Chapter VI: Part 6

“Better that you did not, considering what she would come back to meet. If she loved Ravenutzi she is having her happiness now. If she suffers at all it is not for what she has done but for what you may think of it. And if there is any deep-felt misery going on in this anywhere, it is on the part of Ravenutzi’s wife.”

“Ah, I had forgotten there was a wife.”

I meant he should not forget, nor lose for that shallow girl any of the deeper opprobriousness that should attach to the double betrayal. But I was taken by surprise to have him turned by that suggestion quite in another direction.

“A desperate woman, by your account of her,” he said. “Promise me, Mona, that you will not hold any further communication with her, and that you will not go out of the camp without an escort. It isn’t safe, and it isn’t quite fair, is it, to parley with the enemies of the Outliers?”

If he had stopped with the consideration of my safety, I should probably have consented meekly like any woman when any man takes an interest in her, but that suggestion of unfairness set me at odds again.

“I shall not do anything imprudent,” I said; “but as to the relation of my behavior to the Outliers, that is a matter which you must leave me to decide for myself.”

“I suppose so,” said Herman ruefully. “I beg your pardon. I don’t know how it is, Mona, I let other women do pretty much as they like with me, but I always find myself getting irritated if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

I was certain Herman had never said anything like this to me before, yet it had so familiar a ring to it that I found myself going back in my mind for the association. I recalled what Evarra said when she asked if Herman was in love with me, that if such were the case he would expect me to do as he said. I was so taken up with this possibility that I heard not too attentively the far cry of coyotes going by. There must have been some nuance in it not of the beasts’ cry, for the Outliers began springing up around us, listening and intent. It came again and one answered it. By such signs we were made aware it was Mancha returning from the Smithy.

XII
HOW AN OUTLIER SAW A TALL WOMAN FOLLOWING A TRAIL AND MANCHA MET THE
SMITH AGAIN

I have no notion how long we lay in the neighborhood of River Ward. By this time we had lost all track of the calendar, Herman and I, and the Outliers had none except the orderly procession of the season’s bloom and fruit and mating time. Great umbrageous clouds came up behind the hills and were cut down by the wind. Clear days succeeded one another, matched so perfectly for warmth and color that the consciousness took no account of the dividing nights. Crowns of foothills lying seaward showed increasing green and then faint flecks of poppy color. These were our quietest days, for though there was fighting and following, Herman and I had no active part in it. Consider how few we were in a great land, and no trumpeting, no shock of guns, no daily bulletin. Ten men would set out on the mere stirring of an animal sense that beyond a certain hill or in a known hollow lurked the breeders of offense. And then no news of them except as they came or did not come again. Companies of Far-Folk and Outliers would fence all day each to come at the other unsuspected: flights and evasions and sharp encounters took place in such deeps of leafage as dulled all sound. All this was covered, swept over as carefully as the wild creature hides its ways.

Often now, walking on the tawny-colored hill that sleeps above the bay with the Mission between its paws, I look back at the warm-tinted slopes, beyond the reach of the encroaching fogs, and wonder under what peaks, between what long blue ranges we lay that season. What tumult and warfare goes on in those still spaces unregarded? But we have never, as I said in the beginning, got any nearer to it than Broken Tree.

The Outliers stuck to the track of the Far-Folk, and had so much the better of them in readiness and organization that before long they had captured the most of their women. Under Mancha our men had sought out their homes, abandoned so hurriedly, in the shallow, brush-grown cañons, and had burned and broken what they found. That Ravenutzi had joined the Far-Folk we knew, for once when they had come to parley over a wounded man, they saw the hostage at Oca’s back directing the Council by such knowledge of the Outliers as he had acquired by long residence. Oca blew out his long beard, laughing as he listened.

I knew too from one of the captive women, that he still concealed from his wife the place where he had hidden the Ward. The explanation Ravenutzi had given to Oca of the use he should make of Zirriloë’s person in the game that was yet to be played, set that chief chuckling in his beard like a cataract.

But to his wife Ravenutzi had denied seriousness: laughed, kissed her burned throat, blinded, bound her with an ingenuity of charm and tenderness until she grew tame under his hand. Then she would rage the more bitterly when he was away, suspecting him with the girl in hiding; flaming with jealousy until his return found her burned out, white and faint, creeping humbly to his caress.

