Outland

by Mary Austin

“And how shall I think to win the King’s Desire and not think of how it was lost?” And so having worked round in a circle again he did think of it; what looks and sighs and wooing touches had gone to that betrayal.

“If I could get at him,” he cried, “if I could only get at him”; and groaned and struck with his stone hammer deep into the soft earth.

It was difficult for Trastevera, who alone partook of his stormy confidences, to be patient with his consuming thought, since she was herself the happier, free of the obsession of Ravenutzi. For the Outliers remembered now how she had been against him in the beginning, and blamed themselves for overriding with their weighty reasons that delicate presentiment. Warmed by this support, all her power of foreseeing put forth again and promised them success. She burned with foreknowledge that kept time like a poised and constant needle with what went on afar behind wooded hills and in secret valleys. Often as we lay in the chaparral and heard the bees fumble at the flagons of the wild currant, and saw the young rabbits rising to drink delicately of dew in the shallow cup of leaves, she would start up bright and hot, sniffing battle. As she drooped and grieved, or snatches of triumphant song burst from her, we guessed what went on between our men and Oca’s a day’s journey south and west.

It was in that quarter they defended themselves for as long as enjoyment of the King’s Desire exceeded all other considerations. It was a region of high hills, set close, well covered; narrow cañons choked with chaparral; rain-fed springs, trailless steep barrancas. Here they kept like foxes, quick and slinking, and the Outliers hunted them, not often with success. The cover was too thick for slings, and the ways too steep to give free play with the hammers. The enemy showed themselves and ran, involving the Outliers in a maze of blind gullies, and came out unscathed and mocking on hills above them. They made elaborate false clues and set traps which at the last moment they wanted the courage to spring, but never came to any open issue because of the King’s Desire. They had the Treasure in hand at last, and could not be persuaded to leave it. Where it was they hung like flies at a honey-pot. You could never find the Far-Folk very far nor very long from one another. They would have out the jewels and gloated upon them, tracing the patterns, holding them this way and that to catch the light, tried on the collars and the armlets, pranked in the crowns, fed upon the mere sight of them as an antidote to defeat. All this was very well for a time, but the drawing of their forces together about the King’s Desire served their enemies more than it served them. Threescore men in a camp were easier hunted than two or three. By keeping in close order they left betraying traces in the forest, and brought down Mancha’s hammerers. To avoid this they made longer flights, swift, uncalculated leaps. Their women and children, unable to keep up with them, were gathered in by the Outliers and carried to River Ward. It began to appear that they must make temporary disposition of their trove until they had possession of their families again, and could make off with both into that wooded country south where there were no man traces and no Outliers could come.

They buried the Treasure once, and then the whole party sat upon the place like brooding quail, and betrayed it by their guarding. So they had it up again, and Ravenutzi and Oca made a plan between them. They were to send the jewels on south under convoy, then by means of the person of the Ward they were to draw Mancha off from River Ward. Then with a free field left the main body of the Far-Folk were to raid the camp at River Ward and recapture their women.

This was the plan: An old man was to have himself captured by Mancha’s men in order to convey to the women news of the rescue waiting them. The Ward, who lay still in some secret place of Ravenutzi’s contriving, was to be brought up to that quarter where it was to their advantage to have Mancha get word of her. A good plan, and worthy of the smith who planned it. It was well agreed to except in one point. No one of them trusted another one to take away the Treasure. So after much argument they fell upon the notion of dividing it. It was evident that as long as it remained in the common custody, no man was free to fight and run, according to his fighting humor or his chances. But give every man his own to carry about with him and he would know what he was fighting for, not with one eye over his shoulder to see how the common object fared. Good logic and sound, answering in many a better case; singularly not in this. Settling on a division of the King’s Desire proved a much easier matter than dividing it. They were two days wrangling over the manner of the division, and another trading and bargaining and matching lots among themselves. Then followed the period of inaction, planned to give the Outliers the impression that they had withdrawn from that part of the country. The next move was to have the Mancha sent seeking in the direction where it was to be made known through the captives the Ward was to be found. Ravenutzi had gone to prepare her for her part in it. Poor child, if it were willingly or not, if she consented at all, or even if she had any clear idea what was required of her, who can say?

In the meantime there were the Far-Folk lying separate, very quiet, every man with his treasure in his bosom to finger and fondle, with the south open before him and the spring coming on by leaps and bounds. Everywhere there were the smell of sap, the mating cry of quail and poppy fires kindling seaward; not much to put the fighting humor in a man.

But the Outliers were not quite in the same case. They were wronged, robbed, betrayed, they distrusted every move of their enemies, kept watches out. From the meeting of the river and the Ledge to the Gap, where the dip of the ranges east began, there was a line of solitary outposts, patrolling all the passages. While the Far-Folk played fox in the thorny covers south, there was in reality a stopped earth between them and their women and the places they had known.

The posts beat eastward half a day each from his own station to the next and back. One of these, going as still as a snake, saw a tall woman with long, coiling hair wrapped about her body, wasted and lovely, following a track in the woods. She followed so patiently, and with so much intention and such sureness, poring above it as though every footprint stabbed her and she hugged the stabbing to her breast; urged forward on it with such anguished purpose, held back from it by such torturing fears! Who else but a jealous woman follows in such fashion on the trail of the man she loves? The Outlier counted himself a poor guesser if this were not Ravenutzi’s wife following Ravenutzi. He followed, too, at a discreet distance. He might, perhaps, have come alongside her without attracting her attention, so intently was it fixed upon what lay before her, what she could not withhold herself from seeking, and was afraid to find. Now she hurried on with a kind of fury of discernment. Now she turned aside to compose her anguished bosom the better to read its traces where the trail looped and turned to baffle and bewilder. He followed. Trees gave place to scrub, and that to knee-high chaparral, and that to open hill crowns and broken stony ledges. Here he must skulk behind hills and at a considerable distance, because of the betraying openness. Presently he lost her. He had made sure that she was headed for a certain sag in the crest of a hill, and that by coming around the brow of another one he would have full sight of her again, that he was astounded and chagrined to discover, as it seemed, that she had sunk into the earth. There was no cover and no woman. Below him lay a slight hollow full of loose boulders. Toward this the trail, if trail there was, must have led, and he would have hurried on except for being so sure she had not had time to make it. He lay still where he was, under the jut of a bald hill, and considered.

Presently he saw a fox come out of its hole on the opposite side and begin to trot across the hollow; it started between tall boulders, but swerved, went sidewise, muzzle pointed with suspicion. Within the ring of boulders then lay something that was neither stick nor stone. From his post the watcher could not say very well what it was until the shadows had shrunk by about an hour. And then he saw the woman. She lay flat, face downward, waiting.