Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Part 10

CHAPTER VI.

UNDER THE PIC DU MIDI.

So that was their plan. Two or three hours to the southward, the long white glittering wall stretched east and west above the brown woods.

Beyond that lay Spain. Once across the border, I might be detained, if no worse happened to me, as a prisoner of war; for we were then at war with Spain on the Italian side. Or I might be handed over to one of the savage bands, half smugglers, half brigands, that held the pa.s.ses; or be delivered--worst fate of all--into the power of the French exiles, of whom some would be likely to recognize me and cut my throat.

"It is a long way into Spain," I muttered, watching in a kind of fascination Clon handling his pistols.

"I think you will find the other road longer still!" the landlord answered grimly. "But choose, and be quick about it."

They were three to one, and they had firearms. In effect I had no choice. "Well, if I must I must!" I cried, making up my mind with seeming recklessness. "_Vogue la galere!_ Spain be it. It will not be the first time I have heard the dons talk."

The men nodded, as much as to say that they had known what the end would be; the landlord released my rein; and in a trice we were riding down the narrow track, with our faces set towards the mountains.

On one point my mind was now more easy. The men meant fairly by me; and I had no longer to fear, as I had feared, a pistol shot in the back at the first convenient ravine. As far as that went, I might ride in peace. On the other hand, if I let them carry me across the border my fate was sealed. A man set down without credentials or guards among the wild desperadoes who swarmed in war time in the Asturian pa.s.ses might consider himself fortunate if an easy death fell to his lot. In my case I could make a shrewd guess what would happen. A single nod of meaning, one muttered word, dropped among the savage men with whom I should be left, and the diamonds hidden in my boot would go neither to the Cardinal nor back to Mademoiselle--nor would it matter to me whither they went.

So while the others talked in their taciturn fashion, or sometimes grinned at my gloomy face, I looked out over the brown woods with eyes that saw, yet did not see. The red squirrel swarming up the trunk, the startled pigs that rushed away grunting from their feast of mast, the solitary rider who met us, armed to the teeth, and pa.s.sed northwards after whispering with the landlord--all these I saw. But my mind was not with them. It was groping and feeling about like a hunted mole for some way of escape. For time pressed. The slope we were on was growing steeper. By-and-bye we fell into a southward valley, and began to follow it steadily upwards, crossing and recrossing a swiftly rushing stream. The snow-peaks began to be hidden behind the rising bulk of hills that overhung us; and sometimes we could see nothing before or behind but the wooded walls of our valley rising sheer and green a thousand paces on either hand, with grey rocks half masked by fern and ivy getting here and there through the firs and alders.

It was a wild and sombre scene even at that hour, with the midday sun shining on the rushing water and drawing the scent out of the pines; but I knew that there was worse to come, and sought desperately for some ruse by which I might at least separate the men. Three were too many; with one I might deal. At last, when I had cudgelled my brain for an hour, and almost resigned myself to a sudden charge on the men single-handed--a last desperate resort--I thought of a plan, dangerous, too, and almost desperate, but which still seemed to promise something. It came of my fingers resting in my pocket on the fragments of the orange sachet, which, without having any particular design in my mind, I had taken care to bring with me. I had torn the sachet into four pieces--four corners. As I played mechanically with them, one of my fingers fitted into one, as into a glove; a second finger into another. And the plan came.

Still, before I could move in it, I had to wait until we stopped to bait the flagging horses, which we did about noon at the head of the valley. Then, pretending to drink from the stream, I managed to secure unseen a handful of pebbles, slipping them into the same pocket with the morsels of stuff. On getting to horse again, I carefully fitted a pebble, not too tightly, into the largest sc.r.a.p, and made ready for the attempt.

The landlord rode on my left, abreast of me; the other two knaves behind. The road at this stage favoured me, for the valley, which drained the bare uplands that lay between the lower spurs and the base of the real mountains, had become wide and shallow. Here were no trees, and the path was a mere sheep-track covered with short crisp gra.s.s, and running sometimes on this bank of the stream and sometimes on that.

I waited until the ruffian beside me turned to speak to the men behind. The moment he did so and his eyes were averted, I slipped out the sc.r.a.p of satin in which I had placed the pebble, and balancing it carefully on my right thigh as I rode, I flipped it forward with all the strength of my thumb and finger. I meant it to fall a few paces before us in the path, where it could be seen. But alas for my hopes!

At the critical moment my horse started, my finger struck the sc.r.a.p aslant, the pebble flew out, and the bit of stuff fluttered into a whin-bush close to my stirrup--and was lost!