This, I say, I had from one of the captives, for I talked of her to the Outliers only with Trastevera. I think the woman’s story was known to them. She was seen often flitting from some post of observation when they came with prisoners, and though it was certain she had been twice inside the Ledge seeking the place where Zirriloë lay hidden, no motion was made to take her. They judged her no doubt hunted by a more remorseless enemy; the same that drove on Mancha’s trail and wasted him in the night. It was strange to me at first when I looked on the Hammerer’s passion-hollowed face, to see how it was contradicted by the youthful fuzziness of his blond hair and the round stalwartness of his frame, until I realized that he tried to make his body what his hammer was, the instrument of his satisfaction, and nursed it carefully to that end. But here the invisible enemy had him at point. Eat he could, and bathe, and exercise himself and rough the handle of his hammer to his grasp, and tighten the thongs. But in the night sleep and jealousy contended, and he turned in his bed and set his teeth upon his hands. His eyes reddened at the lids, and when he would be sitting among us, his attention would be forever wandering, and there would be a half inadvertent movement of those same hands as if to rend and tear. It was plain that he came but half out of some burning preoccupation to attend to whatever his men brought to his notice, and slipped back into it even between the utterance of two words, like a drowned insect in a glass. He was seldom at River Ward, seeming easier to be on the trail and in action. That there was only one trail that interested him was perfectly evident. He cared nothing whatever for the recovery of the Treasure if only he might get at Ravenutzi and find where the Ward was hidden. And as often as Outliers and Far-Folk came together in running fights, his men fell apart tacitly to afford him the craved-for opportunity. As we knew afterward, by Oca’s express direction, the Far-Folk closed round the smith to oppose him. As often as Mancha came back unslaked, his new whetted fury turned on himself. Bitter as these frustrated encounters were, they were less so than those times when they surprised their enemy and found Ravenutzi not with them. Where was he then but lingering in some shut quarter with the Ward! One would know that this had occurred when the Hammerer sat upon the edges of his bed the night long goading himself with recollections.

“Give over; give up,” cried Trastevera to him. “She never thought of you; and what do you but suck poison from the thought of her?”

“And what,” said he, “shall I think of, if I do not think of her? Do you advise me to think of _him_?”

“Think of your work, how you are to win back the King’s Desire for us.”

“And how shall I think to win the King’s Desire and not think of how it was lost?” And so having worked round in a circle again he did think of it; what looks and sighs and wooing touches had gone to that betrayal.

“If I could get at him,” he cried, “if I could only get at him”; and groaned and struck with his stone hammer deep into the soft earth.

It was difficult for Trastevera, who alone partook of his stormy confidences, to be patient with his consuming thought, since she was herself the happier, free of the obsession of Ravenutzi. For the Outliers remembered now how she had been against him in the beginning, and blamed themselves for overriding with their weighty reasons that delicate presentiment. Warmed by this support, all her power of foreseeing put forth again and promised them success. She burned with foreknowledge that kept time like a poised and constant needle with what went on afar behind wooded hills and in secret valleys. Often as we lay in the chaparral and heard the bees fumble at the flagons of the wild currant, and saw the young rabbits rising to drink delicately of dew in the shallow cup of leaves, she would start up bright and hot, sniffing battle. As she drooped and grieved, or snatches of triumphant song burst from her, we guessed what went on between our men and Oca’s a day’s journey south and west.

It was in that quarter they defended themselves for as long as enjoyment of the King’s Desire exceeded all other considerations. It was a region of high hills, set close, well covered; narrow cañons choked with chaparral; rain-fed springs, trailless steep barrancas. Here they kept like foxes, quick and slinking, and the Outliers hunted them, not often with success. The cover was too thick for slings, and the ways too steep to give free play with the hammers. The enemy showed themselves and ran, involving the Outliers in a maze of blind gullies, and came out unscathed and mocking on hills above them. They made elaborate false clues and set traps which at the last moment they wanted the courage to spring, but never came to any open issue because of the King’s Desire. They had the Treasure in hand at last, and could not be persuaded to leave it. Where it was they hung like flies at a honey-pot. You could never find the Far-Folk very far nor very long from one another. They would have out the jewels and gloated upon them, tracing the patterns, holding them this way and that to catch the light, tried on the collars and the armlets, pranked in the crowns, fed upon the mere sight of them as an antidote to defeat. All this was very well for a time, but the drawing of their forces together about the King’s Desire served their enemies more than it served them. Threescore men in a camp were easier hunted than two or three. By keeping in close order they left betraying traces in the forest, and brought down Mancha’s hammerers. To avoid this they made longer flights, swift, uncalculated leaps. Their women and children, unable to keep up with them, were gathered in by the Outliers and carried to River Ward. It began to appear that they must make temporary disposition of their trove until they had possession of their families again, and could make off with both into that wooded country south where there were no man traces and no Outliers could come.

They buried the Treasure once, and then the whole party sat upon the place like brooding quail, and betrayed it by their guarding. So they had it up again, and Ravenutzi and Oca made a plan between them. They were to send the jewels on south under convoy, then by means of the person of the Ward they were to draw Mancha off from River Ward. Then with a free field left the main body of the Far-Folk were to raid the camp at River Ward and recapture their women.

