The night hours sped away with only one incident to disturb us. I heard a strange noise which I could not locate nor understand, and as I stood listening intently Chris, within the hut, barked loudly.
I heard the girl speak to him, and was half minded to ask her to let him out that he might help my watch; but I heard nothing more, and so let the thing pass.
Day had broken before Karasch returned. He was alone, and had only failure and mishap to report. Trouble had dogged him from the start. He had not seen a trace of the man he had gone out to find. His companion’s horse had put his foot in a hole and broken his leg, and nearly killed Andreas, who was lying some fifteen miles away in the hills; while Karasch himself had twice been thrown, the second time with disastrous results to his broken arm.
He left no doubt as to where he laid the blame.
“We are bewitched, Burgwan,” he said, his brow frowning and his glance threatening. “In five years I have never once been thrown; and now twice within as many hours. The spell was upon us, and we were not meant to find the man.”
“Does anyone cast spells for their own hurt, Karasch? It was necessary for her safety that the man should be caught and prevented from bringing his comrades here.”
“You are not of this country, or you would know better. These devils work their own ends in their own ways. I lifted my hand against you because of her, and have brought the spell upon me. God defend us;” and he crossed himself earnestly.
“But why should she help to bring her pursuers here?” I repeated; and might as well have reasoned with the wind.
“You do not know. He will never reach his friends; or, if he does, the way hither will be hidden from them.”
“Don’t be a blind fool, Karasch,” I exclaimed, losing my temper.
He looked at me and shook his head slowly with a suggestion of commiseration.
“It is not I who am the fool or blind, Burgwan,” he answered, almost sadly. “Listen. The first time I was thrown, I saw before me a stretch of beautiful turf and pricked my horse to a gallop across it when he plunged right into a pit; and I wonder I was not killed. The next time, just before dawn, I was feeling my way carefully when she herself appeared suddenly in front of me, all white fire, and flashing a gleaming sword before my eyes. I checked my horse, in fear, and he reared and fell back almost on top of me. Is not that enough to prove the spell?”
It proved to me that he had either been asleep on his horse or was suffering from disordered nerves as the result of fatigue and the pain from his arm; but when I told him so, he grew more morose and pitying in his manner.
“I know why you talk as you do,” he said. “You have looked into her eyes. The spell is on you, too—on all here; and we shall die—unless she does.” The last three words were uttered after a long pause, during which he had glanced ominously and fearsomely toward the hut. Superstition held him in its thrall.
I judged it best to check the thought under the words at once.
“The man who lays a finger on her to her hurt will have to reckon with me, Karasch,” I said, sternly, and turned away.
He made no reply, but rode on to the shed some distance to the rear of the tent, where we stalled the horses.
I began to scent a fresh danger for the “witch,” and was fast growing as anxious as she herself could be to get away. If Karasch believed that he would be saving me from the spell by killing her, I knew he was quite capable of doing it in the face of any commands I might lay upon him and the others.
It was easy to guess at his crude reasoning. I had looked into her eyes, and was thus under her spell while she lived. My orders for her safety would thus be regarded as the result of the accursed enchantment; and they would only have to kill her to free me from the spell and make me to see that they had done the right thing. They would feel that I should then be as eager to reward them for her murder as I was now to forbid them touching her.
Added to this was the actual and pressing danger arising from the fact that the man who had pursued her had escaped to carry the tidings of her whereabouts to his companions and bring them down upon us, perhaps in force.
The situation was growing tighter with every fresh turn, and I made up my mind to rush matters and get away at once. I would not wait for the return of my guide, but take the risk of finding my way alone.
I had just made this decision when Gartski came running round the tent with a white, scared face. He stopped some yards short of the hut, as if loath to come too near the abode of the accursed one, and crossed himself.
“The horses have been killed, Burgwan. Will you come to the shed to Karasch?”
The news, if true, was ill enough to make me change colour, and I went back with him.
“We are all under a curse. It is witch’s work,” he said in a curiously awed tone; and he wrung his hands and crossed himself again. I was beginning to regard that gesture of devotion with a pretty considerable dislike by that time.
