I thought that after dinner it might be well to sit again beside the fort where we could watch the prairie. There is a comforting sense of security that comes to one at nightfall when one has looked in all directions and found all things well. So for a while she left me to the orgy of washing dishes, but when I had turned the last plate top down upon our kitchen log to dry, I saw her returning.

She came humming a tune, a catchy tune—I recognized it at once—that the mandolins had tinkled in the Havana cafe, and from the mischievous curves about the corners of her mouth I knew that her mood was adorable. So I caught up the tune, whistling softly, and crossed to her holding out my hands.

"It's a corking fox-trot," I said, for the moment stopping our orchestra. "Let's dance it!"

But she drew back, laughing outright.

"I don't know how!"

"Don't dance?" I must have looked my amazement, for she answered:

"I've often danced, all alone, when I just couldn't help it; but there hasn't been any one to teach me your kind!"

"I will," I cried delightedly. "We'll begin with that fox-trot!"

"We'd look awfully silly," she replied. "Besides, the name of your dance is atrocious."

I felt rather thankful that I hadn't suggested the shimmy.

"That may get you out of it now," I announced, "but when we reach the yacht I'm going to teach you ten hours a day. Understand?—ten hours a day!"

Again came the tantalizing expression, as she daintily caught her skirt and made me a royal curtsey, saying:

"It's beyond all measure charming of you, Chancellor. But shall I be so difficult?"

"Don't joke about a wonderful prospect," I answered. "You're difficult because of your grace, not the lack of it—if that's what you mean!" But from her indifferent way of dismissing the subject I judged it was not what she had meant, at all.

The sun must have set while we were encircling my pool. Then we passed on into a still denser growth, following a crooked path that led to the fort—entering a mysterious shadow-land that twilights have the trick of producing when overhead foliage shuts out the afterglow and the serene forest gloom is painted in tones of gray. The soft earth we trod was dark, and the water lay phantom-like in its black bowl. Except for the few times I held aside a swinging wildwood vine for her to pass, we might have been two drifting spirits—so quietly did we move, and so unknowingly were we affected by the hour, the place.

At the edge of our forest, where that long ago prairie fire had blighted a grove of palm trees that subsequently fell upon each other like an entangled pile of jackstraws, she took my hand to get across and, freed from the clinging shadows, we ran out beneath the sky—then gasped in amazement at its splendor.

It was not a sunset, not an afterglow in the usual sense of afterglows, but a sky of deep, smouldering red equally distributed from horizon to horizon; as though everywhere below the world a conflagration raged. I could not at first speak for the grandeur of it, and when I turned to her words were again checked by the look upon her face. For this dull, permeating glow—this enchantment from the heavens—touched her brow, her cheeks, her parted lips, with a light that aroused in me a thousand devils and a thousand gods; it lingered over her hair as if striving to concentrate itself into a halo there; and in her eyes that gazed afar were suggested the awakening of deeper fires, of wilder mysteries.

"God, what a sky," I at last exclaimed, through sheer panic at the imminence of crying aloud my love for her.

"What a sky, O God," she whispered, delicately turning my profane outburst to a sigh of thankfulness.

But, better than she, I knew the meaning of that sky. I knew that down over the western edge of the world blazed a huge funeral pyre on which my past was being changed to harmless ashes; while in the east flames were already lighted beneath the on-coming crucible of destiny, from whose purifying heat a new love arose. Farther into obscurity would sink the one; up and on would come the other; and so the sky was now roseate unto its zenith, reflecting the glory of these miracles. I followed the look of her eyes and saw, high against the red, a lone crane flying majestically homeward to the seclusion of his swamp; and it typified my own belated heart that, without questioning the whence or why, unerringly obeyed a silent voice which called it to another sanctuary.

I wanted to tell her this, but dared not. And so we stood, spellbound, while the night brought out the blue—and the young moon changed from red to silver—and the stars came down to take their places. Then slowly we passed on and sat by the fort, leaning our backs against it; in meditation looking across the prairie that had become so changed a place to us.

The night grew sweet with the purity of untouched wilderness as, shoulder to shoulder, we sat talking in low tones of Smilax and Echochee. She had wondered about them no few times that day, and now I, too, felt some concern. Yet the Everglades lay far eastward and, for any reason giving up Big Cove, I knew he would plunge as deeply into it as his pursuers dared follow. To-morrow would be time enough to worry, I assured her, so we talked about Monsieur, the Azurian throne, and—I could not help it—of another Chancellor who would build her kitchen fires. But I tried to keep all bitterness from my words. In the vague light I could see that her face was serious, and very tender. Then for a time we sat without speaking.

Perhaps it was the place, the charm; perhaps a magic was working stronger than I knew; but words came to my lips that I stubbornly refused to speak. I fought against them; they, too, fought with grim insistence; so as a compromise, looking straight ahead and pretending to jest even while I accused, I said:

"You've been listening!"

"Listening?" Her eyes opened prettily, alert as they always were to parry banter with banter.

"Yes, listening—at the keyhole like a common gossip. A nice pastime for a Princess, surely!"

"At the—keyhole?" She was proceeding warily now; her mind, as in a game of hide-and-seek, was on tiptoe, in expectation of discovering me at every step.

"Yes," I repeated. "And you heard my heart admitting that it's happy—to've found something it was hungry for."

For the briefest instant I thought a tremor ran through her shoulder, as if a little chilly sensation had rippled her nerves. But it was a silly idea, because she lightly replied:

"Corn cakes, maybe. It ought to feel quite stuffed after the seven you had for dinner."

"Six," I corrected.

"Seven," she insisted.

"But I know!"

"So do I," she laughed, "that you stole one from my plate when you thought I wasn't looking."

"I needed that one."

"I never doubted it," she agreed.

Wild words again sprang to my lips, but this time I ruthlessly strangled them. Yet I wanted to say: "I took from you because you stole from me!" And I wanted to ask—O, shades of suffering Dante, how I longed to ask!—if her dear heart were hungering, too, that she should have needed my own to feed it!—if that were her excuse for thievery!

But already I had overstepped my resolution, although not feeling desperately contrite about it after the sleight-of-hand way that a declaration of love had been changed into the accusation of filching a corn cake. Yet it had been a narrow escape and I thanked my gods for the chance of pulling up, of again getting the right perspective.

To tell her anything at all before Echochee came would be the act of an utterly selfish cad, for if she did not want my love—and there was little enough reason to suppose that she did—her position would be intolerable. In such an eventuality never again could we sit beside the fort on nights like this, no longer would she want a cleared path leading to her bailiwick. We would be as two estranged creatures doomed to live near yet apart; each a daily witness of the other's unhappiness; neither able by word or deed to give relief. Ah, I was glad she did not even suspect that I cared a whit for her! I lit my pipe and in moody silence smoked.

A pipe stem is a safe thing for man to grip his teeth upon when silence is a virtue. Here in our forest I was master, the undisputed superior force; and I wondered with a fascinating wonder how that ancestor, who climbed down from his tree at nightfall, would have been greeting her! I visualized his cunning face, now peering at me through the ages, leering at me with bared tusks, bidding me take what was my own by right of might! I felt the savage splendor of it. The wildness of this place, its solitude, its distance from mankind, supported me. The cry of a night bird out on the prairie told that it, too, was preying, or being preyed upon; and, as if being stirred by this, a panther sent his wail across the night. I listened for a mate to answer, but she did not. A large, whitish moth flying out of the shadows passed clumsily within a few inches of my face, its wings swishing as a bird's; and it, too, was without a mate.

Then, as in the following silence I continued to listen, some far off words came back to me. They came as the scent of lavender comes when rain is pattering on the shingles, and some one opens the old trunk that, ever since you can remember, has stood back under the rafters of the sloping roof; the hallowed old trunk where a veil of yellowing lace is stored—a piece of white satin, a blue or gray faded uniform, and maybe a wee shoe, and a lock of hair. Every one who has leaned above that trunk—and thank God they are legion!—has also listened to a voice coming faintly through the past. And so words out of a lesser past now came to me, as they were meant to be written on a torn wine card: "I am in danger!"

She had been in danger of a brute, and had offered the safety of her keeping to me. And the vision of my savage ancestor, though retreating sullenly, faded into nothing. Then I felt her body press against me softly and, looking down, I saw that she had fallen asleep, with her head—precious, trusting thing—resting against my shoulder.

For an hour I sat motionless, fearing to awake her. Finally one of my legs went to sleep, and soon my other leg. Yet it was a welcome discomfort because endured for her. And I suppose the numbness must eventually have crept the length of my body, for, I, too, slept; awaking, I did not know how much later, to find her gone.

Then I stumbled back to my lean-to, but did not go inside. This was not the night, nor mine the mood, to shut high heaven from my eyes, my thoughts, the lambent flame of my love? So I chose the open, and lay on my back gazing up into the silhouetted palm fronds, catching glimpses of a star that here or there peeped through at me, steeping my thoughts in solitude.

For it was that hushed hour of betwixt and between, when crickets, tree-toads and other little creatures of the darkness have wearied themselves to rest; yet also before the daylight life has stirred from its own deep sleep. The silent hour, this is; the one hour in the round of time when nature seems to be absolutely poised in breathless space; when the pendulum of night hangs dead, and dawn is still a great way over the hill. I shared its mysticism, feeling also a rich contentment that she, too, was lying near me somewhere in this same solitude; dreaming, with her cheek upon her arm; her hair kissed by the same dew that cooled my face. I could not, of course, reach out my hand and touch her, but the path led straight; and along this now my heart went begging—impoverished rascal! He went on tiptoe, begging; while I continued to watch for the elusive star, and my soul looked into the level eyes of God.



CHAPTER XXI

PLANTING A MEMORY

A searching look next morning over the prairie revealed no sign of enemies, or of Smilax. Somewhat thoughtful over his continued absence I went to the kitchen and laid the fire, but did not light it because our stock of buttonwood had become reduced to a few small sticks and scraps that would scarcely more than cook one meal, and the use of other woods might at this time be an unwise experiment. So with an eye to prudence I withheld the match until Her Serene Highness should arrive.

