The Argus Pheasant Part 44

Koyala smiled. She lay stretched out her full length on the ground.

Peter Gross squatted beside her.

"You haven't told me where you found Paddy?" he remarked after a pause.

"Oh, that was easy," she said. "Ah Sing has a station a little way this side of the Sadong country--"

Peter Gross nodded.

"I knew that he would go there. So I followed. When I got there Ah Sing was loading his proa with stores. I learned that your boy was a prisoner in one of the houses of his people. I went to Ah Sing and begged his life. I told him he was sacred to Djath, that the Dyaks of Bulungan thought him very holy indeed. Ah Sing was very angry. He stormed about the loss of his proa and refused to listen to me. He said he would hold the boy as a hostage.

"That night I went to the hut and found one of my people on guard. He let me in. I cut the cords that bound the boy, dyed his face brown and gave him a woman's dress. I told him to wait for me in the forest until he heard my cry. The guard thought it was me when he left."

Her voice drooped pathetically.

"They brought me to Ah Sing. He was very angry, he would have killed me, I think, if he had dared. He struck me--see, here is the mark." She drew back the sleeve of her kabaya and revealed a cut in the skin with blue bruises about it. Peter Gross became very white and his teeth closed together tightly.

"That is all," she concluded.

There was a long silence. Koyala covertly studied the resident's profile, so boyish, yet so masterfully stern, as he gazed into the forest depths. She could guess his thoughts, and she half-smiled.

"When you left, I promised you that you should have a reward--anything that you might name and in my power as resident to give," Peter Gross said presently.

"Let us not speak of that--yet," Koyala dissented. "Tell me, Mynheer Gross, do you love my country?"

"It is a wonderfully beautiful country," Peter Gross replied enthusiastically, falling in with her mood. "A country of infinite possibilities. We can make it the garden spot of the world. Never have I seen such fertile soil as there is in the river bottom below us. All it needs is time and labor--and men with vision."

Koyala rose to a sitting posture and leaned on one hand. With deft motion of the other she made an ineffectual effort to cover her nut-brown limbs, cuddled among the ferns and gra.s.ses, with the shortened kabaya. Very nymphlike she looked, a Diana of the jungle, and it was small wonder that Peter Gross, the indifferent to woman, gave her his serious attention while she glanced pensively down the forest aisles.

"Men with vision!" she sighed presently. "That is what we have always needed. That is what we have always lacked. My unhappy people! Ignorant, and none to teach them, none to guide them into the better way. Leaders have come, have stayed a little while, and then they have gone again.

Brooke helped us in Sarawak--now only his memory is left." A pause. "I suppose you will be going back to Java soon again, _mynheer_?"

"Not until my work is completed," Peter Gross a.s.sured gravely.

"But that will be soon. You will crush your enemies. You will organize the districts and lighten our burdens for a while. Then you will go. A new resident will come. Things will slip back into the old rut. Our young men are hot-headed, there will be feuds, wars, piracy. There are turns in the wheel, but no progress for us, _mynheer_. Borneo!" Her voice broke with a sob, and she stole a covert glance at him.

"By heaven, I swear that will not happen, Koyala," Peter Gross a.s.serted vehemently. "I shall not go away, I shall stay here. The governor owes me some reward, the least he can give me is to let me finish the work I have begun. I shall dedicate my life to Bulungan--we, Koyala, shall redeem her, we two."

Koyala shook her head. Her big, sorrowful eyes gleamed on him for a moment through tears.

"So you speak to-day when you are full of enthusiasm, _mynheer_. But when one or two years have pa.s.sed, and you hear naught but the unending tales of tribal jealousies, and quarrels over buffaloes, and complaints about the tax, and falsehood upon falsehood, then your ambition will fade and you will seek a place to rest, far from Borneo."

The gentle sadness of her tear-dimmed eyes, the melancholy cadences of her voice sighing tribulation like an October wind among the maples, and her eloquent beauty, set Peter Gross's pulses on fire.

