TOGETHER the girl and the mucker approached the entrance to the
amphitheater. From behind a shoulder of rock they peered down into the
forest below them. For several minutes neither saw any cause for alarm.
“I guess youse must o' been seein' things,” said Byrne, drily.
“Yes,” said the girl, “and I see them again. Look! Quick! Down there--to
the right.”
Byrne looked in the direction she indicated.
“Chinks,” he commented. “Gee! Look at 'em comin'. Dere must be a hundred
of 'em.”
He turned a rueful glance back into the amphitheater.
“I dunno as dis place looks as good to me as it did,” he remarked. “Dose
yaps wid de toad stabbers could hike up on top o' dese cliffs an' make
it a case o' 'thence by carriages to Calvary' for ours in about two
shakes.”
“Yes,” said the girl, “I'm afraid it's a regular cul-de-sac.”
“I dunno nothin' about dat,” replied the mucker; “but I do know dat if
we wants to get out o' here we gotta get a hump on ourselves good an'
lively. Come ahead,” and with his words he ran quickly through
the entrance, and turning squarely toward the right skirted the
perpendicular cliffs that extended as far as they could see to be lost
to view in the forest that ran up to meet them from below.
The trees and underbrush hid them from the head-hunters. There had been
danger of detection but for the brief instant that they passed through
the entrance of the hollow, but at the time they had chosen the enemy
had been hidden in a clump of thick brush far down the slope.
For hours the two fugitives continued their flight, passing over the
crest of a ridge and downward toward another valley, until by a small
brook they paused to rest, hopeful that they had entirely eluded their
pursuers.
Again Byrne fished, and again they sat together at a one-course meal. As
they ate the man found himself looking at the girl more and more often.
For several days the wonder of her beauty had been growing upon him,
until now he found it difficult to take his eyes from her. Thrice she
surprised him in the act of staring intently at her, and each time he
had dropped his eyes guiltily. At length the girl became nervous, and
then terribly frightened--was it coming so soon?
The man had talked but little during this meal, and for the life of her
Barbara Harding could not think of any topic with which to distract his
attention from his thoughts.
“Hadn't we better be moving on?” she asked at last.
Byrne gave a little start as though surprised in some questionable act.
“I suppose so,” he said; “this ain't no place to spend the night--it's
too open. We gotta find a sort o' hiding place if we can, dat a fellow
kin barricade wit something.”
Again they took up their seemingly hopeless march--an aimless wandering
in search of they knew not what. Away from one danger to possible
dangers many fold more terrible. Barbara's heart was very heavy, for
again she feared and mistrusted the mucker.
They followed down the little brook now to where it emptied into a river
and then down the valley beside the river which grew wider and more
turbulent with every mile. Well past mid-afternoon they came opposite a
small, rocky island, and as Byrne's eyes fell upon it an exclamation of
gratification burst from his lips.
“Jest de place!” he cried. “We orter be able to hide dere forever.”
“But how are we to get there?” asked the girl, looking fearfully at the
turbulent river.
“It ain't deep,” Byrne assured her. “Come ahead; I'll carry yeh acrost,”
and without waiting for a reply he gathered her in his arms and started
down the bank.
What with the thoughts that had occupied his mind off and on during the
afternoon the sudden and close contact of the girl's warm young body
close to his took Billy Byrne's breath away, and sent the hot blood
coursing through his veins. It was with the utmost difficulty that he
restrained a mad desire to crush her to him and cover her face with
kisses.
And then the fatal thought came to him--why should he restrain himself?
What was this girl to him? Had he not always hated her and her kind? Did
she not look with loathing and contempt upon him? And to whom did
her life belong anyway but to him--had he not saved it twice? What
difference would it make? They'd never come out of this savage world
alive, and if he didn't take her some monkey-faced Chink would get her.
