That afternoon we built the lean-to. I had had some fair ideas about building a lean-to, but Doloria was in possession of a practical knowledge gathered on camping trips that she and Echochee had made—for these, I judged, constituted one of her chief recreations since childhood. She knew how to twist ropes of bark for tying the poles, and how to interlay the palm fronds so they would neither leak nor be lifted by the wind. She took the keenest pleasure in it, too, and I can safely say that never in my life have I enjoyed building anything as much as that lean-to. When it was finished I stepped back and, in a burst of admiration, cried:
"It's a palace? I can't ever get along without you!"
A wave of color came into her face, as instantaneous as I believe it was unexpected, though she said in a matter of fact tone:
"There are other little things to be done, but we'll finish them to-morrow."
"It's already the coziest place in the world," I insisted. "Now I'm going to cut that path, and then we'll have——" but I checked myself and looked at her in some concern. She had worked over hard for me—I had not realized it while we were busy; so now I begged: "Won't you let me cook the dinner? I'm afraid you're about dead!"
"Oh, really I'm not. But I'm hungry and so are you, and——" a little curve came into the corners ofher mouth that was very tantalizing, "I think I'd better cook it."
"I was hoping you would," I admitted shamelessly, "even if you are tired."
"Purely a selfish decision on my part, I assure you," she smiled. "I haven't forgotten the breakfast you attempted."
"Very well. I'll cut you a nice straight path for a nice big feed!"
"And don't leave anything in it, will you, Chancellor! It would be dreadful to come running to you in the dark, and stumble and—and bump my nose!"
"Dreadful!" I cried. "It would be the end of the world!"
"Or the end of you," she laughed. "Now get to work, and then you can build the kitchen fire. Don't you think we might have dinner a little earlier to-night?"
With this she left me; but how sweetly confidential and domestic that had sounded: "Don't you think we might have dinner a little earlier to-night?"
I found her again, sitting on a fallen log and gazing wistfully across the prairie toward the east, not back in the direction of Efaw Kotee's den, and I felt that she was thinking of Azuria—her Azuria. What visions its existence must have opened to her, whose life had been always passionate after dreams and utterly bored with realities! Yet what were her dreams?
She saw me and arose slowly, passing one hand across her eyes as if brushing away the fancies; then I watched an expression almost of tenderness as she came up to me.
"It isn't quite fair to interrupt," I said, "when youwere having such a peaceful time of it; but the fire's ready, and our supply of buttonwood shrinks."
"Was I having such a peaceful time of it?" she asked, wonderingly. "Perhaps it might have been if I knew Echochee and your man are safe. Anyway, I'm glad the fire's ready; I've been expecting you to call me."
"I wish I could give you the same assurance about them that I feel myself. Try to think I'm right, won't you?"
"Yes, really I will, good Chancellor," she smiled.
On the way back we passed my pool, where she kneeled ingenuously to bathe her hands and arms, as chastely innocent as a mermaid.
"Have you such a thing as a towel?" she laughed. "Mine are in the tent!"
I got it, and walked slowly on. And I realized again, what I had once before noted, that overly refined proprieties—I do not mean proprieties of the essential kind—cannot endure between man and maid cast alone in a wilderness. They become frail, insipid; and mar, rather than perfect, the harmony of existence. Contraversely, their absence adds a deeper luster, strikes the tuning-fork that hums with the true note of life. Sorry the man who does not feel a sympathetic vibration! A woman is not exactly at her best when bathing her face above a porcelain bowl, and to be the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, in my limited experience, engender a slight unrest among the tuneful Nine. Yet let her gracefully lean above a woodland pool, roll back her sleeves and open the collar of her shooting shirt, and she becomes a personification of glory to him who waits near the fire he has built for their evening meal. But she must have looked danger in theface with him, slept near him beneath the stars; knowing, should she be affrighted in the night, that her call will bring his reassuring answer, but also knowing that the voice is all that will ever come unbidden to her side. And thus is the Cave-man in him gloriously aroused to guard her from Nature's wild, while the poetry of their intercourse guards her from himself. What more beautiful existence than to live alone in a forest with the girl you love!
I thought that after dinner it might be well to sit again beside the fort where we could watch the prairie. There is a comforting sense of security that comes to one at nightfall when one has looked in all directions and found all things well. So for a while she left me to the orgy of washing dishes, but when I had turned the last plate top down upon our kitchen log to dry, I saw her returning.
She came humming a tune, a catchy tune—I recognized it at once—that the mandolins had tinkled in the Havana café, and from the mischievous curves about the corners of her mouth I knew that her mood was adorable. So I caught up the tune, whistling softly, and crossed to her holding out my hands.
"It's a corking fox-trot," I said, for the moment stopping our orchestra. "Let's dance it!"
But she drew back, laughing outright.
"I don't know how!"
"Don't dance?" I must have looked my amazement, for she answered:
"I've often danced, all alone, when I just couldn't help it; but there hasn't been any one to teach me your kind!"
"I will," I cried delightedly. "We'll begin with that fox-trot!"
"We'd look awfully silly," she replied. "Besides, the name of your dance is atrocious."
I felt rather thankful that I hadn't suggested the shimmy.
"That may get you out of it now," I announced, "but when we reach the yacht I'm going to teach you ten hours a day. Understand?—ten hours a day!"
Again came the tantalizing expression, as she daintily caught her skirt and made me a royal curtsey, saying:
"It's beyond all measure charming of you, Chancellor. But shall I be so difficult?"
"Don't joke about a wonderful prospect," I answered. "You're difficult because of your grace, not the lack of it—if that's what you mean!" But from her indifferent way of dismissing the subject I judged it was not what she had meant, at all.
