They were afoot nearly all of that day, for besides having far to go, the men were stiff with battle. They traveled in this order—first Ravenutzi, limping a little, and Mancha stumbling close upon his heels. Neither of these spoke a word more than necessary the whole of that going. Then came Prassade, who groaned at times and made a gesture with his hands as though his heart were torn out of him and he saw it there in the trail and trampled on it with his feet. Next Noche, muttering in his beard and seeming at times to rehearse the incidents of battle, lifting and hugging somewhat in his arms and shaking his huge shoulders. After these came Herman and the men, among whom was that one who, following the tall woman, had found the smith and betrayed the Far-Folk to capture.
They came behind the others a little distance and whispered at times among themselves. They talked of Mancha’s fight with the smith and how Oca went mad with rage bestriding the dead body of his son, striking so furiously with his pike he could not fetch it back again, and how Prassade had taken him from behind.
They told also how the women of the Far-Folk had come in from some bleak hilltop where they hung like buzzards, and surrendered, asking no privilege but to tend their wounded. Once it occurred to Herman to ask if Ravenutzi’s wife was among them, and the men said no. At that Herman and Mancha looked at one another and the same thought was in the minds of both but they kept it to themselves. About an hour after midday it began to appear that they had done wisely in bringing with them this man who had followed Ravenutzi’s wife. The smith seemed determined to mislead them. He wished to turn out of his earlier trail very far to the right, and could not understand why this man protested so much nor why Mancha paid any attention to him.
“This is the way,” he said; “who should know it if not I?”
“By the Friend, smith, it may be your way,” said the man, “but it was not the way your woman took following your trail, and I hard upon hers.”
“You saw that?” cried Ravenutzi. “A woman, my wife, following me to—to the place where we are going?” Herman said it was the first time he had seen Ravenutzi beside himself; he grew gray, a film came before his eyes through which the pupils opened, blank pits of horror.
“You saw that,” he cried, “and you let her go!”
“Ah,” said the man, “but I judged you the better game.”
Ravenutzi twisted like a man on a rope. He set off running.
“This is the way,” he said, “it is shorter so.” And the rest ran on to keep up with him. They came in this running fashion to the place of the boulders where the woman had lain face downward in the dust, and passed over the sag in the hills where she had been last seen disappearing. Beyond this was stony country; great boulders huge as houses lay all a-heap at the foot of a steep ridge. Smaller stones and rubble from the slope had drifted down and choked the upper crannies between the boulders, so that under them were windy galleries and spacious caves. There was no game nor foodful plant, only coarse tufts of grass between wide stones, nothing to draw men, only shelter and safe hiding.