“All right,” I said, “let’s go. But don’t blame me if we land on an ant hill.”
By that time I was able to see fairly well and led the way through the trees. When I figured that we had reached a zone which would be free of disturbance, I dropped my bedding. Then, telling Nicolind to wait there, so I wouldn’t lose it, I went scouting. Some of the most comfortable places to bivouac in the woods are the worst spots when it rains, and I had been on enough hunting trips to know that. Eventually I found what I was looking for, a well-drained, level place, near enough to the trunk of a big tree to offer our heads shelter from the wind.
“Nicolind!” I called. “Come on; and don’t forget my bedding.” Apparently I had strayed quite a ways, because I had to call again before he answered.
“Those skins are heavy,” he panted, when he had picked his way toward me.
“You’ll be glad of it by morning,” I told him. “Look; I’ve staked my claim right where I am now. There’s room for you next door, if you’re not one of those rambling sleepers; but don’t crowd me.”
“No man has had the right to complain that I’ve done so yet,” he retorted.
At this sign of boyish hauteur I grinned. “O.K. Then you’ve got a record to uphold. Ah, this feels good!”
The boughs overhead were just visible, not as branch and leaf, but as gently swaying masses. The same wind that whispered through them brought me all the richness of the forest. I didn’t drop off to sleep; the descent was a gentle slope.
“Silverlock,” a voice called when I had just about reached the bottom.
That brought me back to the top, and I would have to start all over again. “What?” I demanded.
“I’m not crowding you, am I?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! No, you’re giving me plenty of room.”
My annoyance must have been plain to him, but he still made one more remark. “I just like to be considerate. Good night.”
8
Two Big Cats
A NIGHT IN THE WOODS is seldom a matter of steady slumber. I waked and dozed off a dozen or more times before it was light enough under the leaves to see clearly. Nicolind wasn’t in his bedding, and after a couple of more catnaps the fact alarmed me. Fearing that I might be missing breakfast, I sat up.
The trees looked as if they didn’t have their eyes open yet. There was no wind, and I could hear nothing else stirring either. Puzzled, I blinked at where Nicolind had been lying, to make sure he wasn’t in the crumple of skins. Next I reached over and held something close enough for examination. It was a couple of feet long, and one end of it curled softly about my fingers. Undoubtedly I was holding a strand of dark, feminine hair.
“I’ll be damned!” I said. Then I thought of some of our conversation of the night before. “Why, the little devil!”
When some minutes more passed, I was convinced that Nicolind, or whatever her name really was, had left camp at daybreak. By then I had defined my attitude toward the matter. Her disguise was her own business. Moreover, it was something I didn’t want to go on record as knowing anything about. My wanderings the night before had taken me pretty far from the center of camp; and there was still no sign that anybody else was alert. I took Nicolind’s bedding a hundred or so feet away, then returned to my own to wait until I heard breakfast preparations.
I was almost through eating before the question was raised. “Where’s young Nicolind?” Robin asked, sitting down beside me.
My mouth busy with the drumstick of a wild goose, I shook my head. “Somewhere around,” I said when I could talk.
“Not around at all,” he corrected me. “John takes the muster every morning, and he’s had a look.”
Turning the bone over, I discovered another morsel of meat. “Maybe he’s a heavy sleeper,” I suggested.
“Maybe, but I tell you John searched. In these open woods there’s no chance of anyone getting mislaid.”
“Not now,” I mumbled, wishing I could share his pun with him. Tossing the drumstick into the fire, I wiped my hands on some leaves. “That’s funny,” I commented aloud.
“You were with him last night,” Robin pointed out.
I had been waiting for him to bring that up. “Yes, until it was time to cork in,” I nodded. If somebody had seen me moving that bedding, I would be in trouble, but I took a chance. “I don’t know where he spent the night.”
