Dead with fatigue, bleeding from numerous wounds, yet at this awful
moment they straightened themselves, casting contemptuous glances at the
fierce savages surrounding them. They were Romans and would die like
Romans. Holt saw their faces clearly for the first time.
He sprang up with a cry of anguished fury.
"The second man!" he exclaimed. "You saw the second man!"
The girl, releasing his hand, turned her eyes slowly up to his, so that
he met the flame of her ancient and undying love shining like stars upon
him out of the night of time.
"Ever since that moment," she said in a low voice that trembled, "I have
been looking, waiting for you----"
He took her in his arms and smothered her words with kisses, holding her
fiercely to him as though he would never let her go. "I, too," he said,
his whole being burning with his love, "I have been looking, waiting for
you. Now I have found you. We have found each other...!"
The dusk fell slowly, imperceptibly. As twilight slowly draped the gaunt
hills, blotting out familiar details, so the strong dream, veil upon
veil, drew closer over the soul of the wanderer, obliterating finally
the last reminder of To-day. The little wind had dropped and the
desolate moors lay silent, but for the hum of distant water falling to
its valley bed. His life, too, and the life of the girl, he knew, were
similarly falling, falling into some deep shadowed bed where rest would
come at last. No details troubled him, he asked himself no questions. A
profound sense of happy peace numbed every nerve and stilled his
beating heart.
He felt no fear, no anxiety, no hint of alarm or uneasiness vexed his
singular contentment. He realized one thing only--that the girl lay in
his arms, he held her fast, her breath mingled with his own. They had
found each other. What else mattered?
From time to time, as the daylight faded and the sun went down behind
the moors, she spoke. She uttered words he vaguely heard, listening,
though with a certain curious effort, before he closed the thing she
said with kisses. Even the fierceness of his blood was gone. The world
lay still, life almost ceased to flow. Lapped in the deeps of his great
love, he was redeemed, perhaps, of violence and savagery....
"Three dark birds," she whispered, "pass across the sky ... they fall
beyond the ridge. The omens are favourable. A hawk now follows them,
cleaving the sky with pointed wings."
"A hawk," he murmured. "The badge of my old Legion."
"My father will perform the sacrifice," he heard again, though it seemed
a long interval had passed, and the man's figure was now invisible on
the Crag amid the gathering darkness. "Already he prepares the fire.
Look, the sacred island is alight. He has the black cock ready for the
knife."
Holt roused himself with difficulty, lifting his face from the garden of
her hair. A faint light, he saw, gleamed fitfully on the holm within the
tarn. Her father, then, had descended from the Crag, and had lit the
sacrificial fire upon the stones. But what did the doings of the father
matter now to him?
"The dark bird," he repeated dully, "the black victim the Gods of the
Underworld alone accept. It is good, Acella, it is good!" He was about
to sink back again, taking her against his breast as before, when she
resisted and sat up suddenly.
"It is time," she said aloud. "The hour has come. My father climbs, and
we must join him on the summit. Come!"
She took his hand and raised him to his feet, and together they began
the rough ascent towards the Crag. As they passed along the shore of the
Tarn of Blood, he saw the fire reflected in the ink-black waters; he
made out, too, though dimly, a rough circle of big stones, with a larger
flag-stone lying in the centre. Three small fires of bracken and wood,
placed in a triangle with its apex towards the Standing Stone on the
distant hill, burned briskly, the crackling material sending out sparks
that pierced the columns of thick smoke. And in this smoke, peering,
shifting, appearing and disappearing, it seemed he saw great faces
moving. The flickering light and twirling smoke made clear sight
difficult. His bliss, his lethargy were very deep. They left the tarn
below them and hand in hand began to climb the final slope.
Whether the physical effort of climbing disturbed the deep pressure of
the mood that numbed his senses, or whether the cold draught of wind
they met upon the ridge restored some vital detail of To-day, Holt does
not know. Something, at any rate, in him wavered suddenly, as though
a centre of gravity had shifted slightly. There was a perceptible
alteration in the balance of thought and feeling that had held
invariable now for many hours. It seemed to him that something heavy
lifted, or rather, began to lift--a weight, a shadow, something
oppressive that obstructed light. A ray of light, as it were, struggled
through the thick darkness that enveloped him. To him, as he paused on
the ridge to recover his breath, came this vague suggestion of faint
light breaking across the blackness. It was objective.
