Prisoners of Hope Part 47

"It is because you are wounded," she said. "I would I had thy wounds."

"I had a wounded heart, but you have healed it," he said, and looked at her with s.h.i.+ning eyes.

The sun sank and the long twilight of the hills set in. The evening star was brightening through the pale amethyst of the sky when Landless said quietly: "The last charge," and emptied it into an arm which for one incautious moment had waved above the rocks.

"It is the end, then," said Patricia.

"Yes, it is the end. We have beaten them back for the moment, but presently they will find that all we could do we have done, and then--"

She left her post beside the gap in the front, and came and knelt beside him, and he took her in his arms.

"It is not Death before us, but Life," she said in a low voice.

"It is G.o.d and Love, naught else," he answered. "But the river between will be bitter for you to cross, sweetheart."

"We cross it together," she said, "and so--" She raised her head that he might see her radiant smile, and their lips met.

"Hark!" she said directly with her hand on his. "What is that sound?"

He shook his head. "The wind has risen, and the forest rustles and sighs. There is nothing more."

"It is far off," she answered, "but it is like the dip of oars. Ah!"

Over against them, framed in the narrow opening between the rocks, his lithe, half-nude figure dark against the crimson west, and with a smile upon his evil lips and in his evil eyes, stood Luiz Sebastian. In the dead silence that succeeded he looked with a smiling; countenance from the musket, now useless and thrown aside, to his enemy, wounded and unarmed save for a knife, and to the woman in that enemy's arms; then, without turning, he said a few words in an Indian tongue. From the dusky ma.s.s behind him came one short, wild cry of savage triumph, followed by another dead silence.

Still holding Patricia in one arm, Landless rose from his knee, and stood confronting him.

"We are met again, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian smoothly.

Receiving no answer, he spoke again with a tigerish expansion of his thick lips. "You have had an accident, I see. Mother of G.o.d! that foot must pain you! But you will forget it presently in the pleasure of the pine splinters."

"I will forget it in the pleasure of this," said Landless, releasing Patricia, and springing upon the mulatto with a suddenness and violence that sent them both staggering through the opening between the rocks, out upon the narrow plateau and into the ring of Ricahecrians. Luiz Sebastian was strong, with the easy masked strength of the panther, but Landless had the strength of despair. The mulatto, thrown heavily to the ground, and pinned there by his adversary's knee, saw the gleam of the lifted knife, and would have seen nothing more in this life, but that a woman's cry rang out and saved him. Landless heard, turned, saw Patricia dragged from the shelter of the rocks, leaped to his feet, leaving his work undone, and rushed upon the knot of savages with whom she was struggling. A moment saw him beside her with the Indian who had held her dead at his feet. Behind them was the great boulder which had formed the front wall of their chamber of defense. He put his arm around her, and drew her back with him until they stood against this rock, then faced the advancing savages with uplifted knife.

So determined was his att.i.tude, so terribly had they proved his power, so certain it was that before he should be taken one at least of their number would taste that knife, that the Ricahecrians paused, swaying to and fro, yelling, working themselves into a fury that should send them on like maddened brutes, blind and deaf to all things but their l.u.s.t for blood.

"I hear a sound of footsteps over the leaves," said Patricia.

"The wind rustles in them, or the deer pa.s.s," answered Landless. "Oh, my life! are you content?"

She answered with a low, clear laugh. "I hold happiness fast," she said.

"It cannot escape us now."

"They are coming," he said. "The last kiss, heart of my heart."

Their lips met, and their eyes with a smile in them met, and then he put her gently behind him, and turned to again face Luiz Sebastian.

With his eyes fixed upon the yellow face, he had raised his hand to strike at the yellow breast, spotted and barred with the black of the war paint, when an Indian, gliding between, struck up his arm, and sent the knife tinkling down upon the rocks. With a yell of triumph the savage s.n.a.t.c.hed up the weapon, and brandished it, showing it to his fellows, who, seeing their work accomplished, and the two whom they had tracked so far actually in their hands, made the forest ring with their exultant shouts. A few closed in around the devoted pair, directing at them fiendish cries and no less fiendish laughter, and menacing them with knife and tomahawk, but the majority streamed down the steep and into the forest at its base.