This was the plan: An old man was to have himself captured by Mancha’s men in order to convey to the women news of the rescue waiting them. The Ward, who lay still in some secret place of Ravenutzi’s contriving, was to be brought up to that quarter where it was to their advantage to have Mancha get word of her. A good plan, and worthy of the smith who planned it. It was well agreed to except in one point. No one of them trusted another one to take away the Treasure. So after much argument they fell upon the notion of dividing it. It was evident that as long as it remained in the common custody, no man was free to fight and run, according to his fighting humor or his chances. But give every man his own to carry about with him and he would know what he was fighting for, not with one eye over his shoulder to see how the common object fared. Good logic and sound, answering in many a better case; singularly not in this. Settling on a division of the King’s Desire proved a much easier matter than dividing it. They were two days wrangling over the manner of the division, and another trading and bargaining and matching lots among themselves. Then followed the period of inaction, planned to give the Outliers the impression that they had withdrawn from that part of the country. The next move was to have the Mancha sent seeking in the direction where it was to be made known through the captives the Ward was to be found. Ravenutzi had gone to prepare her for her part in it. Poor child, if it were willingly or not, if she consented at all, or even if she had any clear idea what was required of her, who can say?

In the meantime there were the Far-Folk lying separate, very quiet, every man with his treasure in his bosom to finger and fondle, with the south open before him and the spring coming on by leaps and bounds. Everywhere there were the smell of sap, the mating cry of quail and poppy fires kindling seaward; not much to put the fighting humor in a man.

But the Outliers were not quite in the same case. They were wronged, robbed, betrayed, they distrusted every move of their enemies, kept watches out. From the meeting of the river and the Ledge to the Gap, where the dip of the ranges east began, there was a line of solitary outposts, patrolling all the passages. While the Far-Folk played fox in the thorny covers south, there was in reality a stopped earth between them and their women and the places they had known.

The posts beat eastward half a day each from his own station to the next and back. One of these, going as still as a snake, saw a tall woman with long, coiling hair wrapped about her body, wasted and lovely, following a track in the woods. She followed so patiently, and with so much intention and such sureness, poring above it as though every footprint stabbed her and she hugged the stabbing to her breast; urged forward on it with such anguished purpose, held back from it by such torturing fears! Who else but a jealous woman follows in such fashion on the trail of the man she loves? The Outlier counted himself a poor guesser if this were not Ravenutzi’s wife following Ravenutzi. He followed, too, at a discreet distance. He might, perhaps, have come alongside her without attracting her attention, so intently was it fixed upon what lay before her, what she could not withhold herself from seeking, and was afraid to find. Now she hurried on with a kind of fury of discernment. Now she turned aside to compose her anguished bosom the better to read its traces where the trail looped and turned to baffle and bewilder. He followed. Trees gave place to scrub, and that to knee-high chaparral, and that to open hill crowns and broken stony ledges. Here he must skulk behind hills and at a considerable distance, because of the betraying openness. Presently he lost her. He had made sure that she was headed for a certain sag in the crest of a hill, and that by coming around the brow of another one he would have full sight of her again, that he was astounded and chagrined to discover, as it seemed, that she had sunk into the earth. There was no cover and no woman. Below him lay a slight hollow full of loose boulders. Toward this the trail, if trail there was, must have led, and he would have hurried on except for being so sure she had not had time to make it. He lay still where he was, under the jut of a bald hill, and considered.

Presently he saw a fox come out of its hole on the opposite side and begin to trot across the hollow; it started between tall boulders, but swerved, went sidewise, muzzle pointed with suspicion. Within the ring of boulders then lay something that was neither stick nor stone. From his post the watcher could not say very well what it was until the shadows had shrunk by about an hour. And then he saw the woman. She lay flat, face downward, waiting.

“If you wait, my girl,” said he to himself, “it is because he you follow is at the end of his trail and returns upon it soon.”

The Outlier saw the tortured woman writhing with impatience, saw the shadows shorten toward noon, and crows flying over, and then he saw Ravenutzi. The smith came over the sag of the hills, walking steadily, with apparently nothing on his mind but to get on to the place where he was going. He passed the woman lying among the boulders. The Outlier saw her crowding her face in the dust as he went by, as if she feared she must have cried out and run to him if she had looked. He passed the hill where the watcher lay, and struck into his former trail, deeply cogitating, looking neither down nor about to discover if he had been followed. When the smith was quite out of the hollow the woman rose and ran the way he had come, and the watcher considered. He thought most likely the Ward was at the end of that trail, but he had no particular interest in her, it was Ravenutzi who bred mischief and must be looked after. Accordingly he kept the smith in sight. As they passed the neighborhood of River Ward going back, the Outlier whistled one of his fellows out of the wood and sent word to Mancha.

That was how it happened when the Far-Folk came together to have their last direction from the smith, that there was an Outlier tracked him quite to that place. Behind him, following a slot of bent twigs and broken leaves, were Prassade and Persilope with the slingsmen and Mancha with the hammerers.