"See," said the girl in a low voice, "the moon is rising. It lights the
sacred island. The blood-red waters turn to silver."
He saw, indeed, that a huge three-quarter moon now drove with almost
visible movement above the distant line of hills; the little tarn
gleamed as with silvery armour; the glow of the sacrificial fires showed
red across it. He looked down with a shudder into the sheer depth that
opened at his feet, then turned to look at his companion. He started and
shrank back. Her face, lit by the moon and by the fire, shone pale as
death; her black hair framed it with a terrible suggestiveness; the
eyes, though brilliant as ever, had a film upon them. She stood in an
attitude of both ecstasy and resignation, and one outstretched arm
pointed towards the summit where her father stood.
Her lips parted, a marvellous smile broke over her features, her voice
was suddenly unfamiliar: "He wears the collar," she uttered. "Come. Our
time is here at last, and we are ready. See, he waits for us!"
There rose for the first time struggle and opposition in him; he
resisted the pressure of her hand that had seized his own and drew him
forcibly along. Whence came the resistance and the opposition he could
not tell, but though he followed her, he was aware that the refusal in
him strengthened. The weight of darkness that oppressed him shifted a
little more, an inner light increased; The same moment they reached the
summit and stood beside--the priest. There was a curious sound of
fluttering. The figure, he saw, was naked, save for a rough blanket tied
loosely about the waist.
"The hour has come at last," cried his deep booming voice that woke
echoes from the dark hills about them. "We are alone now with our Gods."
And he broke then into a monotonous rhythmic chanting that rose and fell
upon the wind, yet in a tongue that sounded strange; his erect figure
swayed slightly with its cadences; his black beard swept his naked
chest; and his face, turned skywards, shone in the mingled light of moon
above and fire below, yet with an added light as well that burned
within him rather than without. He was a weird, magnificent figure, a
priest of ancient rites invoking his deathless deities upon the
unchanging hills.
But upon Holt, too, as he stared in awed amazement, an inner light
had broken suddenly. It came as with a dazzling blaze that at first
paralysed thought and action. His mind cleared, but too abruptly for
movement, either of tongue or hand, to be possible. Then, abruptly, the
inner darkness rolled away completely. The light in the wild eyes of the
great chanting, swaying figure, he now knew was the light of mania.
The faint fluttering sound increased, and the voice of the girl was
oddly mingled with it. The priest had ceased his invocation. Holt, aware
that he stood alone, saw the girl go past him carrying a big black bird
that struggled with vainly beating wings.
"Behold the sacrifice," she said, as she knelt before her father and
held up the victim. "May the Gods accept it as presently They shall
accept us too!"
The great figure stooped and took the offering, and with one blow of the
knife he held, its head was severed from its body. The blood spattered
on the white face of the kneeling girl. Holt was aware for the first
time that she, too, was now unclothed; but for a loose blanket, her
white body gleamed against the dark heather in the moonlight. At the
same moment she rose to her feet, stood upright, turned towards him so
that he saw the dark hair streaming across her naked shoulders, and,
with a face of ecstasy, yet ever that strange film upon her eyes, her
voice came to him on the wind:
"Farewell, yet not farewell! We shall meet, all three, in the
underworld. The Gods accept us!"
Turning her face away, she stepped towards the ominous figure behind,
and bared her ivory neck and breast to the knife. The eyes of the maniac
were upon her own; she was as helpless and obedient as a lamb before
his spell.
Then Holt's horrible paralysis, if only just in time, was lifted. The
priest had raised his arm, the bronze knife with its ragged edge gleamed
in the air, with the other hand he had already gathered up the thick
dark hair, so that the neck lay bare and open to the final blow. But it
was two other details, Holt thinks, that set his muscles suddenly
free, enabling him to act with the swift judgment which, being wholly
unexpected, disconcerted both maniac and victim and frustrated the awful
culmination. The dark spots of blood upon the face he loved, and the
sudden final fluttering of the dead bird's wings upon the ground--these
two things, life actually touching death, released the held-back
springs.