The sun must have set while we were encircling my pool. Then we passed on into a still denser growth, following a crooked path that led to the fort—entering a mysterious shadow-land that twilights have the trick of producing when overhead foliage shuts out the afterglow and the serene forest gloom is painted in tones of gray. The soft earth we trod was dark, and the water lay phantom-like in its black bowl. Except for the few times I held aside a swinging wildwood vine for her to pass, we might have been two drifting spirits—so quietly did we move, and so unknowingly were we affected by the hour, the place.
At the edge of our forest, where that long ago prairie fire had blighted a grove of palm trees that subsequently fell upon each other like an entangled pile of jackstraws, she took my hand to get across and, freed from the clinging shadows, we ran out beneath the sky—then gasped in amazement at its splendor.
It was not a sunset, not an afterglow in the usual sense of afterglows, but a sky of deep, smouldering red equally distributed from horizon to horizon; as though everywhere below the world a conflagration raged. I could not at first speak for the grandeur of it, and when I turned to her words were again checked by the look upon her face. For this dull, permeating glow—this enchantment from the heavens—touched her brow, her cheeks, her parted lips, with a light that aroused in me a thousand devils and a thousand gods; it lingered over her hair as if striving to concentrate itself into a halo there; and in her eyes that gazed afar were suggested the awakening of deeper fires, of wilder mysteries.
"God, what a sky," I at last exclaimed, through sheer panic at the imminence of crying aloud my love for her.
"What a sky, O God," she whispered, delicately turning my profane outburst to a sigh of thankfulness.
But, better than she, I knew the meaning of that sky. I knew that down over the western edge of the world blazed a huge funeral pyre on which my past was being changed to harmless ashes; while in the east flames were already lighted beneath the on-coming crucible of destiny, from whose purifying heat a new love arose. Farther into obscurity would sink the one; up and on would come the other; and so the sky was now roseate unto its zenith, reflecting the glory of these miracles. I followed the look of her eyes and saw, high against the red, a lone crane flying majestically homeward to the seclusion of his swamp; and it typified my own belated heart that, without questioning the whence or why, unerringly obeyed a silent voice which called it to another sanctuary.
I wanted to tell her this, but dared not. And so westood, spellbound, while the night brought out the blue—and the young moon changed from red to silver—and the stars came down to take their places. Then slowly we passed on and sat by the fort, leaning our backs against it; in meditation looking across the prairie that had become so changed a place to us.
The night grew sweet with the purity of untouched wilderness as, shoulder to shoulder, we sat talking in low tones of Smilax and Echochee. She had wondered about them no few times that day, and now I, too, felt some concern. Yet the Everglades lay far eastward and, for any reason giving up Big Cove, I knew he would plunge as deeply into it as his pursuers dared follow. To-morrow would be time enough to worry, I assured her, so we talked about Monsieur, the Azurian throne, and—I could not help it—of another Chancellor who would build her kitchen fires. But I tried to keep all bitterness from my words. In the vague light I could see that her face was serious, and very tender. Then for a time we sat without speaking.
Perhaps it was the place, the charm; perhaps a magic was working stronger than I knew; but words came to my lips that I stubbornly refused to speak. I fought against them; they, too, fought with grim insistence; so as a compromise, looking straight ahead and pretending to jest even while I accused, I said:
"You've been listening!"
"Listening?" Her eyes opened prettily, alert as they always were to parry banter with banter.
"Yes, listening—at the keyhole like a common gossip. A nice pastime for a Princess, surely!"
"At the—keyhole?" She was proceeding warily now; her mind, as in a game of hide-and-seek, was on tiptoe, in expectation of discovering me at every step.
"Yes," I repeated. "And you heard my heart admitting that it's happy—to've found something it was hungry for."
For the briefest instant I thought a tremor ran through her shoulder, as if a little chilly sensation had rippled her nerves. But it was a silly idea, because she lightly replied:
"Corn cakes, maybe. It ought to feel quite stuffed after the seven you had for dinner."
"Six," I corrected.
"Seven," she insisted.
"But I know!"
"So do I," she laughed, "that you stole one from my plate when you thought I wasn't looking."
"I needed that one."
"I never doubted it," she agreed.
Wild words again sprang to my lips, but this time I ruthlessly strangled them. Yet I wanted to say: "I took from you because you stole from me!" And I wanted to ask—O, shades of suffering Dante, how I longed to ask!—if her dear heart were hungering, too, that she should have needed my own to feed it!—if that were her excuse for thievery!
But already I had overstepped my resolution, although not feeling desperately contrite about it after the sleight-of-hand way that a declaration of love had been changed into the accusation of filching a corn cake. Yet it had been a narrow escape and I thanked my gods for the chance of pulling up, of again getting the right perspective.
To tell her anything at all before Echochee came would be the act of an utterly selfish cad, for if she did not want my love—and there was little enough reason to suppose that she did—her position would beintolerable. In such an eventuality never again could we sit beside the fort on nights like this, no longer would she want a cleared path leading to her bailiwick. We would be as two estranged creatures doomed to live near yet apart; each a daily witness of the other's unhappiness; neither able by word or deed to give relief. Ah, I was glad she did not even suspect that I cared a whit for her! I lit my pipe and in moody silence smoked.
A pipe stem is a safe thing for man to grip his teeth upon when silence is a virtue. Here in our forest I was master, the undisputed superior force; and I wondered with a fascinating wonder how that ancestor, who climbed down from his tree at nightfall, would have been greeting her! I visualized his cunning face, now peering at me through the ages, leering at me with bared tusks, bidding me take what was my own by right of might! I felt the savage splendor of it. The wildness of this place, its solitude, its distance from mankind, supported me. The cry of a night bird out on the prairie told that it, too, was preying, or being preyed upon; and, as if being stirred by this, a panther sent his wail across the night. I listened for a mate to answer, but she did not. A large, whitish moth flying out of the shadows passed clumsily within a few inches of my face, its wings swishing as a bird's; and it, too, was without a mate.
