Presently he paused in his search. He had missed Sard by half inches two or three times. Presently Pappa Peppy stopped not more than a yard from Sard and said in a little, cold, clear voice, “Lord pity the poor sailors on a night like this! That’s ten times I’ve been round this room looking for that drink. It’s been witchcraft. I can see you here, and well I’ve known you were here all the time, and I know you’re doing it with your witchcraft, you black beast. I’ve watched you doing it, but you needn’t think to scare Pappa Peppy. He’s the Lord’s, he is; he isn’t one of yours. He’s a lily for the pure to look to. He fears not Satan nor all his minions. Ah! here’s the bottle. I knew I’d come to it, if I kept to the south far enough.”
Sard heard the cork drawn from the bottle and the gurgle as he drank raw aniseed brandy.
“That was what I wanted,” said Pappa Peppy. “A man like me who takes a lot out of himself has to put it back or go under. And I’ll have another like that—ah! I’ll have another like that. And now I can lie down on the floor without holding on, and let the storm roar itself sick. I don’t care, I don’t care. To-morrow when I get hold of that box of matches, I’ll show it what I think of it.”
The bottle dropped from his hand. It must still have been a third full, for as it rolled away some liquid gurgled out of it. Pappa Peppy gurgled in sympathy or in tune, and composed himself to sleep, sitting up against the wall. He passed into a drunken unconsciousness almost at once, breathing with dreadful difficulty, being in fact at the point of strangulation, through his throat pressing against his collar. After two or three convulsive gasps, he shook himself out of his dangerous position and lapsed sideways. “There’ll be death upon the sea this night,” he murmured; “I’ve known gales, but never anything like this.” After this he slept and the village slept.
It must have been full midnight when the door opened suddenly and the cool night wind blew in from the desert. The woman was there. “Come you,” she said.
Pappa Peppy groaned and fought with his drink. Sard rose up and came to the door. The woman had a little leather bag full of food for him and a leather-covered gourd full of water.
“If you go past the houses,” she said, “and follow up the cañon, to the end, you will come out below the icefields. In all my living here I have only heard of one man who has ever crossed those fields. His name was Gonzalez: he lived a hundred years ago. He crossed them and reached San Agostino in five days.”
“It’s San Agostino that I want to reach,” Sard said.
“Go then,” the woman said, “and may you have that man’s luck. He was my grandfather. But know this: you’re in the land of the bad men, the land of Red Sleeve and the Jacarillos, and not one other soul for thirty miles would have done what I do, not one other soul.”
“Tell me your name,” Sard said, “that if ever I get among my people again, I will think of you with gratitude until I die.”