“I’ll be waiting for you before eleven o’clock,” she went on. “I’ll have two horses . . . I don’t suppose that you’d bring Ashur?”
He looked down to the beautiful head of the horse and stroked the stallion’s neck, and the colt turned its head and looked back to him.
“If you think it would be stealing . . .” said Nancy. “Well, but they’ll never be able to make any use of him when you’re away.”
“I want him more than diamonds,” he said sadly. “More than masses and masses of diamonds, Nancy dear. But I . . .”
He looked at her in apology, and she shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ll be waiting with two horses, then. I don’t mind stealing.”
“It’s all that I’d ever take from your father. And usually fathers give their children something. We’ll give ours everything.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, with tears in her eyes. Then, after a little pause, she added: “By the poplars beside our house I’ll wait for you. I’ll have some money, too. I have some of my own.”
“You give me everything, and I give you nothing!” cried Torridon in anguish.
“You will give later, dear.”
“I have this one thing to give you. Do you see?” He took her hand. “Here is this ring.”
“This? This is the ring of Roger Lincoln. See his initials on the seal?”
“It’s all I have.”
“You mustn’t give this away.”
“I must. It makes me happier to think of giving you something.”
He slipped it on her finger. She did not look at it, but at him. There was such joy in them that for a moment they remained speechless, worshipping one another.
“We haven’t decided where to go, dear.”
“We’ll go to the Torridons over the mountains . . . my people, dear Nancy.”
“What would they feel if you came back to them out of death and brought a Brett with you?”
“They would love you. Everybody loves you, Nancy.”
“We’d better go to a new place, Paul.” She shook her head.
“I don’t care.”
“We could go west . . . beyond the river.”
“Into the Indian countries?”
“Into the free countries,” she said.
“I don’t care. Oh, Nancy, what a kind world it is.”
“Now I must go home. Poor old Jack. What will he do when you’re gone?”
“Would he want to come, Nancy?”
“He’d go to the end of the world with you and me.”
“Shall we tell him?”
“If you want to.”
“You tell him if you think best, Nancy.”
“I shall, then. Good bye.”
“I hate that word,” he said. “Only for a little while.”
She held out her arms to him and he took her close to him. There was fragrance in her hair; her eyes were looking up to him; he began to tremble.
“Paul Torridon, Paul Torridon,” she said, “heaven give you to me . . . and heaven give me to you.”
He watched her ride away. When she was at the next bending of the trail, she turned and waved back to him, then the trees swallowed her, but still the beat of her horse in full gallop sounded faintly.
“If that should be my last sight of her,” said Torridon to his soul.
Then he looked up and saw that the sun was down, and all the glory was stolen, even from the heads of the autumn trees. He shivered with his thought and with the sudden cold.
Then he rode home, taking the slow way, the roundabout way. It was well enough to gallop madly across country, flying the fence. But that was before he belonged to another, and now what would Nancy do without him?
Still he could not entirely believe, and, before he reached the house, he pinched himself once or twice, wondering if it were real, not all a dream. If, after all, she had not been making a cruel game with him, drawing out his folly so that she could tell her people, and then all of them would laugh long and loudly. He was still tormented by that foolish dream when he came in the dusk toward the house.
It was all dark, and he wondered at that, although doubtless only in the kitchen and dining room were the lamps lit at this hour. He had no sooner come to that conclusion than three or four men started out of the brush.
“Who goes there?” cried one of them.
Paul reined in his horse. He was too shocked to make a quick answer.
“Answer!” called a voice that he thought must be that of Charlie Brett. “Answer, or we’ll blow you to bits! Who are you?”
“Why, it’s only Paul Torridon,” he said. “Is that you, Charlie?”
“Don’t Charlie me, you murdering traitor,” answered young Brett. “Get off that hoss, will you? Get off and get off quick!”
Paul dismounted. He leaned against the shoulder of the stallion, unable to believe that such things could be.
Had they spied upon him and seen beautiful Nancy in his arms? That must be it.
They were all about him. Charlie caught one of his arms. Will Brett caught another. They lashed his wrists together behind his back.
Finally he could ask: “But what does it mean, Will? What does it mean? What have I done?”
“What have you done? You ask that! You and a dozen of your sneaking Torridons ain’t come down on the Harry Bretts and wiped them out, I suppose?”
“What?” breathed the boy.
“You spy!” cried Charlie, furious. “I could thrash you! I could thrash you within an inch of your life! You sneaking spy! We’re gonna burn you to a crisp. Walk on.”
And they jerked Paul Torridon headlong up the path toward the house.
XIII
They dragged Torridon straight in before old John Brett, and the latter regarded him with bent brows.
“Paul Torridon,” he said, “I’ve been keeping you in my house for twelve years or more. I’ve kept you in food and clothes and I’ve given you easy work. Your own father wouldn’t’ve treated you half as good. How’ve you paid me back?”
Torridon looked earnestly back into the face of the clansman. It was not contorted with anger. It was simply hard and cold. He glanced rapidly at the others. Their passion was less under control than that of their leader. They stared at him with hungry malice.
“They say that Harry Brett has been killed,” said Torridon.
“He’s been raided. That was news to you, maybe?”
“It was,” answered Torridon calmly.
The peril was too great to be feared. In the den of the snakes, one forgets the fear of death. So Torridon was surrounded with malice and rage.
“No,” said John Brett ironically, “it’s more likely that one of the Bretts themselves sent on word to those hounds of Torridons beyond the mountains. That’s a pile more likely.”
Torridon was silent. He was determined not to speak until words had a chance of benefiting him.
“It was one of the Bretts,” went on the leader, “that must’ve let the Torridons know that the three men was away from the house and that there was no one but boys and women there.”
“Did they . . . did they hurt . . . the women?” asked Paul Torridon, horror stricken.
John Brett leaned forward in his chair.
“You didn’t aim on that, eh?” he said. “You only wanted to have the men wiped out?”
“Uncle John,” said Torridon earnestly, “will you tell me what I have to gain by an attack on the house of Harry Brett?”
“What has any Torridon to gain?” asked John Brett. “What have the snakes in the field to gain by sneaking up and biting a man that’s sleeping?”
Torridon was silenced.
“They’ve come before you was ready, and I can believe that,” said John Brett. “You figured that tomorrow, maybe, would be better. Then you’d slip away on Ashur. Was that the plan?”
Still Torridon did not speak, and Charlie Brett stepped in from the side and struck him heavily in the face. The blow knocked him with a crash against the wall. He staggered back onto the floor, his head spinning. The hard knuckles of Charlie had split the skin over his cheek bone and a trickle of blood ran down rapidly.