Then, as in the following silence I continued to listen, some far off words came back to me. They came as the scent of lavender comes when rain is pattering on the shingles, and some one opens the old trunk that, ever since you can remember, has stood back under the rafters of the sloping roof; the hallowed old trunk where a veil of yellowing lace is stored—a piece of white satin, ablue or gray faded uniform, and maybe a wee shoe, and a lock of hair. Every one who has leaned above that trunk—and thank God they are legion!—has also listened to a voice coming faintly through the past. And so words out of a lesser past now came to me, as they were meant to be written on a torn wine card: "I am in danger!"
She had been in danger of a brute, and had offered the safety of her keeping to me. And the vision of my savage ancestor, though retreating sullenly, faded into nothing. Then I felt her body press against me softly and, looking down, I saw that she had fallen asleep, with her head—precious, trusting thing—resting against my shoulder.
For an hour I sat motionless, fearing to awake her. Finally one of my legs went to sleep, and soon my other leg. Yet it was a welcome discomfort because endured for her. And I suppose the numbness must eventually have crept the length of my body, for, I, too, slept; awaking, I did not know how much later, to find her gone.
Then I stumbled back to my lean-to, but did not go inside. This was not the night, nor mine the mood, to shut high heaven from my eyes, my thoughts, the lambent flame of my love? So I chose the open, and lay on my back gazing up into the silhouetted palm fronds, catching glimpses of a star that here or there peeped through at me, steeping my thoughts in solitude.
For it was that hushed hour of betwixt and between, when crickets, tree-toads and other little creatures of the darkness have wearied themselves to rest; yet also before the daylight life has stirred from its own deep sleep. The silent hour, this is; the one hour in the round of time when nature seems to be absolutely poisedin breathless space; when the pendulum of night hangs dead, and dawn is still a great way over the hill. I shared its mysticism, feeling also a rich contentment that she, too, was lying near me somewhere in this same solitude; dreaming, with her cheek upon her arm; her hair kissed by the same dew that cooled my face. I could not, of course, reach out my hand and touch her, but the path led straight; and along this now my heart went begging—impoverished rascal! He went on tiptoe, begging; while I continued to watch for the elusive star, and my soul looked into the level eyes of God.
A searching look next morning over the prairie revealed no sign of enemies, or of Smilax. Somewhat thoughtful over his continued absence I went to the kitchen and laid the fire, but did not light it because our stock of buttonwood had become reduced to a few small sticks and scraps that would scarcely more than cook one meal, and the use of other woods might at this time be an unwise experiment. So with an eye to prudence I withheld the match until Her Serene Highness should arrive.
When she did not come nor answer to my call, I set out to see what might have detained her, conscious of a vague dread yet not seriously giving in to it; but, after visiting the fort, this grew into an unreasoning fear, and I began to run. It seemed so easy now to understand how some of Efaw Kotee's henchmen could have discovered us, slipped up during the night and overpowered her! What had been a remote possibility yesterday, to-day grew into a certainty. With this obsession torturing me I dashed across the Oasis, finally coming out of the forest at its extreme eastern tip.
Then I saw her but a few yards away. Perhaps the brisk wind, rustling the palms and prairie grass, drowned the noise of my impetuous rush, for she did not turn.
Her face was toward the east, looking above an orange sun that still clung to the horizon. Instinctively I feltthat she was thinking of Azuria, that the pictures of it which I had drawn were recrossing before her dreamy vision, forming a panorama of splendor that called more surely than in March the Canadian flats call the Southern water bird. This gave her eyes, her uplifted face, her slightly parted lips, a new glory, and I involuntarily exclaimed:
"Doloria of the Golden Dawn!"
She knew then that I was there and, without turning, reached back one hand to me. Impulsively I took it, raised it to my lips, but afraid to hold it longer I stepped aside as if awaiting her commands. When I had done that she looked over her shoulder, gave a little sigh, and said sweetly:
"Chancellor, I wish you'd convince me that our people are safe, and then help me settle a grave question of state!"
"I think they'll be coming to-day, and——"
"Oh, I hope so!" she clasped her hands.
"As for the state question," I continued, "I'll settle it quickly, if you'll let me."
"No, I'm afraid you can't! No, Chancellor," she gave a little laugh, "you can't be trusted to settle that, at all!" Then firmly, almost severely, putting back into its place a wave of hair that had been coquetting with the breeze, she asked: "Is the fire ready?"
"Ready to light," I answered. "I came to find you."
"Then let's go, for it isn't good to ponder over questions of state before breakfast."
"What is it?" I asked, as we turned back. "Why won't you trust me to settle it?"
Another laugh, more full of pathos, was my answer; nor would she speak again—because of some mischiefin her mind, I believed—until, preparing the ambrosial corncakes, she rather abruptly exclaimed:
"I wonder if you deserve any breakfast this morning?"
"Why?" I cried, in feigned alarm.
"Because of your impoliteness."
"My impoliteness was doubtless the need of breakfast. But when was I impolite? I don't remember, honest!"
"Of course, you don't; how could you," she went on rather indifferently. "Were you not such a capable Chancellor I might be more offended. I am tryingly stupid at times, but to be in the very middle of a sentence and discover that the man I'm talking to is fast asleep, is humiliating, to say the least."
Did she think there was a chance of putting over that atrocious yarn on me—of bluffing me into an admission that I had been the first to fall asleep?
"You may be right," I said, with the utmost gravity, "but I did it only in justice to you. You were talking, true enough, but inyoursleep; saying things that—well, no gentleman could have remained awake, in the circumstances."
"I didn't," she cried, darting me a look of uncertainty. "Echochee says I never do!"
"Echochee wasn't here last night," I casually replied, poking the coals of her fire closer. "I hope you understand that I didn't listen intentionally; for, of course, you'd never have told me all those things——"
"Stop it," she commanded; and, when I had stopped, there was an ominous silence.
But I would not look at her and indifferently pretended to be busy. I confess that I was deriving a purely masculine enjoyment out of this, and intendedto push my counter bluff so vigorously that she would be driven to admit her own. Therefore, after I thought the silence had become sufficiently impressive, I yielded to an impulse that many men find irresistible—I made an egregious ass of myself.
