AN ACCIDENT
It was early morning, and the mist lay heavy upon the forest and on the
bosom of the James. Landless and Patricia raked together the dying
embers of their fire and heaped fresh wood upon them. The flames leaped
up, warming their chilled bodies and filling the hollow that had been
their camping place with a cheerful light, in which the moisture that
clothed tree bole and fallen log and withered fern glistened like
diamonds. Their breakfast of deer meat and broiled fish, nuts and a few
late clusters of grape, with coldest water from a spring hard by, was
eaten amidst laughter and pleasant talk. When they had lingered through
it and when Landless had carefully extinguished their fire and had seen
to the priming of his gun, they addressed themselves to their journey.
A bowshot away was the river, and Patricia willed that they walk along
its banks that they might see the white mist lift, and the silver flash
of fish rising from the water, and the swoop of the kingfisher. Landless
agreeing, they went down to the river, and standing upon a rocky spit of
ground which ran far out into the stream, they looked down the misty
expanse, then turned involuntarily and looked up. At that moment the fog
lifted.
"Ah!" cried Patricia, and shrunk back, cowering almost to the ground.
Landless seized her in his arms and ran with her across the shingle and
up the bank. Plunging into the woods he made for the little stream which
flowed past their camping place, and entering the water, walked rapidly
up it.
"Did they see us?" Patricia asked in a low, strained voice.
"I am afraid so."
"They turned their boats towards the land. They are in the forest by
now."
"Yes."
"And there is no doubt that they are the same. I saw the scarlet
handkerchief upon the head of the mulatto."
"Yes, they are the same."
"They were such a little way from us. Oh, they may be upon us at any
moment!"
"We are in great danger," he answered gravely, "but it is not so
imminent as that. They were nearly a mile above us, and they have to
land, to hide their boats and to find our trail, all of which will take
time. We may count on having an hour's start of them, and we will do all
in our power to increase it by breaking our trail as we are doing now.
Then we cannot be many leagues from the falls, and the post below them,
or we may stumble at any moment upon some Monacan village which will not
need our urging to fly out against the Ricahecrians. Please God, we will
win through them yet."
Somewhat comforted, she lay within his arms without speaking until they
left the stream, when he set her down, and giving her his hand, ran with
her over the fallen leaves down the long aisles of the forest.
Red gold showers fell upon them; fiery vines clutched at their feet, or,
swinging from the trees, struck at their faces with vicious tendrils;
the pines made the ground beneath like ice; rotting logs covered with
gorgeous fungi barred their way; dark and poisonous swamps appeared
before them, and had to be skirted--the forest leagued itself with its
children and did them yeoman service.
The two aliens hastened breathlessly on. The sun climbed above the tree
tops and looked down upon them through the half denuded branches. Midday
came, and the short bright afternoon, and still they went fast through
the woods, and still they heard no other sound than the rustle and sough
of the leaves and the beating of their own hearts. They came to rising
ground, and mounting it, found themselves upon a chinquepin ridge, and
before them an abrupt descent of rain-washed, boulder-strewn earth. It
was so nearly a precipice that Patricia shrunk back with an exclamation
of dismay.
"I will go first," said Landless. "Give me your hands. So!"
Half way down, the earth began to slip. Patricia, looking up and over
her shoulder, uttered a cry. A great boulder, imbedded in the earth
directly above them, was dislodging itself, was falling! At her cry
Landless raised his eyes, saw the threatening mass, caught her around
the waist, and with one supreme effort swung her out of the path of the
avalanche which descended the next moment, bearing him with it to the
ground beneath.
