HOW AN OUTLIER SAW A TALL WOMAN FOLLOWING A TRAIL AND MANCHA MET THE SMITH AGAIN
I have no notion how long we lay in the neighborhood of River Ward. By this time we had lost all track of the calendar, Herman and I, and the Outliers had none except the orderly procession of the season’s bloom and fruit and mating time. Great umbrageous clouds came up behind the hills and were cut down by the wind. Clear days succeeded one another, matched so perfectly for warmth and color that the consciousness took no account of the dividing nights. Crowns of foothills lying seaward showed increasing green and then faint flecks of poppy color. These were our quietest days, for though there was fighting and following, Herman and I had no active part in it. Consider how few we were in a great land, and no 237trumpeting, no shock of guns, no daily bulletin. Ten men would set out on the mere stirring of an animal sense that beyond a certain hill or in a known hollow lurked the breeders of offense. And then no news of them except as they came or did not come again. Companies of Far-Folk and Outliers would fence all day each to come at the other unsuspected: flights and evasions and sharp encounters took place in such deeps of leafage as dulled all sound. All this was covered, swept over as carefully as the wild creature hides its ways.
Often now, walking on the tawny-colored hill that sleeps above the bay with the Mission between its paws, I look back at the warm-tinted slopes, beyond the reach of the encroaching fogs, and wonder under what peaks, between what long blue ranges we lay that season. What tumult and warfare goes on in those still spaces unregarded? But we have never, as I said in the beginning, got any nearer to it than Broken Tree.
The Outliers stuck to the track of the Far-Folk, and had so much the better of them in readiness and organization that before long they had captured the most of their women. 238Under Mancha our men had sought out their homes, abandoned so hurriedly, in the shallow, brush-grown cañons, and had burned and broken what they found. That Ravenutzi had joined the Far-Folk we knew, for once when they had come to parley over a wounded man, they saw the hostage at Oca’s back directing the Council by such knowledge of the Outliers as he had acquired by long residence. Oca blew out his long beard, laughing as he listened.
I knew too from one of the captive women, that he still concealed from his wife the place where he had hidden the Ward. The explanation Ravenutzi had given to Oca of the use he should make of Zirriloë’s person in the game that was yet to be played, set that chief chuckling in his beard like a cataract.
But to his wife Ravenutzi had denied seriousness: laughed, kissed her burned throat, blinded, bound her with an ingenuity of charm and tenderness until she grew tame under his hand. Then she would rage the more bitterly when he was away, suspecting him with the girl in hiding; flaming with jealousy until his return found her burned out, white and faint, creeping humbly to his caress.
239This, I say, I had from one of the captives, for I talked of her to the Outliers only with Trastevera. I think the woman’s story was known to them. She was seen often flitting from some post of observation when they came with prisoners, and though it was certain she had been twice inside the Ledge seeking the place where Zirriloë lay hidden, no motion was made to take her. They judged her no doubt hunted by a more remorseless enemy; the same that drove on Mancha’s trail and wasted him in the night. It was strange to me at first when I looked on the Hammerer’s passion-hollowed face, to see how it was contradicted by the youthful fuzziness of his blond hair and the round stalwartness of his frame, until I realized that he tried to make his body what his hammer was, the instrument of his satisfaction, and nursed it carefully to that end. But here the invisible enemy had him at point. Eat he could, and bathe, and exercise himself and rough the handle of his hammer to his grasp, and tighten the thongs. But in the night sleep and jealousy contended, and he turned in his bed and set his teeth upon his hands. His eyes reddened at the lids, and when he would be sitting among us, his attention 240would be forever wandering, and there would be a half inadvertent movement of those same hands as if to rend and tear. It was plain that he came but half out of some burning preoccupation to attend to whatever his men brought to his notice, and slipped back into it even between the utterance of two words, like a drowned insect in a glass. He was seldom at River Ward, seeming easier to be on the trail and in action. That there was only one trail that interested him was perfectly evident. He cared nothing whatever for the recovery of the Treasure if only he might get at Ravenutzi and find where the Ward was hidden. And as often as Outliers and Far-Folk came together in running fights, his men fell apart tacitly to afford him the craved-for opportunity. As we knew afterward, by Oca’s express direction, the Far-Folk closed round the smith to oppose him. As often as Mancha came back unslaked, his new whetted fury turned on himself. Bitter as these frustrated encounters were, they were less so than those times when they surprised their enemy and found Ravenutzi not with them. Where was he then but lingering in some shut quarter with the Ward! One would 241know that this had occurred when the Hammerer sat upon the edges of his bed the night long goading himself with recollections.
“Give over; give up,” cried Trastevera to him. “She never thought of you; and what do you but suck poison from the thought of her?”
“And what,” said he, “shall I think of, if I do not think of her? Do you advise me to think of him?”
“Think of your work, how you are to win back the King’s Desire for us.”
