The League of the Leopard Part 32

"Your wine is too good, and I have slept so well that it seems I have missed the steamer. Well, there are other means of transit, and, if it is not too late, you and I have business to talk about."

A light shone in a window of the factory for an hour after this, and when Victor Rideau walked somewhat unevenly toward his quarters, Dom Pedro cursed him under his breath.

The next morning he demanded a surf-boat and Krooboy crew, and when his host had provided them, he sought speech with his daughter before embarking. Rideau did not look his best that morning. His eyes were heavy, the color of his face was mottled in patches; and he was in a dangerous humor. Miss Castro, however, did not avoid him.

"It is to be hoped that you pa.s.sed a good night," she said.

Rideau could not have failed to notice the boldness of the challenge. He looked at her steadily, and his glance expressed desire rather than resentment. The girl grew hot beneath his gaze as he surveyed her critically, after the manner of one appraising a costly bargain.

"I slept well--so well that I missed the steamer--and awakened with a heaviness I can guess the cause of. You have a bold spirit--and that pleases me; but you are dangerous, senorita--so dangerous that even if you were not otherwise very desirable, I dare not let you go."

Miss Castro returned no answer, and the man added threateningly:

"If you have not a promise to make me when I return from this journey, it will be very bad for Dom Pedro."

The girl clenched one hand tightly, but her voice was clear as she answered him.

"You shall have your promise now. If you come back from the Leopards'

country, I will marry you."

Rideau appeared both gratified and perplexed. Possibly he felt that he should seal the bargain; but the girl's att.i.tude did not encourage him, and he had learned that it was not judicious to press her too hardly. So he answered with a bow which had in it little Latin grace.

"Then one must defer his happiness. The senorita will not forget."

"I have given my word," said Miss Castro calmly. "You may claim the fulfilment of my promise if we are both alive when two months have pa.s.sed."

Rideau shivered slightly as he turned away. He had inherited more than a trace of superst.i.tion from one side of his ancestry, and there was an unusual significance in the speaker's tone, and he had heard stories respecting her powers of prediction. A few minutes later he departed eastward in a surf-boat, and it was not a blessing which Dom Pedro, standing on the beach, sent after him.

CHAPTER XX

MAXWELL'S LAST MARCH

Maxwell was never addicted to losing time, and, thanks to Miss Castro's efforts, he had a clear start of Rideau, when he left Little Mahu.

Redmond, being warned by a message posted on from the cable station farther along the coast, had a number of picked men ready; and Amadu declared that they were st.u.r.dy cattle. Both traders had done their utmost, and by dint of working night and day, Maxwell was able to leave their factory two days after he reached it.

They followed him to the compound gate, where Gilby gazed longingly at the forest and then sighed as he surveyed the line of brawny men, each of whom stood waiting beside his burden. Their clothing was simple.

Broad folds of white cotton hung over one shoulder, and, drooping to the knee, were belted at the waist by a band from which a matchet hung. A number of the men also carried long flintlock guns.

"They're warranted free from civilization, and fit for almost anything, if you drive them with a tight rein," Gilby said.

"The n.i.g.g.e.rs are fit enough," agreed Redmond. "If I were you, Maxwell, I wouldn't spare them. n.o.body has heard anything of Rideau since he reported you as hopelessly hemmed in, but there's not much happens in this region he does not get news of, and it's my humble opinion he'll turn up somewhere along your trail just when you least desire to see him. As you probably know, news travels very fast in this country. That fellow must have some influence with the n.i.g.g.e.r headmen or the chiefs of the Leopards, or somebody would have cut his throat long ago. You'll have to push on your fastest to keep ahead of him."

"I quite appreciate the necessity," Maxwell replied quietly. "But if it were not for my comrade's sake I think I'd wait for him. It strikes me that I am wasting precious time now, and I'll leave you with my best thanks for your a.s.sistance."

One trader thumped him on the back, the other grasped his hand.

