War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 33
IT SEEMED to Lachlan that he had been fighting for an eternity—that for unnumbered hours he had been circling the moonlit meadow under Sani'gilagi's summit, parrying, thrusting, battling for his life, while in front of him Lance Falcon danced and shimmered behind a shifting, glimmering veil of steel—a crouching, hideously smiling figure, yet darkly handsome, unreal, elusive as the moonlight, baleful as some nameless phantom of a dream.
To Lachlan all that had happened and was happening was unreal. It seemed to him that his mind and body dwelt apart; that his hand and eye were fighting this fight without direction from his brain; that the moves that he made were not made consciously but were wholly mechanical, as though his body had become an automaton animated by some force within itself over which he had no control.
Yet he knew that never before had he fought so well. His eyes—and apparently Falcon's also—seemed as much at home in the brilliant moonlight as in the full light of day. He knew that he was fighting with all the art of which he was capable, that he was utilizing with almost perfect skill all that O'Sullivan had taught him; and he was not alarmed at the discovery, which he had made early in the combat, that Falcon was at least his peer in swordcraft, while enjoying also the advantage of height and reach.
He had no sense of apprehension or of nervousness. His mind was not here in the moonlit meadow where he was battling with Lance Falcon but in the little lean-to on the mountain top where Jolie Stanwicke was sleeping.
He saw her lying on her couch of boughs, smiling a little, her red-gold hair pushed back from her cool forehead. How beautiful her face was, and how lithe and strong her slim body, and how brave she had been amid all the perils of the wilderness! With a quick thrill of pleasure he recalled how she had learned to love the wilderness, despite its hardships and its terrors; and he wondered dully whether she had learned to love it well enough to go with him to his own land of Tallasee and to dwell with him there.
But that, he told himself calmly, could not be. There was Gilbert Barradell who had her heart and had crushed it, though as yet she did not know that Barradell was false. And there was Lance Falcon, this devil with whom he was fighting—Lance Falcon who loved her as a fiend might love an angel and who would come back to Sani'gilagi with his Spaniards and Spanish Indians and carry her with him to St. Augustine.
The thought stung him to fury. Yet it was like the unreal fury of a dream, and almost at once it passed, leaving him cold. Eternity wore on. Falcon was attacking more vigorously, more boldly. Lachlan knew that they had circled the moonlit meadowmany times, Falcon always advancing, himself always retreating. He knew, too, though he was scarcely conscious of the knowledge, that at last eternity was drawing to a close, that the battle neared its end. His mind still dwelt apart; but he was hazily and quite calmly aware of Falcon's more aggressive offence; and he knew mechanically—as though his senses knew it but not his brain—that Falcon planned to finish soon.
The slow, interminable minutes passed. He was retreating more rapidly now. He was moving backward around the meadow, and the rasping, hissing swords were as swift as lightning, as nimble as the flickering tongues of snakes.
Swift as was Lachlan's sword in defence, Falcon's was swifter in attack. Lachlan realized grimly the truth of what O'Sullivan had told him—that this man was an almost perfect master of the rapier and that his enormous strength and his length of arm rendered him doubly formidable. Lachlan could not hold his ground for an instant. Falcon was rushing him, attacking him like a raging tiger, and Lachlan gave way before him—faster, faster, faster.
A slow cunning grew in Lachlan's brain. Now, with the final crisis upon him, his mental lethargy fell from him, his mind sprang awake to the fight, to his peril, to his opportunity.
There was one chance in a thousand; one faint, infinitesimal hope; one tenuous, almost incredible possibility.
He had been retreating so long and so swiftly that Falcon must think him beaten. If, now, he should suddenly attack
Falcon's point touched Lachlan's shoulder, a moment later pricked his bare forearm. This, then, was the end: he had waited too long.
Lachlan laughed, braced himself for the shock, flung himself in the teeth of that whirlwind assault, lunged, and lunged again.
A moment they stood like battling stallions, thrusting, stabbing, clashing steel against steel. Then Falcon staggered backward, stood swaying, fell face downward in the grass.
Presently Lachlan was aware of a voice behind him speaking his name—the voice of Jolie Stanwicke. He turned his head slowly.
She was standing, clad in her stained and faded buckskins, near where the trail came down into the open. Her eyes were wide and staring and her face in the white moonlight was like that of a ghost. Behind her, where the trail entered the meadow, stood Mr. O'Sullivan.
She came forward slowly, and Lachlan walked toward her, while O'Sullivan ran quickly to the spot where Falcon lay motionless. She spoke no word, but she lifted her face as they met and Lachlan took her in his arms. He looked down at her and in her eyes he beheld a miracle.
He bent and kissed her lips. He told her then that he loved her, and she answered quietly:
"And I love you, Lachlan McDonald, though I did not know it till now."
O'Sullivan had come forward as she spoke, and she held out her hand to him and he pressed it between his hands.
"I have known it for a long while, Jolie," he said softly, "ever since our first days on the mountain. I was only afraid that you would not discover it in time."
He paused and looked at her gravely.
"Captain Falcon is dead," he told her very gently. "Will you go back to the camp and tell Almayne what has happened here?"
When she had gone O'Sullivan turned to Lachlan.
"It was God's will, God's goodness," he said reverently. "She came out of her hut and ran to me where I sat on watch beside the ashes of the fire—Almayne had left me not five minutes before. She had dreamed, she said, that you were in peril here in the meadow, and I remembered that you had come this way and had taken my sword. We ran down the path together, but she was swifter and left me a little behind."
The little man stood silent a moment.
"God's ways are strange," he continued. "From the path above I saw what happened. She came out into the meadow a moment before you attacked. I think that Falcon saw her standing there, in the moonlight, and that for a fatal instant he was confused."
O'Sullivan paused once more.
"You owe your life to her, lad," he said, his hand on Lachlan's shoulder, "but perhaps it will be best if she never knows."
The two Muskogee warriors kept watch over Falcon's body that night lest some wandering wolfpack should find the place; and next morning, before Jolie had awakened, they laid him in a shallow trench dug with tomahawks and piled stones upon the spot. Almayne leaned on his long rifle, frowning and scornful, while Mr. O'Sullivan spoke a few words of prayer over the grave; but Lachlan, remembering a day when he had stood by Falcon's side on the Good Fortune's deck in the midst of blood and death, seemed to hear once more a great voice booming above the gale.
O'Sullivan ended his prayer and stood, a small, plump, white-headed figure in torn black kneebreeches and mud-stained white shirt, gazing down at the mound of stones at his feet.
"He was an evil man," the little Irishman said slowly, "but, by Paul, he was a swordsman!"
With this brief epitaph they left Lance Falcon.