Part 27 (2/2)
”I surrender to you,” she presently said in French, extending the hilt of her rapier to him. ”I had to defend myself when attacked by your Lieutenant there. If an officer finds it necessary to set upon a girl with his sword, may not the girl guard her life if she can?”
She was short of breath, so that her voice palpitated with a touching plangency that shook the man's heart.
Farnsworth accepted the sword; he could do nothing less. His duty admitted of no doubtful consideration; yet he hesitated, feeling around in his mind for a phrase with which to evade the inevitable.
”It will be safer for you at the fort, Mademoiselle; let me take you there.”
CHAPTER XIII
A MEETING IN THE WILDERNESS
Beverley set out on his mid-winter journey to Kaskaskia with a tempest in his heart, and it was, perhaps, the storm's energy that gave him the courage to face undaunted and undoubting what his experience must have told him lay in his path. He was young and strong; that meant a great deal; he had taken the desperate chances of Indian warfare many times before this, and the danger counted as nothing, save that it offered the possibility of preventing him from doing the one thing in life he now cared to do. What meant suffering to him, if he could but rescue Alice? And what were life should he fail to rescue her? The old, old song hummed in his heart, every phrase of it distinct above the tumult of the storm. Could cold and hunger, swollen streams, ravenous wild beasts and scalp-hunting savages baffle him? No, there is no barrier that can hinder love. He said this over and over to himself after his rencounter with the four Indian scouts on the Wabash. He repeated it with every heart-beat until he fell in with some friendly red men, who took him to their camp, where to his great surprise he met M.
Roussillon. It was his song when again he strode off toward the west on his lonely way.
We need not follow him step by step; the monotony of the woods and prairies, the cold rains, alternating with northerly winds and blinding snow, the constant watchfulness necessary to guard against a meeting with hostile savages, the tiresome tramping, wading and swimming, the hunger, the broken and wretched sleep in frozen and scant wraps,--why detail it all?
There was but one beautiful thing about it--the beauty of Alice as she seemed to walk beside him and hover near him in his dreams. He did not know that Long-Hair and his band were fast on his track; but the knowledge could not have urged him to greater haste. He strained every muscle to its utmost, kept every nerve to the highest tension. Yonder towards the west was help for Alice; that was all he cared for.
But if Long-Hair was pursuing him with relentless greed for the reward offered by Hamilton, there were friendly footsteps still nearer behind him; and one day at high noon, while he was bending over a little fire, broiling some liberal cuts of venison, a finger tapped him on the shoulder. He sprang up and grappled Oncle Jazon; at the same time, standing near by, he saw Simon Kenton, his old-time Kentucky friend.
The pungled features of one and the fine, rugged face of the other swam as in a mist before Beverley's eyes. Kenton was laughing quietly, his strong, upright form shaking to the force of his pleasure. He was in the early prime of a vigorous life, not handsome, but strikingly attractive by reason of a certain glow in his face and a kindly flash in his deep-set eyes.
”Well, well, my boy!” he exclaimed, laying his left hand on Beverley's shoulder, while in the other he held a long, heavy rifle. ”I'm glad to see ye, glad to see ye.”
”Thought we was Injuns, eh?” said Oncle Jazon. ”An' ef we had 'a' been we'd 'a' been sh.o.r.e o' your scalp!” The wizzened old creole cackled gleefully.
”And where are ye goin'?” demanded Kenton. ”Ye're making what lacks a heap o' bein' a bee-line for some place or other.”
Beverley was dazed and vacant-minded; things seemed wavering and dim.
He pushed the two men from him and gazed at them without speaking.
Their presence and voices did not convince him.
”Yer meat's a burnin',” said Oncle Jazon, stooping to turn it on the smouldering coals. ”Ye must be hungry. Cookin' enough for a regiment.”
Kenton shook Beverley with rough familiarity, as if to rouse his faculties.
”What's the matter? Fitz, my lad, don't ye know Si Kenton? It's not so long since we were like brothers, and now ye don't speak to me! Ye've not forgot me, Fitz!”
”Mebby he don't like ye as well as ye thought he did,” drawled Oncle Jazon. ”I HEV known o' fellers a bein' mistaken jes' thet way.”
Beverley got his wits together as best he could, taking in the situation by such degrees as seemed at the time unduly slow, but which were really mere momentary falterings.
”Why, Kenton! Jazon!” he presently exclaimed, a cordial gladness blending with his surprise. ”How did you get here? Where did you come from?”
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