When she did not come nor answer to my call, I set out to see what might have detained her, conscious of a vague dread yet not seriously giving in to it; but, after visiting the fort, this grew into an unreasoning fear, and I began to run. It seemed so easy now to understand how some of Efaw Kotee's henchmen could have discovered us, slipped up during the night and overpowered her! What had been a remote possibility yesterday, to-day grew into a certainty. With this obsession torturing me I dashed across the Oasis, finally coming out of the forest at its extreme eastern tip.

Then I saw her but a few yards away. Perhaps the brisk wind, rustling the palms and prairie grass, drowned the noise of my impetuous rush, for she did not turn.

Her face was toward the east, looking above an orange sun that still clung to the horizon. Instinctively I felt that she was thinking of Azuria, that the pictures of it which I had drawn were recrossing before her dreamy vision, forming a panorama of splendor that called more surely than in March the Canadian flats call the Southern water bird. This gave her eyes, her uplifted face, her slightly parted lips, a new glory, and I involuntarily exclaimed:

"Doloria of the Golden Dawn!"

She knew then that I was there and, without turning, reached back one hand to me. Impulsively I took it, raised it to my lips, but afraid to hold it longer I stepped aside as if awaiting her commands. When I had done that she looked over her shoulder, gave a little sigh, and said sweetly:

"Chancellor, I wish you'd convince me that our people are safe, and then help me settle a grave question of state!"

"I think they'll be coming to-day, and——"

"Oh, I hope so!" she clasped her hands.

"As for the state question," I continued, "I'll settle it quickly, if you'll let me."

"No, I'm afraid you can't! No, Chancellor," she gave a little laugh, "you can't be trusted to settle that, at all!" Then firmly, almost severely, putting back into its place a wave of hair that had been coquetting with the breeze, she asked: "Is the fire ready?"

"Ready to light," I answered. "I came to find you."

"Then let's go, for it isn't good to ponder over questions of state before breakfast."

"What is it?" I asked, as we turned back. "Why won't you trust me to settle it?"

Another laugh, more full of pathos, was my answer; nor would she speak again—because of some mischief in her mind, I believed—until, preparing the ambrosial corncakes, she rather abruptly exclaimed:

"I wonder if you deserve any breakfast this morning?"

"Why?" I cried, in feigned alarm.

"Because of your impoliteness."

"My impoliteness was doubtless the need of breakfast. But when was I impolite? I don't remember, honest!"

"Of course, you don't; how could you," she went on rather indifferently. "Were you not such a capable Chancellor I might be more offended. I am tryingly stupid at times, but to be in the very middle of a sentence and discover that the man I'm talking to is fast asleep, is humiliating, to say the least."

Did she think there was a chance of putting over that atrocious yarn on me—of bluffing me into an admission that I had been the first to fall asleep?

"You may be right," I said, with the utmost gravity, "but I did it only in justice to you. You were talking, true enough, but in your sleep; saying things that—well, no gentleman could have remained awake, in the circumstances."

"I didn't," she cried, darting me a look of uncertainty. "Echochee says I never do!"

"Echochee wasn't here last night," I casually replied, poking the coals of her fire closer. "I hope you understand that I didn't listen intentionally; for, of course, you'd never have told me all those things——"

"Stop it," she commanded; and, when I had stopped, there was an ominous silence.

But I would not look at her and indifferently pretended to be busy. I confess that I was deriving a purely masculine enjoyment out of this, and intended to push my counter bluff so vigorously that she would be driven to admit her own. Therefore, after I thought the silence had become sufficiently impressive, I yielded to an impulse that many men find irresistible—I made an egregious ass of myself.

"Lots of people," said I, sliding out upon thin ice with the braggadocio of him who rocks the boat, "chatter like magpies when dozing in an uncomfortable position. Police recognize this, and often arrange a suspect's cell so he'll have to sleep sitting up, then they listen and take down his inmost thoughts. That's the way you chattered last night."

"Chattered!" she caught her breath.

"Yes; just rippled along, you know, telling everything you've been thinking these last couple of days. Some of it was rather interesting. Shall I poke up the fire again?"

"Rather interesting!" She sprang around and faced me with blazing eyes, the picture of embarrassment and fury. "You consider the things I've been thinking the last couple of days 'rather interesting!' Oh," she cried, dashing the pan of corn meal batter to the ground, "you're damnable—I hate you!" There was a whirl of a skirt, the twinkle of a little booted foot, and, by Jove, she had gone flying off like the wind; while I, feeling about the size of a june-bug, stood first on one leg and then the other, wondering what the devil she had been thinking these last couple of days.

Now, when a fellow has made a blatant ass of himself, I hold that the quickest road to salvation is "own up and shut up." If he's forgiven, life may flow on as formerly. If he isn't, he has recourse to the pose of having been grossly misunderstood, and eventually work himself into quite a creditable reproduction of a martyred nobleman. If he's good at that kind of thing, a girl will grow sorry and forgive him in spite of herself. I got this from Tommy, one day, and Tommy knows a lot about women—really, an awful lot.

But the most detestable part of my present muddle was that I had hurt her—I, who would have bartered my life to shield her from hurts! Feeling thoroughly contrite I went quickly in pursuit, looking ahead and on both sides for a glimpse of the dress that meant the world to me. Regardless of boundaries, regardless of everything but to implore an instant forgiveness at whatever cost, I rushed impetuously on, calling her name.

Then I came up with her at the side of the bubbling spring. She was lying prone upon the bank, her face buried in her arms that were crossed beneath it. And, having found her, I could not advance. Something about the lovely grace of her body held me enthralled. Furthermore, I had no right to be here; I was an interloper, a prowler! There were but two things to do, and do at once, to wit, make myself humble and scarce.

"Doloria," I said.

She did not move, perhaps she had not heard, so I kneeled and took one of her hands, whereupon she sprang to her feet looking at me strangely, wildly.

"You've no right here," she cried. "You've broken faith!"

"No, please no," I said quickly. "I'm too desperate to care where I am when you're angry! Since you called me damnable—said you hated me—the world's turned black; so I'm not deliberately trespassing—only lost, because you've taken away your smile!"

"You took it away," she retorted. "You'd murder any girl's smile by such—brutality!"

"Brutality!" I gasped.

"Truthfulness," she stamped her foot.

"But I wasn't truthful," I hurried to tell her. "I lied like the devil to call your bluff—wanted to make you own up because—well, you'd lied a little, too! I never dreamed my joke would hurt you. Great God," I now cried passionately, "to think of hurting you who are my life and breath and——" I caught myself, stopping short and looking at her; then slowly adding: "You didn't say a word in your sleep, I swear it. It was beautiful of you to trust me that way, and—and if you'll rescue our breakfast I'll never be such an idiot again."

She had partly turned away at my impassioned outburst, but the assurance I gave that Somnus had been dumb brought a hint of the fascinating curve to her lips. Yet her eyes still expressed doubt, and I was growing desperate enough even to humor her incredulity, hoping thereby to discover another road to favor, when she asked:

"You're not just saying that?"

"On my honor it's true—every word! I'm sorry, Princess!"

Again she turned away her face, looking across the spring and murmuring, as though to someone there:

"It's because he's hungry, I suppose,"—then whirled and held out both hands to me, in that sweet way of hers. "It's I who am cruel, Chancellor. Come, poor man, I'll feed you; you look as glum as Pharaoh—was Pharaoh glum? I'll beat you to the kitchen!" And she bounded away, almost before the challenge had been given.

Straight she sped with astonishing swiftness, skimming over fallen logs, darting this way and that through festoons of vines, with the grace of a frightened doe. In freedom of motion she was as some wild thing of forest birth, suggesting the spirits of the wind, the dappled sunlight, the dancing waters; yet never lacking an ineffable refinement that added both charm and mystery.

Each of us was breathing fast when, shoulder to shoulder, we reached the fire, she claiming the race without the slightest show of embarrassment.

"But I was holding back," I said, finding combativeness a very fair outlet to pursue, and adding: "You had the start, too!"

"In a race any one has the start who's able to get it," she asserted. "Besides, I set the pace, and all you had to do was follow. I slowed up toward the end, anyway."

The impertinence of it!

"You slowed up because you had to! And I don't believe you were angry a while ago, either!"

"Don't you?" she asked, slowly.

"Not so very," I compromised, seeing the danger signal. "I think you were just making a jolly chump of me, that's all. I don't so much mind making one of myself, but it's rotten having other people do it for me!"

"I suppose," she said indifferently, raising her arms to tuck in a lock of hair, "that if it's worthwhile making the distinction, you might be allowed a choice."

For the pure deviltry of this remark I looked around for something to throw at her, and then saw our fire—a tragic picture of dead ashes which the wind was blowing over a now cold skillet.

"See," I cried, "what our family row has led to! Fire out, breakfast ruined, and here I am due at the office in half an hour!"

"Oh, Jack," she looked at me gravely, putting an end to our banter—and for the first time calling me Jack, though I believe she did it unconsciously—"haven't we any more buttonwood? This is serious, isn't it!"

"Not so very, perhaps. We can try another kind."

"Will it be safe?" she asked, uncertainly.

"With a small fire of very dry hardwood, and this rising wind, what little smoke there is won't hold together long enough to be seen."

"But it'll blow right toward their camp! The wind's changed since yesterday!"

"That's more than two miles off, and they're probably still after Smilax. I'll make a very small fire."

This, indeed, seemed to work well enough, and by the time a new breakfast was ready our uncertainties had become shadows of no consequence.

"But you do know I was angry, don't you?" she asked, out of a clear sky, with an unexpectedness that made me throw back my head and laugh.

"You bet I do! And you beat me in the race, too; and you're the best cook on our block!"