It was late of the afternoon and the light low enough to dazzle in the eyes. The place was rather level and open, with thin-branched pines and scant fern; behind it a sharp hill breaking abruptly. Oca sat below the hill where a glade opened, and the thick locks of his beard, heavy and waved like sculptor’s work, were gathered in his hand. He had on his head the circlet of fire-stones that gleamed as he turned, red, blue and green like some strange insect’s eyes. His body was half bare and his arms from the elbow up were banded with circles of beaten gold. The smith whispered behind him, and as the chief nodded, the eyes of his circlet changed from blue to green and red again as though they took their color from his thought.

Around stood the Far-Folk, eager, pleased with themselves, more interested in the cunning of their scheme than anxious over its success, making the necklets and armlets to shine on their dark skins. They laughed, boasting together like boys, then crowding one another to stillness to hear what went on among the leaders debating round Oca with some show of order. Half girt they stood, pluming themselves upon the morrow, the ring of unguarded backs turned outward. And in the midst of this came a sharp winging like the flight of birds—but no birds so swift—and a heavy pelting as of hail—but no hail tapped so loudly on the trees or thudded so sickeningly on human flesh. The outer ring of the Far-Folk surged toward the middle and there was a rush of those within outward, and then the pleasant wood was full of racing figures and hurtling noises.

It had come so quickly and from so many quarters, the light shining so low took the Far-Folk so squarely in the eyes, that the best men of them must have known from the beginning what the end was to be. After the first scattering rush they formed a ring about Oca and Ravenutzi, and then the curse of the King’s Desire began to work. Standing so in close order they made a better mark for the pelting of the slings. Such punishment as they had from the slingsmen was not to be endured. Had they had any reason for keeping their close order, they might by sheer weight have broken through the ranks of the Outliers, thinned to enclose them. But they had broken up the Treasure and had no other motive for holding together; they broke scattering, and Mancha’s men dealt with them singly as they came. There was heard the rapping of the slings, like the snapping of coals in the fire, and after the slings left off the hammers began.

Always as the ring about Oca melted into the scuffle and disorder of the fight, the Outliers followed the shine of Mancha’s hair as he ate like flame through the ranks toward Ravenutzi.

I suppose the smith saw him come and saved himself for what was before him; at least no man saw him strike a blow until his time came. The Far-Folk had edged the old king forward through the press, keeping toward a clear cañon down which they hoped to get away. But at the last Oca saw a son of his lifted high in Noche’s arms, one hand cast up like a crest, squealing with anguish. Back the old chief leaped, avoiding the whirling hammers, leaving the smith uncovered. Oca’s men rushed to defend him, and Mancha’s, wheeling to prevent it, carried the fight to another quarter. The sound of the struggle receded from Mancha’s ears, filled with the rushing of his own blood as he came face to face with Ravenutzi.

When the fighting mass cleared away and left them so confronting one another, the advantage seems to have been all to the smith. He was unwinded and wary. Mancha was hot and driven, hate rocked him where he stood like drunkenness.

They looked each upon the other for two or three short breaths, and Ravenutzi took a slight step backward. It was in reality to bring him in a better position with the light, but Mancha mistook it for flinching. With a cry he rushed upon him, whirling his stone hammer. The smith parried and thrust.

The hammer struck glancing, the smith reeled from it and dropped his pike. Mancha threw away his weapon and took the swaying body in his arms. He was head and shoulders shorter, but the lift of his back was tremendous, and Ravenutzi was dizzy from the blow. Mancha had him down. The long legs and arms of the smith clung and bound him; they were down together and up again and down, rolling and writhing, as they turned in a heap. Mancha was aware of one of the Far-Folk running toward them frothed with rage, weapon lifted, but he would not loosen his hold nor look away from Ravenutzi. He expected a blow from behind, and then he heard the shock of men coming together that told him how the blow was intercepted. He had the smith down now and under him, and struggled to loose the binding arms. He heard a voice calling: “Mancha! Mancha!” and thought it was the voice of Lianth. Too young to come to battle, the boy had been allowed by Mancha’s friendship to run between the creek and the fighting men to bring stones, as they might be needed, to the slingsmen. Once he had heard the whistling of the slings, the lad had come bounding like an unbroke hound to bay around the skirts of the fight.

“Mancha! Mancha!” said the voice, “I have him. He shall not get you.”

“Good lad!” said Mancha, but he would not look away from the smith’s eyes lest he should lose the hint of motion in them.

“Mancha, Mancha, I am hurt.” He heard the sounds of mortal agony in the fern, but they were not louder to him than the coming and going of his own breath.

“Hold him,” he said to the voice behind him. He had his knee on the pit of the smith’s stomach and the arms were loosening.

“Mancha!”—the voice was nearer—“he is dragging me. I cannot——”

Mancha had one of Ravenutzi’s arms twisted under the smith’s own body and his own hand at the smith’s throat.

“Mancha! Manc——” The voice broke with a bubbling sound.

