Rancour

“ I tried to talk as if you were a welcome stranger, when I was holding in my rancor. There was no other face in the world that I would not rather have seen in this community than yours!
"How glad I was to hear that you were leaving by the morning train! How I counted the days of your convalescence after you were wounded! How glad I was at the news that you were to go as soon as you were well! With what a revelry of suggestion I planned to speed your parting! How demoralized I was when you announced that you were going to stay! How amazed at your seriousness about ranching—but how distrustful! ”

“ As he was walking among the trees, brooding with averted eyes, he was suddenly confronted by the Seigneur of Rozel, who also was shaken from his discretion and the best interests of the two fugitives he was bound to protect, by a late offence against his own dignity. A seed of rancor had been sown in his mind which had grown to a great size and must burst in a dark flower of vengeance. ”

“ The next instant a sudden doubt, a great fear fell upon me. How could it be that I should be so close to the rancho and the band, of which I was in pursuit, yet closer, but unseen, unheard and unsuspected. I knew that not a moment must be lost. That even now the rangers must be stealing with ready arms upon their victims; that even now the doom of the gay lancers must be sealed, unless my presence should arrest it. I gave my good horse the spur, and throwing the rein upon his neck, galloped at the top of his speed along the intricate and mazy wood-track. ”

“ The young archer leapt to the ground, took off the saddle, and let the horse of power loose to wander as he pleased about the field. Then he climbed up into the oak and hid himself among the green boughs.
The sky grew red and gold, and the sun rose. Suddenly there was a noise in the forest round the field. The trees shook and swayed, and almost fell. There was a mighty wind. The sea piled itself into waves with crests of foam, and the firebird came flying from the other side of the world. ”

“ The brigade still advances; gradually the sputtering crackle in their front grows into a low steady roar; a stream of lead whistles in the air, and the long lurid line of flame glows with the sustained glare of a fire among furze. Men fall at every yard, but the hoarse murmur of the dogged advance never ceases. At last the time comes for the rush. The ranks are trimmed up by imperceptible degrees; the men set their teeth, and a strange eager look comes over many a face. The eyes of the youngsters stare glassily ”

“ He spoke in a nervous frenzy of fury.
"The boatmen chant again tonight. Do you hear them? Death is in the air. Death! And the river seethes in anger, and it will rise against you tonight. And you are alone in the path of the river! Death!"
Randeur cursed him, and raised his hand in a threatening gesture. The hunchback sped away, and as he ran, he shouted, and Randeur heard the ominous cry echo far in the distance.
"Death! Death! Death!" And a harsh laugh sounded after it, and Randeur shuddered. ”

“ About seven o'clock the Rangers began their difficult, dangerous retreat. The rain had ceased to fall, but the snow was water-soaked and the trees dripped from every branch. Even if the men had been in good condition they could not have moved rapidly; but wearied as they were, and some of them having to be carried on extemporized litters, rudely made of boughs, their progress necessarily could be little better than a crawl, and yet at any moment out of the surrounding darkness a horde of merciless savages might burst upon them ravening for their blood. ”

“ It was on the second evening that he forced his way through a narrow-snow-choked gut into that ravine where Andree had fallen. The storm raged still, and it was more than likely that he would not get out by the way he had come; and when, along the ravine-bottom, he saw something flutter, like a leaf in the wind, he stood still, grasping his whip and taking long breaths through his nostrils. If Andree had come to him then he would have beaten her ”

“ But Rantoul, while living life to its fullest, haunting the wharves and the markets with avid eyes, roaming the woods and trudging the banks of the Seine, mingling in the crowds that flashed under the flare of arc-lights, with a thousand mysteries of mass and movement, never relaxed a moment the savage attack his leaping nature made upon the drudgeries and routine of technic. ”