He leaped forward. He received the blow upon his left arm and hand. It
was his right fist that sent the High Priest to earth with a blow that,
luckily, felled him in the direction away from the dreadful brink, and
it was his right arm and hand, he became aware some time afterwards
only, that were chiefly of use in carrying the fainting girl and her
unconscious father back to the shelter of the cottage, and to the best
help and comfort he could provide....
It was several years afterwards, in a very different setting, that he
found himself spelling out slowly to a little boy the lettering cut into
a circlet of bronze the child found on his study table. To the child he
told a fairy tale, then dismissed him to play with his mother in the
garden. But, when alone, he rubbed away the verdigris with great care,
for the circlet was thin and frail with age, as he examined again the
little picture of a tripod from which smoke issued, incised neatly in
the metal. Below it, almost as sharp as when the Roman craftsman cut it
first, was the name Acella. He touched the letters tenderly with his
left hand, from which two fingers were missing, then placed it in a
drawer of his desk and turned the key.
"That curious name," said a low voice behind his chair. His wife had
come in and was looking over his shoulder. "You love it, and I dread
it." She sat on the desk beside him, her eyes troubled. "It was the name
father used to call me in his illness."
Her husband looked at her with passionate tenderness, but said no word.
"And this," she went on, taking the broken hand in both her own, "is the
price you paid to me for his life. I often wonder what strange good
deity brought you upon the lonely moor that night, and just in the very
nick of time. You remember...?"
"The deity who helps true lovers, of course," he said with a smile,
evading the question. The deeper memory, he knew, had closed absolutely
in her since the moment of the attempted double crime. He kissed her,
murmuring to himself as he did so, but too low for her to hear,
"Acella! _My_ Acella...!"
VI
THE VALLEY OF THE BEASTS
1
As they emerged suddenly from the dense forest the Indian halted, and
Grimwood, his employer, stood beside him, gazing into the beautiful
wooded valley that lay spread below them in the blaze of a golden
sunset. Both men leaned upon their rifles, caught by the enchantment of
the unexpected scene.
"We camp here," said Tooshalli abruptly, after a careful survey.
"To-morrow we make a plan."
He spoke excellent English. The note of decision, almost of authority,
in his voice was noticeable, but Grimwood set it down to the natural
excitement of the moment. Every track they had followed during the last
two days, but one track in particular as well, had headed straight for
this remote and hidden valley, and the sport promised to be unusual.
"That's so," he replied, in the tone of one giving an order. "You can
make camp ready at once." And he sat down on a fallen hemlock to take
off his moccasin boots and grease his feet that ached from the arduous
day now drawing to a close. Though under ordinary circumstances he would
have pushed on for another hour or two, he was not averse to a night
here, for exhaustion had come upon him during the last bit of rough
going, his eye and muscles were no longer steady, and it was doubtful if
he could have shot straight enough to kill. He did not mean to miss a
second time.
With his Canadian friend, Iredale, the latter's half-breed, and his own
Indian, Tooshalli, the party had set out three weeks ago to find the
"wonderful big moose" the Indians reported were travelling in the Snow
River country. They soon found that the tale was true; tracks were
abundant; they saw fine animals nearly every day, but though carrying
good heads, the hunters expected better still and left them alone.
Pushing up the river to a chain of small lakes near its source, they
then separated into two parties, each with its nine-foot bark canoe,
and packed in for three days after the yet bigger animals the Indians
agreed would be found in the deeper woods beyond. Excitement was keen,
expectation keener still. The day before they separated, Iredale shot
the biggest moose of his life, and its head, bigger even than the grand
Alaskan heads, hangs in his house to-day. Grimwood's hunting blood was
fairly up. His blood was of the fiery, not to say ferocious, quality. It
almost seemed he liked killing for its own sake.
Four days after the party broke into two he came upon a gigantic track,
whose measurements and length of stride keyed every nerve he possessed
to its highest tension.
Tooshalli examined the tracks for some minutes with care. "It is the
biggest moose in the world," he said at length, a new expression on his
inscrutable red visage.