His face told me that I was in the clear. “I can’t decide whether to be amused or worried,” he confessed. “When a whelp his age doesn’t wait around for breakfast, you can bet your last bowstring there’s a reason for it. Either he’s decided that being an outlaw wasn’t his calling and has run home to mammy, or he’s one of the sheriff’s spies.”
I thought about that. If Nicolind was a spy, I owed it to Robin to tell what I knew, even though it might not help much. Yet if I told him Nicolind was disguised, he might put some of his strong-arm men on her trail. In the end I didn’t tell him. Having given thought to the things that could happen to Rosalette alone in the forest, my sympathy was extended to other women in the same boat.
“Are you going to have him followed?” I asked.
“No, he’s probably just a punk kid,” he relieved me by saying, “but I’ll move camp south just for luck.”
Previously I hadn’t made up my mind whether I would stay with the outlaws or not, but now I had no choice. If I tried to hurry away, they would suspect me, too. Robin didn’t tell me why he was jittery about being spied on. That I got from Scarlok, with whom I grew pretty friendly. One night when we had our noses in the ale he told me that Robin had recently rescued a friend of his from the law. In the course of the fracas the sheriff died, and so did quite a few of the posse.
I spent over a week slowly drifting south with that bunch. They fitted me out with one of their green uniforms, which, with the exception of the dinky feathered hat, I was glad to get. The outfit which Golias had won for me had got hard usage in the battle where Brian was killed. My beard was pretty well grown, so all in all I couldn’t be told from the others, until I tried to shoot the bow I carried. Still I was making progress when Robin took me aside one morning.
“Shandon,” he said, “we’ve got to clear out of this part of the timber, but you’re not going along.”
Well, if they didn’t want me, they didn’t want me. I looked at him.
“We’re in big trouble,” he explained. “The king himself is after us.”
So the heat was on for killing that sheriff. “I don’t mind,” I offered.
“No,” he said. “There’s no sense in you being hunted for something you weren’t in on.”
That was so, and I didn’t make myself absurd by pretending an anxiety for martyrdom. “Good luck,” I said.
He gave me a hard smile. “I expect to have it, but I expect to work for it, too.”
Some of the men were out on assignment and had to be called in with the horn. While they were waiting around I hung my hat on a bush and left them, my bindle slung on my bow stave. I had long given up the thought of seeing Rosalette again, so Heorot, for luck or disappointment, was the only goal I could have. There was no path, and the day was sunless; but Scarlok indicated the southeast for me.
It was with a mixture of feelings that I found myself on my own again. On the one hand I knew enough about Broceliande to be wary of what I might encounter. On the other, the nine or ten days I had lived in it had given me a feeling I was a competent of the environment. If this confidence was hardly justified by my limited woodcraft, it stood for my changed attitude toward the Commonwealth in general. Having made my way so far, I saw no reason why I shouldn’t continue to get along.
This feeling was strengthened when, after walking for an hour or so, I found a creek. By following it I would inevitably reach a river, some part of whose valley was bound to be inhabited. Once I arrived at a town of any size I would consult an atlas at the public library and get myself positively located.
About noon the characte
r of Broceliande changed. The ground, which had been sloping down, leveled off. The undergrowth grew rank. The trees were now strung with vines, and the footing was spongy. The stream was different also. Where it had moved swiftly over a rocky bed, it now glided slowly between mud banks.
Soon it entered a swamp, which was more than I was prepared to do. The trees looked like hired mourners, and their roots hunched up as if they were trying to avoid touching the bog holes. A snake swam lazily across the nearest opaque pool.
While I was trying to decide in which direction to detour, I heard what sounded like the war screech of a giant tomcat. I let my bindle slip to the ground and began rigging my bow. About the time I had an arrow nocked, I heard a sound like a horse running on a sloppy track. Whether this animal was the one that was doing the screeching I couldn’t tell, but it was coming nearer. Hoping I wouldn’t be noticed, I hid behind a tree.