"Lots of people," said I, sliding out upon thin ice with the braggadocio of him who rocks the boat, "chatter like magpies when dozing in an uncomfortable position. Police recognize this, and often arrange a suspect's cell so he'll have to sleep sitting up, then they listen and take down his inmost thoughts. That's the way you chattered last night."
"Chattered!" she caught her breath.
"Yes; just rippled along, you know, telling everything you've been thinking these last couple of days. Some of it was rather interesting. Shall I poke up the fire again?"
"Rather interesting!" She sprang around and faced me with blazing eyes, the picture of embarrassment and fury. "You consider the things I've been thinking the last couple of days 'rather interesting!' Oh," she cried, dashing the pan of corn meal batter to the ground, "you're damnable—I hate you!" There was a whirl of a skirt, the twinkle of a little booted foot, and, by Jove, she had gone flying off like the wind; while I, feeling about the size of a june-bug, stood first on one leg and then the other, wondering what the devil she had been thinking these last couple of days.
Now, when a fellow has made a blatant ass of himself, I hold that the quickest road to salvation is "own up and shut up." If he's forgiven, life may flow on as formerly. If he isn't, he has recourse to the pose of having been grossly misunderstood, and eventually workhimself into quite a creditable reproduction of a martyred nobleman. If he's good at that kind of thing, a girl will grow sorry and forgive him in spite of herself. I got this from Tommy, one day, and Tommy knows a lot about women—really, an awful lot.
But the most detestable part of my present muddle was that I had hurt her—I, who would have bartered my life to shield her from hurts! Feeling thoroughly contrite I went quickly in pursuit, looking ahead and on both sides for a glimpse of the dress that meant the world to me. Regardless of boundaries, regardless of everything but to implore an instant forgiveness at whatever cost, I rushed impetuously on, calling her name.
Then I came up with her at the side of the bubbling spring. She was lying prone upon the bank, her face buried in her arms that were crossed beneath it. And, having found her, I could not advance. Something about the lovely grace of her body held me enthralled. Furthermore, I had no right to be here; I was an interloper, a prowler! There were but two things to do, and do at once, to wit, make myself humble and scarce.
"Doloria," I said.
She did not move, perhaps she had not heard, so I kneeled and took one of her hands, whereupon she sprang to her feet looking at me strangely, wildly.
"You've no right here," she cried. "You've broken faith!"
"No, please no," I said quickly. "I'm too desperate to care where I am when you're angry! Since you called me damnable—said you hated me—the world's turned black; so I'm not deliberately trespassing—only lost, because you've taken away your smile!"
"Youtook it away," she retorted. "You'd murder any girl's smile by such—brutality!"
"Brutality!" I gasped.
"Truthfulness," she stamped her foot.
"But I wasn't truthful," I hurried to tell her. "I lied like the devil to call your bluff—wanted to make you own up because—well, you'd lied a little, too! I never dreamed my joke would hurt you. Great God," I now cried passionately, "to think of hurting you who are my life and breath and——" I caught myself, stopping short and looking at her; then slowly adding: "You didn't say a word in your sleep, I swear it. It was beautiful of you to trust me that way, and—and if you'll rescue our breakfast I'll never be such an idiot again."
She had partly turned away at my impassioned outburst, but the assurance I gave that Somnus had been dumb brought a hint of the fascinating curve to her lips. Yet her eyes still expressed doubt, and I was growing desperate enough even to humor her incredulity, hoping thereby to discover another road to favor, when she asked:
"You're not just saying that?"
"On my honor it's true—every word! I'm sorry, Princess!"
Again she turned away her face, looking across the spring and murmuring, as though to someone there:
"It's because he's hungry, I suppose,"—then whirled and held out both hands to me, in that sweet way of hers. "It's I who am cruel, Chancellor. Come, poor man, I'll feed you; you look as glum as Pharaoh—was Pharaoh glum? I'll beat you to the kitchen!" And she bounded away, almost before the challenge had been given.
Straight she sped with astonishing swiftness, skimming over fallen logs, darting this way and that through festoons of vines, with the grace of a frightened doe.In freedom of motion she was as some wild thing of forest birth, suggesting the spirits of the wind, the dappled sunlight, the dancing waters; yet never lacking an ineffable refinement that added both charm and mystery.
Each of us was breathing fast when, shoulder to shoulder, we reached the fire, she claiming the race without the slightest show of embarrassment.
"But I was holding back," I said, finding combativeness a very fair outlet to pursue, and adding: "You had the start, too!"
"In a race any one has the start who's able to get it," she asserted. "Besides, I set the pace, and all you had to do was follow. I slowed up toward the end, anyway."
The impertinence of it!
"You slowed up because you had to! And I don't believe you were angry a while ago, either!"
"Don't you?" she asked, slowly.
"Not so very," I compromised, seeing the danger signal. "I think you were just making a jolly chump of me, that's all. I don't so much mind making one of myself, but it's rotten having other people do it for me!"
"I suppose," she said indifferently, raising her arms to tuck in a lock of hair, "that if it's worthwhile making the distinction, you might be allowed a choice."
For the pure deviltry of this remark I looked around for something to throw at her, and then saw our fire—a tragic picture of dead ashes which the wind was blowing over a now cold skillet.
"See," I cried, "what our family row has led to! Fire out, breakfast ruined, and here I am due at the office in half an hour!"
"Oh, Jack," she looked at me gravely, putting an end to our banter—and for the first time calling me Jack, though I believe she did it unconsciously—"haven't we any more buttonwood? This is serious, isn't it!"
"Not so very, perhaps. We can try another kind."
"Will it be safe?" she asked, uncertainly.
"With a small fire of very dry hardwood, and this rising wind, what little smoke there is won't hold together long enough to be seen."
