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.
Around stood the Far-Folk, eager, pleased with themselves, more
interested in the cunning of their scheme than anxious over its success,
making the necklets and armlets to shine on their dark skins. They
laughed, boasting together like boys, then crowding one another to
stillness to hear what went on among the leaders debating round Oca with
some show of order. Half girt they stood, pluming themselves upon the
morrow, the ring of unguarded backs turned outward. And in the midst of
this came a sharp winging like the flight of birds—but no birds so
swift—and a heavy pelting as of hail—but no hail tapped so loudly on the
trees or thudded so sickeningly on human flesh. The outer ring of the
Far-Folk surged toward the middle and there was a rush of those within
outward, and then the pleasant wood was full of racing figures and
hurtling noises.
It had come so quickly and from so many quarters, the light shining so
low took the Far-Folk so squarely in the eyes, that the best men of them
must have known from the beginning what the end was to be. After the
first scattering rush they formed a ring about Oca and Ravenutzi, and
then the curse of the King’s Desire began to work. Standing so in close
order they made a better mark for the pelting of the slings. Such
punishment as they had from the slingsmen was not to be endured. Had
they had any reason for keeping their close order, they might by sheer
weight have broken through the ranks of the Outliers, thinned to enclose
them. But they had broken up the Treasure and had no other motive for
holding together; they broke scattering, and Mancha’s men dealt with
them singly as they came. There was heard the rapping of the slings,
like the snapping of coals in the fire, and after the slings left off
the hammers began.
Always as the ring about Oca melted into the scuffle and disorder of the
fight, the Outliers followed the shine of Mancha’s hair as he ate like
flame through the ranks toward Ravenutzi.
I suppose the smith saw him come and saved himself for what was before
him; at least no man saw him strike a blow until his time came. The
Far-Folk had edged the old king forward through the press, keeping
toward a clear cañon down which they hoped to get away. But at the last
Oca saw a son of his lifted high in Noche’s arms, one hand cast up like
a crest, squealing with anguish. Back the old chief leaped, avoiding the
whirling hammers, leaving the smith uncovered. Oca’s men rushed to
defend him, and Mancha’s, wheeling to prevent it, carried the fight to
another quarter. The sound of the struggle receded from Mancha’s ears,
filled with the rushing of his own blood as he came face to face with
Ravenutzi.
When the fighting mass cleared away and left them so confronting one
another, the advantage seems to have been all to the smith. He was
unwinded and wary. Mancha was hot and driven, hate rocked him where he
stood like drunkenness.
They looked each upon the other for two or three short breaths, and
Ravenutzi took a slight step backward. It was in reality to bring him in
a better position with the light, but Mancha mistook it for flinching.
With a cry he rushed upon him, whirling his stone hammer. The smith
parried and thrust.
The hammer struck glancing, the smith reeled from it and dropped his
pike. Mancha threw away his weapon and took the swaying body in his
arms. He was head and shoulders shorter, but the lift of his back was
tremendous, and Ravenutzi was dizzy from the blow. Mancha had him down.
The long legs and arms of the smith clung and bound him; they were down
together and up again and down, rolling and writhing, as they turned in
a heap. Mancha was aware of one of the Far-Folk running toward them
frothed with rage, weapon lifted, but he would not loosen his hold nor
look away from Ravenutzi. He expected a blow from behind, and then he
heard the shock of men coming together that told him how the blow was
intercepted. He had the smith down now and under him, and struggled to
loose the binding arms. He heard a voice calling: “Mancha! Mancha!” and
thought it was the voice of Lianth. Too young to come to battle, the boy
had been allowed by Mancha’s friendship to run between the creek and the
fighting men to bring stones, as they might be needed, to the slingsmen.
Once he had heard the whistling of the slings, the lad had come bounding
like an unbroke hound to bay around the skirts of the fight.
“Mancha! Mancha!” said the voice, “I have him. He shall not get you.”
“Good lad!” said Mancha, but he would not look away from the smith’s
eyes lest he should lose the hint of motion in them.
“Mancha, Mancha, I am hurt.” He heard the sounds of mortal agony in the
fern, but they were not louder to him than the coming and going of his
own breath.
“Hold him,” he said to the voice behind him. He had his knee on the pit
of the smith’s stomach and the arms were loosening.
“Mancha!”—the voice was nearer—“he is dragging me. I cannot——”
Mancha had one of Ravenutzi’s arms twisted under the smith’s own body
and his own hand at the smith’s throat.
“Mancha! Manc——” The voice broke with a bubbling sound.
He had the smith’s windpipe under his thumb, he was shaking him and
grinding his head into the earth. A hand from behind clutched upon his
heel. He kicked out and heard a wet cough, followed by a groan, but he
could not turn to see what came of it. He shook and wried the smith’s
head as it blackened under his hand.
“Where is she? Tell me where she is,” he cried, short and gaspingly.
With every repetition of the word he lifted the smith’s head and ground
it into the earth. He saw surrender in the bitten tongue and the
protruding eyes. He rested a little, but as yet he would not spare the
time to look behind him. Ravenutzi came slowly back to consciousness.
