Riding at a hard gallop, Seyd had cut down Sebastien's lead by a full
hour in the run along the rim. At the sight of the beacon--which the
peons were now thatching with grass--he, also, reined in. But, having
learned from them that Sebastien and Francesca had passed two hours ago,
he rode on down the staircases at a pace which showed little respect for
his neck.
Nearly an hour later he stopped again on the very knoll from which he
had overlooked El Quiss. If he had looked northward it would have been
possible to see Sebastien at the head of the mule train which was
wriggling like a mottled brown snake across the wet green pastures. But
during the quarter hour that Seyd remained there his gaze never left the
distant pink of the hacienda walls.
Somehow their solid realism cooled his fever and brought order to his
rioting senses. "Well, you are here! Now what are you going to do? What
_can_ you do?" The still small voice of Reason rose above the storm.
"These, you know, are not the days of chivalry. It is no longer the
fashion for a jilted lover to snatch his bride from the horns of the
altar. And if it were"--Reason here observed a deadly pause--"what
chance would you have against Sebastien and his retainers?"
"But I must see her! I _will_ see her!" The still small voice was
drowned in a gush of passion. "There have been too many accidents
already. Not till I hear from her own lips that she has done this of her
free will shall I quit."
"Sounds good." Reason agreed only to differ. "But it has one
drawback--she might not care to be interviewed in her bridal chamber."
The suggestion was ill-timed, for it started a new riot among his
senses. "I'll see her! I _will_ have speech with her!" It went roaring
through his brain.
But how to compass it? Had he known the name of Caliban's woman's cousin
it would have been difficult enough! Not knowing it, the thing was
almost impossible. He was tossing on successive waves of feeling that
now urged him forward, again carried him back in the undertow of
despair, when there came a patter of nude feet behind him.
"Senor! senor! _Mira!_ The beacons! The beacons!"
It was one of the peons whom he had left above. "Ride, senor! Ride and
give warning lest they have not seen it at El Quiss! I go to my woman
and children!" Shouting it, he swung at right angles and flew down the
valley at top speed.
Almost as quickly Seyd galloped off. One glance had shown the tall smoke
plumes which were rising like ghostly sentinels above the black edge of
the pine, and with it there burst upon him a vivid picture of the muddy
sea behind the great dam. Crossing the river that morning, he had
noticed that the floods were running above last year's highest mark, and
almost as plainly as by actual sight his imagination pictured the wave
which had just leaped, like a huge yellow hound, over the broken dam. A
solid wall of water, he saw it sweeping down the valley, lapping up
villages, ranches, _jacals_, with greedy tongues. Roweling the flanks of
his tired beast, he drove on. Yet, despite his apprehension, the phrase
rang in his mind like a clashing bell:
"I shall see her! Now I shall see her!"
While he was still half a mile away he saw two mounted men dash out of
the patio gates and ride off at right angles, north and south. After
them came a crowd on foot, and as they opened to let him through Seyd
noted with wonder that all were women. His surprise deepened when,
driving in through the gates, he almost rode over Francesca, who stood
with Roberta against her skirts in the deserted patio. While, breathing
hard after his wild ride, he sat looking down upon her she returned his
gaze with big mournful eyes.
"You are--alone?"
"Yes." Hesitating, she went on, "Don Sebastien left an hour
ago--immediately after our arrival--with the men to work on the dam."
He almost shouted. It was inconceivable, except on a supposition that
filled him with sudden hope. "Then it isn't true? If it were, he would
not have left you. He lied! Paulo lied! All day I have ridden hard on
your trail to disprove it! He lied! Tell me that Paulo lied!"
It was not necessary to reply in words. The slender weaving fingers, her
quivering distress, the pity and grief of her eyes, made answer.
"Oh, how could you?" But his natural sense of justice instantly asserted
itself. "But no! I have only myself to blame. I played the fool all
through. Yet, I meant well--but I explained that in my letter."
"I only received it two hours ago. Oh, why didn't you send it sooner?"
"I did--wrote the instant I got the paper. It lay here four days."
Now, only twenty miles away, at speed swifter than bird flight, the wave
was leaping over the jungle with plumage of tangled debris streaming out
behind. Even then they might have caught its distant roar. But, blind to
all but the fortuitous chance that had dogged their love to this unhappy
conclusion, they stood gazing at each other in distress and despair.
"We have been unfortunate, you and I." She spoke, mournfully, at last.
"And this is the end."
He would not accept it. In thought he was storming the barrier her act
had placed between them when her sorrowful voice answered the mute
appeal of his eyes. "_Si_, the end. If Sebastien had not been so kind!