"It seems to be the same old story," she smiled, with affected sorrow, "that food must always be the price of masculine tractability. Ah, the long drawn out tragedy of woman's existence, that she must forever be stuffing man with things to eat, as reptiles are stuffed, to keep him facile!"

"You fail to observe, my little snake charmer," I replied, "that you omitted to say good things to eat. I'm never facile after Smilax feeds me."—Though I owe Smilax an apology for this!

"He must have run great risks of being bitten."

"Oh, no; I'm not the biting kind of snake! I'm a constrictor—I hug!"

"Mercy!" She gave a little gasp, then, turned and went indifferently toward the spring.

Whistling happily I finished the dishes. But I finished them with the promise of a better cleansing next time, and soon was calling her.

She came to me humming the song I had been whistling—an unconscious bit of flattery on her part, but it added to my pleasure. There is, after all, so much to be gained by hitching your wagon to a star, that I tried to believe she deliberately intended it. I would have hitched up oftener to that same star, except for the fact that stars sometimes get hot and furious at too many liberties, and switch their tails and kick the wagons of well-meaning people to smithereens. That it may be better to have had a stellar joy-ride and be sent to hell for speeding than keep your boots forever in the clay, I will neither affirm nor deny; but the prudent man hitcheth to the moon!

As we went toward the fort she turned to me, asking:

"Don't you think they should have been here sooner? Do you fear anything you won't tell me?" Her eyes were anxious, and I saw how insistent this worry had been.

"Everything depends on how far Smilax had to go," I answered. "He'd never dream of coming back until the men gave up—and they might chase him half across the state! So a few extra days doesn't mean anything. They can't catch him, that's certain; and he and Echochee'll only stay away as long as they're pursued. They'll come through, I believe it sincerely; and your Chancellor, sweet Princess, will guard you with his life—with ten lives, if he had them."

"I know that," she murmured, "and shan't worry if you tell me not to."

"Then cheer up! Smilax is a past-master of the swamps and woods, take my word for it!"

"I really suppose Echochee knows a great deal about them, too," she said, after a pause, "for when she was sixteen she had to leave the Reservation with her husband and hide him in the Everglades. She learned a great deal, then."

"Why did she have to do that?"

"He'd fought and killed another Indian, and the officers were expected. But in the fight he received a cut that made him blind. For ten years Echochee fed and clothed him, hunting alligators and watching her chance of slipping the skins to a market. By extreme stinting she finally saved enough to 'buy him loose'—her optimistic way of saying 'pay a lawyer for his defense.' Think, after being outcasts all that time, of leading a blind husband through half a hundred miles of wilderness, with the savings of ten years to wager on a chance of having him cleared!"

"I hope he was," I declared.

"In a sense he was, yes. He knew where she kept the money, and while she was in the lawyer's office persuading him to take the case, her husband stole it and sneaked away."

I uttered a cry at this hideous ingratitude, and she glanced at me, gravely adding:

"Then he got drunk and was run over by a train; so, in a sense, Echochee freed him, after all."

"Oh, the magnanimous courage of a woman's devotion!" I stopped and looked at her. "It's always the same, irrespective of tribe and nation. She's dauntless, world-defying, utterly self-sacrificing. I hope to God, Doloria, that you won't be among those who squeeze their hearts dry! You've lived away from the world and may not know how plentiful these are; but no day passes without its toll of some woman being silently crucified in her losing fight to save a besotted biped—the lord of her earthly temple. It's only by a streak of luck when their stage is cleared, as Echochee's was!"

"That may be all right for clearing the stage," she murmured, "but it doesn't heal the hearts of those who were made to suffer."

I had not fathomed the penetration of her sympathy, being satisfied, man like, to let a swift revenge wipe the slate. She seemed to be contemplating what I had said, and when she again spoke her voice was tender as though it had come unbidden from a wistful reverie.

"I suppose you're right, Jack. The world I've known, only through books, must be full of such cruelties. I rather dread having to go into it. It seems a pity that I can't always live in—in——" then, with a smile, she asked: "Do you ever dream? I don't mean when you're asleep, but awake—wide awake?"

"I rather think I'm dreaming now," I admitted, for a great contentment had fallen about us as we walked beneath the solemn trees.

The silence that followed was again stirred by her voice, saying:

"You mustn't think me childish, but I've always had a secret gateway to a place—my Secret world—where everything is make-believe, and nothing can be but truth and beauty. Often when Echochee was tiresome, or I was tired, I used to slip away and go there."

"I wish you'd take me—won't you?"

"Oh, I can't," she quickly answered, stooping for a flower in our path, holding it in both hands and leaning her face above it.

"Yes," at last I said, "I've a place like that; but I don't know whether I live there in make-believe, or throwing off the make-believe we have to wear in the world you're going to, I live honestly with myself. If you won't take me to yours, sometime maybe you'll come to mine!"

Now, I had no intention of making love to her. We were talking only about secret worlds and day-dreams.

"I'm afraid it might be difficult," she answered, dropping the flower and walking a shade more slowly. "Our lives—yours and mine—are cast along such opposite lines, it seems!"

"That's what Secret worlds are for," I told her, "——that, no matter how far apart we are, our spirits may come and meet; live again, as we've lived here; be happy again—as I've been." I turned, saying with a laugh that was meant to convey an impression of insouciance—yet failing rather miserably: "These two big pines here, Princess, actually make the gateway to my pool—which is, in fact, my Secret world, because you helped me build my home there. So, you see, it wouldn't be very difficult, as you were about to enter without knowing it. Oh, I wish I could tell you more about it!" And I then became silent, too helplessly afraid to go on.

A brighter color had come into her throat and cheeks, but she was smiling whimsically as she said:

"Then we must go around—find another path to the fort—mustn't we!"

She had stopped before me, poised delicately, almost swaying; and for several seconds our eyes, that must have been charged with some untranslatable excitement, held fast. Mine would not let go, and hers I believe could not. Her hands, idly at her sides, were turned palms forward, unconsciously suggestive of supplication.

"Do you know what you remind me of when you stand that way?" I asked.

"No," She looked away now, laughing lightly—though it was more subtly than suddenly done. "What?"

"Of a fairy that's flown from a butterfly moon, just alighting at my threshold and asking to come in."

"Wouldn't a fairy be unseemly forward to come to a young man's threshold and ask admittance?"

"Not admittance, but admission—to my dreams, where nothing is real but you and beauty."

"Dreams are for the old, the young shall see visions!—isn't there a quotation like that?" she asked, smiling.

"You're not playing fair," I laughed—for I was afraid not to laugh, wanting desperately to say that I was seeing the vision now that would be my dream forever!

"I'll play fair if I know the rules," she also laughed. "You haven't told them to me!"

"We'll make them up as we go along!"

"But what are we going to play?"

"Make-believe," I eagerly cried. "That we're exploring our Secret world where we'll come after,"—there was no laugh in my voice now—"you've gone to Azuria, and I'm here alone."

She gave my face a quick, searching look.

"And we only have to pass between these two big trees?" she asked, half lightly, half timidly.

"Only through that gateway, and we're in our world!"

"Why should I go, I wonder?" The question was whispered, almost unconsciously, and catching the tone of it I also whispered:

"To plant a memory, Doloria, that will grow and bloom as long as we live; where each of us may come—when we're lonely."

What forces, intangible, supernal, were at work here no man can tell. Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead through Life's woodland of mysteries—one instant revealing itself in a golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in grumbling blindness.

At this moment our wood seemed rich with mystic presage. Pleadingly my hands went out to her, and trustfully she put hers into them. Slowly I backed between the two big trees, our eyes held as two charmed beings. Everything about me called to her, everything in her urged compliance; and I knew, as did she, that something strange was happening. Yet when I halted she did not falter, but came on, bravely, sweetly, into my arms.

That she should have done this was as inevitable as it was gloriously true. We could no more have continued to stroll side by side through our Oasis, commenting on the seasons, sometimes rapturous over a sunset or the call of a bird, than we could have rubbed a lamp and brought the Whim sailing to us over the sea of grass. Static existences only prevail with static people, and there was too much surgingly dynamic about this twenty year old girl to have encouraged it here. I say, too, with candor that any man of twenty-six whose blood is red is—with the great out-of-doors abetting—not insulated for or against currents. Throw these two alone in a primitive world where their tent is the sky, and a spark must eventually jump across the gradually lessening distance. It is thus that wild things mate—and their mating is incorruptible.

But now as my arms tightened and my face leaned to hers, she gave a half fearful cry and sprang tremblingly back, pressing both hands to her breast, breathing quickly and staring at me with wide eyes.

"Chancellor," she gasped, "this is madness, don't you know it?"

The quick alarm in her voice sobered me and I answered "Yes," for there was nothing else to say. And a moment later when, in an even tone and at a conventional distance, she suggested: "Shall we go on to the fort?" I did not reply, but walked mutely at her side.

Our contact had been too instantaneous for me to collect myself at once, and I wondered how she was managing to do so—or if she were bluffing. For this sudden serene-mindedness she now displayed was quite too enigmatic for my comprehension.

"We planted the memory that will be mine forever," I whispered, trying to see her face which she kept partially hid by keeping half a step ahead of me. "I'll never forget our——"

"Oh," she cried, on the verge of tears, I thought, "don't ever speak to me of it again—ever!"

"It's nothing we ought to regret—it wasn't your fault," I persisted,——

"That's just it—it was my fault, it was," she interrupted passionately, and somehow her hand found mine and pressed it. Was there ever any one more square? "I knew we were going to—do that, and I didn't try to stop it. You'll think that I'm—I'm——"

"The most glorious girl who ever lived," I cried, taking full possession of her hand now.

"Won't you please be honest?" she asked, quite seriously. "I am; and I give you my word I'd never have done it if it hadn't seemed so real—I mean, our planting the memory."