"Good luck!" cried Redmond. "We'll put a spoke in Rideau's wheel if we can."

"You're the sort of man I take to!" Gilby added. "We'll use up a whole quarter's allowance, and turn this place inside out when you come back again."

Maxwell beckoned to Amadu, and waved his hand to the traders, as his carriers picked up their loads; and the two stood gazing after him until the steamy forest swallowed the long line of plodding men. They never saw him again, and it was some time before any news of his movements reached them, but meanwhile Gilby nearly brought about the death of Rideau's princ.i.p.al a.s.sistant, and ever afterward regretted he did not wholly do so.

That evening Gilby was returning with a gun in his hand from a prowl beside a lagoon soon after darkness fell, when his boot became unlaced near the factory boys' quarters, which stood at some distance from the white men's dwelling. Gilby seated himself on a fallen log, and remained a few minutes glancing meditatively, but unseen himself, toward a group of dusky figures crouching around a cooking-fire just outside the edifice. They sat with their backs toward the long, low shed, and, because the fire had sunk, the light was dim and fitful. Accordingly, Gilby saw, though the negroes did not, a shadowy form crawl without a sound down the slope of thatch. With suspicions aroused, Gilby reached out for his gun. It was a heavy big-bore, and there was a large-shot cartridge in either chamber.

Still, he was distinctly puzzled until the crawling object resolved itself into a man, who dropped noiselessly from the overhanging eaves, and the next moment appeared before the astonished negroes, as though he had fallen from the clouds. It was cleverly done, and Gilby could see by the negroes' att.i.tude that they were impressed. The stranger was evidently one of the wandering magicians who are a power in that country, and wanted something from the Krooboys. Gilby, having suffered by the visits of similar gentlemen, determined to demonstrate to his servants the hollowness of such trickery, and furnish the intruder with cause to regret having frightened them. He could see the dusky figures shrink backward until the stranger checked them with an imperious gesture, and asked questions in some native tongue. As Gilby crept carefully nearer, the man's appearance seemed to be familiar. He wore a broad palm-leaf hat low down on his forehead, but as the firelight leaped up the trader felt almost certain that he had before him Rideau's headman.

"If you lib for move a foot, I'll shoot you!" he shouted, pitching up the gun.

There was a murmur, apparently of relief, from the Kroos, and, though Gilby afterward said he did not run, the stranger's figure grew less distinct. It had almost vanished when he called again, and, receiving no answer, pressed the trigger. A wisp of smoke blew into his eyes, he heard the lead smash through the frail boarding of the shed; but though he was a tolerable shot there was no other sound beyond the concussion flung back from the palms above. Gilby, dashing forward, searched all the surrounding bush before he returned to the Krooboys, having found nothing.

"What did them Ju-ju man lib for want?" he asked.

"He done ask us how many boy them white man take, and when he lib for bush, sah," answered a trembling negro.

"I'll stop half your rations if the next time he comes one of you doesn't lib for get out soffly, soffly, and tell me," said the trader.

"I'll also flog any boy who tells him what he wants to know!"

"Were you trying to shoot yourself, Gilby?" asked Redmond, meeting him at the foot of the stairway. "I'd try to hang out here on top as long as possible, if I were you."

"I was trying to shoot one of those confounded Ju-ju men, more fool me.

The beggar got away, and, though of course it was trickery, he did it cleverly. I believe it was that brute of Rideau's."

"Then it would have saved somebody a lot of trouble if you had held straighter. Rideau doesn't usually make his movements plain, but it will be unlucky for Maxwell if those two rascals are on his trail."

Maxwell in the meantime was pushing north with feverish haste. He did not know what had happened at the factory, but he feared many things, and guessed that his rival would miss no opportunity to prevent his joining hands with his comrade. Still, he could not forecast what his plan would be, and could only redouble his precautions and make Amadu solemnly promise to carry relief to the threatened camp if disaster overtook him personally. Also he traveled very fast, for Maxwell possessed the gift of getting the utmost out of his men, and because news flies swiftly through the African bush, that perhaps accounted for his being able to cover the distance he did before misfortune overtook him.