"But it'll blow right toward their camp! The wind's changed since yesterday!"
"That's more than two miles off, and they're probably still after Smilax. I'll make a very small fire."
This, indeed, seemed to work well enough, and by the time a new breakfast was ready our uncertainties had become shadows of no consequence.
"But youdoknow I was angry, don't you?" she asked, out of a clear sky, with an unexpectedness that made me throw back my head and laugh.
"You bet I do! And you beat me in the race, too; and you're the best cook on our block!"
"It seems to be the same old story," she smiled, with affected sorrow, "that food must always be the price of masculine tractability. Ah, the long drawn out tragedy of woman's existence, that she must forever be stuffing man with things to eat, as reptiles are stuffed, to keep him facile!"
"You fail to observe, my little snake charmer," I replied, "that you omitted to say good things to eat. I'm never facile after Smilax feeds me."—Though I owe Smilax an apology for this!
"He must have run great risks of being bitten."
"Oh, no; I'm not the biting kind of snake! I'm a constrictor—I hug!"
"Mercy!" She gave a little gasp, then, turned and went indifferently toward the spring.
Whistling happily I finished the dishes. But I finished them with the promise of a better cleansing next time, and soon was calling her.
She came to me humming the song I had been whistling—an unconscious bit of flattery on her part, but it added to my pleasure. There is, after all, so much to be gained by hitching your wagon to a star, that I tried to believe she deliberately intended it. I would have hitched up oftener to that same star, except for the fact that stars sometimes get hot and furious at too many liberties, and switch their tails and kick the wagons of well-meaning people to smithereens. That it may be better to have had a stellar joy-ride and be sent to hell for speeding than keep your boots forever in the clay, I will neither affirm nor deny; but the prudent man hitcheth to the moon!
As we went toward the fort she turned to me, asking:
"Don't you think they should have been here sooner? Do you fear anything you won't tell me?" Her eyes were anxious, and I saw how insistent this worry had been.
"Everything depends on how far Smilax had to go," I answered. "He'd never dream of coming back until the men gave up—and they might chase him half across the state! So a few extra days doesn't mean anything. They can't catch him, that's certain; and he and Echochee'll only stay away as long as they're pursued. They'll come through, I believe it sincerely; and your Chancellor, sweet Princess, will guard you with his life—with ten lives, if he had them."
"I know that," she murmured, "and shan't worry if you tell me not to."
"Then cheer up! Smilax is a past-master of the swamps and woods, take my word for it!"
"I really suppose Echochee knows a great deal about them, too," she said, after a pause, "for when she was sixteen she had to leave the Reservation with her husband and hide him in the Everglades. She learned a great deal, then."
"Why did she have to do that?"
"He'd fought and killed another Indian, and the officers were expected. But in the fight he received a cut that made him blind. For ten years Echochee fed and clothed him, hunting alligators and watching her chance of slipping the skins to a market. By extreme stinting she finally saved enough to 'buy him loose'—her optimistic way of saying 'pay a lawyer for his defense.' Think, after being outcasts all that time, of leading a blind husband through half a hundred miles of wilderness, with the savings of ten years to wager on a chance of having him cleared!"
"I hope he was," I declared.
"In a sense he was, yes. He knew where she kept the money, and while she was in the lawyer's office persuading him to take the case, her husband stole it and sneaked away."
I uttered a cry at this hideous ingratitude, and she glanced at me, gravely adding:
"Then he got drunk and was run over by a train; so, in a sense, Echochee freed him, after all."
"Oh, the magnanimous courage of a woman's devotion!" I stopped and looked at her. "It's always the same, irrespective of tribe and nation. She's dauntless, world-defying, utterly self-sacrificing. I hope toGod, Doloria, that you won't be among those who squeeze their hearts dry! You've lived away from the world and may not know how plentiful these are; but no day passes without its toll of some woman being silently crucified in her losing fight to save a besotted biped—the lord of her earthly temple. It's only by a streak of luck when their stage is cleared, as Echochee's was!"
"That may be all right for clearing the stage," she murmured, "but it doesn't heal the hearts of those who were made to suffer."
I had not fathomed the penetration of her sympathy, being satisfied, man like, to let a swift revenge wipe the slate. She seemed to be contemplating what I had said, and when she again spoke her voice was tender as though it had come unbidden from a wistful reverie.
"I suppose you're right, Jack. The world I've known, only through books, must be full of such cruelties. I rather dread having to go into it. It seems a pity that I can't always live in—in——" then, with a smile, she asked: "Do you ever dream? I don't mean when you're asleep, but awake—wide awake?"
"I rather think I'm dreaming now," I admitted, for a great contentment had fallen about us as we walked beneath the solemn trees.
The silence that followed was again stirred by her voice, saying:
"You mustn't think me childish, but I've always had a secret gateway to a place—my Secret world—where everything is make-believe, and nothing can be but truth and beauty. Often when Echochee was tiresome, or I was tired, I used to slip away and go there."
"I wish you'd take me—won't you?"
"Oh, I can't," she quickly answered, stooping for aflower in our path, holding it in both hands and leaning her face above it.
"Yes," at last I said, "I've a place like that; but I don't know whether I live there in make-believe, or throwing off the make-believe we have to wear in the world you're going to, I live honestly with myself. If you won't take me to yours, sometime maybe you'll come to mine!"
Now, I had no intention of making love to her. We were talking only about secret worlds and day-dreams.
"I'm afraid it might be difficult," she answered, dropping the flower and walking a shade more slowly. "Our lives—yours and mine—are cast along such opposite lines, it seems!"
"That's what Secret worlds are for," I told her, "——that, no matter how far apart we are, our spirits may come and meet; live again, as we've lived here; be happy again—as I've been." I turned, saying with a laugh that was meant to convey an impression of insouciance—yet failing rather miserably: "These two big pines here, Princess, actually make the gateway to my pool—which is, in fact, my Secret world, because you helped me build my home there. So, you see, it wouldn't be very difficult, as you were about to enter without knowing it. Oh, I wish I could tell you more about it!" And I then became silent, too helplessly afraid to go on.