She turned then, and to my relief she was half smiling. For an instant the longing to hold her again showed in my face, but she stopped me with a look. This time it was done with the intention of stopping me, and I stopped. Yet the smile had not left her face as she said, in a tone of sweet confidence:

"Let's be above-the-board-honest with each other in all things, Jack; it makes for long friendships, Echochee says—and there's nothing finer, anyhow, than to freely admit a mistake. So it wasn't your fault any more than mine; we've both been very naughty spirits, and we mustn't be again." She paused, adding: "After all, I suppose it does make our secret world just a little——"

I waited, and when she did not continue, asked:

"A little what?"

Still she hesitated.

"Be honest," I warned.

She smiled again, looking at me frankly.

"Well, a little sweeter, to feel that we're equally to blame; that that's why we can't ever go there again."

"Eden up-to-date?" I laughed.

"Y-yes, I suppose so; and the flaming sword has smote us, so we have to be circumspect forever and ever."

"But Eve wasn't! The flaming sword didn't phaze her a minute!"

"I've had lots of time to improve on Eve," she replied archly.

"That's God's truth," I cried.

A rippling laugh burst from her lips—a ringing, happy laugh that was heard, I swear, in listening heaven. She seemed obsessed by a strange excitement—perhaps like my own, that sprang from a deep, inordinate sense of pleasure.

We were getting on toward the fort, walking inside the edge of our Oasis near that place where the fallen palms lay in a confused tangle. I had her hand and was helping her over this network of logs when she suddenly sprang before me with dazzling quickness; facing outward, and holding back her arms to keep me in check.

It was an act instinctive of protection, yet scarcely had I time to wonder at it when a whining, crackling sound, that might have come from anywhere, dashed past our heads. Men who have heard a high-power bullet splitting the air do not forget the sound, which is as quickly recognized a second time as the rattling of a diamond-back.

Immediately following it came the crack of a rifle, and guided by this I saw, above the prairie grass four hundred yards away, the head and shoulders of a man. At that instant he fired again.



CHAPTER XXII

I LOVE YOU

To be transported instantly from the essence of happiness to the brink of tragedy—and a tragedy wherein the whole of one's world goes tottering—engenders a confusion of mind that for a moment leaves one helpless. And thus it was that the second bullet flashed by us before I sufficiently gathered my wits to act, to realize that some returning member of Efaw Kotee's band had stumbled on our little paradise.

I caught Doloria and swung her behind me, at the same time drawing my automatic and sending two quick shots, aimed high, toward the scoundrel who was making ready to try his hand again. Almost at once he disappeared, though I knew he had not been hit for it was extremely doubtful if, at that range, a revolver bullet could reach him at all. For the sake of caution he was merely crouching in the grass, and waiting.

Then I became swept by an inordinate anger; a natural enough feeling in a man whose life has been sneakingly attempted, but let a life that is a million times more precious than his own be so fired upon and he will pass the limit of human rage. With an oath I pushed her down into a niche of temporary safety, saying:

"Stay there till I come back!"

Immediately I began to scramble over the network of fallen logs; my intention being to reach the high grass and, dropping to my hands and knees, crawl out to meet him—as, in all probability, he was now crawling toward us. But before I got free of the entanglements she had sprung after me and caught my arm, crying:

"It's insane for you to go out there—with only your automatic against his rifle! Come back!"

"Go back yourself," I said sternly, shaking off her grasp. "Crouch in the hole, as I told you! Quick!"

"I won't—unless you do, too! For the love of God—he'll kill you!" This last she screamed, frantically catching hold of me again as the man fired a third shot and we felt the breath of his bullet on our faces.

Both of us knew that this was no time for argument, and she began tugging at my belt like a wild thing, bracing herself to keep me back and showing no disposition to obey. So without ceremony I picked her up intending to shove her down between the logs.

"You shan't," she gasped. "He'll kill you if you go—if you don't he'll leave!"

But I was too terrified for her sake to listen—too determined that the fellow should not get back and tell his gang.

"Do as I say," I commanded, giving her a shake.

She had stopped speaking and was desperately using her strength. I, also, had grown desperate. Our position was too unwarrantably exposed to tolerate this further, and urgently I began to pry open her fingers when, by some twist of her own or awkwardness on my part, I slipped and fell out backwards into a deep, narrow slit between the logs, drawing her down with me and wedging my shoulders as if they were held in a vise.

It might have been a serious fall—for her, I mean—had not providentially she landed atop of me; but now, trying to arise, I found that I had measured neither her strength of purpose nor of muscle. Her determination had not been cooled by this mishap, rather had it become more aroused with the consciousness of her advantage; for, in answer to my first movement, she caught my cheeks and passionately shook me. Her eyes, scarcely half a foot away, stared down into mine with a frightened, pleading, commanding look. They were open wider than usual, giving the impression that this was the first test of physical encounter she had ever experienced.

"You're safe here!—you shan't move!" she was whispering wildly.

"I must," I declared. "He's got to be stopped, I tell you!"

I did not want to hurt her, yet at all hazards that man had to be killed, and I began really to struggle.

"No—no!" she panted, pushing down my partially raised head with a jolt that made me see stars. For she was fighting this time, with the ferocity of a tigress, and I, held by her weight, found the task of freeing myself no easy one. I tried working loose one shoulder, growling between my teeth:

"I will get out of here!"

"You won't—you won't!" She reiterated this as if sheer force of mind could make me yield. And then her hair, uncoiling, fell softly over my face and closed my eyes.

There is a mesmeric force about the human hair, a woman's hair, resting on a man's upturned face—although I do not mean this in a sentimental sense. It is a natural law; as a wild bird can be put into a state of mimic sleep by laying it on its back and pressing its eyes with feathers.

The frenzy of Doloria's clutching fingers that still held my cheeks, and the pressure of her body whose excited breathing wedged me even tighter down between the logs, had been to us no more than incidents in the desperate struggle we were making, each for the other's safety. But, blinded by her hair, for the moment I desisted and, taking quick advantage of this, she whispered:

"If you've any wish to please me, listen! I know those men by heart—each is an arrant coward when alone. So he won't crawl closer. By the time he brings the others back we'll be inside the fort!"

"That's just it," I retorted. "The fort's no good at night—they'll rush it! He's got to be stopped, Doloria!"

"Jack, do this for me, please?" she begged. Her lips were very near. "If we have to die, we will—but I can't see you go out on that prairie alone—I simply can't!" And I grew still.

Soon I felt her hands upon my chest as she pushed herself up to look over the logs. By this movement the blindfold was partially lifted and I could see her—her body curved backward, as a mermaid that raises itself at arm's length upon the shore. Her lips were parted, her eyes were steady and level as they gazed searchingly across the sea of grass—as many a nymph, no doubt, hiding from a company of swashbuckling gnomes, must have peeped out to see if her glade were safe before venturing from the wood. In another moment she had left me and run a few steps toward the prairie, crying:

"Look! He's 'way, 'way off!"

"I can't look," I called after her. "You've put me here for life!"

Indeed, I was so completely held that the first result of my twisting seemed only to make me lose ground. She came back, this time laughing without control—but I knew the sign; my nerves, too, had recently been drunk on relaxation from a strain. Tucking up her hair with a few quick movements she held down both hands to me and, after more squirming, I worked myself out. But our enemy had by this time disappeared.

"If that fellow's back, the others are, too," I said, with some display of temper. "You've made the very devil of a mess!"

"I suppose I have," she looked demurely away. There was nothing of the tigress, nothing of the willful little fighter, now.

"The consequence is," I continued, "that we have to decide between two darned slim chances, for they'll be coming back within an hour. We can stay here, or run for it! What do you think?" But as she remained silent, gazing across the prairie, I kept irritably on: "If it's run, we can't reach the forests north, south or east without being seen—and you know what a fight in the open means against such odds. We might hide in the grass and travel at night, but if their woodcraft's worth a hang they'll read our trail on this kind of ground like an electric sign. There's an Indian in their crowd, too. If we stay, the fort'll keep them off till night—and there's always a hope of Smilax turning up. They mightn't rush us after dark, either."

I could see that the fort was our best chance, but still I wanted her opinion. Something about the way she stood, having no word to say, rather awed me, and going softly I looked around at her face. Her cheeks were wet and her lips were trembling with convulsive sobs. Oh, how I hated myself then!

"Good God," I cried, throwing my arms about her, "see what I've done!"

But she put her palms against my shoulders and held me off, saying brokenly:

"You haven't done anything."

"I have," I cried again. "I've hurt you—hurt the one I love most in all the world!"

"Don't," she said, more startled now than at any time when she had been facing a greater danger. "Quick! Please—let's get the things we need for the fort!" And she sprang away from me, running toward the pool.

In a very few minutes we were back with the rifles, an ample supply of cartridges, our canteens, and a blanket I had brought in case we decided to slip away at night. Helping her over the parapet I followed, and we stood looking intently for a sign of foes, but the waving grass spoke only of a brisk wind. It might be a half an hour before Efaw Kotee's band could get within range of us. Twice I whispered her name, but she would not answer, so I turned her around until she had to face me.

"I have the right to speak now," I said gently, "because this may be the last of things. The next few hours will decide. You understand, don't you, and know that my words are their own excuse?"

There was a serious, calm mystery in her look that answered mine with simple courage, as she whispered:

"Yes, I understand."

"We can't die," I drew her close to me, "because I love you—I love you!"

For a quick moment, and then gone, a light shone in her eyes—as though some fire raging below had been swept through the entirety of her being. Her fingers that had been clutching my shoulders relaxed, and very softly her arms crept around my neck, as she murmured: "No more than I do you!"

It might have been a minute or a year that we drifted in a rapturously agonizing kiss; but slowly her eyes opened, her lips sighed and, touching them to my cheek, she whispered my name over and over again.

"We'll win to-day," I cried, giving the prairie a searching look above her head, "and after that there's a kingdom waiting for you here!"

"I can feel it beating," she whispered adorably. "But if we——" She could not say it, but let her moist lips cling to mine as if challenging Death to part us.

Who dares measure time when Cupid perches on the clock! 'Twas a wise providence that gave severe St. Gregory the making of our calendar, and not St. Anthony, else some minutes might be spun to days, and hours squeezed to the fraction of a second.

