"Red-breeches," replied the other, pointing to the bog.
Courte-Joie followed the direction of Trigaud's finger and saw the barrel of a gun in the midst of the reeds; then a form. It was that of a soldier, and he, like the one first seen on the heath, was followed by twenty others. Courte-Joie saw them crouching among the reeds like sportsmen on the watch. Their game was Jean Oullier. If he descended by the point of rocks, as he was evidently about to do, he must fall into the ambush.
There was not a moment to be lost in warning him. Courte-Joie did not hesitate; he seized his gun and fired it, taking care to hold the muzzle below the bushes and to fire behind the dolmen. Then he looked hastily back to the scene of action.
Jean Oullier had heard the signal and knew the ring of Courte-Joie's little gun; he was not mistaken for a moment as to the reasons that constrained his friend to abandon the concealment he was preserving for them at such cost to himself. Instantly he made a half turn, and instead of continuing his way to the steep descent and the bog, he rapidly descended the hill he had been climbing. He no longer ran, he flew; no doubt some plan had occurred to him, and he was hurrying to put it into execution. At the rate he was coming down he would join his friends in a few moments.
But in spite of Courte-Joie's precautions to conceal the smoke of his shot, the soldiers had seen the direction from which it came, and those on the moor as well as those in the bog joined forces behind Jean Oullier (who was still coming down at a great pace), and seemed to be consulting together while awaiting orders.
Courte-Joie glanced about him, apparently studying each point of the horizon; he wet a finger and lifted it to discover the direction of the wind, and felt the heather anxiously, to be sure that the sun, which was hot, and the wind, which was keen, had dried it thoroughly.
"What are you doing?" asked Bertha, who had watched the different phases of this prologue, fully aware of the imminence of the danger, and was now helping Michel, who seemed more depressed than suffering, to get on his feet.
"What am I doing,--or rather what am I going to do, my dear young lady?" replied the cripple. "I am going to make a glorious bonfire; and you can boast to-night, if the fire saves you, as I hope it will, that you never saw the like before."
So saying, he gave Trigaud several lighted bits of tinder, which the latter stuck into bundles of dried herbage, which he placed at intervals of ten feet among the heather, blowing each of them into a flame with his powerful lungs. He was placing his last bundle as Jean Oullier came up the slope, which led to the dolmen.
"Up! up!" cried the latter. "I am not ten minutes in advance of them."