XII
HOW AN OUTLIER SAW A TALL WOMAN FOLLOWING A TRAIL AND MANCHA MET THE SMITH AGAIN
I have no notion how long we lay in the neighborhood of River Ward. By this time we had lost all track of the calendar, Herman and I, and the Outliers had none except the orderly procession of the season’s bloom and fruit and mating time. Great umbrageous clouds came up behind the hills and were cut down by the wind. Clear days succeeded one another, matched so perfectly for warmth and color that the consciousness took no account of the dividing nights. Crowns of foothills lying seaward showed increasing green and then faint flecks of poppy color. These were our quietest days, for though there was fighting and following, Herman and I had no active part in it. Consider how few we were in a great land, and no trumpeting, no shock of guns, no daily bulletin. Ten men would set out on the mere stirring of an animal sense that beyond a certain hill or in a known hollow lurked the breeders of offense. And then no news of them except as they came or did not come again. Companies of Far-Folk and Outliers would fence all day each to come at the other unsuspected: flights and evasions and sharp encounters took place in such deeps of leafage as dulled all sound. All this was covered, swept over as carefully as the wild creature hides its ways.
Often now, walking on the tawny-colored hill that sleeps above the bay with the Mission between its paws, I look back at the warm-tinted slopes, beyond the reach of the encroaching fogs, and wonder under what peaks, between what long blue ranges we lay that season. What tumult and warfare goes on in those still spaces unregarded? But we have never, as I said in the beginning, got any nearer to it than Broken Tree.
The Outliers stuck to the track of the Far-Folk, and had so much the better of them in readiness and organization that before long they had captured the most of their women. Under Mancha our men had sought out their homes, abandoned so hurriedly, in the shallow, brush-grown cañons, and had burned and broken what they found. That Ravenutzi had joined the Far-Folk we knew, for once when they had come to parley over a wounded man, they saw the hostage at Oca’s back directing the Council by such knowledge of the Outliers as he had acquired by long residence. Oca blew out his long beard, laughing as he listened.
I knew too from one of the captive women, that he still concealed from his wife the place where he had hidden the Ward. The explanation Ravenutzi had given to Oca of the use he should make of Zirriloë’s person in the game that was yet to be played, set that chief chuckling in his beard like a cataract.
But to his wife Ravenutzi had denied seriousness: laughed, kissed her burned throat, blinded, bound her with an ingenuity of charm and tenderness until she grew tame under his hand. Then she would rage the more bitterly when he was away, suspecting him with the girl in hiding; flaming with jealousy until his return found her burned out, white and faint, creeping humbly to his caress.
This, I say, I had from one of the captives, for I talked of her to the Outliers only with Trastevera. I think the woman’s story was known to them. She was seen often flitting from some post of observation when they came with prisoners, and though it was certain she had been twice inside the Ledge seeking the place where Zirriloë lay hidden, no motion was made to take her. They judged her no doubt hunted by a more remorseless enemy; the same that drove on Mancha’s trail and wasted him in the night. It was strange to me at first when I looked on the Hammerer’s passion-hollowed face, to see how it was contradicted by the youthful fuzziness of his blond hair and the round stalwartness of his frame, until I realized that he tried to make his body what his hammer was, the instrument of his satisfaction, and nursed it carefully to that end. But here the invisible enemy had him at point. Eat he could, and bathe, and exercise himself and rough the handle of his hammer to his grasp, and tighten the thongs. But in the night sleep and jealousy contended, and he turned in his bed and set his teeth upon his hands. His eyes reddened at the lids, and when he would be sitting among us, his attention would be forever wandering, and there would be a half inadvertent movement of those same hands as if to rend and tear. It was plain that he came but half out of some burning preoccupation to attend to whatever his men brought to his notice, and slipped back into it even between the utterance of two words, like a drowned insect in a glass. He was seldom at River Ward, seeming easier to be on the trail and in action. That there was only one trail that interested him was perfectly evident. He cared nothing whatever for the recovery of the Treasure if only he might get at Ravenutzi and find where the Ward was hidden. And as often as Outliers and Far-Folk came together in running fights, his men fell apart tacitly to afford him the craved-for opportunity. As we knew afterward, by Oca’s express direction, the Far-Folk closed round the smith to oppose him. As often as Mancha came back unslaked, his new whetted fury turned on himself. Bitter as these frustrated encounters were, they were less so than those times when they surprised their enemy and found Ravenutzi not with them. Where was he then but lingering in some shut quarter with the Ward! One would know that this had occurred when the Hammerer sat upon the edges of his bed the night long goading himself with recollections.
“Give over; give up,” cried Trastevera to him. “She never thought of you; and what do you but suck poison from the thought of her?”
“And what,” said he, “shall I think of, if I do not think of her? Do you advise me to think of him?”
“Think of your work, how you are to win back the King’s Desire for us.”