Following it all that day, they yet got no sight of the big fellow that
seemed to be frequenting a little marshy dip of country, too small to be
called valley, where willow and undergrowth abounded. He had not yet
scented his pursuers. They were after him again at dawn. Towards the
evening of the second day Grimwood caught a sudden glimpse of the
monster among a thick clump of willows, and the sight of the magnificent
head that easily beat all records set his heart beating like a hammer
with excitement. He aimed and fired. But the moose, instead of crashing,
went thundering away through the further scrub and disappeared, the
sound of his plunging canter presently dying away. Grimwood had missed,
even if he had wounded.
They camped, and all next day, leaving the canoe behind, they followed
the huge track, but though finding signs of blood, these were not
plentiful, and the shot had evidently only grazed the animal. The
travelling was of the hardest. Towards evening, utterly exhausted, the
spoor led them to the ridge they now stood upon, gazing down into the
enchanting valley that opened at their feet. The giant moose had gone
down into this valley. He would consider himself safe there. Grimwood
agreed with the Indian's judgment. They would camp for the night and
continue at dawn the wild hunt after "the biggest moose in the world."
Supper was over, the small fire used for cooking dying down, with
Grimwood became first aware that the Indian was not behaving quite as
usual. What particular detail drew his attention is hard to say. He was
a slow-witted, heavy man, full-blooded, unobservant; a fact had to hurt
him through his comfort, through his pleasure, before he noticed it. Yet
anyone else must have observed the changed mood of the Redskin long ago.
Tooshalli had made the fire, fried the bacon, served the tea, and was
arranging the blankets, his own and his employer's, before the latter
remarked upon his--silence. Tooshalli had not uttered a word for over an
hour and a half, since he had first set eyes upon the new valley, to be
exact. And his employer now noticed the unaccustomed silence, because
after food he liked to listen to wood talk and hunting lore.
"Tired out, aren't you?" said big Grimwood, looking into the dark face
across the firelight. He resented the absence of conversation, now that
he noticed it. He was over-weary himself, he felt more irritable than
usual, though his temper was always vile.
"Lost your tongue, eh?" he went on with a growl, as the Indian returned
his stare with solemn, expressionless face. That dark inscrutable look
got on his nerves a bit. "Speak up, man!" he exclaimed sharply. "What's
it all about?"
The Englishman had at last realized that there was something to "speak
up" about. The discovery, in his present state, annoyed him further.
Tooshalli stared gravely, but made no reply. The silence was prolonged
almost into minutes. Presently the head turned sideways, as though the
man listened. The other watched him very closely, anger growing in him.
But it was the way the Redskin turned his head, keeping his body rigid,
that gave the jerk to Grimwood's nerves, providing him with a sensation
he had never known in his life before--it gave him what is generally
called "the goose-flesh." It seemed to jangle his entire system, yet at
the same time made him cautious. He did not like it, this combination of
emotions puzzled him.
"Say something, I tell you," he repeated in a harsher tone, raising his
voice. He sat up, drawing his great body closer to the fire. "Say
something, damn it!"
His voice fell dead against the surrounding trees, making the silence of
the forest unpleasantly noticeable. Very still the great woods stood
about them; there was no wind, no stir of branches; only the crackle of
a snapping twig was audible from time to time, as the night-life moved
unwarily sometimes watching the humans round their little fire. The
October air had a frosty touch that nipped.
The Redskin did not answer. No muscle of his neck nor of his stiffened
body moved. He seemed all ears.
"Well?" repeated the Englishman, lowering his voice this time
instinctively. "What d'you hear, God damn it!" The touch of odd
nervousness that made his anger grow betrayed itself in his language.
Tooshalli slowly turned his head back again to its normal position, the
body rigid as before.
"I hear nothing, Mr. Grimwood," he said, gazing with quiet dignity into
his employer's eyes.
This was too much for the other, a man of savage temper at the best of
times. He was the type of Englishman who held strong views as to the
right way of treating "inferior" races.
"That's a lie, Tooshalli, and I won't have you lie to me. Now what was
it? Tell me at once!"