I was bitterly disappointed, for the same thing might happen again, and I had now only three sc.r.a.ps left. But fortune favoured me, by putting it into my neighbour's head to plunge into a hot debate with the shock-headed man on the nature of some animals seen on a distant brow; which he said were izards, while the other maintained that they were common goats. He continued, on this account, to ride with his face turned the other way. I had time to fit another pebble into the second piece of stuff, and sliding it on to my thigh, poised it, and flipped it.

This time my finger struck the tiny missile fairly in the middle, and shot it so far and so truly that it dropped exactly in the path ten paces in front of us. The moment I saw it fall I kicked my neighbour's nag in the ribs; it started, and he, turning in a rage, hit it. The next instant he pulled it almost on to its haunches.

"Saint Gris!" he cried; and sat glaring at the bit of yellow satin, with his face turned purple and his jaw fallen.

"What is it?" I said, staring at him in turn. "What is the matter, fool?"

"Matter?" he blurted out. "_Mon Dieu!_"

But Clon's excitement surpa.s.sed even his. The dumb man no sooner saw what had attracted his comrade's attention, than he uttered an inarticulate and horrible noise, and tumbling off his horse, more like a beast than a man, threw himself bodily on the precious morsel.

The innkeeper was not far behind him. An instant and he was down, too, peering at the thing; and for an instant I thought that they would fight over it. However, though their jealousy was evident, their excitement cooled a little when they discovered that the sc.r.a.p of stuff was empty; for, fortunately, the pebble had fallen out of it.

Still, it threw them into such a fever of eagerness as it was wonderful to witness. They nosed the ground where it had lain, they plucked up the gra.s.s and turf, and pa.s.sed it through their fingers, they ran to and fro like dogs on a trail; and, glancing askance at one another, came back always together to the point of departure. Neither in his jealousy would suffer the other to be there alone.

The shock-headed man and I sat our horses and looked on; he marvelling, and I pretending to marvel. As the two searched up and down the path, we moved a little out of it to give them s.p.a.ce; and presently, when all their heads were turned from me, I let a second morsel drop under a gorse-bush. The shock-headed man, by-and-bye, found this, and gave it to Clon; and, as from the circ.u.mstances of the first discovery no suspicion attached to me, I ventured to find the third and last sc.r.a.p myself. I did not pick it up, but I called the innkeeper, and he pounced on it as I have seen a hawk pounce on a chicken.

They hunted for the fourth morsel, but, of course, in vain, and in the end they desisted, and fitted the three they had together; but neither would let his own portion out of his hands, and each looked at the other across the spoil with eyes of suspicion. It was strange to see them in that wide-stretching valley, whence grey boar-backs of hills swelled up into the silence of the snow--it was strange, I say, in that vast solitude to see these two, mere dots on its bosom, circling round one another in fierce forgetfulness of the outside world, glaring and shifting their ground like c.o.c.ks about to engage, and wholly engrossed--by three sc.r.a.ps of orange-colour, invisible at fifty paces!

At last the innkeeper cried with an oath: "I am going back. This must be known down yonder. Give me your pieces, man, and do you go with Antoine. It will be all right."

But Clon, waving a sc.r.a.p in either hand and thrusting his ghastly mask into the other's face, shook his head in pa.s.sionate denial. He could not speak, but he made it clear that if any one went back with the news he was the man to go.

"Nonsense!" the landlord retorted fiercely. "We cannot leave Antoine to go on alone with him. Give me the stuff."

But Clon would not. He had no thought of resigning the credit of the discovery, and I began to think that the two would really come to blows. But there was an alternative, and first one and then the other looked at me. It was a moment of peril, and I knew it. My stratagem might react on myself, and the two, to put an end to this difficulty, agree to put an end to me. But I faced them so coolly and showed so bold a front, and the ground was so open, that the idea took no root.

They fell to wrangling again more viciously than before. One tapped his gun and the other his pistols. The landlord scolded, the dumb man gurgled. At last their difference ended as I had hoped it would.

"Very well then, we will both go back!" the innkeeper cried in a rage.

"And Antoine must see him on. But the blame be on your head. Do you give the lad your pistols."

Clon took one pistol and gave it to the shock-headed man.

"The other!" the innkeeper said impatiently.

But Clon shook his head with a grim smile, and pointed to the arquebuss.

By a sudden movement the landlord s.n.a.t.c.hed the pistol, and averted Clon's vengeance by placing both it and the gun in the shock-headed man's hands. "There!" he said, addressing the latter, "now can you do?

If Monsieur tries to escape or turn back, shoot him! But four hours'

riding should bring you to the Roca Blanca. You will find the men there, and will have no more to do with it."