But the ever present danger had not at any time quite ceased to pierce the mist of our paradise. She knew I was keeping a careful watch, even while I held her. Now she drew away, and crossed her arms upon the parapet.

"When things begin to happen," I said, "you must sit on the ground. I won't risk your lovely head above the wall!"

"Why?" she asked. "Aren't two rifles better than one?"

"Yes," I admitted, "but I can't shoot unless you're safe."

"Then don't think of me, at all, for I promise to do whatever you say. Look," she pointed suddenly. "There they are!—I believe every one of them! Oh, I wonder if they've killed Echochee!"

I, too, wondered; for surely here was the gang that had pursued them—quite a mile out on the prairie, to be sure, but unquestionably Efaw Kotee's band, showing as a black smudge above the grass. Whether this pack of human wolves had lost the trail of Smilax I would not try to guess, for it was enough to know that they had found our own.

They were still too far off to be counted, but I felt that Doloria had been right in saying every man of them. That would mean eight if Jess and the old chief were along, furious devils demanding their revenge, mad to surround us and take their own good time about placing a shot where it would do the work. It was only fair that she should know the odds, so I put my arm around her, saying:

"When they get nearer, they'll scatter out. Some will stay in front, hiding in the grass and shooting enough to keep us busy, and others will circle to the trees behind us. It's going to be a close call, sweetheart, but they'll never get in while I'm up."

"I know that," she answered gently. "We may as well be brave and speak of it with indifference; it's easier that way; so I want to tell you that if you—you——" but her voice did choke, yet she raised her chin and calmly finished, "are killed, I'll follow right away. It's infinitely preferable to being taken," she hastily added, seeing my look of horror. "So wait for me just a little while, and I'll catch up with you."

Was there ever such courage! Looking back into her eyes I saw a light that by its own vital force was self-translated, requiring no words, nor the sight of her fingers grasping the handle of that small revolver at her waist, to tell of her determination. In spite of myself I shuddered; yet she was so calm, so wonderful in her abiding faith of catching up with me on that Long Trail that knows no turning back, that my heart, too, burned with a flame more enduring than the love of mortals. Without a word I took the small revolver from her hand, and in its place put mine of larger, more reliable, caliber. Understanding, she looked gratefully up at me, her eyes filling with tears even as she smiled and whispered:

"Now I can do it without being afraid."

"By the God above us," I groaned in my agony, "you'll never have to! For your sake I'll beat off twice that many men!"

"Then don't think of it again, my ferocious, terrible Chancellor," she laughed a little—but I knew, with a sob tearing at my throat, that her playful mood, intended as a tonic for my nerves, was the bravest thing she had yet done. "Look, Jack! They're doing something!"

"They're spreading out," I said, tensely.

Her excitement suddenly died. In its place came a pathetic look of wistfulness as she raised her face to mine and, with a quick sob, whispered:

"Oh, very own mine, try to let me cook your dinner again to-night?"



CHAPTER XXIII

THE ATTACK

When after this I looked across the parapet I was as a man of highly tempered steel. The compact mass had begun to disintegrate, spreading in both directions until their flanks must have been an eighth of a mile apart. Then they advanced.

On a guess I judged their line to be quite fifteen hundred yards away because each unit looked about the size of a pea; and, as these represented the upper halves of men, the distance was too great to open fire. So I raised my sight to a thousand yards and waited. My nerves were steady with a purpose deep-set in me, for I was about to shoot for the greatest trophy of my life, so when the line had advanced a third of the way I took careful aim, and fired. A second passed; then my target disappeared.

"Is he hit or hiding?" Doloria asked excitedly, adding with a little gasp: "He's hit, for some are going to him—see?"

"I believe he is," I agreed, taking another careful aim at one who had not started to his comrade's assistance. He, too, disappeared, and immediately afterwards all of them ducked from view.

"That's awkward," I growled. "They'll do some crawling up, now!"

"They won't dare come close after that," she cried, "for I know you hit one!" Yet this might have been what Echochee would have called "good-medicine-talk," and while standing ready I warned her not to be too sure, as both men might have dropped only for safety.

It will not seem strange that we both felt some disappointment over the probability of this, if one stops to consider what lurked in the other side of the scales for us.

Heads soon began to bob up nearer, now accompanied by quickly fired shots, and I ordered Doloria to the ground. But with relief I noticed that these shots went wild, many times hitting too far away to be heard at all, so our position obviously was as yet undiscovered. The morning sun shone directly in the men's eyes, while the protective coloration of our fort blended most elusively into the background of somber forest.

At the bobbing heads I continued to fire with what quickness I could, sometimes sending a second, third and fourth shot purposely low to probe the grass where it seemed that a man might be crouching. I could not reasonably have expected to register a hit by this, but it kept them in check, and that was our chief concern. From the beginning I realized that if they got near enough to rush us the night would close over a very silent little fort.

Suddenly Doloria gave a cry that froze my blood, for I thought it meant an attack from the rear.

"Quick—quick! Your matches! Oh, not to have thought of it before!" But this last was added while I dug into my pockets for the precious box.

"You can't do it," I exclaimed.

"I can! Keep them down, and I'll crawl! They won't see me!"

There was wisdom here, and I yielded. Nimbly she climbed the wall, dropped to her hands and knees, and crawled to the prairie. In another minute a string of smoke appeared; then with a bunch of grass alight she flew from place to place, stooping as she ran, and leaving in her wake a trail of fire. Almost as quickly she was back at my side, breathing fast.

"You glorious genius, we'll win out yet," I yelled.

The grass was dry and tall and thick, and the wind was blowing smartly. Fire asks for no better playground, and with incredible swiftness a wall of flame sprang up, crackling and roaring as it spread out fan-wise.

She knew, as did I, that the men would back-fire. But while this would save them from the flames it would at the same time remove their cover, and my rifle could then have a whole man to bite at instead of merely his head and shoulders, or less. They would have no alternative now but to come forward quickly or retreat. I think Doloria realized that anything might be about to happen, for she laid the other rifle in position on the parapet, rather casually asking:

"Will it matter if I stand on the canteens? They raise me just high enough!"

Why should she not be given a chance to fight for her life—at least, until they located our point of concealment and began to concentrate their fire on it. That this would inevitably happen might be a matter of minutes, but until then I thought she had every right to stay. There's no denying, too, that I knew her value.

What was going on behind the wall of racing flame we could not tell. But now it rose majestically, leapt skyward and sank to insignificance. The back-fire had met our own; they had gripped, flared up, and died. Likewise were our forces about to clash, and perhaps burn out with the heat of human passion.

Staring through the smoke we counted seven men running to the rear. They well enough knew the danger of being without cover, and were intending first to get beyond our range and then bring the fight back by some other means. Shooting fast I heard Doloria give several quick gasps of excitement as I knocked up the ash dust close to them, and although, their number was not reduced we gained a feeling of greater security to find the fort more impregnable than I had prophesied.

But our budding hope lasted about as long as it took us to conceive it. One of the fellows suddenly changed his direction, waving as he ran, and the others dashed after him. Then we, too, saw the discovery he had made, and it filled me with a sense of desperation.

This was a long, low line of green, indicating a ditch, or slough, edged with saw-palmettoes and bay bushes, that began at some indefinite northwestward point and diagonally crossed the prairie until it passed around our Oasis scarcely more than a hundred feet away. Heretofore, completely hidden by the tall grass, I had had no idea of its existence, and neither had the men, until Doloria's torch changed the prairie to a charred waste. In reality it was the outlet from our spring, and I knew that it must be fairly wide because the fire had not jumped it.

To Efaw Kotee's band it offered both an immediate cover and a place from which to carry on the fight; moreover, by following it toward us, they could reach the Oasis and eventually creep up behind so near that a well-directed shot in my head would be only a question of persistence and time.

Doloria must have understood this, and for the first time she began to fire, yet at nearly a thousand yards, when one's target not only moves but looks small and black upon a blackened background, and is made further elusive by a haze of smoke, only luck can hit it. Still we played that luck to the last card, until one by one the men made safe and disappeared. Then she laid her rifle on the parapet, and I think took a long breath. For a moment neither of us spoke, each being afraid of saying too much, perhaps.

Beginning to fill the magazine, she finally announced:

"They're seven, Jack. You hit that first one, a while ago."

"No," I replied, "or we'd see him on the ground now. He merely ducked, like the others."

"But there were eight the night I escaped!"

"Then Smilax got one during the chase—which shows that he and Echochee haven't been killed." But during this our eyes never left the ditch and our rifles were ready to blaze away at the first sign of movement.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because if he had to make a last stand there wouldn't be as many as seven men here now." And I firmly believed it, knowing how savagely our two servants would account for themselves. I think she agreed with me.

An ominous silence lay about us. I felt sure that the scoundrels were crawling up along the ditch, and told her this. She nodded. Minutes passed.

At one point, about two hundred yards out, there was a spot where the saw-palmettoes and bay bushes thinned to almost nothing. Sooner or later the enemy would have to cross this, and I watched it without blinking because it would offer our best—if not, indeed, last—chance to hold them. So when finally a stooping figure showed itself I opened a vigorous fire. He drew back, or fell back, and the silence again enveloped us, to be shattered an instant later by a fusillade of shots that made the air thick with crackling whines. The location of our fort was known.

"Down, down!" I yelled.

"I am," she answered, obeying as the best of soldiers. "I'll load for you!"

We were being showered with lead by now, and between the wasplike things speeding overhead and their "sput-sput" as they hit the logs, I dared expose no more than my eyes and forehead while emptying rifle after rifle. In the fleeting movement of handing one down and taking the other I saw Doloria sitting near my feet, with several opened boxes of cartridges on the ground beside her. We had plenty of ammunition, so I did not wait for human targets but fired rapidly into every probable place of concealment—just hoping.

