Part 25 (1/2)
He leaped from the saddle, drew his carbine from the bucket, and flung to Aylmer the reins of both horses.
”If Monsieur will be so obliging?” he said quickly, and turned towards the nearest tree, a cedar which towered twenty feet above the dwarfed bolls of cork. He climbed lithely, rapidly, resting, at last, within a few feet of the top. He leaned his carbine upon a bough, took a steady aim, and fired.
A shriek answered the report--a shriek m.u.f.fled in the blanket of the broom.
”_Courage, mes enfants!_” said Perinaud, placidly. ”That accounted for one, and from here I see all. There are but six. Give me time and the affair completes itself effectually.”
Again he dwelled upon his aim, hesitated, fired, shook his head in self-reproach and fired again. This time he gave a little nod of satisfaction.
”Two!” he cried complacently. ”Two, my children!” and the report of his rifle punctuated the announcement. ”So!” went on the sergeant, as if he commented on the score at a rifle range. ”So! We write full stop to _Monsieur le troisieme_. Aha! _Messieurs quatrieme_, _cinquieme_ and _sixieme_--it is poor stuff to push through, the broom. No, I do not see you, Messieurs, but I see where you run like rabbits, and perhaps we may chance a bullet--there!”
The report of the last cartridge in the magazine was answered by another yell. A brown-clad body shot into the air out of the undergrowth and subsided limply. Perinaud nodded again.
”Through the brain, my friend, through the brain. Yes, I still see you, my two little doves. We have to reload. Four for one magazine of five cartridges is not bad, you will allow. You are trapped, are you not? In the broom you cannot escape me; in the open you will be ridden down.
Well, it is to be in the broom, is it? So! _Voila, Monsieur le cinquieme!_ That closes your account. As for you, my sixth friend, you have chosen the thicket, have you? You are very still; we must speculate, we must invite the co-operation of chance, who is a good friend to Sergeant Perinaud as a rule. There! No, is that not in the middle of the target? We must try again. Umph! I wonder if you are, after all, dead, my pigeon. Hola, there! Monsieur le Commandant. If you will be good enough to step fifteen long paces to the right, following the motion of my hand, you will be able to inform me if my last shot was a bull's-eye, an outer, or even--shame to me if it is so--a miss. Yes, Monsieur, that is the spot. Where the patch of broom outcrops between those two stumps of cork.”
Rattier beat a road laboriously through the clinging stems as the sergeant's finger motioned. A sudden m.u.f.fled exclamation burst from him; he lurched sideways, stumbled, and fell p.r.o.ne. The green stalks rustled and shook as something brown and indistinguishable shot through them in the direction in which the waiting Goumiers were thickest.
Perinaud gave a warning cry.
”Look to yourselves! I cannot shoot; he is in line between us!”
One of the hors.e.m.e.n shouted and spurred his stallion towards the fringe of the undergrowth furthest from the point at which the charge had entered it. His impulsive action countered Perinaud's manifest purpose of firing, for he, too, had seen the agitation of the mallow in that direction. The horseman bounded forward, the horse clearing the obstructions in a series of jerky little leaps. Beside the edge of the clearing they halted, the man searching the cover in front of him and on each side keenly.
A brown something snaked out of the thicket at his back. Steel flashed in the sun. The Goumier toppled from the saddle, and a brown figure, bowing flat across the horse's withers, seemed to have replaced him almost in the moment of his fall. Spurred desperately by his new rider, the stallion burst away down the cork tree alleys.
A ragged volley rattled out. Splinters flew wide from a dozen trees, but horse and rider fled on. The Goumiers called fiercely on the name of a dozen saints of Islam to qualify their rage as they thrust their chargers out of the tangle in pursuit. Perinaud and their officer yelled strenuous commands.
Crestfallen and sullen, the troopers reined in, listening in silence to the commination addressed to them from the pulpit of the cedar.
”Is one lesson insufficient?” thundered Perinaud. ”Do we practise the arts of war or are we conducting a _ralli-papier_? Like hares you were decoyed into this ambush, and, flinging your red-hot experience to the winds, you are prepared to be drawn, as likely as not, into another.
Collect yourselves, morally as well as physically, if you please.”
They reined in among the cork trees, and half a dozen, flinging their reins to comrades, pushed back on foot into the cover. A string of oaths and maledictions, twice repeated, told of what they found. They came back with the sullen tread of those bearing the heavy burdens of defeat and death. They laid the bodies of their two comrades at the foot of the cedar.
Rattier, leaning upon Aylmer's arm, swore vehemently. The blood dripped from a gash across his wrist, but he raised it to shake a fist in the direction taken by the fugitive.
”Another item in M. de Landon's ledger, name of all names!” he cried.
”But we shall see, my friends, we shall see. The hand is not played out yet, believe me!”
”Perhaps not,” agreed Aylmer, ”but you, at any rate, have cut out of the deal, or have been cut out,” he added significantly, pointing to the wounded arm.
The commandant drew himself away with a fierce jerk.
”I!” he cried. ”Is a cut finger--a graze--to send me weeping to the ambulance? The scoundrel who deceived me I pursue to the world's end! He has scored once more. It is the last time--this!”
He raised himself to his full height in a grandiloquent gesture and--fell fainting into Perinaud's arms. The sergeant grunted morosely and pointed to a crimson stain which had welled through the blue tunic and was rapidly spreading.
”If it is not serious, I thank Our Lady and all the listening Saints for this!” he said devoutly. ”He is impossible as a colleague on reconnaissance, this energetic commandant. It was his recklessness which led these men into a trap which at any other moment they would have avoided. We have lost two men and five horses by the result of this escapade. What are your suggestions now, Monsieur?”