Part 47 (1/2)

”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.”