The screaming grew more ferocious and the running more furious. My ears had been right on both counts. First I saw the horse and rider, then, following as snugly as a dinghy trailing a yacht, a gigantic panther. As they burst from the swamp, the rider stabbed his mount with an instrument of some sort. He must have severed the spinal cord, for the horse promptly collapsed.
Jumping clear, the man started sprinting. Undoubtedly he had killed his mount for a decoy, but horse flesh wasn’t what the big cat wanted. After giving the carcass the once over with his nose, the beast began yowling in pursuit of the man once more.
I had to try. My arrow scored a perfect hit on that dead horse. The panther didn’t even know it had been shot at. Fumbling in my hurry, I drew another arrow from my quiver. Before I could get it nocked, the catamount had leaped.
From where I stood it looked as if the man hit it on the jaw. The next instant he crumpled to the ground. With a final howl, the animal did the same.
I contemplated the prostrate bodies for some minutes before I gingerly drew near. My bow was drawn, as I stopped short of them for a final appraisal. Dropping my weapon, I then sprang forward to examine the man.
His eyes opened when I bent over him. “Has it gone away?” he whispered.
As he asked this, he turned his head and saw for himself that the beast was still there. After a little he sat up and touched it with one finger. Next he pried open the jaws, which had been clenched in death on one of his jacket pockets.
“Valerian!” he breathed. “Good God! Valerian. And to think it never occurred to me.”
As he seemed to have pulled himself together, I thought it time to appease my curiosity. “What,” I demanded, “did you hit him with?”
He turned a weathered, high cheek-boned face to me. His hazel eyes smiled.
“I didn’t hit him. I administered cyanide by pitching it down his throat.”
“Oh,” I sat down on the catamount to discuss that. “It was fore-thoughted of you to have it handy.”
“There are compensations even for being a swamp doctor. For instance,” and his smile spread to his mouth, “I always carry a restorative for nerves. My own are sagging badly.”
“So are mine,” I admitted when he reached into his hip pocket. “No, you first. You must really need it, er — ”
“M. Tensas, M.D.” He breathed deeply, as he gave me my turn at the bottle. “It’s an unsettling experience at that, Mr. — ”
“Shandon.” It was good liquor. “Do you hunt that way often?”
“It was just an experiment.” He gave me a cigar, my first smoke since I was aboard the Naglfar. “And,” he went on after lighting up, “I don’t think I’ll repeat it.” He held his cigar to mine. “Getting the right timing is too difficult.”
“It would be hard on your stable, too,” I suggested.
“That’s right. Lucky he was a borrowed steed, wasn’t it?”
This man had nothing but the best in whiskey and tobacco. I beamed upon him.
“It’s better that way. Then you don’t get all choked up, when the time comes to give him the works. By the way, what did you do that job with?”
“A scalpel.” He stared at his fallen mount, then he studied me. “Was it a personal grudge, or do you just dislike horses?”
I, too, peered at the arrow sticking out of the animal’s belly. “He didn’t get away from me, did he?” I said complacently. “Of course, I might have hit him a little farther forward, but I forgot to lead him.”
We had another drink before he put the flask back in his pocket. “No use in leaving the saddle on. Besides, it aggravates the buzzards.” He was a tall, loose-jointed fellow. I wondered where he had bought the Currier and Ives clothes; but I thought that as long as he didn’t ask about my green tights I could afford to be silent. “As so often happens,” he continued, while he loosened the girth, “this poor creature owes disaster to another’s personal vanity. In this case my own. Nothing in my past experience justifies me in supposing that a panther would covet my stringy carcass, but I was convinced of it.”
“Well, what the deuce did he want? He passed the nag up.”
For an answer he reached into the pocket torn by the catamount’s teeth and showed me a handful of dried roots. “In the backwoods here a doctor’s got to be his own pharmacist, so I always carry a stock of herbs along with me; but I forgot that all felines have a mania for valerian.” He picked up his saddle and saddlebags. “Which way are you traveling?”
Having retrieved my bindle, I slung it on my bow stave again. “That’s hard to say. Where I’m going and where I want to go may be two different things. Does the name Heorot register with you?”