The news was true enough. The three horses lay dead on the shed floor, each in a pool of blood; and on the quarter of each of them a small ring of blood was to be seen some two inches across. Peering into the shed stood the horse from which Karasch had just dismounted, his neck outstretched and his ears cocked in fear.
Karasch and Petrov were inside, preternaturally grave and awe-struck. Both looked as frightened as Gartski when he had come running with the news to me; and Karasch pointed ominously in turn at the marks on each of the dead animals.
“The witch’s mark. It’s always there,” he said.
It was unquestionably very strange, and I looked solemn enough no doubt to lead them to believe I was beginning to share their own superstitious fears. It was about the worst thing that could have occurred at such a juncture; and for the moment I could think of nothing but the possible consequences of so disastrous an occurrence.
With an effort I roused myself and examined the “witch’s” mark on each of the beasts. A circle had been cut with the point of a sharp knife, the mark being just skin deep.
“How did they die, do you think, Karasch?”
He pointed again to the marks and smiled grimly, as though the cause were too plain to need words.
“And all this blood?” I asked.
He shrugged his great shoulders.
I looked at Gartski and the third man closely, for any sign that they had had a hand in it; but their superstitious fear was too genuine to be doubted.
“Turn the horses over,” I ordered; but they shrank away and obstinately refused to put a finger near them.
“Who is smeared with the blood of a witch-killed beast dies before the moon is old,” said Karasch. “They must burn where they lie.”
“You’re a set of fools,” I cried angrily. But neither anger nor request was heeded.
I took the iron bar from the door, and levering it under the smallest of the horses turned the carcase over sufficiently to find what I sought—the cause of death. There was a wound just under the heart. The horse had been stabbed with a sword or long knife. Whoever had done the work knew where and how to strike so as to kill instantly.
I went outside then and searched the ground all round the door carefully.
“Come back to the tent all of you,” I said. I led the way, scrutinising every inch of the ground and following a somewhat unaccountable trail I had discovered. It led direct to the tent.
“Let me see to your arm, Karasch,” I said first, intending to let them have some minutes to recover from the first effects of their stupefaction.
“No, Burgwan. You have cursed blood on you. You cannot touch me. I should die, too.”
“Very well, then, we’ll settle this thing first. You saddled Karasch’s horse last night, Gartski. Did you fasten the shed afterwards?”
“No; we never fasten it. Bars won’t keep out devils.”
“This is the work of no devil. Those horses have been killed by someone who plunged a knife into their hearts and then cut that ring on the haunch. I saw the wound myself on the beast I examined. They were all right when you left them?”
“Yes, quite right.”
“Did either of you go near the shed again until Karasch returned, or did you sleep?” I asked next, remembering the strange noise I had heard in the night.
“We had had a long day, and both slept soundly.”
“We’re getting very close to it now,” I answered. I turned to our prisoner with the broken leg. “How is your leg this morning, my man?”
“Very painful, but better,” he replied after a pause.
“Did you sleep, or did you hear anything in the night?”
“I slept all through the night. I was asleep when you came in just now.”
“Then it ought not to be so painful. I’ll have a look at it.”
“No, no,” he cried, putting up his hands to ward me off. “Don’t touch me. You have touched the accursed blood.”
“Do you believe in it, too?” and I looked keenly at him.
He crossed himself earnestly and spat on the floor.
“Stay, stay. You’re a Turk! why do you cross yourself with the cross of the Christians? I won’t touch you against your will, but I must see how your leg is doing. Lift him up, Gartski,” and I pointed to a bench. They hesitated. “Do as I say; and smartly, too. You know me,” I cried sternly.
The man objected and protested with many oaths, and cursed me volubly. But I insisted; and the others did not dare to disobey me. Karasch himself plucked the man’s rug off, and the other two lifted him.
The mystery was instantly plain to me. The man was smeared from head to foot with mud and blood, the traces of which he had tried to remove; and lying where his body had covered them were a knife and a small lantern; while a glance at his injured leg showed me that the splints had been all but torn off in the exertions of his night’s work.