“ It contained a wild little conflagration of its own, and even in their excitement some of those who ran felt a gentle secondary vibration of the thrifty part of their minds at sight of this overturned lantern. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a calamity.
But the cattle in the barn were trampling, trampling, trampling, and above this noise could be heard a humming like the song of innumerable bees. The old man hurled aside the great doors, and a yellow flame leaped out at one corner and sped and wavered frantically up the old gray wall. ”

“ The people in the Row took but little notice of this eccentric couple; for, after all, the friends did harm to nothing except the Squire's ground-game.
When the two men were growing grizzled with advancing years the coble which belonged to them had gone away from the fishing-ground one black night, before a strong north-easterly gale: she shot between the Great Farne Island and the Bird's Rock. The tide was going like a millrace, and the solemn roar of the vast stream made very terrible music in the dark. The men might have got into their own haven by an [Pg 31] easy passage, despite the gale. ”

“ In silence, broken only by the occasional lowing of the cattle, the boy ranchers waited—waited for they knew not what. And then, as suddenly as an explosion, came a cry in the night—and such a cry!
An unearthly noise of long drawn out howling notes, mingled with roars, the crescendo effect ending in a peal of weird yells that were like the cries of a laughing hyena, mingled with the sardonic wails of a baboon. ”

“ A southerly gale, with a southerly sea, came away in the night, and the boats could not [Pg 24] beat down from the northward. By daylight they were all safe in a harbour about eighteen miles north of the village. The sea grew worse and worse, till the usual clouds of foam flew against the houses or skimmed away into the fields beyond. When the wind reached its height the sounds it made in the hollows were like distant firing of small-arms, and the waves in the hollow rocks seemed to shake the ground over the cliffs. A little schooner came round the point, running before the sea. ”

“ He had in his mind more than one occasion on which the tribes had advanced to the attack under cover of a parley, and with the rear of the fort in its present condition he could not neglect any precautions. The heaps of rubbish on the opposite bank of the narrow channel which Runcorn had cleared for the water were a cause for constant anxiety, since a small force of resolute men posted behind them might render the new breastwork untenable, but nothing could be done to them at present. ”

“ Have you no plan, Ralph?” said Barry.
“We’ll stop not over three hundred yards from hyar,” answered Ralph.
“How’s that? There’s not a tree, log or rock around. Explain what you say,” said the young hunter, turning to the guide.
“Why we can’t reach the river, that’s certain. We’ve got to do something, fur thar’s no fun in being burned up by the pesky fire. Now what I propose is this. We’ll fight fire wid fire. What d’ye say to that, now?” called out Ralph, to make himself heard above the trampling hoofs, and the roaring and crackling of flames, which came rushing on like a huge wall. ”

“ Outside of the boundary was a great heap of ashes, from which clouds of dust drifted hither and thither. A light smoke arose from the chimney, and as my dog and I approached, a heavy bark came from a mastiff that was chained inside the low wicket. A sudden sense of companionship almost frightened me. It seemed as though the brownie had come from his clump of rushes to set things in order. A chair stood in the centre of a patch of grass that crowned a little hillock near the cottage, and while I waited and wondered a bowed figure stole forth and walked slowly towards the chair. ”

“ The war of extermination, as already intimated, begins at the mouth of the river, and with our friend will only cease when he has reached the fountain-head, or the season for trapping comes to an end. The coldest of winds may blow and the woods may be completely blocked with snow, but the trapper has mounted his snow-shoes, and day after day does he revisit and rearrange his traps. ”

“ I told M. Ferou—God forgive me!—I had business for the duke at the other end of the tunnel. He took me through, and I came here."
"But, mademoiselle, the bats!" I cried.
"Yes, the bats," she returned, with a little smile. "And my hands on the ropes!" She turned them over; the skin was torn cruelly from her delicate palms and the inside of her fingers. Little threads of blood marked the scores. "Then I came here," she repeated. "In all my life I have never been in the streets alone—not even for one step at noonday. Now will you tell me, M. Vigo, that I cannot go to St. Denis?" ”