He shook his head.
“Then what I’m trying to do is to bust out of the woods and get to some town.”
“I’m on my way to a patient or I’d show you how. Let’s see; there’s a short cut through the swamp.” Dr. Tensas nodded in the direction from which he had come. “I wouldn’t advise it without a horse, but you’re welcome to mine.”
“Not without the saddle, thanks. How about the long cut?”
“Cross on that fallen tree; it’s not as rotten as it looks,” he said, pointing to a windfall athwart the stream. “Keep on skirting the swamp. You’ll get tired of that, but eventually it’ll peter out. Peel your eyes for a blazed trail, and turn right on it. Can I shoot you in the other foot?”
He could. When he had corked his flask again, I shouldered my bow, jammed my cigar in my teeth, and ambled happily toward the fallen tree. The Boss of Arden seemed to be full of good people.
Camping on the trail that night, I felt confident of reaching the town Tensas had mentioned during the afternoon of the next day. My lunch had hardly settled, however, when I lost the blazes where a hurricane, by the look of things, had ploughed a swathe through the woods. I failed to pick them up on the other side. Finally I gave up looking and bulled ahead the best I could with the aid of the sun.
The worst of it was that there was no way of telling how I was doing, and therefore no sense of progress. By mid-afternoon this situation had depressed me; and I sat dunking my feet in a small brook, while I tried to think of a better course of action. Absorbed, I didn’t pay much attention to the sounds of splashing downstream. Vaguely I had assigned them to some animal, until I heard a sneeze. My bow ready, I stole along the bank to investigate.
Around a bend from where I had been resting, the stream widened into a little pool. Beside it knelt a man with his head in a bucket. Unwilling to disturb him at this curious but peaceful pursuit, I sat down and waited for him to finish.
By the time I had made myself comfortable I had decided that he was doing nothing more strange or interesting than washing his hair. I had hardly made this diagnosis, when he started to lift his head, wringing blond locks as he withdrew it. They were a half a foot long, then a foot, and still the end hadn’t been reached. My eye went from them to the costume, which I now found familiar. Light was dawning, but it still had some fog to burn away.
The clothes belonged to Nicolind and so, to judge from the genera
l size of it, did the body in them. But Nicolind had had black hair, while this was golden enough to belong to —
“Rosalette!” I cried, jumping to my feet.
With a shriek she sprang up also, pushing her hair away from her face. She had been about to run but relaxed when she recognized me.
“Oh, it’s you, Silverlock. I can’t remember your other name.”
“I can remember both of yours,” I informed her.
She laughed, offering both her hands. “I felt awful about that when you were nice enough to worry about me; but at night with all those men around, and everybody drinking, I was pretty frightened.”
She was genuinely glad to see me, which pleased me more than I would have expected. “I don’t blame you,” I told her. “A stag party is no place for a careful doe to bleat. Did you ever meet up with your boy friend?”
“Yes.” She laughed delightedly. “I see him every day, and he doesn’t recognize me any more than you did.”
“What’s the sport in that?”
“Oh, we have lots of fun talking about me and how much he loves me. As you know, I’d dyed my face and hair as part of my disguise, and it takes a week to get looking right again. I certainly wasn’t going to let him know who I was before I was looking my best.”
“Don’t overdo it,” I cautioned her. “You’re leading the league right now.”
She made a kissing motion with her lips. “You’re sweet, Silverlock.” I tried to think when any girl had said such a thing to me before; then I tried to remember whether I’d ever given any girl much reason to. “Anyhow,” she went on, “he won’t have to pine for me after tonight. I was just rinsing after the final hair washing when you came along.”
“And then what? Wedding bells?”
“Tomorrow!” In her enthusiasm she let go of her hair and gave me her hands again. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
I wasn’t so sure. It was not that I was in love with her, or even had designs upon her. To me she was like honeysuckle, that I could admire on the vine without wanting to pick. Still it might be better if the option could be kept open.