He took advantage of my anger to place bars between you and me, but
there he rests. His consideration deserves some return, and the least I
can offer is the outward semblance of good wifehood. You must go!"
"What! Leave you--now?" Recalled to a sudden realization of their
imminent danger, he pleaded, "First let me place you in safety?"
"No." She nodded toward a saddled horse under the gateway. "In a few
minutes I can overtake the people. With you will go my--"
While they talked Roberta had wandered over to the gates. Now she
suddenly cried: "Oh, senora! Don Sebastien!"
Seyd's view of the trail was limited by a swing to the south that cut
off all but a couple of hundred yards. As he made, instinctively, to
move forward Francesca caught his bridle. "No! no! He must not see you!
If he finds you here--with me--oh, has there not been trouble enough?"
Her distracted glance circled the courtyard. "See, the old guardhouse!
Dismount--quickly! Lead in your horse, then I will ride with the child
to meet him!"
As a matter of fact, he felt like anything but hiding. His eye lit with
a hard gray gleam. But in these premises that he had forced upon her it
was not for him to pick and choose. He yielded to her pleading, "For my
sake?"
Dismounting, he led his horse in through the arched doorway, and as she
closed the door upon him Francesca added a last hurried instruction. "He
will undoubtedly turn with me. Give us time to gain cover under the
oaks, then take you the trail to the south. It reaches high ground
quickly. And ride hard"--her voice broke in a sob--"for if you should be
overtaken by the water what in this miserable world would be left for
me?"
"And this is the end?" He caught her hand between the closing doors.
"The end--for thy sake." She dropped into the tender second person of
the Spanish. "_Si_, if you wish it."
Left alone, Seyd stood listening, the soft touch of her lips thrilling
upon his. In the guardhouse, used now for a storeroom, all but one
window was blocked by piles of sacked maize, but as his eyes grew
accustomed to the half gloom he made out the massive beams which held up
the heavy roof. The wall from which the one window looked out formed
part of the hacienda's southern face, and, remembering that the trail
inclined in that direction, he moved over to it when he caught the
clatter of departing hoofs. Deeply recessed in the thick wall, the low
sill afforded standing room, and by peering obliquely through the bars
he caught first the flutter of her skirt, then gradually she forged into
full view. About three hundred yards away the trail ran in among shade
oaks, cedars, and great spreading banyans, that were strewn in clumps
all over the pastures. But just before she rode in among them Sebastien
and Pancho, his _mozo_, galloped out from among the trees.
Even if the wind had not been dashing the sheeting rain in his face it
would have been impossible for Seyd to have caught a distant murmur of
voices. But he saw the _mozo_ lift Roberta from Francesca's beast, and
lead off, with his mistress following. Then Sebastien came galloping on
toward the gates.
"Coming for something--money or papers," Seyd thought. "Just for fear he
looks in--"
At the far end of the room a pile of sacked beans formed a natural
stall, and he had no more than gotten his horse behind it when the
clatter of hoofs broke in the court. He could not, of course, see
Sebastien dismount. But, faint as they were, his highly keyed senses
recorded the vibrations of the other's footsteps as he followed the
muddy horse tracks across to the guardhouse.
Outside the door Sebastien stopped. In the tense pause that followed
Seyd's hand went to his gun. At first the act was due to the natural
instinct of self protection, but in the very moment of its inception
that gave place to a second, more powerful impulse that dyed his face
and neck with a dark flush. Drawing the weapon, he trained it across a
sack at the door, and at that moment no primitive man in hiding at the
mouth of his enemy's cave was ever obsessed by a fiercer lust to kill.
All of his trials and long travail, despair, seemed in his disordered
fancy to materialize just then in Sebastien's person. And it would be so
easy! A slight pressure of his finger the instant he showed in the
doorway, then--the flood!
In a flash the pros and cons of it passed through his mind. If the
circumstances were reversed he knew exactly the course that Sebastien
would take. And almost as he thought it came proof--first the grating of
the key in the lock of the inner door, next the groaning complaint of
rusty hinges as Sebastien swung to the iron outer doors which had not
been used for a score of years, finally the wooden crash of the oaken
bars falling into their staples.
It was all over before Seyd really understood. With knowledge there
flashed upon him the thought of the flood. Rushing across the floor, he
leaped and threw all of his weight against the inner door. It hardly
shook, and the recoil threw him flat on the floor. As he rose came the
clatter of Sebastien's departing hoofs, and running across to the window
he was just in time to see him come in view. On the skirts of the timber
he reined suddenly in and sat his beast, listening. Then, after a quick
glance northward, he galloped on.
And Seyd, at the window, also heard.
Above the sough of the wind which drove the sheeting rain into his face
he caught the roar of the oncoming flood.