Montlivet Part 9

He brought out the last words in a crescendo, and again my hand clapped tight against his mouth.

"Be still! Be still!" I spluttered wildly, and I threw a disordered glance at the horizon, and at my astonished crew. I had not meant that the men, except Pierre, should be taken into the secret until we were well afloat. Here was another contretemps.

"Are you mad, Father Carheil!" I began, with a sorry show of dignity, while my palm stuck like a leech against his lips. "This is not"----

"Not any one but the prisoner himself," interrupted the Englishman's voice. He dropped his blanket, and sprang to the sand. "Do not lie for me, monsieur," he went on in his indolent, drawling French that already had come to have a pleasant quaintness in my ears. "Monsieur, let me speak to the father."

If Nature had given me a third hand, I should have used it to throttle the Englishman. "Get back in the canoe!" I stormed.

He motioned me away. Standing slim and tall in Singing Arrow's dress, he put me--such creatures of outward seeming are we--absurdly in the wrong, as if I had been rude to a woman.

"Father Carheil," he began, "your ears at least are not fettered.

Listen, if you will. This man is not to blame. I was thrown in his way, and he took me from pity, to save my life. Now that I am discovered, I will go back to prison with you. Let this man go west.

Whatever his business, it is pressing."

With two mad men on my hands, I had to choose between them. I dropped the priest, and gripped the Englishman.

"If you go back, I go with you!" I raged in his ear. Then I turned to Father Carheil. "Are you going to report this, father? It is as the Englishman says. I take him as the only way to save him from torture.

May we go?"

The father thought a moment. "No," he said.

I gripped my sword. "You have seen torture, Father Carheil. Would you hand this man over to it?"

The father looked at me as if I were print for his reading. "I am piecing facts together," he said, with unmoved slowness. "Singing Arrow is in league with you, for the prisoner is wearing her clothes.

The Indians are wild with brandy, which, it is rumored, Singing Arrow furnished. The brandy must have come from you. Is that so? Answer me. Answer, in the name of the Holy Church. Is that so?"

I bowed. "You are a logician," I said bitterly. "Father, I can hear the tom-toms. It is a miracle that we have escaped undetected so long.

Our respite cannot last many minutes longer. May we go?"

My tone seemed to reach him, and he wavered a moment. "Perhaps," he began haltingly; then he backed several paces. "No!" he cried, all his small wiry figure suddenly tense. "No! You are a dangerous man. You carry brandy, and no one knows your errand. If I let you go, I may save one man from torture,--which, after all, is but an open door to the blessed after life,--but I shall be letting you carry brandy and perdition on to scores of souls. No." And he opened his mouth to call for help.

But I was on him before his shout could frame itself to sound. I drew my handkerchief, and tied it, bandage-firm, across his mouth. Then I called to Pierre, and bidding him bring me thongs from our store in the canoe, I proceeded to bind the priest firmly. He was slight as a woman in my hands. I could feel the sharpness and brittleness of his old bones through his wrinkled skin, and I was sick at myself. "I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry," I heard myself repeating, explaining to him, and to myself, and, mostly, to the G.o.d who judges us. I looked at the wonderful mobile old face, with all its weakness, and all its wonderful white goodness, and hated myself for laying hands of violence on such a man. "I am sorry," I cried again. I looked at the spit of land that separated us from the camp, and the light from the fires glowed red above it. The din of dogs and men swelled high. Something was happening. I glanced down at the priest, but turned away quickly, for I had no stomach for what I had done.

"They will find you soon," I said, with my throat tightening. "G.o.d knows I'm sorry."

Then I dashed to the canoes. "Quickly!" I cried, and I shoved the Englishman down behind me, that I might not have to see even the glint of his red blanket to anger me by thought of what I had sacrificed.

In a moment, our paddles were dipping. I looked back at the settlement. "It is done!" I cried under my breath, and I could not forbid a moment of exultation. I glanced at the Englishman.

But I met no exultation there. The man's strange eyes were still grave. "No, monsieur, it is just begun," he corrected, and I thought, as I saw his look at the retreating sh.o.r.e, that he shrunk from the uncertainties ahead more than from the death behind. Was there a coward streak in him, after all? I turned my back, and did not speak again.

CHAPTER VIII

PARTNERS

To paddle by day, to work in sun and breeze, is a pastime, but to paddle by night drains a man's endurance. For long hours our canoes nosed their way around headland after headland and along wild sh.o.r.es peopled by beasts and shadows. The black water was a threat and a mystery, and the moonlight was chill, so that our limbs, which should have bounded with red blood, were aching and leaden with the cold. I stretched myself with relief when the red-streaked horizon told me it was time to land and make camp.

I was prepared for pursuit, but knew that, with Pierre in one canoe and Labarthe in the other, we must be well in advance of it. Now I purposed to stop and hide. It is more to my taste to be hound than hare, and I do not like an enemy snapping at my heels. So I prepared to land. Once the pursuing canoes had pa.s.sed us we could take up the chase on our own part and follow at leisure.

