I do not know what things leaped together in the man’s mind, what circumstance but half observed, what weakness of his blood yet unconfessed, what scrupulosity of honor. “Stop!” he said, and the swearer’s hand slacked limply. Mancha propped it up fiercely with his own.
“By the honor of the Maiden Ward,” he swore, “it comes back again.”
Prassade gurgled in his throat. In the gray light as they looked at each other, it grew upon them that the loss of the Treasure meant betrayal. Daria, Zirriloë, the four keepers, to whom should they apportion dishonor? From that time, said Herman, no man looked full at his neighbor or spoke freely what he thought until they came to Deep Fern.
In the meantime it had occurred to me that I was not seeing as much of Ravenutzi as was implied in my promise to Trastevera. Besides, I thought it might be interesting to know what he thought of the redisposal of the King’s Treasure. I had followed the use of the Outliers up to this time in not speaking of it to him.
I was sitting between the roots of a redwood steeped in the warm fragrance and languor of a pine forest in the spring, when this notion occurred to me. The force with which this idea caught me might have arisen from Trastevera’s wishing it at that moment, or Ravenutzi’s being engaged on some business that made my presence advisable. Accordingly I looked for the smith in the accustomed places, where, in the fulfillment of his hostage, he made a point of being unobtrusively and contentedly about. He could be found oftenest with Noche, the only one of the men who afforded him an unaffronting companionship. But this morning I could not find him in the Fern, nor at his smithy under the fall, nor with the fishers at the creek. It was quite by accident that I came upon him some hours later sitting on a stump in an artificial clearing not much frequented by the Outliers, since it had been a hunters’ camp and had the man taint about it. As he sat turning over some small matters in his hand, his brow knitting and unknitting, the whole man seemed to bristle with some evil, anxious intent. If there had been flames jutting from him, green spitting flames from eye and brow, they could not have given to him an aspect more sinister and burning. The mobile tip of his nose twitched slightly, the full, gracile lips were drawn back, bracketed by deep, unmirthful lines. The whole personality of the man pulsed and wavered with the fury of his cogitations, which, when he looked up and saw me, he gathered up with a gesture and disposed of like a snake swallowing its skin.
From the moment that his eyes lighted on mine his look neither flinched nor faltered, but all the evil preoccupation of him seemed to retreat and withdraw under their velvet. His mood yielded, as it seemed to me he always did yield, gracefully to my understanding and the security of sympathy. He had been busy as I came up, with some bits of leaves and blossoms and sticks, all of special significance, by which the Outliers could communicate as well as by letter. He was tying them in a bundle, which, as soon as he saw me, he began to untie and scatter as though there had been no object in it but mere employment.
Seeing him set his foot on some shredded petals of a sentimental significance, I thought he might have been composing a message to some woman of his own, to her who had come to me at Leaping Water perhaps, and destroyed it as one tears verses written in secret. I was quite willing to help him from the embarrassment of being caught at such an occupation by falling in with his first suggestion.
“Come,” he said, making room on the stump beside him, “it is a good day for teaching you to be completely the Outlier that I believe you are at heart.”
He lifted a heap of twigs and flowers, chose a spray of laurel and berries of toyon, with two small sticks, one of which was carefully measured three-fourths of the length of the other.
“Now what does this say?”