“Ma foi,” muttered de Sancerre, as he crawled softly from between the intoxicated State and the bedrugged Church into the shadow into which Noco had stolen, “had I not learned a trick or two in camps, ’tis I who would be nodding, not Coheyogo. I would I could remain to see the outcome of this contest between a poison and a snake!”
Noco had grasped him by the arm, and in another instant de Sancerre found himself stealing toward Doña Julia’s cabin through the darkest corner of the crowded square. Either the saints or the moon-god, or senseless chance, granted the Frenchman favors at that crucial hour; for, as he approached Coyocop’s sacred abode, wellnigh hidden from sight beneath hillocks of cut flowers, a group of enthusiasts at the feast, still unconquered by the fermented juice of the cassia-berry, had mounted the food-stained benches and raised a maudlin, monotonous chant, in which the onlooking plebeians accompanied them. At the same moment a crowd of boys and girls at the further end of the square had begun a weird, ungraceful, unseemly dance, in which, as time passed, men and women joined with shouts of wild laughter. Presently the kettle-drum added its barbaric clamor to the din which fretted the darkness as it crept across the disordered square. Even the sun-priests, heated by the epidemic of gayety which had seized the town, had left their sacred fire to the care of a chosen few, and were now mingling with the shouting, dancing, delirious multitude upon a pretext of good-fellowship, which was not too well received.
“Wait here, señor,” whispered Noco, in a guttural voice which shook with excitement, pushing de Sancerre against the wall at the rear of Doña Julia’s hut. “Don’t stir until I return. I fear some priest may still be watching me.”
The old crone disappeared around the corner of the cabin, and de Sancerre stood, trying to swallow his insistent heart, as he listened to the uproar in the square and, presently, to the voice of Julia de Aquilar whispering to Noco almost at his very side.
“Come,” hissed Noco, at his shoulder, seizing him by the wrist, and dragging Doña Julia toward the black shelter of the forest by the other hand. “No word! No rest! There will be no safety for us until we reach the trees.”
Followed through the gloom by the harsh discord of a mad town’s revelry, Doña Julia de Aquilar, of Seville, and Count Louis de Sancerre, of Languedoc, linked together by a wrinkled beldame, who looked at that moment like a grinning witch escaping to the wilds with the helpless victims of her spite, hurried, with hearts growing lighter with every step, toward a pathless wilderness, in which a thousand lurking perils would menace them at every turn.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN WHICH DE SANCERRE UNDERGOES MANY VARIED
EMOTIONS
The full moon of May, the moon of old corn, shone down upon a virgin forest bounding with the high pulse of a ripe spring-time. Its white splendor tiptoed along the outskirts of impenetrable thickets, or danced gayly down majestic glades, patrolled by oak and hickory, sassafras, and poplar trees. Presently, shunning a menacing morass, the silvery outriders of the moon’s array would file along a narrow bayou or charge en masse across the broad surface of a trembling lake. And while the triumphant moonlight took possession of a splendid province, the thousand voices of the forest murmured at midnight a welcome to the conqueror.
Panting for breath, and worn with the friction of their race for freedom through swamps and woods, de Sancerre and his companions, after long hours of hurried flight, paused to recover their strength, far to the southward of the City of the Sun. The marvellous endurance of Julia de Aquilar, whose urgency had granted to the enraged Noco no chance to protest against the fervor of their mad career, had put even the wiry, hardened frame of the lithe Frenchman to a stubborn test. Hand in hand de Sancerre and the Spanish girl had sped onward, followed by the grumbling crone, now breaking their way through vindictive underbrush, anon wetting their feet in marshy vales, again making progress beneath stately trees, avoiding the deep gloom of threatening recesses and following a moon-track, like hounds upon a scent. Behind them sat certain death; beyond them, a joyful promise lured them deeper and ever deeper into the primeval wilds.
Tottering and breathless, old Noco reached the crest of the tree-crowned hillock upon which Doña Julia and de Sancerre, gasping, speechless, but strong with renewed hope, stood awaiting her coming. Throwing her old bones upon the damp grass, Noco lay moaning for a time in senile misery. Youth, under the spurs of fear and hope, had led old age a cruel race. Noco had come into the forest to solve by moon-magic the secret of her grandson’s flight, and, lo! the wizard upon whom she relied had become a will-o’-the-wisp, in tattered velvets, using his diabolical power to kidnap Coyocop, the spirit of the sun.