This must have begun to touch them up, for one now made a dash across the open space and dived into good cover, from which he started an instant reply to me. There had been only time for a quick shot at him, as the opening was scarcely ten feet wide. Another tried and made it, but the third stumbled. Whether he accidentally fell or was wounded, I had no way of knowing, yet he was able, at least, to continue the fight because there seemed to be no let up in their volume of fire. Then, to my chagrin, a fourth got across, and, following him, the last three tried together—successfully.

In the best of conditions these men would have been very hard to hit, yet I offer no excuses. My aim, of course, had greatly suffered. Disregard for the nicest accuracy in marksmanship may be expected when an enemy is pouring a hundred shots a minute at a certain point, and you happen to be that point.

Again their rifles became silent. There seemed, indeed, no reason to keep them speaking, as the road to the Oasis was clear. When the trees back of us should be reached more shots would ring out, closer, always getting closer; eventually would come the hand-to-hand fight, and then—forgetfulness. Yet I swore with a burning rage in my heart that whoever of those fiends were left to gloat over their victory would remember until their dying day the price I had collected for it.

"Where are they?" Doloria asked, in a voice that trembled slightly. The strain of waiting below was greater than that of seeing what went on outside.

Grimly I told her how matters stood with us, and we, also, became silent.

The next move appeared in the direction of our kitchen, when several shadowy forms began to dart from tree to tree. The same plan was being adopted as that which they had used at the ditch: one man, his advance covered by a hot fire from the others, would stoop and run forward to a previously selected place, then a second, third, and so on, each beginning to shoot from the new position, as he got to it. These tactics might successfully be repeated until the last barrier of trees, not more than twenty yards from us, was gained. But now a fellow showed himself a moment too long and I thought I dropped him, because a howl of rage went up from his mates.

I was keeping the two rifles very busy by this time, and Doloria could scarcely load one before the other was being passed to her. Each side had resorted to the expediency of rising, firing and ducking down again. They were too near for me to risk an inch of head for more than the necessary fraction of a second, and sometimes, in my haste, I aimed at nothing at all. A vigorous fire, whether effective or not, would hold off their rush. But when I peeped over the next time a rifle, protruding from around a tree, showed me that one, at least, had reached the nearest point of cover. I banged at it and ducked, as several shots whizzed over me. It was rather discouraging work, this of being forced to keep down! Another brief silence on their part was suggestive of a new move, and I felt sure that they were preparing for a charge.

Calling this to Doloria, I began to bob up at different places along the wall, trying in a frenzy to check them, and for the moment was successful. Then I heard her give a cry, as a bullet split the stock of the rifle she was loading.

"Some one's in a tree shooting down at us! Look out!" she called, rolling over to get beneath the nearer wall.

Upon hearing this I gave up trying to dodge, and stood to the parapet determined to drop as many as possible before being dropped myself; for if their number were materially reduced she might be able, as a last resort, to come off victor with the automatic. And spurred by this intention I faced them so resolutely that they were compelled to hug their cover. But a second shot from the tree, slanting downward, struck the surface of the sand filling we had used between our walls; it hit a few inches directly in front of my face, knocking up a shower of grit that, for the moment, completely blinded me.

I must have wheeled around with my arm across my eyes, because the men believed that I'd been done for, and with a triumphant howl started forward. Doloria, too, thought the end had come, and gave one despairing cry that I shall remember if I live a thousand years. Through my blurred vision I got a glimpse of her face, a blending of courage and horror and purpose, as she raised the automatic to her temple.

And then by some divine insight I sprang and snatched it away. The howls of triumph had ceased; no leering enemy appeared above our parapet. The smart in my eyes was passing enough for me to see four of them running southward across the prairie with the speed of deer, and suddenly I knew that, without realizing it, I had just been hearing other rifle shots. Whirling about, I saw emerging from a near-by point in the ditch several figures, shouting and waving their hats.

"Tommy," I yelled, "Gates, Echochee, Smilax!" I did not name them all, but turned quickly as Doloria flew into my arms. "We're saved, sweetheart! The dice have rolled for us!"

She was crying a little, clinging to my neck, talking fast, but saying only one thing. And although Tommy afterwards declared that for a time there was such a silence in the fort that he believed we had been killed, I consider this but one of his verbal extravagances; for it seemed only a second after he waved before we were on the parapet waving back to him.

Yet, in the midst of my wildest cheer I stopped. It stuck in my throat, it dried up as the fountain of my gladness seemed suddenly to have gone dry, and I looked at her. There must have been a great pain in my eyes—not physical, for that was transient and had passed—because she touched them, whispering:

"What is it?"

"See what I'm cheering for," I answered huskily. "Our escape only means death to our dreams—it's good-bye to the Oasis!"

"Why?" she asked, her face turning slightly pale.

"Because the minute those people get here you won't be my Doloria of the Golden Dawn any more, but Princess Doloria of Azuria!"

She caught hold of my sleeve and gasped, a little hysterically:

"But, Jack, suppose I don't want to be Princess Doloria!"

Our friends had covered half the distance, and I hurriedly said:

"You can't help yourself! You don't know the power that man, Dragot, has! Will you run off with me to-night?" For I could not dismiss the obsession that Monsieur would prevail. "He came especially armed with government orders to find you and take you back. And I'm only afraid your heart's too straight to refuse him, even if you could, when he puts it up to your conscience! Oh, Doloria—please don't cry!"

"I won't," she answered tremulously, "if you stop talking that way!"

I was sorry, and quickly told her that everything would come out all right—that my love was stronger than all the powers of all the governments under the sun. Then I helped her down on the prairie side, for the others were nearly up to us, approaching with bared heads. There was a fantastic note in our situation that deeply affected me. What could have been more bizarre than an Azurian princess holding court upon the edge of a Florida prairie? This, emphasized by our escape from death, added color to the fabric of unreality whose warp was romance, and whose woof was the mystifying surge of human impulses. So my vacillating spirits rebounded to the pinnacle of happiness and, raising my hand, I announced in a loud voice:

"Gentlemen, Her Serene Highness, Doloria, Princess of Azuria!"

Except for Echochee, they stopped and in frank amazement gazed at her. Flushed by the excitements that had made this day memorable, she was indeed the most adorable sovereign before whom knights had e'er sworn fealty. But the old Indian woman, with an undisguised croon of delight, went straight to her side, folded her in aged, brown arms of iron, and faced the waiting men with a look of defiance. She did not comprehend all that was passing, but distinctly wanted it understood that no one should touch her child.

After that they were all about her, even Bilkins and the two sailors asking to shake hands and hear from her own lips the story of what had happened. She recognized Gates as "the splendid captain who found the bomb," and he blushed like a little boy. Monsieur, of course, could not bring himself to treat her with anything less than royal deference, so he kneeled and kissed her hand. I saw her look at the back of it when he arose, and then search his face—he had left a tear which she seemed unwilling to brush off. Tommy, not content with one hand, took both; and these he shook until she burst out laughing. As a matter of fact, we were all laughing a few degrees immoderately. Then, without warning, the strain became too much. Her eyes suddenly filled, her lips began to tremble. Turning impulsively, she put an arm across Echochee's shoulders and together they walked toward the spring, leaving us silent.

Old Gates rubbed his chin and looked up at the sky, saying huskily:

"My word, it's going to rain!" And, although there was no cloud in sight, Tommy said he thought so, too.

Thus the spell was broken and, with a more dismal duty to be performed, we sent for Smilax to bring the camp spade—leaving Monsieur to find Doloria and talk with her, for I had excused him from the contract Tommy made aboard the Whim, wanting to remove uncertainties as soon as possible.

Gates entered a careful record in his notebook of identification marks on the three men we found dead. Our joint statement would be sufficient for the law in such a case as this, especially as Monsieur knew there was a price on Efaw Kotee's head, and doubtless on the heads of all who served him.

When Smilax approached the last man he pointed down with grim satisfaction, saying:

"Him bust black boy's head!"

It was Jess, who would have bullied the old chief into giving up my princess! Well, our account was closed. But of Efaw Kotee there was no clue. I felt sure he was not among those who escaped, simply because he could not have run so fast; and Smilax was certain he did not follow with the chase.

Our gruesome task finished, we turned back. For the moment I wanted to be alone, with my thoughts, my happiness, my uncertainty of Monsieur's power of persuasion, my heaviness of spirit caused by the work behind us. But Tommy ran up and slipped his arm through mine, saying with exaggerated carelessness:

"I'm glad that crescendo of horrors is over—if you'll allow a kind of musical term; but I've got music in my soul to-day."

"It's a funny time for music," I grumbled, "—except funeral marches."

"By the way, did you find out about that other funeral march?"

"No, I forgot," I confessed. "Don't bother me, Tommy; I feel like the devil."

"I know it," he gave my arm a squeeze—for Tommy possessed that characteristic making for a community of mind and spirit that did not wait for explanations. "I know it," he repeated, "but you look a whole lot better—really like your old self! Now, what's the trouble? If you're worrying about the ruins we created back there, cut it out! I'm not bothered over the one or two I might have got! Fact is, nobody knows which of us hit which, anyway. So what is it? I'm not asking, merely insisting!"

So I told him pretty much everything, as one chum can to another.

"You mean she may listen to the little gezabo and go back?" he asked.

"I mean just that. She will if she thinks it has a bigger claim on her. I know how square she is!"

"Besides being square," he said thoughtfully, "there's also something in the make-up of woman that I've never understood: her apparent hankering after sacrifice. When it comes to a show-down between heart and conscience, she'll follow the conscience ten to one—if she's straight. Look at it," he swept his arm toward the prairie, as if innumerable instances were in sight of us. "See the sweet-faced old ladies who never wrote 'Mrs.' before their names—not that they've missed anything, God knows, but just look at 'em! All because some over-finicky parent didn't approve, no doubt! And see the heart starvation stamped on 'daughter's' face, because 'father' was nearly bankrupt and she did write 'Mrs.' to save him! Taking them in retrospect, it's a question if the thing they called sacrifice wasn't plain damn foolishness. Why, hell, Jack, d'you mean to say that the professor and his musty European customs—oh, I can't be profane enough!—the English language is trifling and inadequate! But I'm going to take a hand in this courtship, myself!"

