By this time I was so interested in Bulla and his plans that I oscillated between my crag, the outlaws' camp and the constabulary post, with no more other occupations than what I judged absolutely needful to forestall any unwelcome interest in my doings and the possibility of too many persons knowing of my visits to the outlaws.
When next I visited them Bulla told me that something had alarmed the procurator. Either some rumor of their presence along the road had reached him or he knew of the bad reputation of the stretch of the Flaminian Highway through the Umbrian mountains between Forum Sempronii and Nuceria, which it had acquired some years before when the King of the Highwaymen himself had made on it a succession of valuable captures which had yielded him princely booty and the reports of which had spread all over Italy. Anyhow their advices informed them that he had packed his bullion-chests with stones and old-iron and had parcelled out his packets of dust and nuggets among the wagons of a long train of arena-beasts.
"We'll fool him!" Bulla boasted. "We'll nab him and hold him for a big ransom. Also we'll not only make sure of his bullion chests in case our information is false, or based on an intentional rumor he has given out as a blind; but we'll get that bullion, too, if it is not in the chests, but hidden in the wagons in the guise of dusty packets of provender for the draft-cattle or of meat for the caged beasts. We'll get it!"
Prom his mention of the wagons we fell into talk of the increasing difficulty of getting fresh meat for the lions and other beasts, of the depletion of the flocks and herds along the roads from Aquileia, to Rome; and he told me that his advices reported that the whole country near the highways was already swept clean of all goats, sheep and cattle, except breeding stock, milch stock and their choicest young kept for breeding. The inhabitants could get no beef, mutton or goats' flesh for themselves; all had gone into the maws of hyenas, tigers, wolves and the rest; and the procurators were insisting on the farmers selling their kids, lambs, calves, ewes and cows-in-milk, any stock, even mules and horses; any animals fit to butcher for lion-food.
From this we came round to chatting of my talks with the teamsters and of my prospect from my crag. I had told Bulla of the crag long before, but he did not seem to have taken in the idea. Now he was delighted.
"If I'd paid attention to you soon enough," he said, "I'd have put in a day or two with you watching the show. It's too late now. Our prayed for chances are coming soon, and not far apart."
Next day he was gleeful.
"It's all going to work out like the end of a theater-play," he said. "The procurator and the propraetor and his charge are practically certain to come along tomorrow afternoon. I calculate that they will meet not far south of your crag. I've planned to post one ambush near the foot of your crag, just south of it, another at a judicious interval down the road nearer Rome. I'll have 'em between the two ambushes about the middle of the afternoon or between that and sunset. We'll nab all three ransom prizes at once and we'll lay our hands on the jewels, coin and gold almost at the same instant. I've arranged to lead the constables off on a false scent about noon and they'll be miles away up a lonely crossroad when we pull off our coup. We'll make our getaway, with the swag, hours before they can get wind of the occurrence and follow on our trail. We'll have a long start of them.
"You can watch the whole thing from your crag. This ideal weather is going to last many days yet. And the moon will be full two nights from now, so its light will help us two nights on our getaway. I envy you up on that crag watching the show, comfortable as a senator at a theater, aloft like Jupiter on Olympus in the Iliad."
Next day I made sure that the Villicus would not want me, had Septima put up for me an abundant supply of her inviting food and set off about the middle of the morning for my crag, on foot, of course. I climbed to the very top and ensconced myself under and among sheltering bushes so that I was certain that I could not be seen from the road in either direction, yet could view it both ways as far as the horizon, except just at the foot of the crag and where, in the distance, hilltops hid the hollows behind them. Close by me I placed my precious kidskin of much watered wine, I might say of water flavored with wine, so that it would keep cool in the thickest shade. The day was hot, clear and still and the rays of the sun fierce. The occasional slight breezes were very welcome.