"They go to gather wood," said the still smiling Luiz Sebastian. "By and by we are to have a bonfire. Senor Landless has often carried wood, I think, in those old times when he was a slave, and when the pretty mistress behind him there treated him as such--unless she gave him favors in secret. But, Mother of G.o.d! now that she has made him master, we must carry the wood for him!"

Landless, standing with folded arms, looked at him with quiet scorn. "It is the nature of the viper to use his venom," he said calmly. "Such a thing cannot anger me."

"At the same time it is as well to crush the viper," said a voice at his elbow.

The speaker, who was Sir Charles Carew, had come from behind the boulders which ran in a straggling line down the hillside toward the river. He had his drawn sword in his hand, and as he spoke, he ran the mulatto through the body. The wretch, his oath of rage and astonishment still upon his lips, fell to the ground without a groan, writhed there a moment or two, and then lay still forever.

From the forest below rose a loud confusion of shouts and cries, followed by a volley of musketry. At the sound the half dozen savages upon the plateau turned and plunged down the hillside, to be met before they reached the bottom by the upward rush of a portion of the rescuing party. For a short while the twilight glades, low hills and frowning crags rang to the sound of a miniature battle, to the quick crack of muskets, the clear shouts of the whites, and the whoops of the savages.

But by degrees these latter became fainter, further between, died away--a short ten minutes, and there were no warriors left to return to the village in the Blue Mountains. Fierce shedders of blood, they were paid in their own coin.

On the hilltop Sir Charles shot his rapier into its scabbard, and strode over to Patricia, standing white and still against the rock. "I was in time," he said. "Thank G.o.d!"

She made no motion to meet his extended hands, but stood looking past him at Landless. Her face was like marble, her eyes one dumb question.

Landless met their gaze, and in his own she read despair, renunciation, strong resolve--and a long farewell.

"You are come in time, Sir Charles Carew," he said. "A little more, and we should have been beyond your reach. You will find the lady safe and well, though shaken, as you see, by this last alarm. She will speak for me, I trust, will tell you that I have used her with all respect, that I have done for her all that I could do.... Madam, all danger is past.

Will you not collect yourself and speak to your kinsman and savior?"

He spoke with a certain calm stateliness of voice and manner, as of one who has pa.s.sed beyond all emotion, whether of hope or fear, and in his eyes which he kept fixed upon her there was a command.

"Speak to me, my cousin; tell me that I am welcome," said Sir Charles, flinging himself upon his knee before her.

With a strong shudder she looked away from the still, white, and sternly composed face opposite to the darkening river and the evening star s.h.i.+ning calmly down upon a waste world.

At length she spoke. "I was all but beyond this world, cousin, so pardon me if I seem to come back to it somewhat tardily. You have my thanks, of course--my dear thanks--for saving my life--my life which is so precious to me."

She gave him her hand with a strange smile, and he pressed his lips upon it. "Your father is below, dearest cousin. Shall we descend to meet him? As to this--gentleman," turning with a smile that was like a frown to Landless, "I regret that circ.u.mstances combine to prevent our rewarding him as the guardian (a trusty one, I am sure) of so precious a jewel should be rewarded. But Colonel Verney will do--I will do--all that is possible. In the mean time I observe with regret that he is wounded. If he will allow me, I will send him my valet, who is below, and is the best barber surgeon in the three kingdoms. Come, dearest madam."

He bowed low and ceremoniously to Landless, who returned the salute with grave courtesy, and gave his hand to Patricia. For one moment she looked at Landless with wide, dark eyes, then, her spirit obedient to his spirit, she turned and went from him without one word or backward look.

The color had quite faded from the west, and the stars were thickening when Landless became conscious that the overseer was standing beside him. "You are the hardest one to hold that ever I saw," said that worthy grimly, and yet with a certain appreciation of the qualities that made the man at his feet hard to hold showing in his tone, "but I fancy we've got you at last. You've gone and put yourself in bilboes."