"For a gregarious animal, Tommy, you're something of a wonder," I began to laugh, because it was like myrrh and frankincense blown upon my doubts and fears to hear him talk.

We went quietly on after this. Our boots made no noise in the soft earth, and thus silently we approached the fort; then halted. For on the farther side, hidden by the walls, a man was speaking in tones of earnestness, yet at that very instant a voice interrupted him.

"I wish you wouldn't persist in talking now," it said irritably, "I'm too unhappy over the lives which most have been lost, and——"

"But Your Serenity must realize that lives are nothing. The new destiny that——"

"Oh, I know what you'd say," the voice cried. "But don't give me any more arguments, for Heaven's sake! They're utterly useless and, besides, you might convince me!"

Softly we tiptoed away and, when at a safe distance I stopped to rub my arm where Tommy's fingers had been digging into it, he whispered:

"That didn't sound sacrificy, did it?"

"The old fellow hasn't struck his pace, yet," I answered doubtfully.

"Well," Tommy looked back toward the fort, "the pressure's high enough for one day. She needs another rescuing. You go and speed up the grub."

So, whistling the Charpentier love song, he left me.



CHAPTER XXIV

GERMAN CRUELTY

At the kitchen fire Echochee was busily preparing food for a company now swelled to ten, and Smilax had dropped in rank to an assistant. I saw from her activity that this was not a fortunate moment to interrupt, yet there are some few things in life more important than a well-turned meal, and I therefore advanced, wishing to speak in the presence of our two sailors who hovered near with lips that all but drewled in anticipation of the feast.

"I want to remind each of you," I said, "not to tell the princess that any one was killed. Let it go that a few were scratched, and the rest got away. You get the idea? I don't want her shocked."

My men understood at once, but Echochee, never taking her eyes from the sizzling skillets, asked:

"What you mean—'shocked'?"

"I mean horrified, terrified—sorry," I answered, rather put to it how else to explain.

"Ugh! She already sorry; cry some, say ve'y bad. Me say ve'y good. She all right now. You through?"

And, since I was through, she gave another grunt, leaving me with the suspicion that she thought I was a very small boy.

When finally the others came in sight Doloria walked at the side of Tommy, while Monsieur followed in some discomfiture of mind. His hair was tousled, and his eyes were thoughtful. From this, and the grin on Tommy's face, I judged that all was not going well for him and, in a more happy frame of mind, I went out to meet them.

"Mr. Davis has been telling me a strange story," she smiled at me.

"He's full of strange stories," I warned her. "Don't take him seriously—ever!"

"But I know he was serious this time—weren't you?" The corners of her mouth were tell-tales of merriment as she turned to him.

"Shall we let Jack in on it?" he asked, the grin on his face widening.

"Do you think we'd better?" She was laughing outright now, with an alluring spirit of confidence; so I knew that she approved my estimate of Tommy and had taken him into her heart as for many years he had lived in mine.

But women always loved Tommy—perhaps because he loved them. If some far-reaching providence had not endowed him with a well-developed sense of honor to go hand in hand with his attractiveness, more girls would have looked after him through tears than toward him with gladness. Whatever his loves and secret affairs, he always played above the board and never cheated; so they could trust him if he won, and pet him if he lost. Taken altogether, he was rather a lucky beggar, who learned early in life that the golden key which unlocks a woman's heart is Secrecy—and this they seemed to know by some divine, or devilish, insight.

Before he now had a chance to answer her question, Monsieur caught up with us.

"Ah, my boy Jack," he grasped my hands, forgetting his ill humor to beam on me. "For lack of opportunity I have not expressed my gratitude! Azuria is your debtor! I, who have the authority, say it!"

"Thank you," I replied, "but that debt was cancelled early this morning when its Princess saved me from assassination."

"Good Lord," Tommy cried, in despair, "he's spilled the beans! Jack, you bone-head, we——"

"Be quiet, sir," she commanded, turning beautifully pink and giving me ten thousand messages in a single look.

"Then come on," Tommy said, beginning to draw her away by the hand, "let's go off and think up another!"

"My boy Tommy," the professor sternly reproved him, "she is of royal blood!"

"You said something that time," he imperturbably replied. "Come on, Princess!" And laughingly she went with him.

"Pardieu," the old fellow pulled at his beard, "that sex is like a cyclone—the nearer I get the faster I am twisted! But just as her mother was at that age—yes, quite!" He sighed.

"Is she going back with you?" I asked, feeling a malicious joy in the question after the last look she gave me.

"Certainement, there is no other way! Thus far I have not tried to persuade her, but merely presented a few minor facts. Yes, she will go."

I confess that my malicious joy sank somewhat.

"You are a gentleman," he continued, "and that presupposes a delicate sense of honor. I know how you feel toward her—yet would you have her remain with you if she one day regretted it? Great things rest on her return, I assure you. Let us start even! You have had two days to persuade her your way; let me have two days to persuade her mine! After that, we fight in the open—you and I!"

There was something straightforward in his appeal that impressed me. I had had two days, and it would be giving her destiny, those great things he spoke of, a square deal to comply. I had misgivings, of course, but these were overruled by—why deny it?—the masculine conceit that becomes assertive after a few feminine favors. At any rate, it was a fair sporting proposition, and I said:

"All right, for two days—provided I explain to her how we made this bargain."

He smiled and hugged me as of yore, crying:

"Almost you would make me sorry when I win! So we fight to the last ditch, eh?"

"To the last ditch," I smiled, shaking hands with him.

But hardly had the agreement been sealed before I regretted it. Tommy's dissertation on sacrifice worried me. And yet, what man with red blood and two wide-open eyes in his heart would have refused to play the cards Monsieur thus honestly laid out? It would be unfair to Doloria's future if I pugnaciously held to the advantage these few days had brought; for it is one thing to start in an open race with men, and run and burst your heart to be first across the goal which means a woman's arms, but quite another to take her unawares in a wilderness and, upon the spot, claim her before she knows what the surrender may involve. In years to follow a time might come when she would look at me through shadows—shadows that grow dark with perplexity over some irrevocable step—and I did not want to sow a seed to ripen into one of these. It is distracting enough for a man to bury his existing ghosts, but sheer madness deliberately to raise a crop of new ones.

In this case I did not so much fear a race with other men in forms of rivals. I had reached my goal, her arms, and nothing could undo that. But her conscience—who dares claim the conscience of another! For two days, then, Monsieur could fight it out alone with her, and if his arguments prevailed—well, I would set about destroying them.

After luncheon, with a brevity that she must have understood meant torture, I explained the compact, saying that I could ask for no more promises until two days had passed; and when she would have replied that her promise had been given I warned her that Monsieur had not even begun to show his power. She seemed a little frightened at this and, but for the sterling mark indubitably pressed upon her sense of right, I think she might have consented to fly from him.

"For two days, then, I'm not to see you," she said simply.

"No," I cried. "But for two days I can't tell you how I love you; how you're the very breath of my life, the control of my brain and body and soul, how I'll finally win you against everything! I'll see you, and be with you, but for two long, weary, interminable days I can't tell you that!"

"Mightn't you," she smiled, a wee bit naughtily, "remind me each morning of those things you must not tell me during the two long, weary, interminable days? Then you wouldn't be so likely to forget, and break your contract."

"Temptress! I wish we'd walked to the fort!" For, while we stood out of hearing, we were still in sight of the others.

"So do I," she laughed now, her eyes expressive of a most fascinating wickedness, a daredeviltry born of the knowledge that the proximity of outsiders made her safe. Tommy says that girls often take this unfair advantage of a fellow. Then Monsieur, believing the time for explanations should be up, came toward us.

At three o'clock our cavalcade started across the prairie for Efaw Kotee's settlement. Tommy and Monsieur were keen to see it, and especially was the latter keyed up to ransack the place for proofs and information. Smilax led, keeping away from the graves. Doloria had made no reference to casualties, accepting them as an unfortunate necessity, and only once asked about the old chief's fate.

I looked back at the Oasis growing small behind us and a great sorrow came over me. It was not easy to leave the place where I had found such happiness, the place sacred to our vows, our first dwelling together beneath God's tent! It lay green and peaceful, but now upon a blackened sea. And, like that flame-swept land, so was my flame-swept heart; the fire of a resistless passion had passed over it, leaving amid the ashes one spot of beauty. She, also, had stopped to look at it and, as she turned away, our eyes met.

When we approached the islands I went forward with Tommy and Smilax, leaving Gates to command the rear guard composed of his two sailors, Bilkins and Monsieur. Echochee, supremely content to have found Doloria, remained at her side.

Four of the attacking party had escaped and might well have returned to their houses. We favored the theory, too, that Efaw Kotee had remained there, expecting his band to capture us; so, if the fugitives were with him, they could by now have prepared a formidable resistance. We therefore went warily up to a certain point and waited while Smilax crawled forward to reconnoiter.

He returned saying that three punts were on our side, from which he believed the men had not come back but were still putting as much distance between themselves and us as possible. Tommy thought the punts might mean a trap and, although Smilax shook his head in doubt at this, we brought up one of the sailors to cover our crossing in case of an attack. Then, scrambling down the steep bank, in less than a minute we stood upon the island stronghold. No shot had been fired, no sign of life existed anywhere. Running to the nearest cabin we hastily searched it, and ran to the next, and in this way came finally to the old chief's bungalow. Here we halted, as if some horrible magic had turned us to stone.

Efaw Kotee, naked to the waist, a few dried smears of blood around his mouth, was there to meet us. His lips munched the air, as a very old man who interminably chews on nothing, and his chest rose convulsively, then rested several seconds before renewing its struggle for breath. He was repulsive beyond all human description; for, stretched as an animal skin to dry, legs and arms pulled wide apart with buckskin thongs, he had been fastened head down on the wall beside his door. Yet this was not all. Hanging at the end of a string—in fact, now resting inertly against his cheek—was the scarlet, black and yellow ringed body of a coral snake, the deadly elaps. Its head had been severed and lay upon the floor directly underneath.