He was a faithful servant to his masters, whoever they might be; and he had conceived the design of killing the only horses we had, in order to prevent the escape of the girl before his comrades could return to recapture her.
Waiting until the two men in the tent were fast asleep he had dragged himself, painfully and laboriously, through the mud to the shed, had shut himself in, and, by the light of the lantern he carried, had deliberately stabbed one horse after the other, putting on each the witch’s mark. He knew the superstition about it, of course, and trusted to that to save him from the risk of discovery. I had seen the slimy trail he had left in the mud, however, and had thus detected him.
With what dogged effort he had acted and the stoical endurance he had shown were evidenced by the condition of his wounded leg. The splints had been torn off, and he must have suffered excruciating agony in the grating of the fractured bones.
I taxed him with the deed, but he denied it, of course, and swore by every oath he could think of, Christian and Mahomedan alike, that he was innocent and had slept soundly the whole night through.
I drew Karasch aside. “You can see for yourself what happened,” I said, significantly and triumphantly. But his superstition was proof even against such evidence.
“You do not understand, Burgwan; I do,” he replied, in the same dismal fanatical tone.
“The thing can be seen as plainly as a mountain in the moonlight,” I exclaimed, impatiently. “He wants to prevent our getting away until his companions get here.”
But Karasch only shook his head.
“You can see that he did it, can’t you, man?”
“I can see she used his body to do it. They often do that. He did it in a dream. His hand; her mind. I’ll question him.”
“And put a ready-made lie into his thoughts,” I exclaimed, angrily.
“It is witch’s work, more than his,” he repeated, stubbornly and doggedly. I felt I should lose my temper if I stayed longer, and tossing up my hands in despair at his folly, I gave up talking sense to him.
I washed off the traces of the blood from my hands, and having got materials for a breakfast, went away to the hut to try and think what next to do in view of this fresh disaster.
I don’t think I had ever been more completely cornered than I was by the position which faced me then. I was thirty miles or so from anywhere; I did not know the road for even a league from the camp; and I hadn’t an animal left worth calling a horse. If I attempted to leave with the girl, we should probably be lost, or break down by the way. Yet if I stayed where I was, we should have her pursuers back to fetch her; while, even if they did not come, there was an almost hourly risk that my own men would break out against her in order to deliver me from her enchantment.
Whichever way I turned I could see nothing but imminent peril for her—peril of death indeed; and cudgel my wits as I would, I could see no turning in the long, straight lane of danger.
I remember stopping midway between the tent and the hut, and setting down the things I carried, and glancing round at the circle of frowning hills with a confused and dismaying sense of feebleness. The breeze of the morning, fresh and invigorating as it was, seemed to grow hot, stifling, oppressive, until it was positively difficult to breathe freely. The hills had become suddenly as the walls of a prison, shutting me in, a helpless, crippled prisoner. Light, freedom, hope, life were all on the other side of them, but the path was barred and the way of escape blocked. My nerves were shaken and the mental perspective warped, for the moment, in the exaggeration of sudden alarm for the girl.
The sight of her brought me to my senses again. She appeared at the door of the hut and looking about her saw me and smiled. I must keep the knowledge of danger from her, of course, so I went down and pretended to busy myself with my packages while I pulled myself together.
I picked them up and went on to the hut whistling a strain of the “Star Spangled Banner,” and trying to appear as if I hadn’t a thought in the world above breakfast.
“Good-morning, Burgwan,” she said, with a sort of chary patronage and encouragement.
“Good-morning. I have brought your breakfast. Very homely diet, but the best we can offer you here.”
“Never mind. What time do we start?” She had a rare knack of finding awkward questions.
“The guide is not come yet,” I answered, conscious that my pause would rouse her suspicions.
“But I cannot wait long.”
“That’s true enough.” I spoke the thought aloud, unwittingly.
“What does that mean?” Very sharply asked, this.
“I can’t answer any questions yet. I have to think.”
