... “Long, oh long, have I been gathering lilies!...”
She stood up as well as she could under the bent pine, to draw her dress into order, and asked me who had gone on the trail of Ravenutzi. I named all the men, and then Herman.
“He too!” She looked at me with curious mocking. “All the men are mad, I think. Now I have a mind to go and see what this girl is like who sets all people by the ears, and when I have found her I shall come to tell you.”
She smiled sidewise whimsically as she stooped to the chaparral again. Though there was inordinate hate in her look and insuperable hardness, there was that in her fierce, tormented spirit so laid hold on me that I neither put out my hand nor raised my voice to stay her as she went.
XI
HOW THE OUTLIERS CAME UP WITH THE FAR-FOLK AT A PLACE CALLED THE SMITHY, AND HERMAN CAME BACK TO RIVER WARD
Nothing in all that struggle initiated by the lifting of the King’s Desire, pleased me so much as the way the Far-Folk outstretched themselves by their own cunning. They had chewed the cud of the old grudge so long, disgorging and regorging, that life smacked no other savour for them. They made the mistake of imagining no other among their enemies. That slow treachery of Ravenutzi’s, while it burned against the honor of the Outliers, kept the habit of treacherous thinking alive among their enemies. The Far-Folk wasted themselves upon the method and left not much to reckon with beyond the fact of possession.
Let them once get their hands upon the King’s Desire! They asked no more than that, planned very little more. Communication with Ravenutzi was difficult. Never greater than the time of the Meet from which they hoped so much, when the thought of the Treasure was uppermost in every man’s mind. Then hope overrode precaution and drew them, when they had most need to keep in the dark, to cluster just beyond River Ward like wastrels above the water where the dead are about to rise. There, had he not had other business for his thoughts, Mancha should have discerned them. But the Hammerer’s preoccupation, though it saved them from detection by increasing the sense of safety, hurried the unearthing of the King’s Desire.
News of this move only reached the Far-Folk as they lay all together, with no preparation for flight or siege, in a shallow cañon back of River Ward, humming with excited talk, like a hive about to swarm. The mere hint of frustration fanned them into a fury, which was succeeded when the Treasure was actually in camp, by gross, babbling boastfulness and exultation. Close on this came word from Ravenutzi that he had fled the Outliers with the Ward, and they were to await him in a place called the Smithy.
If they wondered why he should have taken so much trouble for a girl who had already served her turn, they had either less interest in his relation to her, or trusted him more. What did concern them was that the same message told them that by this time the Outliers were in a fair way to discover the loss of the King’s Desire.
They judged they would be tracked and planned their defense in keeping with what they thought the Outliers’ probable estimate of themselves. They reasoned that the Outliers would be expecting lies in the enemy’s country. They left a boy behind them to watch. If the Outliers lost the trail he was to run and bring the Far-Folk word. If they struck the trail to the Smithy he was to turn them from it by the simple truth. There they overdid themselves. The Outliers, not yet inured to lies, believed what the boy told them.