Like bloodhounds now they search me out;--
Hark to the whistle and the shout!--
The chase is up,--but they shall know,
The stag at bay's a dangerous foe.--_Lady of the Lake_.
Three or four weeks passed. They were deep within the bounds of Tyrol.
By avoiding towns and highways, travelling often in the night, making
prize of every stray sheep, pig, or fowl, and a diligent robbing of
henroosts, they had thus far contrived to elude arrest, and support
life.
Morton was greatly changed. Body and mind, he was formed for hardship,
and toils which would have broken a weaker frame had nerved and
strengthened his. But of late their suffering had increased. They
found but poor forage among the poverty-pinched mountaineers, and for
two days, had had no better sustenance than the soft inner bark of the
pine trees. This, with previous abstinence, had sunk them to the last
extremity, and brought Max to the verge of despair.
It was a rainy afternoon; rain drizzling in the valleys, clouds
hanging on the mountains, dark vapors steaming up from the chasms, and
clinging sullenly to the edge of the pine forests. Max and Morton sat
under a dripping rock, on a mountain which overhangs a nameless little
valley, not far to the north of the Val di Sole.
"Keep a good heart, Max," said Morton, "it shall go hard but you and I
will get out of this scrape yet."
Max shook his head despondingly. His bold spirit was starved out of
him. Morton's courage, unlike that of his companion, was the result
more of his mental habits than of a native constitutional intrepidity,
and was therefore much less subject to the changes of his bodily
condition. He had proved Max, and knew him to be brave as he was warm
and true-hearted; but the corporal's valor, like that of Homer's
heroes, was best displayed on a full stomach.
"There's nothing else for it," said Morton; "we must take the bull by
the horns. One of those houses below is an inn, or something that
pretends to be one. I can see the bush fastened to the door post. We
must go and buy food; or else lie here and die."
"It is better to be shot than starve," said Max.
"Come on, then. You must be spokesman. I am go for nothing in that
way; but if there's any trouble, I'll stand by you as well as I can."
Max had had a little money in copper and silver, the greater part of
which he had consigned to the keeping of Morton, as the more careful
treasurer. With this for their passport, they issued from the cover of
the woods, and began to cross the mountain slopes and rough pasture
that lay between them and the hamlet.
The latter, as they drew near, seemed by no means so insignificant as
at first, a rising ground having hidden a part of it. They came to the
inn, a low stone building of a most respectable antiquity, and pushing
open the door, were met by a short man who seemed to be the owner. Max
produced a handful of kreutzers, and asked for bread and meat. The
host looked at the strangers, then at their money; seemed satisfied
with both, and showed them up a flight of broken steps to a large room
above the half-sunken kitchen. Here, at his call, a girl brought the
food and placed it on a table. He next asked if they would not have
beer; and Max assenting, went out to bring it.
The fugitives now addressed themselves to their meal with the keenness
of starving men; but the prudent Morton took care, at the same time,
to secure the more portable of the viands for future need. Having
dulled the edge of his appetite, he began to grow uneasy at the
landlord's long absence.
"What is that man doing? He might have brewed the beer by this time."
"He _does_ take his time," responded Max, also growing anxious.
"This is no place for us. Take the rest of that biscuit, and let's be
off."
Max was following this counsel, when---- "Hark!" cried Morton; "what
noise is that?"
"Go to the window and look."
Morton did so.
"My God!" he exclaimed, recoiling, his face ghastly with dismay.
Max sprang to the window. Below, at the door, four or five men were
standing, and among them two gendarmes, while others were in the act
of entering.
The outlandish dress of the two strangers had at once roused the
landlord's suspicion. Of Max's character he had not a moment's doubt;
for in him no disguise could hide the look and port of the trained
soldier. By ill luck, a party of gendarmes were in the village,
weather-bound on their way from Latsch. Having secured his guests'
money, the landlord thought to make a farther profit from them; and,
sure of his reward, reported to the officer in command, that there
were in his house two men, the taller of whom was certainly a
deserter, while the other could not be a peasant, though he wore the
dress of one. The officer mustered his followers, and hastened to beat
up the game.
He entered as Max turned from the window, and came up to him, sword in
hand.
"I arrest you. Give yourselves up, you and the other."
But before the words were well out of his mouth, the fist of Max fell
between his eyes like a battering ram, and dashed him back against the
soldier next behind him.
"Come on," cried Max to Morton, and leaped through the open window at
the farther end of the room. Morton followed in time to escape two or
three bayonet thrusts which were made after him. They both vaulted
over a fence, and ran through the narrow passage between an old shed
and a huge square stack of the last year's hay. A musket or two were
let off at them, but to no effect; and splashing across a shallow
brook, they made at headlong speed for the shelter of the mountains.
As they reached the base, Max looked back. Seven or eight gendarmes
were after them, and behind, later joining the chase, ran two or three
men in a different dress.
"Riflemen!" muttered Max, with an oath.
Breasting the rough heights, clinging to stumps, roots, and bushes,
they made their way up with all the speed which desperate need could
give them. They were soon among thick trees, hidden from the pursuers,
and almost from each other. But the shouts of the soldiers came up
from below: they all gave tongue like so many hounds.
"Curse your yelping throats!" gasped Morton. Breathless and half
spent, he was clinging to a sapling on the edge of a steep pitch of
the hill. One of the soldiers saw him. A musket shot rang from below,
the hollow hum of the ball passing high above his head.
Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide
plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its
farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they
had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The
gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active
riflemen were nearer every moment.
Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they
won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the
ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they
dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods
beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when
a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they
did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came
a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into
the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to
shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back;
lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands
were clutched full of grass and earth.
"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max,
for God's sake."
But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly
under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a
spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his
shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeballs. Morton
had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes,
glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold
jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in
the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had
done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn
through his heart on its way.
The whole passed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly
all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them,
the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He snatched
Max's pistol, which had fallen on the grass, and, blind with grief and
fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet
with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton
hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his
teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned.
Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the
woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a
hunted wolf.
Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled
and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the
rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was
stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught
in a complete _cul de sac_. He might have climbed the precipices, but,
in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the
earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and
desperation, he turned savagely at bay.
Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned,
one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the
game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another,
and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been
in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he
sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in
the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a
hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping
mass of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a
dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with
death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the
chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far
behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack
were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.
Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or
more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching
far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and
confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered
friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing
for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own
loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven
back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She
alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the
clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the
dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their
evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but
the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old
pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their shaggy arms
to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground,
and commended his desperate fortunes to the God of the waste and the
mountain.