“And how shall I think to win the King’s Desire and not think of how it was lost?” And so having worked round in a circle again he did think of it; what looks and sighs and wooing touches had gone to that betrayal.
“If I could get at him,” he cried, “if I could only get at him”; and groaned and struck with his stone hammer deep into the soft earth.
It was difficult for Trastevera, who alone partook of his stormy confidences, to be patient with his consuming thought, since she was herself the happier, free of the obsession of Ravenutzi. For the Outliers remembered now how she had been against him in the beginning, and blamed themselves for overriding 242with their weighty reasons that delicate presentiment. Warmed by this support, all her power of foreseeing put forth again and promised them success. She burned with foreknowledge that kept time like a poised and constant needle with what went on afar behind wooded hills and in secret valleys. Often as we lay in the chaparral and heard the bees fumble at the flagons of the wild currant, and saw the young rabbits rising to drink delicately of dew in the shallow cup of leaves, she would start up bright and hot, sniffing battle. As she drooped and grieved, or snatches of triumphant song burst from her, we guessed what went on between our men and Oca’s a day’s journey south and west.
It was in that quarter they defended themselves for as long as enjoyment of the King’s Desire exceeded all other considerations. It was a region of high hills, set close, well covered; narrow cañons choked with chaparral; rain-fed springs, trailless steep barrancas. Here they kept like foxes, quick and slinking, and the Outliers hunted them, not often with success. The cover was too thick for slings, and the ways too steep to give free play with the hammers. The enemy showed themselves 243and ran, involving the Outliers in a maze of blind gullies, and came out unscathed and mocking on hills above them. They made elaborate false clues and set traps which at the last moment they wanted the courage to spring, but never came to any open issue because of the King’s Desire. They had the Treasure in hand at last, and could not be persuaded to leave it. Where it was they hung like flies at a honey-pot. You could never find the Far-Folk very far nor very long from one another. They would have out the jewels and gloated upon them, tracing the patterns, holding them this way and that to catch the light, tried on the collars and the armlets, pranked in the crowns, fed upon the mere sight of them as an antidote to defeat. All this was very well for a time, but the drawing of their forces together about the King’s Desire served their enemies more than it served them. Threescore men in a camp were easier hunted than two or three. By keeping in close order they left betraying traces in the forest, and brought down Mancha’s hammerers. To avoid this they made longer flights, swift, uncalculated leaps. Their women and children, unable to keep up with them, were gathered in 244by the Outliers and carried to River Ward. It began to appear that they must make temporary disposition of their trove until they had possession of their families again, and could make off with both into that wooded country south where there were no man traces and no Outliers could come.
They buried the Treasure once, and then the whole party sat upon the place like brooding quail, and betrayed it by their guarding. So they had it up again, and Ravenutzi and Oca made a plan between them. They were to send the jewels on south under convoy, then by means of the person of the Ward they were to draw Mancha off from River Ward. Then with a free field left the main body of the Far-Folk were to raid the camp at River Ward and recapture their women.
This was the plan: An old man was to have himself captured by Mancha’s men in order to convey to the women news of the rescue waiting them. The Ward, who lay still in some secret place of Ravenutzi’s contriving, was to be brought up to that quarter where it was to their advantage to have Mancha get word of her. A good plan, and worthy of the smith who planned it. It was well agreed to except 245in one point. No one of them trusted another one to take away the Treasure. So after much argument they fell upon the notion of dividing it. It was evident that as long as it remained in the common custody, no man was free to fight and run, according to his fighting humor or his chances. But give every man his own to carry about with him and he would know what he was fighting for, not with one eye over his shoulder to see how the common object fared. Good logic and sound, answering in many a better case; singularly not in this. Settling on a division of the King’s Desire proved a much easier matter than dividing it. They were two days wrangling over the manner of the division, and another trading and bargaining and matching lots among themselves. Then followed the period of inaction, planned to give the Outliers the impression that they had withdrawn from that part of the country. The next move was to have the Mancha sent seeking in the direction where it was to be made known through the captives the Ward was to be found. Ravenutzi had gone to prepare her for her part in it. Poor child, if it were willingly or not, if she consented 246at all, or even if she had any clear idea what was required of her, who can say?
In the meantime there were the Far-Folk lying separate, very quiet, every man with his treasure in his bosom to finger and fondle, with the south open before him and the spring coming on by leaps and bounds. Everywhere there were the smell of sap, the mating cry of quail and poppy fires kindling seaward; not much to put the fighting humor in a man.
But the Outliers were not quite in the same case. They were wronged, robbed, betrayed, they distrusted every move of their enemies, kept watches out. From the meeting of the river and the Ledge to the Gap, where the dip of the ranges east began, there was a line of solitary outposts, patrolling all the passages. While the Far-Folk played fox in the thorny covers south, there was in reality a stopped earth between them and their women and the places th............