A brighter color had come into her throat and cheeks, but she was smiling whimsically as she said:
"Then we must go around—find another path to the fort—mustn't we!"
She had stopped before me, poised delicately, almost swaying; and for several seconds our eyes, that must have been charged with some untranslatable excitement,held fast. Mine would not let go, and hers I believe could not. Her hands, idly at her sides, were turned palms forward, unconsciously suggestive of supplication.
"Do you know what you remind me of when you stand that way?" I asked.
"No," She looked away now, laughing lightly—though it was more subtly than suddenly done. "What?"
"Of a fairy that's flown from a butterfly moon, just alighting at my threshold and asking to come in."
"Wouldn't a fairy be unseemly forward to come to a young man's threshold and ask admittance?"
"Not admittance, but admission—to my dreams, where nothing is real but you and beauty."
"Dreams are for the old, the young shall see visions!—isn't there a quotation like that?" she asked, smiling.
"You're not playing fair," I laughed—for I was afraid not to laugh, wanting desperately to say that I was seeing the vision now that would be my dream forever!
"I'll play fair if I know the rules," she also laughed. "You haven't told them to me!"
"We'll make them up as we go along!"
"But what are we going to play?"
"Make-believe," I eagerly cried. "That we're exploring our Secret world where we'll come after,"—there was no laugh in my voice now—"you've gone to Azuria, and I'm here alone."
She gave my face a quick, searching look.
"And we only have to pass between these two big trees?" she asked, half lightly, half timidly.
"Only through that gateway, and we're in our world!"
"Why should I go, I wonder?" The question was whispered, almost unconsciously, and catching the tone of it I also whispered:
"To plant a memory, Doloria, that will grow and bloom as long as we live; where each of us may come—when we're lonely."
What forces, intangible, supernal, were at work here no man can tell. Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead through Life's woodland of mysteries—one instant revealing itself in a golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in grumbling blindness.
At this moment our wood seemed rich with mystic presage. Pleadingly my hands went out to her, and trustfully she put hers into them. Slowly I backed between the two big trees, our eyes held as two charmed beings. Everything about me called to her, everything in her urged compliance; and I knew, as did she, that something strange was happening. Yet when I halted she did not falter, but came on, bravely, sweetly, into my arms.
That she should have done this was as inevitable as it was gloriously true. We could no more have continued to stroll side by side through our Oasis, commenting on the seasons, sometimes rapturous over a sunset or the call of a bird, than we could have rubbed a lamp and brought theWhimsailing to us over the sea of grass. Static existences only prevail with static people, and there was too much surgingly dynamic about this twenty year old girl to have encouraged it here. I say, too, with candor that any man of twenty-six whose blood is red is—with the great out-of-doors abetting—not insulated for or against currents. Throwthese two alone in a primitive world where their tent is the sky, and a spark must eventually jump across the gradually lessening distance. It is thus that wild things mate—and their mating is incorruptible.
But now as my arms tightened and my face leaned to hers, she gave a half fearful cry and sprang tremblingly back, pressing both hands to her breast, breathing quickly and staring at me with wide eyes.
"Chancellor," she gasped, "this is madness, don't you know it?"
The quick alarm in her voice sobered me and I answered "Yes," for there was nothing else to say. And a moment later when, in an even tone and at a conventional distance, she suggested: "Shall we go on to the fort?" I did not reply, but walked mutely at her side.
Our contact had been too instantaneous for me to collect myself at once, and I wondered how she was managing to do so—or if she were bluffing. For this sudden serene-mindedness she now displayed was quite too enigmatic for my comprehension.
"We planted the memory that will be mine forever," I whispered, trying to see her face which she kept partially hid by keeping half a step ahead of me. "I'll never forget our——"
"Oh," she cried, on the verge of tears, I thought, "don't ever speak to me of it again—ever!"
"It's nothing we ought to regret—it wasn't your fault," I persisted,——
"That's just it—it was my fault, it was," she interrupted passionately, and somehow her hand found mine and pressed it. Was there ever any one more square? "I knew we were going to—do that, and I didn't try to stop it. You'll think that I'm—I'm——"
"The most glorious girl who ever lived," I cried, taking full possession of her hand now.
"Won't you please be honest?" she asked, quite seriously. "I am; and I give you my word I'd never have done it if it hadn't seemed so real—I mean, our planting the memory."
She turned then, and to my relief she was half smiling. For an instant the longing to hold her again showed in my face, but she stopped me with a look. This time it was done with the intention of stopping me, and I stopped. Yet the smile had not left her face as she said, in a tone of sweet confidence:
"Let's be above-the-board-honest with each other in all things, Jack; it makes for long friendships, Echochee says—and there's nothing finer, anyhow, than to freely admit a mistake. So it wasn't your fault any more than mine; we've both been very naughty spirits, and we mustn't be again." She paused, adding: "After all, I suppose it does make our secret world just a little——"
I waited, and when she did not continue, asked:
"A little what?"
Still she hesitated.
"Be honest," I warned.
She smiled again, looking at me frankly.
"Well, a little sweeter, to feel that we're equally to blame; that that's why we can't ever go there again."
"Eden up-to-date?" I laughed.
"Y-yes, I suppose so; and the flaming sword has smote us, so we have to be circumspect forever and ever."
"But Eve wasn't! The flaming sword didn't phaze her a minute!"
"I've had lots of time to improve on Eve," she replied archly.
"That's God's truth," I cried.
A rippling laugh burst from her lips—a ringing, happy laugh that was heard, I swear, in listening heaven. She seemed obsessed by a strange excitement—perhaps like my own, that sprang from a deep, inordinate sense of pleasure.