He was recalled to consciousness by the dash of water against his face,
and opened his eyes to behold Patricia bending over him, very white,
with tragic eyes, and lips pressed closely together. She had run to the
river, flowing through the sunshine a hundred yards away, for water,
which she had brought back in his cap, and she had taken the kerchief
from her neck, wet it, and laid it upon his forehead. Her hands were
torn and bleeding. He saw them and uttered an exclamation. "It is
nothing," she said; "I had to move the rock." Scarcely fully conscious
as yet, his eyes glanced from her to the great rock which lay upon one
side, and upon which there were bloodstains. "I have had a bad fall," he
said unsteadily, but with an attempt to speak lightly because of the
trouble in her eyes, "but it is over. Come! we must hurry on. We have no
time to lose."
As he spoke he strove to rise, but with the effort came a pang of
anguish, and he sank back, faint and sick, upon the ground.
"Ah! you cannot!" cried Patricia with a great sob in her voice. "It is
your foot. The rock fell upon it."
After a moment of lying with closed eyes, he sat up and with his knife
began to cut away the moccasin from the wounded limb. Presently he
looked up. "Yes, it is badly crushed. There is no doing anything with
it."
For many moments they gazed at each other in a despairing silence,
broken by Patricia's low, "What are we to do now?"
"We must go on," answered Landless. "It is death to stay here."
Holding by the bank against which he had leaned, he dragged himself up
and stood for an instant with eyes dark with pain; then, setting his
lips, took a step forward. The bronze of his face paled, and beads of
anguish stood upon his brow, but he took another step. Patricia, the
tears running down her cheeks, came to him and put his arm around her
shoulder. "I will be your crutch," she said, striving to smile. "I will
carry the gun, too."
Before them was a steeply sloping, grass-grown ascent rising to a broken
line of cliffs, scarred and gray, crowned with cedars and hung here and
there with crimson creepers, and with a chance medley of huge gray
boulders scattered about their base. Up this ascent they labored, so
slowly that the crags seemed like the mountain in the Arabian tale, ever
receding as they advanced. Twice Landless staggered and fell to his
knee, but when, after what seemed an eternity of pain and distress, they
reached the summit and Patricia would have had him rest, he shook his
head and motioned with his hand towards the narrow, boulder-strewn
plateau at the foot of the crags.
With her accustomed unquestioning obedience she turned towards the
rocks, and after another interval of painful toil they found themselves
in a sort of rocky chamber, a natural blockhouse, of which the sheer
cliff formed one wall and boulders of varying height and shape the
others.
Above them gleamed the blue sky; through the gaps between the rocks they
looked down upon the shining river and the parti-colored woods, and
behind them towered the cliffs. A strong wind was blowing and it sent
red leaves from the vines that draped the rock whirling down upon them.
"The tall gray crags," said Patricia in a strange voice, "and the
Martinmas wind. The river flowing in the sunshine too."
Landless sank upon the rocky floor. "I can go no further," he said. "God
help me!"
"I do not think another man could have come so far," she answered. "What
are we to do now?"
"You must go on without me."
She cried out angrily, "What do you mean? I don't understand you."
"Listen," he said earnestly, dragging himself closer to her. "We can be
but a very few leagues from the falls, still fewer from the Indian
villages above them. Reach one of those villages and you are safe from
these devils at least. We have kept the start of them. They may not
reach this spot for several hours, and when they come, I will keep them
here, God helping me, for more hours than one. This place is a natural
fortress, and they have no guns. They will not take me until my
ammunition is exhausted, and you know there is store of bullets and
powder. They will think that you are with me, hidden behind the rocks--"
"And I shall be with you!" she cried vehemently.
"No, no. You must go through this pass in the cliff to the right of us,
and thence down the river with all your speed. Please God, to-morrow
will find you in safety. It is the only way. To stay here is to fall
into their hands. And you must not delay. You must go at once."
"And you--" she said in a whisper.
"What does it matter if I lose my life to-day instead of a few weeks
hence? I grieve for this," with a glance at his foot, "because it keeps
me from being with you, from guarding you into perfect safety. Otherwise
it does not matter. You lose time, madam."
She stood with heaving bosom and foot tapping the ground, an expression
that he could not read in her wonderful eyes. "I am not going," she said
at last.