The rains had set in, when, with Amadu some paces behind him, he plodded one day through thick jungle before his men. The deluge had ceased during the last hour, but the narrow path ran water, while the cane, which grew higher than a tall man's head on either side, shook down drenching showers alike on soaked white man and naked negro. Belts of thick steam drifted across it in places. There was no sound but the splash of moisture and the fall of weary feet, but Maxwell, with his pistol loose in its waterproof holster, marched the more cautiously. He had faced numerous perils in his time, and had learned never to run an unnecessary risk; and the jungle he traversed was particularly suitable for an ambush.

Amadu, who recognized this, also was vigilant, and swept the cane on either side with searching eyes. He endeavored to persuade his master to travel in his hammock; but unavailingly. Therefore he carried the long Snider rifle with its breech well covered by his arm, and felt at times with wet fingers for the hilt of the short, straight blade, which hung at his side. He was a tolerable shot, but like most of the Moslem tribesmen deadly with the steel.

"These men march well," said Maxwell. "We should reach the camp within a week if nothing hinders us. Tell them to spread out a little and keep their matchets ready. The cane is getting thicker."

Amadu moved backward along the plodding line, and when he turned to rejoin his master, Maxwell was some distance in front of him. The path twisted sharply round a thicker clump of cane, and suddenly Amadu caught a glimpse of a tiny black patch among the dripping stems. Nevertheless, he evinced no sign of notice until he was certain that the black strip formed part of a human arm; and then he was called upon to make an eventful decision. The dusky soldier of fortune knew that if an ambush had been planted among the cane the lurking foe would, should both pa.s.s apparently un.o.bservant, hold their fire until, by a volley poured into the main body, they could spread panic and cut the column in two. That might mean the loss of many black men; but Amadu counted these as beasts of burden in comparison with his master. He guessed that almost before he could pitch up his rifle a poisoned arrow or a charge of ragged potleg would strike down the white man. So he held on stolidly, with dusky lips set tight, hoping that Maxwell might not see what he had until the corner was pa.s.sed. Then there might still be time to crawl in upon the enemy from behind.

Maxwell walked straight on until he turned and glanced over his shoulder; then he shook the moisture from his jacket, and in doing so, let his hand slip from its lower corner to his revolver holster. He turned again, with death, as it were, suspended above his head; and Amadu gasped as he approached the thicker clump of cane. There was now no sign of an enemy's presence in all the jungle; only the splashing and panting of the carriers behind.

Suddenly the white man's hand swept out level with his shoulder, and almost at the same instant a bright flash blazed from the cane. Then the quick ringing of a rifle broke through the dull thud of the flintlock and the pistol's second crack, and Maxwell, reeling a little, hurled himself into the thicket.

With a roar to those who followed, Amadu plunged in too, a score of clamorous black men with naked blades hard behind, and was just in time to spring upon a naked man who strove to clear an entangled foot from the creeper withes. The short blade twice pa.s.sed through him; and wrenching it free with an exultant laugh, Amadu floundered on. For a s.p.a.ce he and his followers smashed through that strip of jungle, but found only a smoking rifle and one flintlock gun; then calling off the rest, he led them back to the path. Maxwell was sitting there in a pool of water.

"Send those boys back," he said thickly. "One of those brutes missed me, the other did not. One can't always guess aright, Amadu, and I thought there were at least a score of them."

Amadu groaned. He could see that his master was hard stricken, for he looked faint and cold, and did not usually converse with his subordinates in that kind of English. Still, he understood the first sentence, and drove the curious black men back beyond the corner before he stooped over the speaker. Maxwell's face was distorted and clammy.

There was a stain on the side of his jacket, and it plainly cost him an effort to speak.