We were getting on toward the fort, walking inside the edge of our Oasis near that place where the fallen palms lay in a confused tangle. I had her hand and was helping her over this network of logs when she suddenly sprang before me with dazzling quickness; facing outward, and holding back her arms to keep me in check.
It was an act instinctive of protection, yet scarcely had I time to wonder at it when a whining, crackling sound, that might have come from anywhere, dashed past our heads. Men who have heard a high-power bullet splitting the air do not forget the sound, which is as quickly recognized a second time as the rattling of a diamond-back.
Immediately following it came the crack of a rifle, and guided by this I saw, above the prairie grass four hundred yards away, the head and shoulders of a man. At that instant he fired again.
To be transported instantly from the essence of happiness to the brink of tragedy—and a tragedy wherein the whole of one's world goes tottering—engenders a confusion of mind that for a moment leaves one helpless. And thus it was that the second bullet flashed by us before I sufficiently gathered my wits to act, to realize that some returning member of Efaw Kotee's band had stumbled on our little paradise.
I caught Doloria and swung her behind me, at the same time drawing my automatic and sending two quick shots, aimed high, toward the scoundrel who was making ready to try his hand again. Almost at once he disappeared, though I knew he had not been hit for it was extremely doubtful if, at that range, a revolver bullet could reach him at all. For the sake of caution he was merely crouching in the grass, and waiting.
Then I became swept by an inordinate anger; a natural enough feeling in a man whose life has been sneakingly attempted, but let a life that is a million times more precious than his own be so fired upon and he will pass the limit of human rage. With an oath I pushed her down into a niche of temporary safety, saying:
"Stay there till I come back!"
Immediately I began to scramble over the network of fallen logs; my intention being to reach the high grass and, dropping to my hands and knees, crawl out to meethim—as, in all probability, he was now crawling toward us. But before I got free of the entanglements she had sprung after me and caught my arm, crying:
"It's insane for you to go out there—with only your automatic against his rifle! Come back!"
"Go back yourself," I said sternly, shaking off her grasp. "Crouch in the hole, as I told you! Quick!"
"I won't—unless you do, too! For the love of God—he'llkillyou!" This last she screamed, frantically catching hold of me again as the man fired a third shot and we felt the breath of his bullet on our faces.
Both of us knew that this was no time for argument, and she began tugging at my belt like a wild thing, bracing herself to keep me back and showing no disposition to obey. So without ceremony I picked her up intending to shove her down between the logs.
"You shan't," she gasped. "He'll kill you if you go—if you don't he'll leave!"
But I was too terrified for her sake to listen—too determined that the fellow should not get back and tell his gang.
"Do as I say," I commanded, giving her a shake.
She had stopped speaking and was desperately using her strength. I, also, had grown desperate. Our position was too unwarrantably exposed to tolerate this further, and urgently I began to pry open her fingers when, by some twist of her own or awkwardness on my part, I slipped and fell out backwards into a deep, narrow slit between the logs, drawing her down with me and wedging my shoulders as if they were held in a vise.
It might have been a serious fall—for her, I mean—had not providentially she landed atop of me; but now, trying to arise, I found that I had measured neitherher strength of purpose nor of muscle. Her determination had not been cooled by this mishap, rather had it become more aroused with the consciousness of her advantage; for, in answer to my first movement, she caught my cheeks and passionately shook me. Her eyes, scarcely half a foot away, stared down into mine with a frightened, pleading, commanding look. They were open wider than usual, giving the impression that this was the first test of physical encounter she had ever experienced.
"You're safe here!—you shan't move!" she was whispering wildly.
"I must," I declared. "He's got to be stopped, I tell you!"
I did not want to hurt her, yet at all hazards that man had to be killed, and I began really to struggle.
"No—no!" she panted, pushing down my partially raised head with a jolt that made me see stars. For she was fighting this time, with the ferocity of a tigress, and I, held by her weight, found the task of freeing myself no easy one. I tried working loose one shoulder, growling between my teeth:
"Iwillget out of here!"
"You won't—you won't!" She reiterated this as if sheer force of mind could make me yield. And then her hair, uncoiling, fell softly over my face and closed my eyes.
There is a mesmeric force about the human hair, a woman's hair, resting on a man's upturned face—although I do not mean this in a sentimental sense. It is a natural law; as a wild bird can be put into a state of mimic sleep by laying it on its back and pressing its eyes with feathers.
The frenzy of Doloria's clutching fingers that stillheld my cheeks, and the pressure of her body whose excited breathing wedged me even tighter down between the logs, had been to us no more than incidents in the desperate struggle we were making, each for the other's safety. But, blinded by her hair, for the moment I desisted and, taking quick advantage of this, she whispered:
"If you've any wish to please me, listen! I know those men by heart—each is an arrant coward when alone. So he won't crawl closer. By the time he brings the others back we'll be inside the fort!"
"That's just it," I retorted. "The fort's no good at night—they'll rush it! He's got to be stopped, Doloria!"
"Jack, do this for me, please?" she begged. Her lips were very near. "If we have to die, we will—but I can't see you go out on that prairie alone—I simply can't!" And I grew still.
Soon I felt her hands upon my chest as she pushed herself up to look over the logs. By this movement the blindfold was partially lifted and I could see her—her body curved backward, as a mermaid that raises itself at arm's length upon the shore. Her lips were parted, her eyes were steady and level as they gazed searchingly across the sea of grass—as many a nymph, no doubt, hiding from a company of swashbuckling gnomes, must have peeped out to see if her glade were safe before venturing from the wood. In another moment she had left me and run a few steps toward the prairie, crying:
"Look! He's 'way, 'way off!"
"I can't look," I called after her. "You've put me here for life!"
Indeed, I was so completely held that the first result of my twisting seemed only to make me lose ground.She came back, this time laughing without control—but I knew the sign; my nerves, too, had recently been drunk on relaxation from a strain. Tucking up her hair with a few quick movements she held down both hands to me and, after more squirming, I worked myself out. But our enemy had by this time disappeared.