“Tell me where she is.” The answer came thickly.
“Far from here.”
“Where, where——” There was a motion of the choking and grinding to begin
again.
“How can I tell you?... in a place known only to me.”
“If I let you up will you take me to it?”
“Breath,” said Ravenutzi, “give me breath.”
Mancha let his throat be while he bound the man’s arms.
“Do you promise, smith?”
“What is that across my feet?”
“A dead man, I think.” Mancha glanced slightingly over his shoulder.
“Where is my king?”
“Prassade has taken him.”
“And my friends?”
“One of them is across your feet; a lad of mine killed him. I do not
know where the others are, it is some moments since I heard fighting.”
“It is all to you, then?”
“All to us ... _you dog_ ... if I let you up she is?”
“I will take you.”
But it was not until Mancha had bound and rebound him that he left the
smith to go and turn over the stiffening body of Lianth and wipe the
bloody froth from his lips.
XIII
HOW THEY FOUND THE RUBIES, AND THE SMITH’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF
News of the fight reached River Ward before midnight, but before that,
about dusk, we heard Trastevera singing, walking up and down on a low
hill scented and white with gilias, hymning of victory. And after I had
lain down in my accustomed place I heard the women all about me, fevered
with expectation, rising to intimations of approach too fine for me.
From that part of the camp where the women of the Far-Folk slept, there
arose now and then some sharp accent of dismay and grief, succeeded by
the nearly mortal dejection of defeat. Unable at last to bear the night
so full of noises and suspense, I rose and walked to the edge of the
wide, bush-grown shallow where the Outliers were camped and met Herman
coming to find me.
“Do not go where the women are,” he said; “the wounded are there, and
besides, they do not want us.”
Very softly we skirted the edge of the swale and climbed to the foot of
a knoll overlooking it. Some oaks grew here, and the prostrate trunks
were strong to lean against. The moon was gone on her last quarter, and
the figures of men moving in the swale were large and vague against it.
There was a wind stirring that kept up a whimpering whisper in the tops
of the chaparral. It took the voices as they rose through it and rounded
them to indistinctness; only by listening attentively could we
distinguish between the acclamations of victory and cries of loss and
pain.
“But tell me,” I insisted to Herman, “you have been among the men, have
they brought back the King’s Desire?”
“Look,” he said, “at that man moving there as he turns against the moon;
do you see the line of light that runs about his forehead? And there!
what glitters on that outstretched arm? Hardly a man of them but has
some gold about him, but they have not said a word.”
“And who has the Cup of the Four Quarters?”
“Noche took it from Oca’s son; I saw him studying it by the reflected
moon, but when I came up he hid it in his bosom.”
“And the great rubies?”
“They have not come in.”
“Herman,” I said, after a long pause, “what do you think they will do
with it—and us?”
“The King’s Desire? Bury it, I hope. With us? Do you know, Mona, I am no
longer anxious about what they will do to us.”
“No; they have been good friends of ours.”
“Nor afraid of the Cup,” finished Herman, “for I have come to feel that
I have found something here in Outland that not even Forgetfulness can
take away.... What I said to you the other night ... the door....”
“Oh, I thought it was Zirriloë....” He stopped and considered. “... And
that she had shut it again on cheapness and affronting shame.... It left
a mark on me.”
“Such experiences do, Herman.”
“But she is gone ... and the door swings wide. It is open to-night; and
that is what I have found here in Outland that I shall never let go
again.”
What he really had was my hand, which he seemed not to be aware of,
beating it softly between his palms as he talked. I could hardly
withdraw it without seeming to point an emphasis.
“And being so sure of _that_,” said Herman, “makes it difficult to
believe that all this should be taken away from us.”
He made a gesture with the hand that held mine toward the swale of River
Ward, the silvered line of the willows, the low moon, the fair light,
the smell of the packed earth breaking up to bloom.
“Do you know, it is very strange, Mona, I have not the least idea where
we are, but I think I could start out to-night direct for home and find
it. Have you ever felt so?”
“Not since the Meet at Leaping Water.”
“But to-night?”
“To-night I feel it.”
“How far away the Outliers seem to-night. Look down there in the hollow,
there is not one stirring. How could one say there is now any grief or
captivity down there? Mona, do you really believe there _are_ any
Outliers?”
“Ah, I’m good at believing.”
The moon dropped down behind the hill till there was but one shining
jewel point of it winking on the world. The chill that comes before the
morning began to temper the air and I shivered under it.
“You are cold,” cried Herman; “wait.” He slipped away in the scrub and
brought back skins in which he wrapped me. “Have you had any sleep at
all to-night? Where is your hand, Mona?” He drew it through his arm.
“Now, if you will lean back against the oak here, and against my
shoulder, so: now you may get some rest.”
I leaned against the oak and touched his sleeve with my cheek. I had not
meant to do more than that, nor yet to sleep, but the oak swayed a
little comfortingly, so still and soft and dark the night was—suddenly
there was the morning freshness and Trastevera calling me awake.