HOW THEY FOUND THE RUBIES, AND THE SMITH’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF

News of the fight reached River Ward before midnight, but before that, about dusk, we heard Trastevera singing, walking up and down on a low hill scented and white with gilias, hymning of victory. And after I had lain down in my accustomed place I heard the women all about me, fevered with expectation, rising to intimations of approach too fine for me. From that part of the camp where the women of the Far-Folk slept, there arose now and then some sharp accent of dismay and grief, succeeded by the nearly mortal dejection of defeat. Unable at last to bear the night so full of noises and suspense, I rose and walked to the edge of the wide, bush-grown shallow where the Outliers were camped and met Herman coming to find me.

259“Do not go where the women are,” he said; “the wounded are there, and besides, they do not want us.”

Very softly we skirted the edge of the swale and climbed to the foot of a knoll overlooking it. Some oaks grew here, and the prostrate trunks were strong to lean against. The moon was gone on her last quarter, and the figures of men moving in the swale were large and vague against it. There was a wind stirring that kept up a whimpering whisper in the tops of the chaparral. It took the voices as they rose through it and rounded them to indistinctness; only by listening attentively could we distinguish between the acclamations of victory and cries of loss and pain.

“But tell me,” I insisted to Herman, “you have been among the men, have they brought back the King’s Desire?”

“Look,” he said, “at that man moving there as he turns against the moon; do you see the line of light that runs about his forehead? And there! what glitters on that outstretched arm? Hardly a man of them but has some gold about him, but they have not said a word.”

“And who has the Cup of the Four Quarters?”

260“Noche took it from Oca’s son; I saw him studying it by the reflected moon, but when I came up he hid it in his bosom.”

“And the great rubies?”

“They have not come in.”

“Herman,” I said, after a long pause, “what do you think they will do with it—and us?”

“The King’s Desire? Bury it, I hope. With us? Do you know, Mona, I am no longer anxious about what they will do to us.”

“No; they have been good friends of ours.”

“Nor afraid of the Cup,” finished Herman, “for I have come to feel that I have found something here in Outland that not even Forgetfulness can take away.... What I said to you the other night ... the door....”

“Oh, I thought it was Zirriloë....” He stopped and considered. “... And that she had shut it again on cheapness and affronting shame.... It left a mark on me.”

“Such experiences do, Herman.”

“But she is gone ... and the door swings wide. It is open to-night; and that is what I have found here in Outland that I shall never let go again.”

What he really had was my hand, which he seemed not to be aware of, beating it softly 261between his palms as he talked. I could hardly withdraw it without seeming to point an emphasis.

“And being so sure of that,” said Herman, “makes it difficult to believe that all this should be taken away from us.”

He made a gesture with the hand that held mine toward the swale of River Ward, the silvered line of the willows, the low moon, the fair light, the smell of the packed earth breaking up to bloom.

“Do you know, it is very strange, Mona, I have not the least idea where we are, but I think I could start out to-night direct for home and find it. Have you ever felt so?”

“Not since the Meet at Leaping Water.”

“But to-night?”

“To-night I feel it.”

“How far away the Outliers seem to-night. Look down there in the hollow, there is not one stirring. How could one say there is now any grief or captivity down there? Mona, do you really believe there are any Outliers?”

“Ah, I’m good at believing.”

The moon dropped down behind the hill till there was but one shining jewel point of it winking on the world. The chill that comes 262before the morning began to temper the air and I shivered under it.

“You are cold,” cried Herman; “wait.” He slipped away in the scrub and brought back skins in which he wrapped me. “Have you had any sleep at all to-night? Where is your hand, Mona?” He drew it through his arm. “Now, if you will lean back against the oak here, and against my shoulder, so: now you may get some rest.”

I leaned against the oak and touched his sleeve with my cheek. I had not meant to do more than that, nor yet to sleep, but the oak swayed a little comfortingly, so still and soft and dark the night was—suddenly there was the morning freshness and Trastevera calling me awake.

I saw the dark green of the earth shining wet, the faint, ineffable green of the dawn, and between them spread a veil of silvery mist. Down in the hollow the Outliers were all astir; rearward two lines of men moved toward the Gap. I saw them disappear in the willows and emerge again in the stream rounding the point of the Ledge. They walked mid-thigh in the turbid water and braced themselves against the force of its running. 263I saw the lines bend and right themselves like the young willows. These were the Far-Folk moving under guard toward Leaping Water. Below us as we came down the knoll were Mancha, Prassade, Noche and some others, with one in their midst whom, as they turned and looked toward us expectantly, I recognized as Ravenutzi. He looked dry, I thought, and stripped. His glance, which took me dully, when at last it was aware of me, appeared to turn inward for an instant as if to call that old excluding charm of personality. I felt it flicker and expire. But all that group continuing to look toward us curiously as we went down, I enquired of Trastevera what it meant.

“It is Herman,” she said. “They wait for him. Mancha has asked if he would like to go a day’s journey with them.”

“He will go,” I answered for him, for I knew at once whither that journey tended, and what they would find at the end of it. To this day I do not know what prompted Mancha to invite him. Whether he thought the opportunity due to him who had first gone on the trail of that unhappy girl. Whether he had some inkling of Herman’s state of mind, 264and divined in him an excusing understanding of his own hopeless infatuation, I do not know. At any rate he would not set out on that day’s business without Herman. That was how we learned what happened in the Place of Caves, half a day beyond Windy Covers, and as much as was ever known of what had occurred between Ravenutzi and the Maiden Ward, no maid by now, and in a more inviolable wardship.

They were afoot nearly all of that day, for besides having far to go, the men were stiff with battle. They traveled in this order—first Ravenutzi, limping a little, and Mancha stumbling close upon his heels. Neither of these spoke a word more than necessary the whole of that going. Then came Prassade, who groaned at times and made a gesture with his hands as though his heart were torn out of him and he saw it there in the trail and trampled on it with his feet. Next Noche, muttering in his beard and seeming at times to rehearse the incidents of battle, lifting and hugging somewhat in his arms and shaking his huge shoulders. After these came Herman and the men, among whom was that one who, following the tall woman, had found the 265smith and betrayed the Far-Folk to capture.

They came behind the others a little distance and whispered at times among themselves. They talked of Mancha’s fight with the smith and how Oca went mad with rage bestriding the dead body of his son, striking so furiously with his pike he could not fetch it back again, and how Prassade had taken him from behind.

They told also how the women of the Far-Folk had come in from some bleak hilltop where they hung like buzzards, and surrendered, asking no privilege but to tend their wounded. Once it occurred to Herman to ask if Ravenutzi’s wife was among them, and the men said no. At that Herman and Mancha looked at one another and the same thought was in the minds of both but they kept it to themselves. About an hour after midday it began to appear that they had done wisely in bringing with them this man who had followed Ravenutzi’s wife. The smith seemed determined to mislead them. He wished to turn out of his earlier trail very far to the right, and could not understand why this man protested so much nor why Mancha paid any attention to him.

266“This is the way,” he said; “who should know it if not I?”

“By the Friend, smith, it may be your way,” said the man, “but it was not the way your woman took following your trail, and I hard upon hers.”

“You saw that?” cried Ravenutzi. “A woman, my wife, following me to—to the place where we are going?” Herman said it was the first time he had seen Ravenutzi beside himself; he grew gray, a film came before his eyes through which the pupils opened, blank pits of horror.

“You saw that,” he cried, “and you let her go!”

“Ah,” said the man, “but I judged you the better game.”

Ravenutzi twisted like a man on............