Antoine did not see things quite in that light, however. He looked at me, and then at the wild track in front of us; and he muttered an oath and said he would die if he would. But the landlord, who was in a frenzy of impatience, drew him aside and talked to him, and in the end seemed to persuade him; for in a few minutes the matter was settled.

Antoine came back and said sullenly, "Forward, Monsieur," the two others stood on one side, I shrugged my shoulders and kicked up my horse, and in a twinkling we two were riding on together--man to man.

I turned once or twice to see what those we had left behind were doing, and always found them standing in apparent debate; but my guard showed so much jealousy of these movements that I presently shrugged my shoulders again and desisted.

I had racked my brains to bring about this state of things. But, strange to say, now I had succeeded, I found it less satisfactory than I had hoped. I had reduced the odds and got rid of my most dangerous antagonists; but Antoine, left to himself, proved to be as full of suspicion as an egg of meat. He rode a little behind me with his gun across his saddle-bow, and a pistol near his hand, and at the slightest pause on my part, or if I turned to look at him, he muttered his constant "Forward, Monsieur!" in a tone that warned me that his finger was on the trigger. At such a distance he could not miss; and I saw nothing for it but to go on meekly before him--to the Roca Blanca and my fate.

What was to be done? The road presently reached the end of the valley and entered a narrow pine-clad defile, strewn with rocks and boulders, over which the torrent plunged and eddied with a deafening roar. In front the white gleam of waterfalls broke the sombre ranks of climbing trunks. The snow-line lay less than half a mile away on either hand; and crowning all--at the end of the pa.s.s, as it seemed to the eye--rose the pure white pillar of the Pic du Midi shooting up six thousand feet into the blue of heaven. Such a scene, so suddenly disclosed, was enough to drive the sense of danger from my mind; and for a moment I reined in my horse. But "Forward, Monsieur!" came the grating order. I fell to earth again, and went on. What was to be done?

I was at my wit's end to know. The man refused to talk, refused to ride abreast of me, would have no dismounting, no halting, no communication; at all. He would have nothing but this silent, lonely procession of two, with the muzzle of his gun at my back. And meanwhile we were fast climbing the pa.s.s. We had left the others an hour--nearly two. The sun was declining; the time, I supposed, about half-past three.

If he would only let me come within reach of him! Or if anything would fall out to take his attention! When the pa.s.s presently widened into a bare and dreary valley, strewn with huge boulders, and with snow lying here and there in the hollows, I looked desperately before me, and scanned even the vast snow-fields that overhung us and stretched away to the base of the ice-peak. But I saw nothing. No bear swung across the path, no izard showed itself on the cliffs. The keen sharp air cut our cheeks and warned me that we were approaching the summit of the ridge. On all sides were silence and desolation.

_Mon Dieu!_ And the ruffians on whose tender mercies I was to be thrown might come to meet us! They might appear at any moment. In my despair I loosened my hat on my head, and let the first gust carry it to the ground, and then with an oath of annoyance tossed my feet loose to go after it. But the rascal roared to me to keep my seat.

"Forward, Monsieur!" he shouted brutally. "Go on!"

"But my hat!" I cried. "_Mille tonnerres_, man! I must--"

"Forward, Monsieur, or I shoot!" he replied inexorably, raising his gun. "One--two--"

And I went on. But, oh, I was wrathful! That I, Gil de Berault, should be outwitted and led by the nose, like a ringed bull, by this Gascon lout! That I, whom all Paris knew and feared--if it did not love--the terror of Zaton's, should come to my end in this dismal waste of snow and rock, done to death by some pitiful smuggler or thief! It must not be! Surely in the last resort I could give an account of one man, though his belt were stuffed with pistols!

But how? Only, it seemed, by open force. My heart began to flutter as I planned it; and then grew steady again. A hundred paces before us a gully or ravine on the left ran up into the snow-field. Opposite its mouth a jumble of stones and broken rocks covered the path. I marked this for the place. The knave would need both his hands to hold up his nag over the stones, and, if I turned on him suddenly enough, he might either drop his gun, or fire it harmlessly.

But, in the meantime, something happened; as, at the last moment, things do happen. While we were still fifty yards short of the place, I found his horse's nose creeping forward on a level with my crupper; and, still advancing, until I could see it out of the tail of my eye, and my heart gave a great bound. He was coming abreast of me: he was going to deliver himself into my hands! To cover my excitement, I began to whistle.

"Hush!" he muttered fiercely: his voice sounding strange and unnatural. My first thought was that he was ill, and I turned to him.

But he only said again, "Hush! Pa.s.s by here quietly, Monsieur."