In a flash I read the story: a duel of teeth between this captive reptile and the semi-crucified man; the one in anger wounding, the other snapping in his frenzy to sever that venomous head—his only means of escape from it. From the way the thongs had cut into his wrists and ankles I knew the struggle had been wild, yet much of this may have come from the insanity later kindled by the poison. But that period of torment now had passed. Strength was exhausted, and life dangled by the merest thread.

I heard Tommy draw in his breath. With a shiver Smilax turned away. Better than we he understood what the old man had endured. Together we cut the pitiable victim down, carried him inside and laid him on a kind of divan.

"Who did this?" Tommy kneeled and called in a loud voice close to his ear, hoping to reach a consciousness that had receded far into the shadows.

"I know who did it," I interrupted. "Quick! While there's time let me ask something we're not so sure about!" And, taking Tommy's place, I called: "Is Doloria the princess of Azuria?"

It was so obviously my duty to see that she learned the truth from one who knew, that I may be forgiven this apparent disregard for the sufferer in our hands. But he showed no sign of having heard, although I called again and again in a more commanding voice. His mouth had not munched the air since we put him down, and Tommy, listening for a heart beat, looked up quietly, saying:

"Must have died on the way in."

"If we'd only come an hour ago," I exclaimed.

"No," Smilax shook his head, "him only squeal ve'y bad for last twelve hour. Me reckon some men come back last night; say he plan Lady run-'way; tie him up; tie on snake. No, him no talk hour ago. Coral snake bite make him ve'y crazy bad."

Tommy had arisen and was walking softly back and forth across the room. Finally he stopped, saying over his shoulder:

"I'll give odds there's more in this old desk than he could have told in a week! Here's a safe, too, stuck back in an alcove, that looks like it might hold a ton! You won't have any trouble finding out things!"

I had not yet noticed the room, but now looked with interest at these places that promised to reveal so much. The room itself was large and expressive of luxury, without being luxuriously furnished. The fireplace, mantel, and furniture were of a good, home-made mission type, constructed from gyminda, Florida's nearest approach to ebony; but the floor was covered with really beautiful rugs. Around the walls were built-in book shelves, mantel high, filled with the volumes Doloria had told me of. The piano was there, not an up-right as we had found on the Orchid, but a handsome grand, bearing one of the best names. A violin case lay upon it, while near by was a music stand. Altogether, these living quarters of Efaw Kotee showed a taste I would have expected. Instinctively I crossed to the desk, but Tommy stopped me, saying:

"Not while that's in here, old fellow," he jerked his head toward the divan. "In no other circumstances would he take it from us lying down, and it's kind of rubbing it in, don't you think so?"

"If you feel that way about it," I agreed. "But to rob a girl of seventeen years or so of life isn't a crime that merits much sympathy."

"I reckon he pretty well paid up for it during last night and to-day," he said softly.

"Whether he did or not, I don't owe him anything," I retorted, in no charitable vein, that I hope was caused by our excitement and excessive strain.

"You owe him a dog-gone lot," Tommy emphatically replied. "Look at those books, at that piano, at what is suggested by the violin case, at the refinement of this room—and then picture what might have been here! Take another view, and consider what a fine chance you'd have had to meet her if that old codger hadn't turned scamp off there in Azuria! Anyway, we've got to clean up the signs of this butchery before she comes."

In an adjoining room we laid Efaw Kotee upon his own bed. The sheet that Tommy got out of a press to spread over him was, I noticed, of beautiful linen, and I felt softened toward the uncouth frame which, in this wilderness, had still demanded the refinements of life.

Locking the door, we passed back to the living room and thence to the landing where, at our direction, the sailor signaled Gates to bring up his waiting party. As Doloria once more stepped upon the island I saw her eyes grow moist with tears.

We told her that the chief had been found dying, that now he was dead and the place deserted; but after she and Echochee had been rowed across to their own home and the two sailors posted to guard against a possible return of the outlaws, Monsieur and Gates accompanied us to the place of awful murder where we explained what we had found.

Monsieur passed into the smaller room, but came out shaking his head and murmuring:

"The face is much changed, yet I recognize enough to feel reasonably sure it is he."

More positive proofs came when, with breathless interest, we went through the contents of the desk, taking things out in order and putting them aside after minute examination. The first of these was a seal, and the professor, bending over it, uttered a cry of surprise:

"The royal seal of Azuria! What deviltry could he have been contemplating when he stole this!"

Then came a blank sheet of note paper, stamped with a gold peak, surmounted by a gold crown and three lavender ostrich plumes—the Azurian royal crest. These two things alone were strong pieces of evidence for the professor's sanguine expectation. There was nothing further of importance, so we turned to the safe which seemed impassively challenging us to get at its secrets, for the door stood fastened and the combination was unknown.

Monsieur kneeled, placed his ear against it, and began slowly to turn the knob, listening intently for the little metal hammers, or tumblers, of the lock to fall clicking into place.

"I never supposed he knew enough for that," Tommy whispered. "It's a regular crook's way!"

At last, very much disgusted, he gave up after explaining that he could have succeeded in an hour or so, but preferred to use dynamite because it was quicker.

"Undoubtedly it's quicker," Tommy said, "but unless you've cracked safes that way before, we may as well say good-bye to the bungalow!"

Gates thought that the door, being of ancient pattern, might yield to a sledge, and Smilax went in search of one. Finding none of sufficient size, he returned with an anvil, swinging it by its spike. I remember the muscles of his arm that held it, the poise of his body as he raised it above his head and gathered every ounce of power to hurl it upon the combination knob. It made a superb picture of primordial man pitted against the sciences. After each resounding blow we tried to throw the lever, and at last the battered door swung out.

Here was a find worth coming far to see—packages upon packages of greenbacks, all counterfeit, but they made a show, nevertheless. There were also plates for printing francs, pounds and rubles, as well as those from which the American bills had been made. While Monsieur was studying one of these more carefully, Tommy reached past him and drew out a large bundle wrapped in heavy brown paper, securely tied and sealed. He cut the strings and opened it, then gave a whistle of surprise, asking:

"Are these counterfeit, too?"

"Mon Dieu, no!" the old fellow gasped, and I, also, caught my breath; for in the bundle were hundreds of unregistered French bonds, of the highest denomination.

Opening one, I looked at the last coupon, announcing that it bore a date of about seventeen years ago, whereupon Monsieur cried:

"Ah, I see it! This accounts for the royal seal we found! Here, at last, is the perpetrator of that grand swindle, lying peacefully behind the door and not caring what we discover! But he has taken his rue with the spoils!—he dared not enjoy these because of the lees he saw in the pleasure cup!"

"Chop that off," Tommy told him. "If you've an inspiration about this stuff, come across with it!"

"Ah-ha, that man—that capitaine Jess! His name is Karl Schartzmann, a shrewd, rascally German who vanished after the coup d'etat!"

"What swindle, Monsieur?—what coup d'etat? Whom do these belong to?" I was really losing patience; and Tommy murmured:

"Jack, didn't it strike you that only a German mind could have conceived that revenge on Efaw Kotee?"

"It was certainly true to German form," I admitted, without reluctance.

"The Bank of France!—who else?" Monsieur was saying. "As one of the trusted, I know! Listen: the dead man behind us, and the one called Jess, with our Azurian consul in Paris—all scoundrels—hatched a swindle to sell, through forged state authority and a farcical secret diplomacy, a portion of Azuria to France. This, you may remember, came near upsetting the Balkans in 1903. Their crafty scheme lay ready to be sprung when Efaw Kotee—we will call him that—had to kidnap the princess in self-defense. From that time but fragmentary facts came dribbling in from secret agents, as follows:

"First: Two weeks after the kidnaping a foreigner bought a schooner yacht in New York, fitted it up with great masses of household effects, and sailed, his papers designating Guayra, Venezuela.

"Second: Still two weeks later Karl Schartzmann and our consul in Paris transferred the secret bill of sale and left with their arms full of bonds. When France discovered the fraud they were well away.

"Third: Still two weeks later a schooner yacht, afterward supposed to be the one bought in New York, dropped anchor at Guayra and stayed until two men, arriving by steamer, went aboard; whereupon she sailed.

"This is all we definitely discovered, except that before sailing crafty inquiries were made into extradition treaties between France and South American countries—and found, in every instance, to be unfriendly to swindlers.

"I now see how it was with them. Fearing everywhere the press of France's vengeance, shunning telegraph wires, they were driven to the solitude of these islands where, as solitude has a way of treating the criminal mind, their shyness grew to fear, their fear to terror. They did not dare go out except at rare intervals, nor dared they realize on the bonds. It is clear to me at last!"

It was also clear to me, at last inerrantly clear, that Doloria and the little princess were the same.

"Whew!" Tommy gave a whistle. "I feel as woozy as an old warped mirror! Did France offer a reward for this stuff?"

"Certainement! And you drew it out!—it is yours, my boy!"

"Like hell it is," he laughed. "I move it goes as prize money to Smilax, Echochee, and the crew!"

Late that evening we buried Efaw Kotee under the mangroves, and did not tell Doloria. No one knows, who has never seen it, the desolation of laying a shrouded figure in a mangrove-covered oyster bar at twilight, where water follows each slushy lift of the spade! I feared for her to witness it, and therefore, Tommy reading the service, the old chief was buried without a woman's sympathy. But, in a measure, he had our own. He held a claim on it for having faced a certain responsibility to Doloria; for having, with the skill of a master, developed the talents God had given her; for having kept her from growing up like a weed.

At ten o'clock that night when, by prearrangement, Tommy and I paddled across to bring Monsieur back from the little island, she was standing with him on the landing. The moon was nearing full, bathing her in a silvery light, and I saw from the droop of her body that she was tired.