Lendert lashed at him furiously with his whip, at which François gave a low mocking laugh. “I advise you not to attempt that, monsieur,” he said; “you might also strike Mademoiselle Hervieu. So closely are we united, she and I, that what touches one touches the other. Is it not so, Mademoiselle Hervieu?”
She made him no answer, but tried to shrink away from his close embrace, and leaning forward, asked, in a low voice, “Are you hurt, Monsieur Verplanck?”
“But slightly,” he whispered back.
Alaine made a little exclamation, for at this instant François whipped out his knife to cut the belt into which Lendert’s pistols were thrust. These fell with a clatter to the ground. In one moment their owner had pulled in his horse, but to dismount meant to leave Alaine in the hands of her enemy, and he but gave note to the spot and rode on.
“We ride,” cried François, “to the devil, maybe, though I fancy your horse may grow weary if the journey be long. I am not of a great weight myself, but monsieur there is not too light, and three of us.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Yet, I do not alight while mademoiselle rides,” he continued.
Lendert gave a slow, sleepy look over his shoulder. “The mosquito is sometimes bad in the woods,” he remarked, confidentially, to Alaine. “After a while we are able to rid ourselves of the pest.” And he turned his horse around.
“Ah-h!” cried François, “I see your manœuvre, monsieur,” and with the quickness of a monkey he unloosed Alaine’s hands from the hold and leaped with her to the ground, crying, “Ride on, monsieur, you are well rid of the pest, eh? He will satiate himself first, this mosquito.” And again a pistol-shot rang out.
“Poltroon! villain!” cried Alaine. “You shoot a man when his back is turned.”
“I use the means the good God gives me, mademoiselle. I kill to defend myself, and who would not? I kill even you, yes, rather than that other there possess you.”
The pistol-shot had wounded Lendert in the shoulder, but he rode back over the ground at a gallop, was down from his horse in an instant, and picking up his own pistols from where they had fallen, he levelled one at François.