They were in the middle of the stream now. Byrne's arms already had
commenced to tighten upon the girl. With a sudden tug he strove to pull
her face down to his; but she put both hands upon his shoulders and held
his lips at arms' length. And her wide eyes looked full into the glowing
gray ones of the mucker. And each saw in the other's something that held
their looks for a full minute.
Barbara saw what she had feared, but she saw too something else that
gave her a quick, pulsing hope--a look of honest love, or could she be
mistaken? And the mucker saw the true eyes of the woman he loved without
knowing that he loved her, and he saw the plea for pity and protection
in them.
“Don't,” whispered the girl. “Please don't, you frighten me.”
A week ago Billy Byrne would have laughed at such a plea. Doubtless,
too, he would have struck the girl in the face for her resistance. He
did neither now, which spoke volumes for the change that was taking
place within him, but neither did he relax his hold upon her, or take
his burning eyes from her frightened ones.
Thus he strode through the turbulent, shallow river to clamber up the
bank onto the island. In his soul the battle still raged, but he had by
no means relinquished his intention to have his way with the girl. Fear,
numb, freezing fear, was in the girl's eyes now. The mucker read it
there as plain as print, and had she not said that she was frightened?
That was what he had wanted to accomplish back there upon the
Halfmoon--to frighten her. He would have enjoyed the sight, but he had
not been able to accomplish the thing. Now she not only showed that
she was frightened--she had admitted it, and it gave the mucker no
pleasure--on the contrary it made him unaccountably uncomfortable.
And then came the last straw--tears welled to those lovely eyes. A
choking sob wracked the girl's frame--“And just when I was learning to
trust you so!” she cried.
They had reached the top of the bank, now, and the man, still holding
her in his arms, stood upon a mat of jungle grass beneath a great tree.
Slowly he lowered her to her feet. The madness of desire still gripped
him; but now there was another force at work combating the evil that had
predominated before.
Theriere's words came back to him: “Good-bye, Byrne; take good care
of Miss Harding,” and his admission to the Frenchman during that last
conversation with the dying man: “--a week ago I guess I was a coward.
Dere seems to be more'n one kind o' nerve--I'm just a-learnin' of the
right kind, I guess.”
He had been standing with eyes upon the ground, his heavy hand still
gripping the girl's arm. He looked into her face again. She was waiting
there, her great eyes upon his filled with fear and questioning, like a
prisoner before the bar awaiting the sentence of her judge.
As the man looked at Barbara Harding standing there before him he
saw her in a strange new light, and a sudden realization of the truth
flashed upon him. He saw that he could not harm her now, or ever, for he
loved her!
And with the awakening there came to Billy Byrne the withering, numbing
knowledge that his love must forever be a hopeless one--that this girl
of the aristocracy could never be for such as he.
Barbara Harding, still looking questioningly at him, saw the change that
came across his countenance--she saw the swift pain that shot to the
man's eyes, and she wondered. His fingers released their grasp upon her
arm. His hands fell limply to his sides.
“Don't be afraid,” he said. “Please don't be afraid o' me. I couldn't
hurt youse if I tried.”
A deep sigh of relief broke from the girl's lips--relief and joy; and
she realized that its cause was as much that the man had proved true to
the new estimate she had recently placed upon him as that the danger to
herself had passed.
“Come,” said Billy Byrne, “we'd better move in a bit out o' sight o' de
mainland, an' look fer a place to make camp. I reckon we'd orter rest
here for a few days till we git in shape ag'in. I know youse must be
dead beat, an' I sure am, all right, all right.”
Together they sought a favorable site for their new home, and it was
as though the horrid specter of a few moments before had never risen to
menace them, for the girl felt that a great burden of apprehension had
been lifted forever from her shoulders, and though a dull ache gnawed
at the mucker's heart, still he was happier than he had ever been
before--happy to be near the woman he loved.
With the long sword of Oda Yorimoto, Billy Byrne cut saplings and bamboo
and the fronds of fan palms, and with long tough grasses bound them
together into the semblance of a rude hut. Barbara gathered leaves and
grasses with which she covered the floor.
