But the landlord, who was in a frenzy of impatience, drew him aside and talked to him, and in the end seemed to persuade him; for in a few minutes the matter was settled.
Antoine came back, and said sullenly, ‘Forward, Monsieur,’ the two others stood on one side, I shrugged my shoulders and kicked up my horse, and in a twinkling we two were riding on together—man to man. I turned once or twice to see what those we had left behind were doing, and always found them standing in apparent debate; but my guard showed so much jealousy of these movements that I presently shrugged my shoulders again and desisted.
I had racked my brains to bring about this state of things. Strange to say, now I had succeeded, I found it less satisfactory than I had hoped. I had reduced the odds and got rid of my most dangerous antagonists; but Antoine, left to himself, proved to be as full of suspicion as an egg of meat. He rode a little behind me, with his gun across his saddlebow, and a pistol near his hand; and at the slightest pause on my part, or if I turned to look at him, he muttered his constant ‘Forward, Monsieur!’ in a tone which warned me that his finger was on the trigger. At such a distance he could not miss; and I saw nothing for it but to go on meekly before him to the Roca Blanca—and my fate.
What was to be done? The road presently reached the end of the valley and entered a narrow pine-clad defile, strewn with rocks and boulders, over which the torrent plunged and eddied with a deafening roar. In front the white gleam of waterfalls broke the sombre ranks of climbing trunks. The snow line lay less than half a mile away on either hand; and crowning all—at the end of the pass, as it seemed to the eye—rose the pure white pillar of the Pic du Midi shooting up six thousand feet into the blue of heaven. Such a scene so suddenly disclosed, was enough to drive the sense of danger from my mind; and for a moment I reined in my horse. But ‘Forward, Monsieur!’ came the grating order. I fell to earth again, and went on. What was to be done?
I was at my wits’ end to know. The man refused to talk, refused to ride abreast of me, would have no dismounting, no halting, no communication at all. He would have nothing but this silent, lonely procession of two, with the muzzle of his gun at my back. And meanwhile we were fast climbing the pass. We had left the others an hour—nearly two. The sun was declining; the time, I supposed, about half-past three.
If he would only let me come within reach of him! Or if anything would fall out to take his attention! When the pass presently widened into a bare and dreary valley, strewn with huge boulders and with snow lying here and there in the hollows, I looked desperately before me, and scanned even the vast snow-fields that overhung us and stretched away to the base of the ice-peak. But I saw nothing. No bear swung across the path, no izard showed itself on the cliffs. The keen, sharp air cut our cheeks and warned me that we were approaching the summit of the ridge. On all sides were silence and desolation.
MON DIEU! And the ruffians on whose tender mercies I was to be thrown might come to meet us! They might appear at any moment. In my despair I loosened my hat on my head, and let the first gust carry it to the ground, and then with an oath of annoyance tossed my feet from the stirrups to go after it. But the rascal roared to me to keep my seat.
‘Forward, Monsieur!’ he shouted brutally. ‘Go on!’
‘But my hat!’ I cried. ‘MILLE TONNERRES, man! I must—’
‘Forward, Monsieur, or I shoot!’ he replied inexorably raising his gun. ‘One—two—’