He had the smith’s windpipe under his thumb, he was shaking him and grinding his head into the earth. A hand from behind clutched upon his heel. He kicked out and heard a wet cough, followed by a groan, but he could not turn to see what came of it. He shook and wried the smith’s head as it blackened under his hand.

“Where is she? Tell me where she is,” he cried, short and gaspingly. With every repetition of the word he lifted the smith’s head and ground it into the earth. He saw surrender in the bitten tongue and the protruding eyes. He rested a little, but as yet he would not spare the time to look behind him. Ravenutzi came slowly back to consciousness.

“Tell me where she is.” The answer came thickly.

“Far from here.”

“Where, where——” There was a motion of the choking and grinding to begin again.

“How can I tell you?... in a place known only to me.”

“If I let you up will you take me to it?”

“Breath,” said Ravenutzi, “give me breath.”

Mancha let his throat be while he bound the man’s arms.

“Do you promise, smith?”

“What is that across my feet?”

“A dead man, I think.” Mancha glanced slightingly over his shoulder.

“Where is my king?”

“Prassade has taken him.”

“And my friends?”

“One of them is across your feet; a lad of mine killed him. I do not know where the others are, it is some moments since I heard fighting.”

“It is all to you, then?”

“All to us ... _you dog_ ... if I let you up she is?”

“I will take you.”

But it was not until Mancha had bound and rebound him that he left the smith to go and turn over the stiffening body of Lianth and wipe the bloody froth from his lips.

XIII
HOW THEY FOUND THE RUBIES, AND THE SMITH’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF

News of the fight reached River Ward before midnight, but before that, about dusk, we heard Trastevera singing, walking up and down on a low hill scented and white with gilias, hymning of victory. And after I had lain down in my accustomed place I heard the women all about me, fevered with expectation, rising to intimations of approach too fine for me. From that part of the camp where the women of the Far-Folk slept, there arose now and then some sharp accent of dismay and grief, succeeded by the nearly mortal dejection of defeat. Unable at last to bear the night so full of noises and suspense, I rose and walked to the edge of the wide, bush-grown shallow where the Outliers were camped and met Herman coming to find me.

“Do not go where the women are,” he said; “the wounded are there, and besides, they do not want us.”

Very softly we skirted the edge of the swale and climbed to the foot of a knoll overlooking it. Some oaks grew here, and the prostrate trunks were strong to lean against. The moon was gone on her last quarter, and the figures of men moving in the swale were large and vague against it. There was a wind stirring that kept up a whimpering whisper in the tops of the chaparral. It took the voices as they rose through it and rounded them to indistinctness; only by listening attentively could we distinguish between the acclamations of victory and cries of loss and pain.

“But tell me,” I insisted to Herman, “you have been among the men, have they brought back the King’s Desire?”

“Look,” he said, “at that man moving there as he turns against the moon; do you see the line of light that runs about his forehead? And there! what glitters on that outstretched arm? Hardly a man of them but has some gold about him, but they have not said a word.”

“And who has the Cup of the Four Quarters?”

“Noche took it from Oca’s son; I saw him studying it by the reflected moon, but when I came up he hid it in his bosom.”

“And the great rubies?”

“They have not come in.”

“Herman,” I said, after a long pause, “what do you think they will do with it—and us?”

“The King’s Desire? Bury it, I hope. With us? Do you know, Mona, I am no longer anxious about what they will do to us.”

“No; they have been good friends of ours.”

“Nor afraid of the Cup,” finished Herman, “for I have come to feel that I have found something here in Outland that not even Forgetfulness can take away.... What I said to you the other night ... the door....”

“Oh, I thought it was Zirriloë....” He stopped and considered. “... And that she had shut it again on cheapness and affronting shame.... It left a mark on me.”

“Such experiences do, Herman.”

“But she is gone ... and the door swings wide. It is open to-night; and that is what I have found here in Outland that I shall never let go again.”

What he really had was my hand, which he seemed not to be aware of, beating it softly between his palms as he talked. I could hardly withdraw it without seeming to point an emphasis.

“And being so sure of _that_,” said Herman, “makes it difficult to believe that all this should be taken away from us.”

He made a gesture with the hand that held mine toward the swale of River Ward, the silvered line of the willows, the low moon, the fair light, the smell of the packed earth breaking up to bloom.

“Do you know, it is very strange, Mona, I have not the least idea where we are, but I think I could start out to-night direct for home and find it. Have you ever felt so?”

“Not since the Meet at Leaping Water.”

“But to-night?”

“To-night I feel it.”

“How far away the Outliers seem to-night. Look down there in the hollow, there is not one stirring. How could one say there is now any grief or captivity down there? Mona, do you really believe there _are_ any Outliers?”

“Ah, I’m good at believing.”

The moon dropped down behind the hill till there was but one shining jewel point of it winking on the world. The chill that comes before the morning began to temper the air and I shivered under it.