“Number One, Riverside Drive,” said the mucker, with a grin, when the
work was completed; “an' now I'll go down on de river front an' build de
Bowery.”
“Oh, are you from New York?” asked the girl.
“Not on yer life,” replied Billy Byrne. “I'm from good ol' Chi; but I
been to Noo York twict wit de Goose Island Kid, an' so I knows all about
it. De roughnecks belongs on de Bowery, so dat's wot we'll call my dump
down by de river. You're a highbrow, so youse gotta live on Riverside
Drive, see?” and the mucker laughed at his little pleasantry.
But the girl did not laugh with him. Instead she looked troubled.
“Wouldn't you rather be a 'highbrow' too?” she asked, “and live up on
Riverside Drive, right across the street from me?”
“I don't belong,” said the mucker gruffly.
“Wouldn't you rather belong?” insisted the girl.
All his life Billy had looked with contempt upon the hated,
pusillanimous highbrows, and now to be asked if he would not rather be
one! It was unthinkable, and yet, strange to relate, he realized an odd
longing to be like Theriere, and Billy Mallory; yes, in some respects
like Divine, even. He wanted to be more like the men that the woman he
loved knew best.
“It's too late fer me ever to belong, now,” he said ruefully. “Yeh gotta
be borned to it. Gee! Wouldn't I look funny in wite pants, an' one o'
dem dinky, little 'Willie-off-de-yacht' lids?”
Even Barbara had to laugh at the picture the man's words raised to her
imagination.
“I didn't mean that,” she hastened to explain. “I didn't mean that you
must necessarily dress like them; but BE like them--act like them--talk
like them, as Mr. Theriere did, you know. He was a gentleman.”
“An' I'm not,” said Billy.
“Oh, I didn't mean THAT,” the girl hastened to explain.
“Well, whether youse meant it or not, it's so,” said the mucker. “I
ain't no gent--I'm a mucker. I have your word for it, you know--yeh
said so that time on de Halfmoon, an' I ain't fergot it; but youse was
right--I am a mucker. I ain't never learned how to be anything else. I
ain't never wanted to be anything else until today. Now, I'd like to be
a gent; but it's too late.”
“Won't you try?” asked the girl. “For my sake?”
“Go to't,” returned the mucker cheerfully; “I'd even wear side whiskers
fer youse.”
“Horrors!” exclaimed Barbara Harding. “I couldn't look at you if you
did.”
“Well, then, tell me wot youse do want me to do.”
Barbara discovered that her task was to be a difficult one if she were
to accomplish it without wounding the man's feelings; but she determined
to strike while the iron was hot and risk offending him--why she should
be interested in the regeneration of Mr. Billy Byrne it never once
occurred to her to ask herself. She hesitated a moment before speaking.
“One of the first things you must do, Mr. Byrne,” she said, “is to learn
to speak correctly. You mustn't say 'youse' for 'you,' or 'wot' for
'what'---you must try to talk as I talk. No one in the world speaks
any language faultlessly, but there are certain more or less obvious
irregularities of grammar and pronunciation that are particularly
distasteful to people of refinement, and which are easy to guard against
if one be careful.”
“All right,” said Billy Byrne, “youse--you kin pitch in an' learn me
wot--whatever you want to an' I'll do me best to talk like a dude--fer
your sake.”
And so the mucker's education commenced, and as there was little else
for the two to do it progressed rapidly, for once started the man
grew keenly interested, spurred on by the evident pleasure which his
self-appointed tutor took in his progress--further it meant just so much
more of close companionship with her.
For three weeks they never left the little island except to gather fruit
which grew hard by on the adjacent mainland. Byrne's wounds had troubled
him considerably--at times he had been threatened with blood poisoning.
