We struck palms heavily. Then he turned to Speed and motioned him to retire.
Speed walked slowly toward a half-buried bowlder and sat down out of ear-shot.
“For your sake,” said the poacher, clutching my hand in a tightening grip—“for your sake I have let Mornac go—let him pass me at arm’s-length, and did not strike. You have dealt openly by me—and justly. No man can say I betrayed friendship. But I swear to you that if you miss him this time, I shall not miss—I, Robert the Lizard!”
“You mean to kill Mornac?” I asked.
His eyes blazed.
“Ami,” he said, “I once spoke of ‘a little red deer,’ and you half understood me, for you are wise in strange ways, as I am.”
“I remember,” I said.
His strong fingers closed tighter on my hand. “Woman—or doe—it’s all one now; and I am out of prison—the prison he sent me to! Do you understand that he wronged me—me, the soldier Garenne, in garrison at Vincennes; he, the officer, the aristocrat?”
He choked, crushing my hand in a spasmodic grip. “Ami, the little red deer was beautiful—to me. He took her—the doe—a silly maid of Paradise—and I was in irons, m’sieu, for three years.”
He glared at vacancy, tears falling from his staring eyes.