“You are cold,” cried Herman; “wait.” He slipped away in the scrub and brought back skins in which he wrapped me. “Have you had any sleep at all to-night? Where is your hand, Mona?” He drew it through his arm. “Now, if you will lean back against the oak here, and against my shoulder, so: now you may get some rest.”

I leaned against the oak and touched his sleeve with my cheek. I had not meant to do more than that, nor yet to sleep, but the oak swayed a little comfortingly, so still and soft and dark the night was—suddenly there was the morning freshness and Trastevera calling me awake.

I saw the dark green of the earth shining wet, the faint, ineffable green of the dawn, and between them spread a veil of silvery mist. Down in the hollow the Outliers were all astir; rearward two lines of men moved toward the Gap. I saw them disappear in the willows and emerge again in the stream rounding the point of the Ledge. They walked mid-thigh in the turbid water and braced themselves against the force of its running. I saw the lines bend and right themselves like the young willows. These were the Far-Folk moving under guard toward Leaping Water. Below us as we came down the knoll were Mancha, Prassade, Noche and some others, with one in their midst whom, as they turned and looked toward us expectantly, I recognized as Ravenutzi. He looked dry, I thought, and stripped. His glance, which took me dully, when at last it was aware of me, appeared to turn inward for an instant as if to call that old excluding charm of personality. I felt it flicker and expire. But all that group continuing to look toward us curiously as we went down, I enquired of Trastevera what it meant.

“It is Herman,” she said. “They wait for him. Mancha has asked if he would like to go a day’s journey with them.”

“He will go,” I answered for him, for I knew at once whither that journey tended, and what they would find at the end of it. To this day I do not know what prompted Mancha to invite him. Whether he thought the opportunity due to him who had first gone on the trail of that unhappy girl. Whether he had some inkling of Herman’s state of mind, and divined in him an excusing understanding of his own hopeless infatuation, I do not know. At any rate he would not set out on that day’s business without Herman. That was how we learned what happened in the Place of Caves, half a day beyond Windy Covers, and as much as was ever known of what had occurred between Ravenutzi and the Maiden Ward, no maid by now, and in a more inviolable wardship.

They were afoot nearly all of that day, for besides having far to go, the men were stiff with battle. They traveled in this order—first Ravenutzi, limping a little, and Mancha stumbling close upon his heels. Neither of these spoke a word more than necessary the whole of that going. Then came Prassade, who groaned at times and made a gesture with his hands as though his heart were torn out of him and he saw it there in the trail and trampled on it with his feet. Next Noche, muttering in his beard and seeming at times to rehearse the incidents of battle, lifting and hugging somewhat in his arms and shaking his huge shoulders. After these came Herman and the men, among whom was that one who, following the tall woman, had found the smith and betrayed the Far-Folk to capture.

They came behind the others a little distance and whispered at times among themselves. They talked of Mancha’s fight with the smith and how Oca went mad with rage bestriding the dead body of his son, striking so furiously with his pike he could not fetch it back again, and how Prassade had taken him from behind.

They told also how the women of the Far-Folk had come in from some bleak hilltop where they hung like buzzards, and surrendered, asking no privilege but to tend their wounded. Once it occurred to Herman to ask if Ravenutzi’s wife was among them, and the men said no. At that Herman and Mancha looked at one another and the same thought was in the minds of both but they kept it to themselves. About an hour after midday it began to appear that they had done wisely in bringing with them this man who had followed Ravenutzi’s wife. The smith seemed determined to mislead them. He wished to turn out of his earlier trail very far to the right, and could not understand why this man protested so much nor why Mancha paid any attention to him.

“This is the way,” he said; “who should know it if not I?”

“By the Friend, smith, it may be your way,” said the man, “but it was not the way your woman took following your trail, and I hard upon hers.”

“You saw that?” cried Ravenutzi. “A woman, my wife, following me to—to the place where we are going?” Herman said it was the first time he had seen Ravenutzi beside himself; he grew gray, a film came before his eyes through which the pupils opened, blank pits of horror.

“You saw that,” he cried, “and you let her go!”

“Ah,” said the man, “but I judged you the better game.”

Ravenutzi twisted like a man on a rope. He set off running.

“This is the way,” he said, “it is shorter so.” And the rest ran on to keep up with him. They came in this running fashion to the place of the boulders where the woman had lain face downward in the dust, and passed over the sag in the hills where she had been last seen disappearing. Beyond this was stony country; great boulders huge as houses lay all a-heap at the foot of a steep ridge. Smaller stones and rubble from the slope had drifted down and choked the upper crannies between the boulders, so that under them were windy galleries and spacious caves. There was no game nor foodful plant, only coarse tufts of grass between wide stones, nothing to draw men, only shelter and safe hiding.