The reply appeared to offend her, and her eyes flashed as she drew herself up with a gesture of authority and constraint. She was turning back into the hut when she caught sight of some stains on my clothes.
“That is—blood?” She paused before the word.
“Yes, it’s blood. I didn’t know it was there.”
She shrank from me for a space against the lintel.
“It’s horse’s blood. We’ve had some trouble in the stables, and I’m afraid I don’t cut a very pretty figure just now.” I tried to make light of it in this way; but it was a feeble effort.
“Tell me—at once. The truth, please.” There was eagerness now in her tone, as well as the usual imperative note.
I hesitated. “I suppose you’d better know it,” I said then. “There has been foul play in the night, and our horses have been killed. I got this on me when I was tracing the thing to its source. That’s all—but it’s bad enough.”
“How many?”
“All but one—and he’s dead lame, I’m afraid.”
“Is this true? or is it an excuse to keep me here?”
I winced. The injustice bit deep. I looked at her with a protest in my eyes.
“If you’ll put that question plainly, perhaps you’ll see it in its proper light, and understand how it may sound to me. No, I don’t mean that. It doesn’t matter. I have told you the truth; that’s all.”
“But it does mean delay?”
“I’m very sorry; but thirty or forty miles make a long march for a lame horse. I could manage on foot, of course, but——” I left the sentence unfinished.
She started, and bit her lip as she realised my meaning. To avoid seeing her distress, and to fill the pause, I dropped one of the tins I was carrying and stooped to pick it up.
“I have to beg your pardon, Burgwan, for doubting you.”
“That’s no account, I assure you. I couldn’t have helped it myself if the position had been reversed. The truth does sometimes look strangely like falsehood.”
“But you don’t seem to understand that I must get away. I must.”
“I do realise it,” I answered, very earnestly, “and mean to find a way, somehow. I’m not easy to beat, most times.”
“When can we start, then?” I noticed the “we,” and I think it had something to do with putting me off my guard.
“I shall have to think a bit,” I said.
“It must be soon, Burgwan. What time is it now?”
Without thinking, I pulled out my watch from an inner pocket—a big gold chronometer on a gold chain—and the moment I caught her quick eyes on it I saw the mistake, and regretted it.
“Just six o’clock,” I answered, as indifferently as I could.
“That’s a very valuable watch you carry in these lonely hills;” and her look spoke her thought much more eloquently than her words.
“It’s a very good timekeeper,” I answered at random.
Her intent gaze held me all the while, and I saw gathering in her eyes something of the suspicion with which she had first heard my name the previous night.
“How did you get it?”
“Are you not over quick with your suspicions?”
“Am I to fear you—or trust you?”
“If you trust me it will have to be without asking any questions—at present. You have no reason to fear me; and never will have.”
“You must tell me where you got so valuable a thing—you, a peasant of the hills?”
“I am not a peasant of the hills.”
“Where did you get it?”
“If I told you, you would scarcely believe me.”
“Where?” she insisted.
She drew a deep breath and bit her lip.
“I have thought of you as a brave man capable of real nobleness. I have believed you to be true and honest. If you fail me I have no hope. And if you mean me harm, for the sake of the living God tell me so.” She spoke with intense but carefully restrained passion until the last few words.
“Don’t take it like that,” I replied, firmly and calmly, although moved to the core by her appeal. “I will tell you something. I am not what I may have seemed to you. I am no peasant and no brigand, as you seem to fear. Who and what I am, and why here, I cannot tell you yet; but, believe this, I will serve you and save you from this trouble. If you wish it, I will take any oath you like on that. But my word is my word, and you may trust it.”
She listened intently, marking every word, and when I finished she bent forward and gazed searchingly right into my eyes. Then she drew a deep, long breath, as of relief, and smiled.
“Thank God, I feel I can trust you. I will not question you again, Burgwan.”
“Then the best thing you can do is to show it by getting some breakfast.”
The change to the commonplace and practical from that moment of feverish passion was a welcome relief to us both.
“Yes; you are right. I will,” she answered, forcing a smile; and picking up the things I had laid on the chair, she carried them into the hut.