UNDER THE WILD MARCH MOON
Southward under the watery moon and the wild, dark clouds rode the
Indian girl, following a trail blazed only for Indian eyes. The
aquatic world about them had grown steadily wilder, more remote from
the haunts of men. Fording miry creeks, silver-streaked with
moon-light, trampling through dense, dark, tangled brakes and on, under
the wild March moon, followed Carl, a prey to the memory of the Indian
girl as he had seen her that night at Sherrill's.
Keela's face, vividly dark and lovely, had mocked his restless slumbers
this many a day. Keela's eyes, black like a starless night or the
cloud-black waters of Okeechobee had lured and lured to sensual
conquest.
But a great shame was adding its torment to the terrible pain in his
head and the fevered singing of his pulses. In the torture of his
self-abasement, the over-strung ligament in his head fell ominously to
droning again. Everything seemed remote and unreal. He hated the
awful silence about him--the crash of his horse's feet through the
matted brush and the twist of palmetto, resolved itself into dancing
ciphers.
Ahead Keela stopped. Motionless, like a beautiful sculptured thing,
she sat listening as Carl rode up beside her.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I fancied some one followed," said Keela soberly. "It may not be."
She rode forward, glancing keenly at the trail behind her.
Thus they rode onward until the east grew pale and gray. A bleak dawn
was breaking in melancholy mists over the Everglades. The lonely
expanse of swamp and metallic water, of grass-flats and tangled wilds,
loomed indistinctly out of the half light in sinister skeleton.
Keela glanced with furtive compassion at the haggard face of the rider
behind her. Since midnight he had ridden in utter silence, growing
whiter it seemed as the night waned.
"Another hour!" said Keela in her soft, clear voice. "Be of courage.
When the sun rises there behind the cypress, we shall be at our
journey's end."
"I--I am all right," stammered Carl courageously, but he bit his lips
until they bled, and swayed so violently in the saddle that Keela slid
to the ground in alarm.
"Put your arms about my shoulders--so!" she commanded imperiously.
"You will fall! Philip surely could not know how ill you are. Can you
get down?"
With an effort Carl dismounted and fell forward on his knees.
"You must sleep for a while," said Keela. "I will build a fire. We
can breakfast here and rest as long as you like." She took a blanket
from his saddle and spread it on the ground.
Carl crept on hands and knees to the Indian blanket and lay very still.
A drowsiness numbed his senses. When he awoke after a brief interval
of restless slumber, it was not yet daylight, though the sky in the
east was softly streaked with color. The moon hung low.
A fire crackled in the center of a clearing. The horses were tethered
to a tree. Keela was off somewhere with bow and arrow to hunt their
breakfast.
Now suddenly as he lay there, tired and apathetic, Carl was conscious
of a face leering from among the trees close at hand, a dark,
thin-lipped foreign face with eyes black with hate and malicious
triumph. There was a horse hitched to a tree in the thicket beyond.
In that instant Carl knew that the Houdanian had furtively followed the
camp of the traders into the wilds of the Everglades, spurred on by the
fierce command of Ronador. But he did not move. A terrible apathy
made him indifferent to the knife of the assassin. He had had his day
of masterful torment back there in the attic of the farm, he told
himself. Now he must pay. The knife would quiet this unbearable agony
in his head.
Themar met his eyes, smiled evilly and raised his knife. But the
weapon fell suddenly from his hand. With an ominous hum an arrow
whizzed fiercely through the trees and anchored in the flesh above his
heart.
Themar stumbled and fell forward on his face. Like the stricken moose
who seeks to press his wound against the earth, he drove the arrow home
to his heart. He sobbed, and choked and lay very still, a scarlet
wound dying his flannel shirt.
Carl's horrified eyes turned slowly to the west.
Keela was coming through the trees, proud eyes fierce with terrible
anger; halting beside the dead man, she spurned him with moccasined
foot.
The tense, droning string in Carl's head whirred again--and snapped.
He lay in a heavy stupor, dozing fitfully until the moon climbed high
again above the Glades.