When they came near this place, Ravenutzi began to go more slowly, forewarned perhaps and afraid of what he should find there. He raised a call, cautiously at first, got no answer, called loudly, grew anxious, set off running again, the men hard behind him. The place fronted westward; the shadows retreating inward gave to the caverns under the rocks a shallow look. The men could not have told from the outside which of them would have yielded passage, but Ravenutzi plunged into one, which proved an arched gallery. It opened into a sort of court, from which a water-worn gully led steeply up to a ledge on which opened a cave, overhung and guarded at the entrance by fire-blackened stones. They were slow enough going up this steep, to observe a woman who sat at the mouth of the cave with her knees drawn up under her hands, and her head bent upon them. They saw that she was tall and had long hair that coiled flatly about her throat and between her breasts.

She looked up from her knees as they climbed and clustered on the narrow platform before the cave. There was neither astonishment nor fear in her eyes, only weariness, as of one who has accomplished what she has long sought and found that after that nothing mattered. Some color sprang in her face as Ravenutzi stood before her, the faint tinge of expectancy. But he never looked at her.

“Where, _where_ is she?”

It was Ravenutzi who asked, and got no answer except as by the turning of the long throat she indicated the cave behind her. Resting her head upon her knees, the tall woman went on looking quietly at nothing.

The floor of the cave sloped downward. It was low at the mouth, and the men stooped going through it. It was large and airy, and had been hung with tawny and dappled skins; some light broke through high crannies in the roof and showed them in the midst of these the Ward. She was very beautiful. The sparkling masses of her hair drifted out on either side the cameo face. Over the eyes, that were brown like agates at the bottom of a brook, the pale lids half drooped like the rims of snow that lie along brook borders in the cold. She was partly dressed, the bosom bare, and over its soft curves ran a line of blood-red stones, wickedly a-fire on that cold breast, tremblingly, shiftily alive in the light that sifted through the crannies of the rocks. Around the throat and in the hollow of the bosom they led the eye down where they melted, and ran in redness and spread dully on the floor, still wet and dripping.

He was so moved by that sight, Herman said, and for the moment so little believing in it, that he had no realization of how the others looked at it nor what they might have felt. He was first roused to take note of his companions by seeing the smith turn from the body with a movement of deprecation, and the sudden swinging of Mancha’s hammer into position. He heard it click as it rose against the roof of the cave. He heard an exclamation but could not tell for the life of him whether he himself had not uttered it; and then he saw the hammer caught from behind by the girl’s father.

“Mine,” he said; “mine, not yours.”

Prassade was as fierce upon the point as if some one had denied it: his the greater offense, to him the punishment. Then as quietly as Mancha’s hammer dropped, the wrath of Prassade fell off before the unimpassioned quietness of the Ward. Stillness seemed to rise from her and crowd them out of the narrow chamber into the overhung and guarded entrance where the woman sat winding and unwinding the long coils of her hair. They did not look at the Ward again nor back at what Prassade did; it was a relief to watch the woman. She stood up and her head was high, her lip was bitten red, two spots of color glowed upon her cheeks. She looked at Ravenutzi as a child might who has broken a delicate thing and refuses to be chidden for it.

“The place was too small for us both,” she said, and then after a little: “I thought you would never come,” with a gesture of weary, ineffable tenderness. “Oh, I thought you would never come.”

She was all alive to him and very beautiful, so flushed and so alive you could not understand that death could be so close behind her. All the rushing of her blood and the swaying of her slender figure demanded of him what, even with death behind, he could not deny. He took her in his arms. He put up his hand to turn her face on his shoulder away from the hard eyes of the men. But he could not conceal as he did so the flush upon his own and the tremor of renewal.

Whatever the girl had been to him, she was now the evidence of how much his wife had loved him; as much as _that_! It was a declaration which shamed him by its publicity but purchased him anew to passion and protecting tenderness. They stood so, she superbly conscious of her right to a place she had cleared for herself, and he still shielding her. Nobody spoke a word. Behind in the cavern Prassade put back the dead girl’s hair from her soiling blood and covered up her breast. Presently he called Mancha, and the others by one consent moved down the water-worn way, out of the sound of their sorrow. Ravenutzi’s arm was still about his wife. At the foot of the ascent he put her from him quietly.

“Go wait by the outer caves,” he said. “They will not wish to see you when they come out.” And she, lifting up her head from his breast, went quietly, all gentleness and submission, never seeing how the others looked at her, never taking her eyes from him till the boulders closed on her and hid her from their view.

“I should say to you,” said Ravenutzi, “what, perhaps, I may not have time to say again”—for he thought then and the others thought, that Prassade would kill him when he came out of the cave. It was to spare her that sight that he sent his wife away. “You may say to the others when they are able to hear it,” he went on, “that much you may have been thinking of that fair child is wrong. She never told me where the King’s Desire was hid.

“She never told,” he insisted, “not of her own consciousness”—looking about for some point of interest or attention to fix upon, and settling upon some small stones which he pushed together with his foot—“something I had from her without her knowing it ... but there were others”—here, his gaze rested an instant on Noche, and dropped to the stones again—“... several others ... in whose minds the facts lay like trout in a lake for him to make rise who was able.... Among my people there is great skill in this.... You yourselves gave me the opportunity ... all your minds ran full of it as a creek after the rain.”