"Koyala," he cried, "do you think I could give up a cause like this--forget the work we have done together--to spend my days on a plantation in Java like a buffalo in his wallow?"

"You would soon forget Borneo in Java, _mynheer_--and me."

The sweet melancholy of her plaintive smile drove Peter Gross to madness.

"Forget you? You, Koyala? My right hand, my savior, savior thrice over, to whom I owe every success I have had, without whom I would have failed utterly, died miserably in Wobanguli's hall? You wonderful woman! You lovely, adorable woman!"

s.n.a.t.c.hing her hands in his, he stared at her with a fierce hunger that was half pa.s.sion, half grat.i.tude.

A gleam of savage exultation flashed in Koyala's eyes. The resident was hers. The fierce, insatiate craving for this moment, that had filled her heart ever since she first saw Peter Gross until it tainted every drop of blood, now raced through her veins like vitriol. She lowered her lids lest he read her eyes, and bit her tongue to choke utterance. Still his grasp on her hands did not relax. At last she asked in a low voice, that sounded strange and harsh even to her:

"Why do you hold me, _mynheer_?"

The madness of the moment was still on Peter. He opened his lips to speak words that flowed to them without conscious thought, phrases as utterly foreign to his vocabulary as metaphysics to a Hottentot. Then reason resumed her throne. Breathing heavily, he released her.

"Forgive me, Koyala," he said humbly.

A chill of disappointment, like an arctic wave, submerged Koyala. She felt the sensation of having what was dearest in life suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed from her. Her stupefaction lasted but an instant. Then the fury that goads a woman scorned possessed her and lashed on the blood-hounds of vengeance.

"Forgive you?" she spat venomously. "Forgive you for what? The words you did not say, just now, _orang blanda_, when you held these two hands?"

Peter Gross had risen quickly and she also sprang to her feet. Her face, furious with rage, was lifted toward his, and her two clenched fists were held above her fluttering bosom. Pa.s.sion made her almost inarticulate.

"Forgive you for cozening me with sweet words of _our_ work, and _our_ mission when you despised me for the blood of my mother that is in me?

Forgive you for leading me around like a pet parrot to say your words to my people and delude them? Forgive you for the ignominy you have heaped upon me, the shame you have brought to me, the loss of friendships and the laughter of my enemies?"

"Koyala--" Peter Gross attempted, but he might as well have tried to stop Niagara.

"Are these the things you seek forgiveness for?" Koyala shrieked. "Liar!

Seducer! _Orang blanda!_"

She spat the word as though it were something vile. At that moment there was a rustling in the cane back of Peter Gross. Bewildered, contrite, striving to collect his scattered wits that he might calm the tempest of her wrath, he did not hear it. But Koyala did. There was a savage exultation in her voice as she cried:

"To-morrow the last white will be swept from Bulungan. But you will stay here, _mynheer_--"

Hearing the footsteps behind him, Peter Gross whirled on his heel. But he turned too late. A bag was thrust over his head. He tried to tear it away, but clinging arms, arms as strong as his, held it tightly about him. A heavy vapor ascended into his nostrils, a vapor warm with the perfume of burning sandalwood and aromatic unguents and spices. He felt a drowsiness come upon him, struggled to cast it off, and yielded. With a sigh like a tired child's he sagged into the waiting arms and was lowered to the ground.

"Very good, Mynheer Muller," Koyala said. "Now, if you and Cho Seng will bind his legs I will call my Dyaks and have him carried to the house we have prepared for him."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ATTACK ON THE FORT

When Peter Gross failed to return by noon that day Captain Carver, becoming alarmed, began making inquiries. Hughes supplied the first clue.

"I saw him go into the bush with the heathen woman while we was buzzin'

Paddy," he informed his commander. "I ain't seen him since."

A scouting party was instantly organized. It searched the banyan grove, but found nothing. One, of the members, an old plainsman, reported heel-marks on the trail, but as this was a common walk of the troops at the fort the discovery had no significance.