Kildares of Storm Part 38

Channing had an odd and perfectly irrelevant thought of that bulge in the clergyman's hip-pocket.

"Bother Philip! You'd suppose the man was a sort of watch-dog. I believe you're afraid of me to-night," he teased, turning her face to his.

Her lips trembled as he kissed them. "It is so dark," she whispered.

"Little goose! Why should the darkness make a difference to you and me?"

"I don't know--but it does." Suddenly she pushed him away, and jumped to her feet. "Give me the matches, Mr. Channing. I want to light the lantern and go back."

He obeyed with a shrug, wondering just where and how he had blundered. A sense of artistic incompleteness mingled with a keen personal sense of chagrin. Did the girl care less for him than he had thought? Or was it merely the instinct of self-preservation that had warned her?

Now that the blood ran more coolly in his veins, he blushed to realize that the instinct had been right.

They went back into the ravine, which, as Jacqueline had prophesied, had become as dark as a pocket. Without the lantern they could not have seen a foot ahead of them, and even with the lantern their way was not easy.

They stumbled along, still hand-in-hand and silent; but it was no longer the delicious, thrilling silence of the earlier adventure. The glamour of it seemed to have departed with the moon.

Jacqueline, stiff with an embarra.s.sment she did not understand (she thought it the fault of the negligee and the stockingless feet) was eager to get back to the shelter of the crowded cabin. Channing was by this time as eager as herself, having discovered that riding-boots are not the most comfortable equipment for mountain tramping.

"There's our cornfield, at last!" said the girl, and both heaved sighs of relief.

They climbed laboriously toward the outline of corn stalks against the starlit sky, with a darker outline looming behind; but as they came into better sight of the cabin, she gave a cry of dismay.

"It's all lighted. Oh, Mr. Channing! They've missed us!"

"d.a.m.n!" said the author.

At that moment voices reached them: loud, drunken voices, mingled with laughter, and a s.n.a.t.c.h of song.

"Why--why!" muttered Channing, blankly. "That can't be our cabin!"

Nor was it. They had trusted to the wrong landmark.

They turned and hurried down into the ravine again. But Channing stumbled, and the sound reached the quick ears of the mountaineers above. There was a shout, in a voice suddenly sobered.

"Who's down thar?"

It was followed by the sharp ping of a bullet.

"Good gad, but they're shooting!" gasped Channing.

"They certainly are," said the girl, with a giggle. "It must be a still or something, and they think we're revenue officers!"

"Wh-what shall we do?"

"Run," she quoted him, laughing, and seizing his hand suited the action to the word. She seemed perfectly unafraid. "They won't get our range in the dark. Isn't this exciting?"

But the bullets followed them, too close for comfort.

"It's the lantern!" exclaimed Channing, and was about to drop it when the girl seized it out of his hand.

"Here--don't do that! We'd be wandering about in this ravine all night without it."

She looked at her companion in sheer surprise. It was her first experience of the type of man who loses his head in the presence of danger. Her voice became all at once quite motherly and kind.

"It's all right. You go ahead and I'll carry the lantern. They're probably too drunk to follow us," she rea.s.sured him.

Channing, to the after mortification of his entire life, obeyed without demur.

"It's all right," she repeated. "But go as fast as you can."

Shots were flying thick and fast about the lantern she held at arm's length. More than one grazed her closely.

"You great cowards up there!" she cried out in sudden anger. "Do you know you're shooting at a girl?"

There was a sudden silence. Then the shouts began again with a new note.

"A gal, be ye? Boys, hit's a female down thar. Come on up, gal! Let's see what ye look like."

But the shots ceased, and the shouts came no nearer.

"Just as I thought--they 're too drunk to follow us," she said triumphantly. "Better get out of this neighborhood, though. Hurry on, Mr. Channing!"

"I'm afraid I can't," he said faintly. "You go without me."

She turned the light of the lantern full upon him, and saw that he was holding to a tree, swaying where he stood. There was a dark stain on his breeches, just above the knee, which spread even as she looked.

Without a word, she turned and began to run up the hillside again.

"Where are you going?" he cried.

"To get help. You are hurt."

"Those drunken brutes? Never!"

"They'll help us. I'm a woman."

"All the more reason--" he conquered his growing weakness, and put what force he could into his voice. "Jacqueline, I forbid you to go! Come here!"

She obeyed, wringing her hands. "But I don't know what to do for you!"

she quavered.

"Listen! I must walk as far as I can, and when I'm done, you leave me, and run ahead for help. We can't be far from our own cabin now."

Channing had resumed his manhood, and it did not occur to the girl to argue with him. He was not a coward. He had merely been startled momentarily out of his self-control, unaccustomed as he was to physical danger. She realized this thankfully. The literary life does not prepare a man for the emergency of finding himself a target for bullets out of the dark.

Arm-in-arm they stumbled along the ravine. Soon he was obliged to lay an arm across her st.u.r.dy young shoulders, leaning upon her more heavily with each step. She felt the effort of his every motion, was aware of the labored breath with which he fought back his weakness. Still he struggled on. If she had loved him before, she adored him now.

"Oughtn't I to bandage it, or something?"