though I thanked heaven that the place existed,
I thanked heaven also that I was out of it--I bade him halt.
‘Take off your belt,’ I said curtly, ‘and throw it down. But, mark me,
if you turn I fire.’
The spirit was quite gone out of him, and he obeyed mechanically. I
jumped down, still covering him with the gun, and picked up the belt,
pistols and all. Then I remounted, and we went on. By-and-by he asked me
sullenly what I was going to do.
‘Go back,’ I said, ‘and take the road to Auch when I come to it.’
‘It will be dark in an hour,’ he answered sulkily.
‘I know that,’ I retorted. ‘We must camp and do the best we can.’
And as I said, we did. The daylight held until we gained the skirts of
the pine-wood at the head of the pass. Here I chose a corner a little
off the track, and well sheltered from the wind, and bade him light a
fire. I tethered the horses near this and within sight. Then it remained
only to sup. I had a piece of bread: he had another and an onion. We ate
in silence, sitting on opposite sides of the fire.
But after supper I found myself in a dilemma; I did not see how I was
to sleep. The ruddy light which gleamed on the knave’s swart face and
sinewy hands showed also his eyes, black, sullen, and watchful. I knew
that the man was plotting revenge; that he would not hesitate to plant
his knife between my ribs should I give him the chance; and I could find
only one alternative to remaining awake. Had I been bloody-minded, I
should have chosen it and solved the question at once and in my favour
by shooting him as he sat.
But I have never been a cruel man, and I could not find it in my heart
to do this. The silence of the mountain and the sky-which seemed a thing
apart from the roar of the torrent and not to be broken by it--awed
me. The vastness of the solitude in which we sat, the dark void above,
through which the stars kept shooting, the black gulf below in which the
unseen waters boiled and surged, the absence of other human company or
other signs of human existence, put such a face upon the deed that I
gave up the thought of it with a shudder, and resigned myself, instead,
to watch through the night--the long, cold, Pyrenean night. Presently
he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the blaze, and then for a
couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking. It seemed years since
I had seen Zaton’s or thrown the dice. The old life, the old
employments--should I ever go back to them?--seemed dim and distant.
Would Cocheforet, the forest and the mountain, the grey Chateau and its
mistresses, seem one day as dim? And if one bit of life could fade
so quickly at the unrolling of another, and seem in a moment pale and
colourless, would all life some day and somewhere, and all the things
we--But enough! I was growing foolish. I sprang up and kicked the wood
together, and, taking up the gun, began to pace to and fro under
the cliff. Strange that a little moonlight, a few stars, a breath of
solitude should carry a man back to childhood and childish things.
. . . . . .
It was three in the afternoon of the next day, and the sun lay hot on
the oak groves, and the air was full of warmth as we began to climb the
slope, midway up which the road to Auch shoots out of the track. The
yellow bracken and the fallen leaves underfoot seemed to throw up light
of themselves; and here and there a patch of ruddy beech lay like a
bloodstain on the hillside. In front a herd of pigs routed among the
mast, and grunted lazily; and high above us a boy lay watching them. ‘We
part here,’ I said to my companion.
It was my plan to ride a little way along the road to Auch so as to
blind his eyes; then, leaving my horse in the forest, I would go on foot
to the Chateau. ‘The sooner the better!’ he answered with a snarl. ‘And
I hope I may never see your face again, Monsieur.’
But when we came to the wooden cross at the fork of the roads, and were
about to part, the boy we had seen leapt out of the fern and came to
meet us.
‘Hollo!’ he cried in a sing-song tone.
‘Well,’ my companion answered, drawing rein impatiently. ‘What is it?’
‘There are soldiers in the village.’
‘Soldiers,’ Antoine cried incredulously.
‘Ay, devils on horseback,’ the lad answered, spitting on the ground.
‘Three score of them. From Auch.’
Antoine turned to me, his face transformed with fury.
‘Curse you!’ he cried. ‘This is some of your work. Now we are all
undone. And my mistresses? SACRE! if I had that gun I would shoot you
like a rat.’
‘Steady, fool,’ I answered roughly. ‘I know no more of this than you
do.’
Which was so true that my surprise was at least as great as his, and
better grounded. The Cardinal, who rarely made a change of front, had
sent me hither that he might not be forced to send soldiers, and run
the risk of all that might arise from such a movement. What of this
invasion, then, than which nothing could be less consistent with his
plans? I wondered. It was possible that the travelling merchants, before
whom I had played at treason, had reported the facts; and that on this
the Commandant at Auch had acted. But it seemed unlikely since he had
had his orders too, and under the Cardinal’s rule there was small place
for individual enterprise. Frankly I could not understand it, and found
only one thing clear; I might now enter the village as I pleased.
‘I am going on to look into this,’ I said to Antoine. ‘Come, my man.’ He
shrugged his shoulders, and stood still.
‘Not I!’ he answered, with an oath. ‘No soldiers for me I have lain out
one night, and I can lie out another.’
I nodded indifferently, for I no longer wanted him; and we parted. After
this, twenty minutes’ riding brought me to the entrance of the village,
and here the change was great indeed. Not one of the ordinary dwellers
in the place was to be seen: either they had shut themselves up in their
hovels, or, like Antoine, they had fled to the woods. Their doors were
closed, their windows shuttered. But lounging about the street were
a score of dragoons, in boots and breastplates, whose short-barrelled
muskets, with pouches and bandoliers attached, were piled near the inn
door. In an open space, where there was a gap in the street, a long row
of horses, linked head to head, stood bending their muzzles over bundles
of rough forage; and on all sides the cheerful jingle of chains and
bridles and the sound of coarse jokes and laughter filled the air.
As I rode up to the inn door an old sergeant, with squinting eyes and
his tongue in his cheek, scanned me inquisitively, and started to cross
the street to challenge me. Fortunately, at that moment the two knaves
whom I had brought from Paris with me, and whom I had left at Auch to
await my orders, came up. I made them a sign not to speak to me, and
they passed on; but I suppose that they told the sergeant that I was not
the man he wanted, for I saw no more of him.
After picketing my horse behind the inn--I could find no better stable,
every place being full--I pushed my way through the group at the door,
and entered. The old room, with the low, grimy roof and the reeking
floor, was half full of strange figures, and for a few minutes I stood
unseen in the smoke and confusion. Then the landlord came my way, and
as he passed me I caught his eye. He uttered a low curse, dropped the
pitcher he was carrying, and stood glaring at me like a man possessed.
The soldier whose wine he was carrying flung a crust in his face,
with,--
‘Now, greasy fingers! What are you staring at?’
‘The devil!’ the landlord muttered, beginning to tremble.
‘Then let me look at him!’ the man retorted, and he turned on his stool.
He started, finding me standing over him.
‘At your service!’ I said grimly. ‘A little time and it will be the
other way, my friend.