CHAPTER XXV
IN WHICH DE SANCERRE WEEPS AND FIGHTS
“I HAVE searched in all directions,” remarked de Sancerre to Doña Julia, standing upon the river-bank and watching the early sunbeams as they greeted the rippling flood, “and I fear my captain’s people did not abandon the canoe whose contents they left here as a gift from the good St. Maturin. But we are in good case! ’Tis a kindly stream, and its bosom will bear us gently to my friends. The walls of these frail huts will serve us well to form a raft.”
The Spanish maiden watched the golden glory of the dawn, as it made a mirror of the stately stream, with eyes which glowed with happiness and peace. The dread of many perils which beset de Sancerre’s mind found no reflection in the devout soul of Julia de Aquilar. Had not the saints wrought miracles to lead her from captivity? Weak, indeed, would be her faith if she doubted the kind persistence of their aid.
“’Tis but repaying what I owe, señora, if I should make you safe at last,” continued de Sancerre, musingly, taking Doña Julia’s hand in his. “You saved my life. You have not told me how you knew they’d dressed my fish with poison from the woods.”
“Ah, monsieur,” sighed the girl, regretting that he had recalled the sorrows and dangers of the past, which seemed to her at this glad hour like the unreal horrors of a nightmare forever ended. “You must remember that I’ve spent a long, sad year in that City of the Sun. I’m quick to learn an alien tongue, and, without effort, I came to understand the language of the priests. The saints be praised, I’ll know no more of it! And so I heard them plotting in the night outside my door to give you poison in the fish you ate. I prayed to Mother Mary to find a way—and, lo! my prayer was answered, for Noco came to me!”
“Ma foi, how much we owe to Noco!” exclaimed de Sancerre, scanning the river and the forest with searching eyes, as he turned to lead Doña Julia to the hut in which, through the aid of their aged companion, they were to break their fast. By means of the flintlock on his gun de Sancerre had kindled a fire, at which Noco had been cooking cakes of corn-meal, the odor from which now mingled with the bracing fragrance of the cool May morning.
As they entered the hut the girl uttered a cry of dismay, and de Sancerre strode quickly to the prostrate form of their faithful counsellor and guide. Stretched before a snapping fire of twigs, with her last earthly task undone, lay Noco, dead, the grin and wrinkles smoothed from her old, brown face by the kindly hand of eternal sleep. The strain of the night’s wild race had been too great for her brave heart, and, when called upon by the labor of the day, it had ceased to beat.
Doña Julia threw herself upon her knees beside the only friend she had known in her long captivity, and, with sobs and prayers, gave vent to the sorrow in her heart.
“Nom de Dieu! I think I loved that queer old hag!” murmured de Sancerre to himself, brushing a tear from his pale cheek, as he turned toward the wood-fire to resume the work from which Noco had been called by death. “I thought there was no limit to the vigor in her frame! Alas for her, I set the pace too hot!”
But there was no time for sighs and vain regrets. De Sancerre knew the woods too well to let his fire long toss the smoke between the fissures of the hut. Removing the corn-cakes from the blaze, he extinguished the flames at once, and urged Doña Julia to eat freely of a simple meal.
“Remember, señora,” pleaded de Sancerre, earnestly, seeing that the sudden taking-off of their aged comrade had robbed the sorrowing girl of all desire for food—“remember that the larder of our raft will be a crude affair. I know not when the luxury of corn-cakes will tempt our teeth again.”
Doña Julia smiled sadly and renewed her efforts to do justice to a repast for which she had no heart.
“Think not, señor,” she said, in Spanish, gazing at de Sancerre with eyes bright with pride and fortitude, “that I have learned no lessons from a year of peril and dismay. You knew me in the luxury of courts. Methinks you’ll find me changed in many ways. I mourn old Noco. She saved me from despair. She hated Spaniards, but she worshipped me. Ah, señor, she had a loyal heart. May the saints be kind to her!”
“Amen!” exclaimed de Sancerre, fervently. “And now, señora, we have no time to lose! Untie the meal-bags in the corner there and bring the cords to me. I’ll pull a hut to pieces and make a raft of logs upon the shore. For every mile the river puts between this spot and us, I’ll vow a candle to St. Maturin.”