“ Then, peering down among the alder-stems, Ranolf spied the pipe on the sandy bottom, looking blurred and distorted through the writhing current. Long we grappled for it, poking at it with pole and paddle. We would cautiously raise it a little way towards the surface; but even as we began to triumph it would wriggle off again as if actually alive, and settle languidly back upon the sand. ”

“ The suspicions of the landlord were awakened upon lifting my valise after your departure, and he insulted me to my face by calling me an imposter, and a contraband prince, I sprang up to stab him, but La Rancune had removed my sword, fearing lest despair on account of the ungrateful mistress who has abandoned me, might lead me to thrust it through my heart. This precaution was needless, O La Rancune! An actor never stabs himself with the sword that he has worn in many a comedy; nor does he who is himself the hero of tragedy ape the hero of a romance. ”

“ M. Étienne, protected somewhat in the embrasure of a doorway, held at bay with his good left arm a pair of attackers. These were in the dress of gentlemen, and wore masks as if their cheeks blushed (well they might) for the deeds of their hands.
A broad window in the Hôtel de Lorraine was flung open; a man leaned far out with a torch. The bright glare in our faces bewildered our gloom-accustomed eyes; I could not see what I was about, and rammed my point against my Spaniard's hilt, snapping my blade. ”

“ They were blocking her back. She knew they had gathered on a log bridge over the sedgy dike, a dark, heavy, powerfully heavy knot. Yet her feet went on and on. They would burst before her. They would burst before her. Her feet went on and on. And tense, and more tense became her nerves and her veins, they ran hot, they ran white hot, they must fuse and she must die.
But the horses had burst before her. In a sort of lightning of knowledge their movement travelled through her, the quiver and strain and thrust of their powerful flanks, as they burst before her and drew on, beyond. ”

“ She might climb into the boughs of that oak tree, and so round and drop on the other side of the hedge.
Shuddering, with limbs like water, dreading every moment to fall, she began to work her way as if making a wide detour round the horse-mass. The horses stirred their flanks in a knot against her. She trembled forward as if in a trance.
Then suddenly, in a flame of agony, she darted, seized the rugged knots of the oak tree and began to climb. Her body was weak but her hands were as hard as steel. She knew she was strong. ”

“ The breeze which was supposed to have upset the temper of the crustaceous multitude in the Tarn blew up bad weather before night. The panic-stricken leaves upon the alders and poplars announced the change with palsied movements and plaintive cries; the willows whitened, and bent towards the stream; and muttered threats of the strife-breeding spirits in nature seemed to issue from caverns half hidden by sombre foliage. As the gorge darkened, the gusts grew stronger, and the moaning rose at times to a shriek. ”

“ All day, while the clouds sailed by, white as snow and dazzlingly pure, while the stream roared with joy of exploration, and the sunshine fell in dazzling floods upon the world, the ranger bent above his ward or walked the floor of his cabin marvelling that the air and light of this high place should be so powerless to check the march of that relentless plague. ”

“ Half a stone's throw farther the bank fell again to the water's edge, the river having broadened and grown shallow, as mountain creeks do. The ranger ran, stooping, along the bank, till it afforded him no more protection, then dashed across the stony-bottomed stream to the shelter of the thick aspens beyond. ”

“ Many were lying there bleeding to death and crying aloud for help and for water; neither of which we could render, as the camarade battery and the fieldpieces had resumed their operations against the sconce; but many of the poor wretches crawled like bruised snails to the reedy margin of the shallow lake, and there perished miserably among the mud and slime, in futile efforts to quench their burning thirst. ”

“ We were some two hundred yards down stream from the spot at which we had entered the river, and such was the quantity of muddy water we had swallowed that we all three became sick. This left us much exhausted, and, as the storm showed no signs of abating, we encamped (16,320 feet) there and then on the left bank of the stream. Though we sadly needed some warm food, there was, of course, no possibility of lighting a fire. A piece of chocolate was all I had that night, and my men preferred to eat nothing rather than break their caste by eating my food. ”