He looked up from his stones, which he had pushed into line as though they were a class who could nowise hear him until they had been so ordered. He must have found some hint of belief in Herman’s face, for he addressed himself to that more confidently.

“It is true I wooed her ... so as to have an open road to her mind. She had no chance against me ... but she never knowingly told.... I do not think I could have persuaded her.”

I believe the man spoke truth. For a certainty he felt death close upon him. Whether the men believed him or not they honored his intention to clear the girl. Some slight easement of their manner toward him made it possible to say more openly:

“I meant no harm to her. She had none at first.... I brought her away because I thought you would not believe ... you would have killed her ... she came....”

He stopped full at that, there was no need to say how she came nor what believing. They were all still together, thinking what he had done and despising him too much to question at all. He essayed to speak once or twice after that, and Herman observed that look to come upon his face which he had often remarked there. The faun’s look, half wishful, half defiant. A wild creature that abates none of its creature ways, but is desirous to have touch with man.

“How fine a piece of work she was,” he said. “... The way her chin was fitted into her throat ... the gold fret of her hair.... I was the smith....”

He stopped; there was nothing in the faces of the men that gave him leave to say his craftsman’s delight in her who was to them the injured daughter of their friend.

Prassade came out presently and Mancha with him. They looked nor spoke to no one as they came down the gully, but each took up a stone, walking with it laboriously, and laid it at the cave’s mouth. Then one of the men went and did the same, and the others, and Herman. At last Ravenutzi, seeing no one hindered him, took up a stone and went up and down with them, carrying, until the mouth of the cave was quite full. Presently Ravenutzi’s wife, grown tired of waiting, crept back through the stone arch and stood watching them with red bitten lip, coiling and uncoiling the long strands of her hair.

XIV.
THE KING’S DESIRE, AND WHAT BECAME OF IT

The party of us that came up from River Ward to Leaping Water turned aside from the meadow where the Meet had been, and settled in one of the galleries of that amphitheater looking down on its veiled cascades. The shouting of the falls came up to us mixed with the faint, incessant murmur given off by a great forest. From here the rim of the world sank westward into the thin blue ring of the sea.

We had come so slowly, being joined at times by families of Outliers, come out of safe hiding and already furnished with news. We were scarcely well settled in the place when word of the death of the Ward began to circulate among them in that mysterious way of news to travel in the open. Doubtless it came by way of runners stationed out toward Windy Covers, by which trail the seekers of the Ward returned. Rumor of it was rife in the camp a full hour before Mancha and Prassade came in. There was very little said about it, they were at all times as private in their griefs as wild creatures, but I think they felt better satisfied to learn that the natural progress of her betrayal had furnished its own punishment and spared them the necessity of putting Zirriloë to death.

Herman came and told me this, walking at dusk on an open hill where there was long grass blowing and shut-eyed heavy flowers among the grasses. But it was a long time before he would talk freely of that suggestion of excuse, put forth by Ravenutzi, which lay in the appeal to his craftsman’s soul of the girl’s bodily perfection. He had been no more able to resist taking into his hand that fair contrivance than any other jewel of gold and fine stones, and its turning to flesh and blood under his touch had been a bitter and unavoidable consequence. I think Herman’s inarticulateness grew out of feeling himself involved in the ruin of a lovely woman in the common culpability of men. She was a vase which they had pulled about among them in admiring, and dropped and shattered.

I say I think Herman felt this, though I do not now recall any words that passed between us on the subject. Yet I was at that time much nearer to understanding the beguilement of beauty, and the pain of its bafflement which drives men to create of words and paint and stone, forms of it by which no confusion can come. When I saw Ravenutzi sitting among the Far-Folk, with his knees drawn up under his hands and his delicate faun’s profile bent above them, looking out at me in the old way, at once wishful and compelling, the look I sent back to him was almost kind.

The whiteness of his hair had been cut away, the drawn look of his skin smoothed out. I saw how young he was, a little of what those two women had seen who had been drawn by it to death and killing. His wife sat with her head propped against his shoulder. And for so long as she sat there, assured, accepted, it was plain there was for her neither anxiety nor pained remembrance, nor any other thing.

One supposes death at all times so natural that the wound of it heals by its own processes. It was so with the Outliers. No later than the next morning much of the bitterness of loss had drained away with the dark. The business of the Ward being finished they turned without discursiveness to disposing of Ravenutzi, the Far-Folk and the King’s Desire. Though we had no inkling, Herman and I, what would be done to the smith, we felt it would be just; and whatever would be done to the Far-Folk, more than kind. Concerning the Treasure there must some command have circulated. Though we had seen it glinting in the camp at River Ward—there was scarcely a man who had not brought something away with him from the last fight—there was not so much as the red sparkle of a jewel to be seen at Leaping Water.