"You only got me that last," Tudor grunted sullenly, "lying in ambush like--"
"Like a wild Indian. Precisely. You"ve caught the idea, old man."
Sheldon ceased his mocking and stood up. "You lie there quietly until I send back some of the boys to carry you in. You"re not seriously hurt, and it"s lucky for you I didn"t follow your example. If you had been struck with one of your own bullets, a carriage and pair would have been none too large to drive through the hole it would have made. As it is, you"re drilled clean--a nice little perforation. All you need is antiseptic washing and dressing, and you"ll be around in a month. Now take it easy, and I"ll send a stretcher for you."
CHAPTER XXVIII--CAPITULATION
When Sheldon emerged from among the trees he found Joan waiting at the compound gate, and he could not fail to see that she was visibly gladdened at the sight of him.
"I can"t tell you how glad I am to see you," was her greeting. "What"s become of Tudor? That last flutter of the automatic wasn"t nice to listen to. Was it you or Tudor?"
"So you know all about it," he answered coolly. "Well, it was Tudor, but he was doing it left-handed. He"s down with a hole in his shoulder." He looked at her keenly. "Disappointing, isn"t it?" he drawled.
"How do you mean?"
"Why, that I didn"t kill him."
"But I didn"t want him killed just because he kissed me," she cried.
"Oh, he did kiss you!" Sheldon retorted, in evident surprise. "I thought you said he hurt your arm."
"One could call it a kiss, though it was only on the end of the nose."
She laughed at the recollection. "But I paid him back for that myself. I boxed his face for him. And he did hurt my arm. It"s black and blue.
Look at it."
She pulled up the loose sleeve of her blouse, and he saw the bruised imprints of two fingers.
Just then a gang of blacks came out from among the trees carrying the wounded man on a rough stretcher.
"Romantic, isn"t it?" Sheldon sneered, following Joan"s startled gaze.
"And now I"ll have to play surgeon and doctor him up. Funny, this twentieth-century duelling. First you drill a hole in a man, and next you set about plugging the hole up."
They had stepped aside to let the stretcher pa.s.s, and Tudor, who had heard the remark, lifted himself up on the elbow of his sound arm and said with a defiant grin,--
"If you"d got one of mine you"d have had to plug with a dinner-plate."
"Oh, you wretch!" Joan cried. "You"ve been cutting your bullets."
"It was according to agreement," Tudor answered. "Everything went. We could have used dynamite if we wanted to."
"He"s right," Sheldon a.s.sured her, as they swung in behind. "Any weapon was permissible. I lay in the gra.s.s where he couldn"t see me, and bushwhacked him in truly n.o.ble fashion. That"s what comes of having women on the plantation. And now it"s antiseptics and drainage tubes, I suppose. It"s a nasty mess, and I"ll have to read up on it before I tackle the job."
"I don"t see that it"s my fault," she began. "I couldn"t help it because he kissed me. I never dreamed he would attempt it."
"We didn"t fight for that reason. But there isn"t time to explain. If you"ll get dressings and bandages ready I"ll look up "gun-shot wounds"
and see what"s to be done."
"Is he bleeding seriously?" she asked.
"No; the bullet seems to have missed the important arteries. But that would have been a pickle."
"Then there"s no need to bother about reading up," Joan said. "And I"m just dying to hear what it was all about. The _Apostle_ is lying becalmed inside the point, and her boats are out to wing. She"ll be at anchor in five minutes, and Doctor Welshmere is sure to be on board. So all we"ve got to do is to make Tudor comfortable. We"d better put him in your room under the mosquito-netting, and send a boat off to tell Dr.
Welshmere to bring his instruments."
An hour afterward, Dr. Welshmere left the patient comfortable and attended to, and went down to the beach to go on board, promising to come back to dinner. Joan and Sheldon, standing on the veranda, watched him depart.
"I"ll never have it in for the missionaries again since seeing them here in the Solomons," she said, seating herself in a steamer-chair.
She looked at Sheldon and began to laugh.
"That"s right," he said. "It"s the way I feel, playing the fool and trying to murder a guest."
"But you haven"t told me what it was all about."
"You," he answered shortly.
"Me? But you just said it wasn"t."
"Oh, it wasn"t the kiss." He walked over to the railing and leaned against it, facing her. "But it was about you all the same, and I may as well tell you. You remember, I warned you long ago what would happen when you wanted to become a partner in Berande. Well, all the beach is gossiping about it; and Tudor persisted in repeating the gossip to me. So you see it won"t do for you to stay on here under present conditions. It would be better if you went away."
"But I don"t want to go away," she objected with rueful countenance.
"A chaperone, then--"
"No, nor a chaperone."
"But you surely don"t expect me to go around shooting every slanderer in the Solomons that opens his mouth?" he demanded gloomily.
"No, nor that either," she answered with quick impulsiveness. "I"ll tell you what we"ll do. We"ll get married and put a stop to it all. There!"
He looked at her in amazement, and would have believed that she was making fun of him had it not been for the warm blood that suddenly suffused her cheeks.
"Do you mean that?" he asked unsteadily. "Why?"
"To put a stop to all the nasty gossip of the beach. That"s a pretty good reason, isn"t it?"
The temptation was strong enough and sudden enough to make him waver, but all the disgust came back to him that was his when he lay in the gra.s.s fighting gnats and cursing adventure, and he answered,--
"No; it is worse than no reason at all. I don"t care to marry you as a matter of expedience--"
"You are the most ridiculous creature!" she broke in, with a flash of her old-time anger. "You talk love and marriage to me, very much against my wish, and go mooning around over the plantation week after week because you can"t have me, and look at me when you think I"m not noticing and when all the time I"m wondering when you had your last square meal because of the hungry look in your eyes, and make eyes at my revolver- belt hanging on a nail, and fight duels about me, and all the rest--and--and now, when I say I"ll marry you, you do yourself the honour of refusing me."
"You can"t make me any more ridiculous than I feel," he answered, rubbing the lump on his forehead reflectively. "And if this is the accepted romantic programme--a duel over a girl, and the girl rushing into the arms of the winner--why, I shall not make a bigger a.s.s of myself by going in for it."
"I thought you"d jump at it," she confessed, with a naivete he could not but question, for he thought he saw a roguish gleam in her eyes.