Under the Andes Part 45

"My revenge," she breathed.

I nodded and again pressed her hand to my lips.

"Yes, Desiree. We are not children. I think we know what we mean.

But you have not told me. Did you mean what you said that day on the mountain?"

"Ah, I thought that was a play!" she murmured.

"Tell me! Did you mean it?"

"I never confess the same sin twice, my friend."

"Desiree, did you mean it?"

Then suddenly, with the rapidity of lightning, her manner changed. She bent toward me with parted lips and looked straight into my eyes.

There was pa.s.sion in the gaze; but when she spoke her voice was quite even and so low I scarcely heard.

"Paul," she said, "I shall not again say I love you. Such words should not be wasted. Not now, perhaps; but that is because we are where we are. And if we should return?

"You have said that nothing is worth a serious word to you; and you are right. You are too cynical; things are bitter in your mouth, and doubly so when they leave it. Just now you are amusing yourself by pretending to care for me. Perhaps you do not know it, but you are.

Search your heart, my friend, and tell me--do you want my love?"

Well, there was no need to search my heart, she had laid it open. I hated myself then; and I turned away, unable to meet her eyes, as I said:

"Bon Dieu!" she cried. "That is an ugly speech, monsieur!" And she laughed aloud.

"But we must not awaken Harry," she continued with sudden softness.

"What a boy he is--and what a man! Ah, he knows what it is to love!"

That topic suited me little better, but I followed her. We talked of Harry, Le Mire with an amount of enthusiasm that surprised me.

Suddenly she stopped abruptly and announced that she was hungry.

I found Harry's pantry after a few minutes' search and took some of its contents to Desiree. Then I returned to the edge of the water and ate my portion alone. That meal was one scarcely calculated for the pleasures of companionship or conviviality.

It was several hours after that before Harry awoke, the greater part of which Desiree and I were silent.

I would have given something to have known her thoughts; my own were not very pleasant. It is always a disagreeable thing to discover that some one else knows you better than you know yourself. And Desiree had cut deep. At the time I thought her unjust; time alone could have told which of us was right. If she were here with me now--but she is not.

Finally Harry awoke. He was delighted to find Desiree awake and comparatively well, and demonstrated the fact with a degree of effusion that prompted me to leave them alone together. But I did not go far; a hundred paces made me sit down to rest before returning, so weak was I from wounds and fasting.

Harry's spirits were high, for no apparent reason other than that we were still alive, for that was the best that could be said for us. So I told him; he retorted with a hearty clap on the back that sent me sprawling to the ground.

"What the deuce!" he exclaimed, stooping to help me up. "Are you as weak as that? Gad, I'm sorry!"

"That is the second fall he has had," said Desiree, with a meaning smile.

Indeed, she was having her revenge!

But my strength was not long in returning. Over a long stretch our diet would hardly have been conducive to health, but it was exactly what I needed to put blood and strength in me. And Harry and Desiree, too, for that matter.

Again I had to withstand Harry's eager demands for action. He began within two hours to insist on exploring the cave, and would hardly take a refusal.

"I won't stir a foot until I am able to knock you down," I declared finally and flatly. "Never again will I attempt to perform the feats of a Hercules when I am fit only for an invalid's chair." And he was forced to wait.

As I say, however, my strength was not long in returning, and when it started it came with a rush. My wounds were healing perfectly; only one remained open. Harry, with his usual phenomenal luck, had got nothing but the merest scratches.

Desiree improved very slowly. The strain of those four days in the cavern had been severe, and her nerves required more pleasant surroundings than a dark and damp cavern and more agreeable diet than raw meat, to adjust themselves.

Thus it was that when Harry and I found ourselves ready to start out to explore the cavern and, if possible, find an exit on the opposite side from the one where we had entered, we left Desiree behind, seated on a pile of skins, with a spear on the ground at her side.

"We'll be back in an hour," said Harry, stooping to kiss her; and the phrase, which might have come from the lips of a worthy Harlem husband leaving for a little sojourn with friends on the corner, brought a smile to my face.

We went first toward the spot where lay the remains of "our friend with the eyes," as Harry called him, and we were guided straight by our noses, for the odor of the thing was beginning to be--to use another phrase of Harry's--"most awful vile."

There was little to see except a ma.s.sive pile of crumpled hide and sinking flesh. As we approached, several hundred of the animals with which Harry had filled our larder scampered away toward the water.

"They're not fighters," I observed, turning to watch them disappear in the darkness.

"No," Harry agreed. "See here," he added suddenly, holding up a piece of the hide of the reptile; "this stuff is an inch thick and tough as rats. It ought to be good for something."

But by that time I was pinching my nostrils with my fingers, and I pulled him away.

Several hundred yards farther on we came to the wall of the cavern. We followed it, turning to the right; but though it was uneven and marked by projecting boulders and deep crevices, we found no exit. We had gone at least half a mile, I think, when we came to the end. There it turned in a wide circle to the right, and we took the new direction, which was toward the spot where we had left Desiree, only considerably to the left.

Another five minutes found us at the edge of the stream, which at that point was much swifter than it was farther up. We waded in and discovered that the cause was its extreme narrowness.

"But where does the thing go to?" asked Harry, taking the words from my mouth.

We soon found out. Proceeding along the bank to the left, within fifty feet we came to the wall. There the stream entered and disappeared.

But, unlike the others we had seen, above this there was a wide and high arch, which made it appear as though the stream were pa.s.sing under a ma.s.sive bridge. The current was swift but not turbulent, and there was something about the surface of that stream flowing straight through the mountain ahead of us--

Harry and I glanced at each other quickly, moved by the same thought.

There was an electric thrill in that glance.

But we did not speak--then.

For suddenly, startlingly, a voice sounded throughout the cavern--Desiree's voice, raised in a shrill cry of terror.

It was repeated twice before our startled senses found themselves; then we turned with one impulse and raced into the darkness toward her.

Chapter XIX.

AFLOAT.

As we ran swiftly, following the edge of the stream, the cries continued, filling the cavern with racing echoes. They could not quicken our step; we were already straining every muscle as we bounded over the rock. Luckily, the way was clear, for in the darkness we could see but a few feet ahead. Desiree's voice was sufficient guide for us.