"I hear nothing," repeated the other. "I only think."
"And what is it you're pleased to think?" Impatience made a nasty
expression round the mouth.
"I go not," was the abrupt reply, unalterable decision in the voice.
The man's rejoinder was so unexpected that Grimwood found nothing to say
at first. For a moment he did not take its meaning; his mind, always
slow, was confused by impatience, also by what he considered the
foolishness of the little scene. Then in a flash he understood; but he
also understood the immovable obstinacy of the race he had to deal with.
Tooshalli was informing him that he refused to go into the valley where
the big moose had vanished. And his astonishment was so great at first
that he merely sat and stared. No words came to him.
"It is----" said the Indian, but used a native term.
"What's that mean?" Grimwood found his tongue, but his quiet tone was
ominous.
"Mr. Grimwood, it mean the 'Valley of the Beasts,'" was the reply in a
tone quieter still.
The Englishman made a great, a genuine effort at self-control. He was
dealing, he forced himself to remember, with a superstitious Redskin. He
knew the stubbornness of the type. If the man left him his sport was
irretrievably spoilt, for he could not hunt in this wilderness alone,
and even if he got the coveted head, he could never, never get it out
alone. His native selfishness seconded his effort. Persuasion, if only
he could keep back his rising anger, was his role to play.
"The Valley of the Beasts," he said, a smile on his lips rather than in
his darkening eyes; "but that's just what we want. It's beasts we're
after, isn't it?" His voice had a false cheery ring that could not have
deceived a child. "But what d'you mean, anyhow--the Valley of the
Beasts?" He asked it with a dull attempt at sympathy.
"It belong to Ishtot, Mr. Grimwood." The man looked him full in the
face, no flinching in the eyes.
"My--our--big moose is there," said the other, who recognized the name
of the Indian Hunting God, and understanding better, felt confident
he would soon persuade his man. Tooshalli, he remembered, too, was
nominally a Christian. "We'll follow him at dawn and get the biggest
head the world has ever seen. You will be famous," he added, his temper
better in hand again. "Your tribe will honour you. And the white hunters
will pay you much money."
"He go there to save himself. I go not."
The other's anger revived with a leap at this stupid obstinacy. But, in
spite of it, he noticed the odd choice of words. He began to realize
that nothing now would move the man. At the same time he also realized
that violence on his part must prove worse than useless. Yet violence
was natural to his "dominant" type. "That brute Grimwood" was the way
most men spoke of him.
"Back at the settlement you're a Christian, remember," he tried, in his
clumsy way, another line. "And disobedience means hell-fire. You know
that!"
"I a Christian--at the post," was the reply, "but out here the Red God
rule. Ishtot keep that valley for himself. No Indian hunt there." It was
as though a granite boulder spoke.
The savage temper of the Englishman, enforced by the long difficult
suppression, rose wickedly into sudden flame. He stood up, kicking his
blankets aside. He strode across the dying fire to the Indian's side.
Tooshalli also rose. They faced each other, two humans alone in the
wilderness, watched by countless invisible forest eyes.
Tooshalli stood motionless, yet as though he expected violence from the
foolish, ignorant white-face. "You go alone, Mr. Grimwood." There was no
fear in him.
Grimwood choked with rage. His words came forth with difficulty, though
he roared them into the silence of the forest:
"I pay you, don't I? You'll do what _I_ say, not what _you_ say!" His
voice woke the echoes.
The Indian, arms hanging by his side, gave the old reply.
"I go not," he repeated firmly.
It stung the other into uncontrollable fury.
The beast then came uppermost; it came out. "You've said that once too
often, Tooshalli!" and he struck him brutally in the face. The Indian
fell, rose to his knees again, collapsed sideways beside the fire, then
struggled back into a sitting position. He never once took his eyes from
the white man's face.
Beside himself with anger, Grimwood stood over him. "Is that enough?
Will you obey me now?" he shouted.
"I go not," came the thick reply, blood streaming from his mouth. The
eyes had no flinching in them. "That valley Ishtot keep. Ishtot see us
now. _He see you._" The last words he uttered with strange, almost
uncanny emphasis.