Part 107 (2/2)
He shaded both his eyes with his hands, for the sun was glaring. About a mile off he saw two men coming slowly up by a zig-zag path toward the very point where he stood. Presently the men stopped and examined the prospect, each in his own way. The taller one took a wide survey of the low ground, and calling his companion to him appeared to point out to him some beauty or peculiarity of the region. Our scout stepped back and called down to his companions, ”Shepherds!”
He then strolled back to his post with no particular anxiety. Arrived there his uneasiness seemed to revive. The shorter of the two strangers had lagged behind his comrade, and the watcher observed, that he was carrying on a close and earnest inspection of the ground in detail.
He peered into the hollows and loitered in every ravine. This gave singular offense to the keen eye that was now upon him. Presently he was seen to stop and call his taller companion to him, and point with great earnestness first to something at their feet, then to the backbone of rocks; and it so happened by mere accident that his finger took nearly the direction of the very spot where the observer of all his movements stood. The man started back out of sight and called in a low voice to his comrades,
”Come here.”
They came straggling up with troubled and lowering faces. ”Lie down and watch them,” said the leader. The men stooped and crawled forward to some stunted bushes, behind which they lay down and watched in silence the unconscious pair who were now about two furlongs distant. The shorter of the two still loitered behind his companion, and inspected the ground with particular interest. The leader of the band, who went by the name of Black Will, muttered a curse upon his inquisitiveness. The others a.s.sented all but one, a huge fellow whom the others addressed as Jem. ”Nonsense,” said Jem, ”dozens pa.s.s this way and are none the wiser.”
”Ay,” replied Black Will, ”with their noses in the air. But that is a notice-taking fellow. Look at him with his eyes forever on the rocks, or in the gullies, or--there if he is not picking up a stone and breaking it!”
”Ha! ha!” laughed Jem incredulously, ”how many thousand have picked up stones and broke them and all, and never known what we know.”
”He has been in the same oven as we,” retorted the other.
Here one of the others put in his word. ”That is not likely, captain; but if it is so there are no two ways. A secret is no secret if all the world is to know it.”
”You remember our oath, Jem,” said the leader sternly.
”Why should I forget it more than another?” replied the other angrily.
”Have you all your knives?” asked the captain gloomily. The men nodded a.s.sent.
”Cross them with me as we did when we took our oath first.”
The men stretched out each a brawny arm, and a long sharp knife, so that all the points came together in a focus; and this action suited well with their fierce and animal features, their long neglected beards, their matted hair and their gleaming eyes. It looked the prologue to some deed of blood. This done, at another word from their ruffianly leader they turned away from the angle in the rock and plunged hastily down the ravine; but they had scarcely taken thirty steps when they suddenly disappeared.
In the neighborhood of the small stream I have mentioned was a cavern of irregular shape that served these men for a habitation and place of concealment. Nature had not done all. The stone was soft, and the natural cavity had been enlarged and made a comfortable retreat enough for the hardy men whose home it was. A few feet from the mouth of the cave on one side grew a stout bush that added to the shelter and the concealment, and on the other the men themselves had placed two or three huge stones, which, from the att.i.tude the rogues had given them, appeared, like many others, to have rolled thither years ago from the rock above.
In this retreat the whole band were now silently couched, two of them in the mouth of the cave, Black Will and another lying flat on their stomachs watching the angle of the road for the two men who must pa.s.s that way, and listening for every sound. Black Will was carefully and quietly sharpening his knife on one of the stones and casting back every now and then a meaning glance to his companions. The pertinacity with which he held to his idea began to tell on them, and they sat in an att.i.tude of sullen and terrible suspicion. But Jem wore a look of contemptuous incredulity. However small a society may be, if it is a human one jealousy shall creep in. Jem grudged Black Will his captaincy.
Jem was intellectually a bit of a brute. He was a stronger man than Will, and therefore thought it hard that merely because Will was a keener spirit, Will should be over him. Half an hour pa.s.sed thus, and the two travelers did not make their appearance.
”Not even coming this way at all,” said Jem.
”Hus.h.!.+” replied Will sternly, ”hold your tongue. They must come this way, and they can't be far off. Jem, you can crawl out and see where they are, if you are clever enough to keep that great body out of sight.”
Jem resented this doubt cast upon his adroitness, and crawled out among the bushes. He had scarcely got twenty yards when he halted and made a signal that the men were in sight. Soon afterward he came back with less precaution. ”They are sitting eating their dinner close by, just on the sunny side of the rock--shepherds, as I told you--got a dog. Go yourself if you don't believe me.”
The leader went to the spot, and soon after returned and said quietly, ”Pals, I dare say he is right. Lie still till they have had their dinner; they are going farther, no doubt.”
Soon after this he gave a hasty signal of silence, for George and Robinson at that moment came round the corner of the rock and stood on the road not fifty yards above them. Here they paused as the valley burst on their view, and George pointed out its qualities to his comrade. ”It is not first-rate, Tom, but there is good gra.s.s in patches, and plenty of water.”
Robinson, instead of replying or giving his mind to the prospect said to George, ”Why, where is he?”
”Who?”
”The man that I saw standing at this corner a while ago. He came round this way I'll be sworn.”
”He is gone away, I suppose. I never saw any one, for my part.”
”I did, though. Gone away? How could he go away? The road is in sight for miles, and not a creature on it. He is vanished.”
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