"If that fellow's back, the others are, too," I said, with some display of temper. "You've made the very devil of a mess!"
"I suppose I have," she looked demurely away. There was nothing of the tigress, nothing of the willful little fighter, now.
"The consequence is," I continued, "that we have to decide between two darned slim chances, for they'll be coming back within an hour. We can stay here, or run for it! What do you think?" But as she remained silent, gazing across the prairie, I kept irritably on: "If it's run, we can't reach the forests north, south or east without being seen—and you know what a fight in the open means against such odds. We might hide in the grass and travel at night, but if their woodcraft's worth a hang they'll read our trail on this kind of ground like an electric sign. There's an Indian in their crowd, too. If we stay, the fort'll keep them off till night—and there's always a hope of Smilax turning up. They mightn't rush us after dark, either."
I could see that the fort was our best chance, but still I wanted her opinion. Something about the way she stood, having no word to say, rather awed me, and going softly I looked around at her face. Her cheeks were wet and her lips were trembling with convulsive sobs. Oh, how I hated myself then!
"Good God," I cried, throwing my arms about her, "see what I've done!"
But she put her palms against my shoulders and held me off, saying brokenly:
"You haven't done anything."
"I have," I cried again. "I've hurt you—hurt the one I love most in all the world!"
"Don't," she said, more startled now than at any time when she had been facing a greater danger. "Quick! Please—let's get the things we need for the fort!" And she sprang away from me, running toward the pool.
In a very few minutes we were back with the rifles, an ample supply of cartridges, our canteens, and a blanket I had brought in case we decided to slip away at night. Helping her over the parapet I followed, and we stood looking intently for a sign of foes, but the waving grass spoke only of a brisk wind. It might be a half an hour before Efaw Kotee's band could get within range of us. Twice I whispered her name, but she would not answer, so I turned her around until she had to face me.
"I have the right to speak now," I said gently, "because this may be the last of things. The next few hours will decide. You understand, don't you, and know that my words are their own excuse?"
There was a serious, calm mystery in her look that answered mine with simple courage, as she whispered:
"Yes, I understand."
"We can't die," I drew her close to me, "because I love you—I love you!"
For a quick moment, and then gone, a light shone in her eyes—as though some fire raging below had been swept through the entirety of her being. Her fingers that had been clutching my shoulders relaxed, and verysoftly her arms crept around my neck, as she murmured: "No more than I do you!"
It might have been a minute or a year that we drifted in a rapturously agonizing kiss; but slowly her eyes opened, her lips sighed and, touching them to my cheek, she whispered my name over and over again.
"We'll win to-day," I cried, giving the prairie a searching look above her head, "and after that there's a kingdom waiting for you here!"
"I can feel it beating," she whispered adorably. "But if we——" She could not say it, but let her moist lips cling to mine as if challenging Death to part us.
Who dares measure time when Cupid perches on the clock! 'Twas a wise providence that gave severe St. Gregory the making of our calendar, and not St. Anthony, else some minutes might be spun to days, and hours squeezed to the fraction of a second.
But the ever present danger had not at any time quite ceased to pierce the mist of our paradise. She knew I was keeping a careful watch, even while I held her. Now she drew away, and crossed her arms upon the parapet.
"When things begin to happen," I said, "you must sit on the ground. I won't risk your lovely head above the wall!"
"Why?" she asked. "Aren't two rifles better than one?"
"Yes," I admitted, "but I can't shoot unless you're safe."
"Then don't think of me, at all, for I promise to do whatever you say. Look," she pointed suddenly. "There they are!—I believe every one of them! Oh, I wonder if they've killed Echochee!"
I, too, wondered; for surely here was the gang that had pursued them—quite a mile out on the prairie, to be sure, but unquestionably Efaw Kotee's band, showing as a black smudge above the grass. Whether this pack of human wolves had lost the trail of Smilax I would not try to guess, for it was enough to know that they had found our own.
They were still too far off to be counted, but I felt that Doloria had been right in saying every man of them. That would mean eight if Jess and the old chief were along, furious devils demanding their revenge, mad to surround us and take their own good time about placing a shot where it would do the work. It was only fair that she should know the odds, so I put my arm around her, saying:
"When they get nearer, they'll scatter out. Some will stay in front, hiding in the grass and shooting enough to keep us busy, and others will circle to the trees behind us. It's going to be a close call, sweetheart, but they'll never get in while I'm up."
"I know that," she answered gently. "We may as well be brave and speak of it with indifference; it's easier that way; so I want to tell you that if you—you——" but her voice did choke, yet she raised her chin and calmly finished, "are killed, I'll follow right away. It's infinitely preferable to being taken," she hastily added, seeing my look of horror. "So wait for me just a little while, and I'll catch up with you."
Was there ever such courage! Looking back into her eyes I saw a light that by its own vital force was self-translated, requiring no words, nor the sight of her fingers grasping the handle of that small revolver at her waist, to tell of her determination. In spite of myself I shuddered; yet she was so calm, so wonderful in herabiding faith of catching up with me on that Long Trail that knows no turning back, that my heart, too, burned with a flame more enduring than the love of mortals. Without a word I took the small revolver from her hand, and in its place put mine of larger, more reliable, caliber. Understanding, she looked gratefully up at me, her eyes filling with tears even as she smiled and whispered:
"Now I can do it without being afraid."
"By the God above us," I groaned in my agony, "you'll never have to! For your sake I'll beat off twice that many men!"
"Then don't think of it again, my ferocious, terrible Chancellor," she laughed a little—but I knew, with a sob tearing at my throat, that her playful mood, intended as a tonic for my nerves, was the bravest thing she had yet done. "Look, Jack! They're doing something!"
"They're spreading out," I said, tensely.
Her excitement suddenly died. In its place came a pathetic look of wistfulness as she raised her face to mine and, with a quick sob, whispered:
"Oh, very own mine, try to let me cook your dinner again to-night?"