War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 3
THE shadowy garden, more shadowy than ever now as the dusk deepened, lay around him like the impalpable landscape of a dream. At the outer edge of the little cane thicket, through which he had passed as soundlessly as a lynx, Lachlan paused and stood motionless, listening. In front, under tall magnolias and slim-stemmed sycamores, he saw clumps of myrtle and small-leafed cassena and arbours of wild jessamine and Indian rose. The air was drowsy with the scent of blossoms, and behind him the long, slim cane leaves shivered with faint, mysterious rustlings. Over all, in the dim late light, hung a translucent silver haze; and it seemed to him suddenly that not only this shadowy garden, but all that had happened in it, was as ephemeral as moonlit mist.
He stood for a few moments at the edge of the cane thicket, drinking in the perfumes of the garden, considering his next move. His decision was reached quickly. After a swift glance around him, he passed noiselessly amid the myrtles towards the high wall looming beyond. Leaping upward, he clutched the lowest branch of a young sycamore and swung himself to the top of the wall.
The narrow, unlighted lane outside was empty, and the foliage of the sycamore made a screen between him and the garden. Lachlan perched comfortably on the wall, his knees drawn up under his chin, his lean brown hands clasped about his ankles. He sat silent and motionless for many minutes, his eyes narrowed, his forehead wrinkled in a frown. At last his thin lips moved.
"Now here," he said to himself, "is Mystery."
He shifted his position slightly and looked up at the moon just rising above the trees. Yet, though he seemed to study the face of the moon, he did not see it, for his thoughts dwelt upon another face, one that perplexed and troubled him. For some moments he puzzled over the mystery of that face—a face which, beneath the scorn and anger that it had assumed, had revealed also unmistakable fear and a poignant, pitiful distress. Then his brow relaxed and he smiled—a smile of boyish, reckless abandon which obliterated in an instant the accustomed gravity of his lean, sharply chiselled face.
"I fought badly," he muttered, "but i'faith, I think I talked well. It is not every night that a Prince and a Chief of the Family of the Wind drops from high heaven into My Lady's garden."
A murmur of voices checked him. He sat bolt upright on the wall, listening; and in a moment he made sure that the voices were those of the lady and the young gallant whom she had called Richard.
The two came on slowly. Tall hawthorns hid them from him so that only once could he catch a gleam of her white shawl in the moonlight; but presently they were so near that he could hear every word. It was the girl who was speaking, and Lachlan's eyes brightened as he listened.
"A Prince of the Muskogee Nation," she said, "and a Chief of the Family of the Wind. Lord! Lord! Here is the very soul and essence of romance. A handsome boy, too, and a fearless one. He fought a better fight than you did, Richard, against that ruffian."
Again there was that mocking, faintly contemptuous note in her voice; and Lachlan marked it well. If this young London gallant was her lover, so far he had wooed in vain.
"Odds my soul, Jolie!" Richard answered, "I was blind with rage, I think. I had told the scoundrel that if he came again when I was with you I would run him through; and when, in the midst of your song, I looked up and saw him standing there with his supercilious sneering smile, I rushed him instantly. Alas, my little bodkin was not meant to parry a bravo's rapier."
She laughed, and once more there was mockery in her tone. But in the middle the laugh broke, became almost a sob.
"O God! God! Richard!" she cried, "I am in terror—terror of the shame that may come. Falcon grows importunate. And I am losing hope of finding Gilbert . . ."
They had passed around a bend of the path. Lachlan, keen of hearing though he was, could hear only an indeterminate murmur which in a moment died into silence. For some minutes he kept his seat on the wall, hoping that the pair would make another circuit of the garden paths before entering the house. He heard the voices no more, however, and presently a door slammed shut beyond the shrubbery. Lachlan jumped lightly down into the street and set off eastward at a brisk pace.
His course took him towards the waterfront of the town. The narrow lane beside the garden wall was deserted, but when he reached the wide thoroughfare fronting the wharves, he found it even more crowded and more lively than usual. Two ships from Barbados had come into harbour that day, he recalled, while in the late afternoon another pack train had arrived from the mountain country of the Cherokees. Sailors and pack-horse drivers, relieved at last from the long tedium of the empty sea and the weary miles of forest path, would own the town that night, or at least that quarter of it where the tavern lights twinkled in the dark. Those of the townsfolk who disliked brawls would keep to the quieter streets or retire discreetly within doors; and there would be work for the men of the watch before morning—work and perhaps some broken heads.