Fastening a powder-horn and a bullet-pouch to his waist, to the deep resentment of his patrician rapier, de Sancerre, with gun in hand, hurried to the river-bank and chose a convenient spot from which to launch his treacherous craft upon a kindly current flowing toward the camp of friends. As the hours passed by and his raft grew in size and strength, the depression which the death of Noco had cast upon de Sancerre’s spirits stole away, and there were hope and cheer in the smiles with which he greeted Doña Julia when she came to him now and again from the hut with stout cords with which he spliced together the clumsy, stubborn logs of his rude boat. At short intervals he would abandon his task as a raft-builder to scan, with straining eyes, the broad expanse of river upon his left, or to listen breathlessly for sounds of menacing import in the forest at his back. But the sun had reached the zenith, his raft was nearly built, and de Sancerre could discover, neither upon flood nor land, aught to suggest that man-hunting man was stirring at high noon.
“Courage, mademoiselle,” he cried, gayly, in his native tongue, as Doña Julia, pale and silent, approached him from the hut. “Another hour will find us voyageurs at last. We’ll name our gallant little ship La Coyocop!”
“The saints forefend!” exclaimed the girl, smiling at his fancy. “’Twould bring disaster with it! ’Tis a heathen name! We’ll christen our good raft in honor of the Virgin or the saints. They have been kind to us!”
“Ma foi, you speak the truth, ma chère! My patron saint, the kindly Maturin, has saved me from all blunders for a day. If ever I should see a godly land again, I’ll raise an altar to his memory.”
The mocking undertone in de Sancerre’s light, laughing voice recalled to Doña Julia the old days at Versailles when this same man, who, by a marvel wrought in Paradise, now stood beside her in a wilderness, had touched upon many things which she had held in high regard with the irreverent wit of a flippant tongue. But, on the instant, she felt that she had been unjust to de Sancerre in taking, even for a moment, the path along which memory led. The earnest, courageous, resourceful man at her side was not the debonair, satirical cavalier whom she had known at court. She had said to him that he would find a change in her, wrought by a year of danger and despair. She realized, through the quick intuitions of a loving heart, that during that same lapse of time the wild, stirring life which he had led had touched the nobler chords in the soul of de Sancerre, and had brought to view a manly earnestness and force which had stamped his mobile face with an imprint grateful to her eyes. At Versailles the courtier had fascinated her against her will. In the wilderness the man had won the unforced homage of her admiration. If, now and then, his tongue, by habit, used flippant words to speak of mighty mysteries, the saints in heaven would forgive him this, for he had grown to be a man well worthy of their tender care.
The truth of this came to Doña Julia with renewed insistence as she and de Sancerre, having made the final preparations for their embarkation, knelt beside old Noco’s corpse and, hand clasping hand, voiced a prayer for the repose of their faithful ally’s soul.
“I dare not wait to give her burial,” said de Sancerre, regretfully, as he and the girl left the hut, carrying to their raft what little corn-meal and gunpowder their frail craft allowed to them as cargo. “But well I know the saints will treat her well. Her claim upon them is the same as mine.”
Doña Julia glanced up at de Sancerre, questioningly. He looked into her dark, earnest eyes with his heart in his, and answered her in Spanish:
“Old Noco worshipped you, señora—as I do! Caramba! What is that?”
The Frenchman stood motionless for a moment watching an object which broke the monotony of the river’s broad expanse on their left. Presently he placed the keg of gunpowder, which he had been carrying, upon the shore, and, seizing the long, clumsy musket at his feet, examined the pan and hammer.
“What is it, señor?” asked the girl, calmly, glancing up the river at a bobbing, white speck far to the northward, and then looking into de Sancerre’s pale, set face with eyes in which no terror gleamed.
“I hardly know, señora!” exclaimed the Frenchman. “But I fancy ’tis a thing which has no hold upon the saints!”