Landless smiled. "This time you may keep me. I shall not interfere. But tell me how you come here. You were sent back to the Plantations."

"Ay," said the other, "and there was the devil to pay, I can tell you, when I had to report you missing to Sir William. But Major Carrington stood my friend, and I got off with a tongue-drubbing. Well, after about three weeks or so, during which time the dogs and the searchers brought back most all of the runaway n.i.g.g.e.rs, and Mistress Lettice had hysterics every day, back comes the Colonel and Sir Charles with ten of the twenty men who had rowed them up the Pamunkey. The rest had fallen in a brush with the Monacans. They hadn't come up with the Ricahecrians, hadn't seen hair nor hide of them, had but one report from the Indian villages along the river, and that was that no Ricahecrians had pa.s.sed that way.

So after a while they were forced to believe that they were upon a false scent, and back they comes post haste to the Plantations to get more men, and go up the Rappahannock. Well, they went up the Rappahannock, and found nothing to their purpose, so back they came again to try the James and the country above the Falls. This time they found the Settlements, which had been before like an overturned hive, pretty quiet, the ringleaders of your precious plot having all been strung up, and the rest made as mild as sheep with branding and whipping and doubling of times. So, the tobacco being in and the plantation quiet, things were left to Haines, and I came along with the Colonel. Major Carrington, too, who they say is in the Governor's black books, though Lord knows he was active enough in stamping out this insurrection, asked to be allowed to join in the search for his old friend's daughter, and so he's down in the woods yonder. And Mr. Cary is there, and Mr. Peyton (Mistress Betty Carrington made _him_ come) and Mr. Jaclyn Carter. Fegs!

half the young gentry in the colony pressed their services on the Colonel. It got to be the fas.h.i.+on to volunteer to run their heads into the wolf's mouth for Mistress Patricia. But Sir Charles choked most of them off. 'Gentlemen,' he says, says he, 'despite the saying that there cannot be too much of a good thing, I beg to remind you that the disastrous fortunes of those who first struggled with the forest and the Indians in this western paradise are attributed to the fact that they were two thirds gentlemen. Wherefore let us shun the rock upon which they split'--"

"How many of my fellow conspirators were put to death?" interrupted Landless.

"All the princ.i.p.al ones--them that Trail denounced as leaders. The rest we pardoned after giving them a lesson they won't soon forget. We let bygones be bygones with the redemptioners and slaves--all but those devils who got away that night at Verney Manor, and with Trail at their head, made for Captain Laramore's s.h.i.+p which was going to turn pirate.

Well, they got to the boats, and one lot got off safe to the s.h.i.+p which hoisted the black flag, and sailed away to the Indies, and is sailing there, murdering and ruining, to this day, I reckon. But the other boat was over full, and the steersman was drunken, and she capsized before she got to the middle of the channel. Some were drowned, and those that got ash.o.r.e we hung next morning. But Trail was in the first boat."

"When do you--do we--start down the river?"

"At midnight. And it's the Colonel's orders that until then you stay here among the rocks and not show yourself to the men below. He'll see you before we start. In the mean time I'll keep you company." And the overseer took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the former, lighted it, and leaning back against the rock fell to smoking in contented silence.

Landless too sat in silence, with his head thrown back against the rock and his face uplifted to the growing splendor of the skies. The night wind, blowing mournfully around the bare hill and the broken crag, struck upon his brow with a hint of winter in its touch. With it came the tide of forest sounds--the sough of the leaves, the dull creaking of branch against branch, the wash of the water in the reeds, the whirr of wings, the cries of night birds--all the low and stealthy notes of the earth chant which had become to him as old and tenderly familiar as the lullabies of his childhood. Below him, at the foot of the hill, a square of dark and stately pines was irradiated by a great fire which burnt redly, casting flickering shadows far across the smooth brown earth, and around which sat or moved many figures. Laughter and jest, oaths and sc.r.a.ps of song floated up to the lonely watcher upon the hilltop. He heeded them not--he was above that world--and no sound came from that other and smaller fire blazing at some distance from the first--and the tree trunks between were so many and so thick that he could see naught but the light.