Ordinarily Lachlan would have considered this prospect with a little thrill of joyful excitement. But on this evening other matters engaged his thoughts, and he walked on swiftly, careless of the strange faces that he saw on every hand.
They were, most of them, the faces of sailors and pack-horse men, with now and then the stern, impassive face of an Indian and the lean, weather-beaten face of some buckskin-clad hunter. A few of the latter Lachlan knew; and twice, as he passed an Indian, an almost imperceptible signal of recognition and of greeting flashed between him and the red man. But he stopped to talk with no one amid the groups that he passed strolling along the street or loitering about lighted doorways; and a frown of annoyance clouded his brow when suddenly his way was barred by a stream of men issuing pell-mell from a tavern in front of him, crowding and jostling one another and crying out as though in terror of something behind them.
As they poured out of the doorway, they blocked the path along the street, and Lachlan halted perforce. They were pack-horse men, he noted at a glance, wearing the fantastic half-Indian livery of their profession. He saw, too, that some of them had been roughly handled in the house which they had just vacated in such haste; that the jackets of one or two of them were torn, and that one—a hulking, scowling youth in a yellow jerkin—nursed an ugly cut on his forehead.
This one, as soon as he had gained the open street, seemed smitten with new courage. He yelled to his comrades to stop; and they, no longer hemmed in by four walls, rallied round him, muttering, cursing, and flourishing their fists, some few of which held evil-looking knives, at the house in front of them.
Lachlan had stepped back a pace or two to avoid being caught in the turmoil. Yet he stood nearer the door than any of the others, and he heard before they did the sound of footfalls just beyond the threshold. At once he jumped back into the dark shadows under the wall of the house; and next moment he saw a tall man standing in the doorway, a man whose face and form he was likely to remember. His lips tightened as he recognized Captain Lance Falcon.
For a moment Falcon stood motionless in the doorway. His handsome, full-blooded face was flushed, his thick, red-brown hair was dishevelled, his buff jacket was twisted awry under its showy blue sash. No sooner had his eyes grown accustomed to the dim light without than he clapped his hand to his hilt and half drew the blade. Yet the next moment he thrust the weapon back with a clang and stepped down into the street bare-handed.
"So!" he shouted, "you're waiting for me, are you? You want some more o' the same physic? Aye, aye, you scum, you shall have it!"
The big pack-horse driver in the yellow jerkin—he with the bloody forehead—had a knife. He held his ground, but his comrades, less angry and less earnest than their leader, fell back. The street was in a hubbub now. From all sides men rushed to the scene, and at any moment the watch might come, summoned by the disturbance. In a deserted street Falcon might have fared badly, but as it was he faced only one enemy. And that one he disposed of quickly.
The man with the knife, confused perhaps by the clamour of the swelling crowd behind him, waited too long to strike. His wrist was caught in an iron grip and the knife was wrenched from him. Next moment Falcon had him by the collar, shaking him. The crowd roared and laughed its approval; and, after a little, Falcon thrust the man from him, turned his back, walked slowly across the street, reëntered the house and slammed the door after him.
Lachlan, still standing in the shadows apart from the throng, heard a quiet chuckle close to his ear. He turned to face a tall, thin man, white-haired and white-moustached, brown as old leather, and wearing the fringed buckskin shirt, high leggins and raccoon cap of a hunter. Lachlan's eyes lit with pleasure.
"Almayne!" he exclaimed. "The very man! I've been looking for you."
"You'd have found me sooner, boy," the other replied, "if you had not been in so huge a hurry. I've trailed you the length of the street. What think you of our gamecock yonder?" and he jerked his head towards the doorway where Falcon had just disappeared.
Lachlan hooked his arm through the tall hunter's elbow.
"I would talk with you, Almayne," he said, "about that same gamecock and about certain other more peaceable birds—to wit, a singing sanguilla and a bright-plumaged popinjay from London. Come, let's be going. Jem Marshall's inn is a quiet place, and you like his ale."