“You think it is—”
“I fear it is a war-canoe of white-robed devils, whose only claim to mercy is that they knew you were from God. But listen, ma chère. They must not see you here! There is no safety for us within the woods, for they would find my raft and track us quickly to the trees. The weird moon-magic of this snaphance gun must turn them from their course. Go back into the hut, and let their black eyes search for you in vain. With good St. Maturin’s most timely gift I’ll show them that a bullet is harder than their hearts.”
“Ah, no—I cannot leave you now!” exclaimed the girl, shuddering at the prospect of a lonely vigil in the room where Noco lay.
“This is no place for you, señora,” said de Sancerre, grimly, glancing again at the river, down which a large canoe, manned by ten stalwart sun-worshippers, which rose and fell upon the favoring tide, was approaching them with its menace of death for de Sancerre and captivity for the girl. “Go to the hut at once! I shall not keep you waiting long. If the magic of my musket should not avail, we’ll test the friendliness of yonder trees. But, still, I think my merry gun will drive the cowards back.”
A moment later de Sancerre, humming snatches of the love-song which he had sung before the cabin of the goddess Coyocop, fingered his musket with impatience as he waited for the war-canoe to swing within easy range of a weapon with which he had had no long experience.
“Nom de Dieu!” he muttered, as he raised the gun to his shoulder and then lowered it again to await a more favorable opportunity for his initial shot. “They make a gallant show! Their sun-baked brawn and muscle form a target which would rejoice the heart of a coureur de bois.”
At that instant a cry of mingled rage and triumph arose from the paddlers as they discovered the picturesque figure, standing erect upon the bank in tattered velvets and toying with a curiously-shaped implement which had no terrors for their unsophisticated eyes.
“Ma foi, I think the time is ripe to do my little trick!” exclaimed de Sancerre, gayly, a smile of derision playing across his thin lips as the echo of his pursuers’ shout of delight and anger came back to him from the wall of forest trees. “My hand is steady, and my heart is light! You black-haired devil, drop that paddle!”
The mimic lightning made by flint and steel changed powder into noise, and as the river and the trees tossed back and forth the echoes of the musket’s roar, a dusky athlete, dropping his paddle with a moan, toppled over dead into the shimmer of the sun-kissed waves.
“Bien, ma petite!” cried de Sancerre, patting his smoking gun with grateful hand. “The magic of the moon is working well to-day.”
For a moment the horrified sun-worshippers lost control of their canoe, and it drifted jerkily toward the centre of the stream. Presently, recovering their wits, they plunged their paddles into the flood and held their responsive, graceful boat steadfast on the waves, seemingly in doubt as to the course they should pursue.
“Confound them!” muttered the Frenchman, who had leisurely recharged his musket. “’Tis strange how slow these bright-eyed devils are to learn! Do they want ten miracles, when one should well suffice? They seem to crave another message from the moon. If I could hit a moving boat-load, I’ll have no trouble now! They’re steadying my target—to the greater glory of my magic gun! Adieu—once more!”
Again the peaceful day protested loudly against de Sancerre’s noisy tricks, and the waters gained another victim from the worshippers of fire. There was no further hesitation aboard the great canoe. With paddles wielded by hands cold with fear, and arms bursting with the struggle to drive their boat beyond the fatal circle of a demon’s witchery, the sun-worshippers frantically urged their primitive war-ship upward against the current of this treacherous river of death. Laying his faithful gun upon the bank, de Sancerre watched his retreating foes for a happy moment. Removing his torn bonnet with a flourish from his throbbing head, he made a stately bow, unheeded by the terrified canoemen, and cried gayly:
“Adieu, messieurs! They’ll hear of you in France anon! And then beware! Adieu!”
With a light heart and feet which seemed to spurn the sloping bank, de Sancerre rushed toward the hut in which the woman of his love had been listening in terror to the scolding of his gun.
“Behold me, mademoiselle,” he cried, jubilantly, as he drew the trembling girl to his breast, “a musketeer who wastes no powder upon his foes! I kiss your lips, my life and love! The prayers you sent to Heaven, I well know, have saved our lives again! Another kiss—and so we will embark.”