His temperature had mounted once to alarming heights, and for a whole
night Barbara Harding had sat beside him bathing his forehead and easing
his sufferings as far as it lay within her power to do; but at last the
wonderful vitality of the man had saved him. He was much weakened though
and neither of them had thought it safe to attempt to seek the coast
until he had fully regained his old-time strength.
So far but little had occurred to give them alarm. Twice they had seen
natives on the mainland--evidently hunting parties; but no sign of
pursuit had developed. Those whom they had seen had been pure-blood
Malays--there had been no samurai among them; but their savage, warlike
appearance had warned the two against revealing their presence.
They had subsisted upon fish and fruit principally since they had come
to the island. Occasionally this diet had been relieved by messes of
wild fowl and fox that Byrne had been successful in snaring with a
primitive trap of his own invention; but lately the prey had become
wary, and even the fish seemed less plentiful. After two days of fruit
diet, Byrne announced his intention of undertaking a hunting trip upon
the mainland.
“A mess of venison wouldn't taste half bad,” he remarked.
“Yes,” cried the girl, “I'm nearly famished for meat--it seems as though
I could almost eat it raw.”
“I know that I could,” stated Billy. “Lord help the deer that gets
within range of this old gat of Theriere's, and you may not get even
a mouthful--I'm that hungry I'll probably eat it all, hoof, hide, and
horns, before ever I get any of it back here to you.”
“You'd better not,” laughed the girl. “Good-bye and good luck; but
please don't go very far--I shall be terribly lonely and frightened
while you are away.”
“Maybe you'd better come along,” suggested Billy.
“No, I should be in the way--you can't hunt deer with a gallery, and get
any.”
“Well, I'll stay within hailing distance, and you can look for me back
any time between now and sundown. Good-bye,” and he picked his way down
the bank into the river, while from behind a bush upon the mainland two
wicked, black eyes watched his movements and those of the girl on the
shore behind him while a long, sinewy, brown hand closed more tightly
upon a heavy war spear, and steel muscles tensed for the savage spring
and the swift throw.
The girl watched Billy Byrne forging his way through the swift rapids.
What a mighty engine of strength and endurance he was! What a man! Yes,
brute! And strange to relate Barbara Harding found herself admiring the
very brutality that once had been repellent to her. She saw him leap
lightly to the opposite bank, and then she saw a quick movement in a
bush close at his side. She did not know what manner of thing had caused
it, but her intuition warned her that behind that concealing screen lay
mortal danger to the unconscious man.
“Billy!” she cried, the unaccustomed name bursting from her lips
involuntarily. “In the bush at your left--look out!”
At the note of warning in her voice Byrne had turned at her first
word--it was all that saved his life. He saw the half-naked savage and
the out-shooting spear arm, and as he would, instinctively, have ducked
a right-for-the-head in the squared circle of his other days, he ducked
now, side stepping to the right, and the heavy weapon sped harmlessly
over his shoulder.
The warrior, with a growl of rage, drew his sharp parang, leaping to
close quarters. Barbara Harding saw Byrne whip Theriere's revolver from
its holster, and snap it in the face of the savage; but to her horror
the cartridge failed to explode, and before he could fire again the
warrior was upon him.
The girl saw the white man leap to one side to escape the furious cut
aimed at him by his foe, and then she saw him turn with the agility of a
panther and spring to close quarters with the wild man. Byrne's left arm
went around the Malay's neck, and with his heavy right fist he rained
blow after blow upon the brown face.
The savage dropped his useless parang--clawing and biting at the mighty
creature in whose power he found himself; but never once did those
terrific, relentless blows cease to fall upon his unprotected face.
The sole witness to this battle primeval stood spellbound at the sight
of the fierce, brutal ferocity of the white man, and the lion-like
strength he exhibited. Slowly but surely he was beating the face of his
antagonist into an unrecognizable pulp--with his bare hands he had met
and was killing an armed warrior. It was incredible! Not even Theriere
or Billy Mallory could have done such a thing. Billy Mallory! And she
was gazing with admiration upon his murderer!