I called the word to the other canoe, and then as we swung sh.o.r.eward I turned to look at the Englishman. All night I had heard no sound from him, nor glanced his way. My thoughts of him had been bitter, for he was a sore weight on my hands. Yet this I knew was unjust, and I was shamed for my own bad temper. My surliness must have p.r.i.c.ked him, as he sat silent through the long hours of dark and cold; and now that the approaching sun was putting me in a better humor, I could see that I had been hard, and I determined to speak to him fairly.

And so I turned, puckering my lips to a smile that did not come easily, for my face was stiff and my spirit sore. But I might have spared my pains. The prisoner was asleep. He lay in a chrysalis of red blanket, his head tipped back on a bundle of sailcloth, his face to the stars.

He was submerged in the deep slumber where the soul deserts the body and travels unknown ways. Judged by his look of lax muscles and surrender, he had lain that way for hours,--the hours when I had been punishing him with my averted glance.

I woke him with a hand on his shoulder.

"You slept well," I accused.

He shivered under my hand and opened his eyes. It took him an instant to recognize me, but when he did he smiled with relief. I could not but see that there was something pleasant in his smile. I saw, too, that sleep had wiped the lines from his face, and given him a touch of color.

"Did I sleep? Did I really sleep?" he marveled. "Monsieur, you are very good to me."

But I was in no holiday humor, so only shrugged, and told him to unload the bales. He smiled again, nodding, and jumped to the sh.o.r.e with buoyancy that was an affront to our numbed muscles. But once at work he was as useless as a sailor in a hayfield. He could lift nothing, and he was hopelessly under foot. I bade him stand aside, and I prayed for patience. After all he was young, and had been through great hardship. I would spare him what I could for a time.

It is depressing to work in a cold dawn on an empty stomach. Our landing had been made at the mouth of a rivulet, and we followed it till we found a place, some quarter mile inland, that was open enough for a camp. Here bale by bale we brought the cargo, piling it under trees and covering it with sailcloth. The canoes we put bottom up in the open, that the sun might dry them. I left Pierre hidden at the sh.o.r.e to watch the horizon for our pursuers, and the rest of us proceeded to breakfast.

It was cheerless. When I say we made a camp it is misleading, for we could not swing our kettles for fear of the betraying smoke. We sat down stiffly, for the ground was still wet from the night dew, and we pa.s.sed our bags of dried maize and jerked meat from hand to hand. I made some ado to eat cheerfully, for I saw that the men were surly from this unnecessary hardship. The western Indians were friendly, and if we had not had this incubus of an Englishman on our hands we should have had fire and song, a boiling pot, and roasting maize cakes. There was no muttering among the men, for I was there, but they looked glowering, and drew away.

The Englishman ate in silence. I was too ruffled and crossgrained to talk to him, but I could not keep myself from watching him. His eyes were less sad than I had thought. I could imagine that they might easily be merry. But they were watchful eyes. He saw the discontent among the men, and finally he rose and went to them. I followed him with some warning in my look, for I thought that he was vexed, and I knew that his tongue was sharp, but I realized in a moment that his brain was in control and that he was safe.

"I have brought you all discomfort," he said, with a shake of the head, and his slow French gave his words more meaning than they perhaps deserved. "I regret this. It is hard for me to bear, for it is new to me to be a burden. But what can I do? I cannot go away. I am not enamored of this voyage, for I do not like being thrust upon your company, but you saved my life, and I have no right to throw away what you went to such lengths to preserve. What would you have me do?"

The oafs exchanged glances. They spoke after a minute in a united, disjointed grumble.

"You don't work."

The Englishman looked at them and at me. I realized that he was curiously slight and young, and that we seemed hostile. That was hardly just, and I was ready to go to his rescue. But he turned from me to the men.

"It is true that I work very badly," he said. "I do not know how. But men are born of women, and--well, what a man can do I can learn.

Suppose, now, that I go and relieve Pierre at the watch. If you will show me what to do I think you will find me teachable. I shall try to be as little of a burden as possible. Here is my hand on it." And he held out his slim palm for their grasp.

Again they stared; but the hand won them. They touched it fumblingly and were impressed. They were a slow lot, selected for various purposes other than wit. Their minds moved too sluggishly for swift reactions, and I dismissed anxiety about them from my mind.

The Englishman turned to me. "Will you conduct me to the sh.o.r.e? I will take Pierre's place."

It was my turn to stare. "Suppose you conduct yourself," was on my tongue, but I let it escape unsaid. "Come, then," I answered, with a shrug.

I led the way over logs and under bushes, and the Englishman followed silently; silently at least as to his tongue, but his feet were garrulous. They stepped on twigs, stumbled on slippery lichen, and shouted their pa.s.sage for rods around.

"I would rather lead a buffalo in tether," I fretted, and just as I said it he completed the sum of his blundering by catching his toe in a root and plunging head foremost to the ground. I pulled him up by the sleeve of his skin blouse and shook him free from loam and twigs.

"Now will you stop that?" I cried.

He looked at me gravely, unabashed, but curious. "I did not fall purposely to irritate you. Gravity, which, I understand, operates alike on the learned and the foolish, had some share in it. Why are you angry?"