"Mark!" called the father.
Out of the willows like a feathered bomb burst a big grouse, and the green foliage that barred its flight seemed to explode as the strong bird sheered out into the sunshine.
The boy"s gun, slanting upward at thirty degrees, glittered in the sun an instant, then the left barrel spoke; and the grouse, as though struck by lightning in mid-air, stopped with a jerk, then slanted swiftly and struck the ground.
"Dead!" cried the boy, as a setter appeared, leading on straight to the heavy ma.s.s of feathers lying on the pasture gra.s.s.
"Clean work, Jim," said his father, strolling out of the willows. "But wasn"t it a bit risky, considering the little girl yonder?"
"Father!" exclaimed the boy, very red. "I never even saw her. I"m ashamed."
They stood looking across the pasture, where a little girl in a pink gingham dress lingered watching them, evidently lured by her curiosity from the old house at the crossroads just beyond.
Jim Neeland, still red with mortification, took the big c.o.c.k-grouse from the dog which brought it--a tender-mouthed, beautifully trained Belton, who stood with his feathered offering in his jaws, very serious, very proud, awaiting praise from the Neelands, father and son.
Neeland senior "drew" the bird and distributed the sacrifice impartially between both dogs--it being the custom of the country.
Neeland junior broke his gun, replaced the exploded sh.e.l.l, content indeed with his one hundred per cent performance.
"Better run over and speak to the little girl, Jim," suggested old d.i.c.k Neeland, as he motioned the dogs into covert again.
So Jim ran lightly across the stony, clover-set ground to where the little girl roamed along the old snake fence, picking berries sometimes, sometimes watching the sportsmen out of shy, golden-grey eyes.
"Little girl," he said, "I"m afraid the shot from my gun came rattling rather close to you that time. You"ll have to be careful. I"ve noticed you here before. It won"t do; you"ll have to keep out of range of those bushes, because when we"re inside we can"t see exactly where we"re firing."
The child said nothing. She looked up at the boy, smiled shyly, then, with much composure, began her retreat, not neglecting any tempting blackberry on the way.
The sun hung low over the hazy Gayfield hills; the beeches and oaks of Mohawk County burned brown and crimson; silver birches supported their delicate canopies of burnt gold; and imperial white pines clothed hill and vale in a stately robe of green.
Jim Neeland forgot the child--or remembered her only to exercise caution in the Brookhollow covert.
The little girl Ruhannah, who had once fidgeted with p.r.i.c.kly heat in her mother"s arms outside the walls of Trebizond, did not forget this easily smiling, tall young fellow--a grown man to her--who had come across the pasture lot to warn her.
But it was many a day before they met again, though these two also had been born under the invisible shadow of the Dark Star. But the shadow of Erlik is always pa.s.sing like swift lightning across the Phantom Planet which has fled the other way since Time was born.
_Allahou Ekber, O Tchinguiz Khagan!_
A native Mongol missionary said to Ruhannah"s father:
"As the chronicles of the Eighurs have it, long ago there fell metal from the Black Racer of the skies; the first dagger was made of it; and the first image of the Prince of Darkness. These pa.s.s from Kurd to Cossack by theft, by gift, by loss; they pa.s.s from nation to nation by accident, which is Divine design.
"And where they remain, war is. And lasts until image and dagger are carried to another land where war shall be. But where there is war, only the predestined suffer--those born under Erlik--children of the Dark Star."
"I thought," said the Reverend Wilbour Carew, "that my brother had confessed Christ."
"I am but repeating to you what my father believed; and Temujin before him," replied the native convert, his remote gaze lost in reflection.
His eyes were quite little and coloured like a lion"s; and sometimes, in deep reverie, the corners of his upper lip twitched.
This happened when Ruhannah lay fretting in her mother"s arms, and the hot wind blew on Trebizond.
Under the Dark Star, too, a boy grew up in Minetta Lane, not less combative than other ragged boys about him, but he was inclined to arrange and superintend fist fights rather than to partic.i.p.ate in battle, except with his wits.
His name was Eddie Brandes; his first fortune of three dollars was ama.s.sed at c.r.a.ps; he became a hanger-on in ward politics, at race-tracks, stable, club, squared ring, vaudeville, burlesque. Long Acre attracted him--but always the gambling end of the operation.
Which predilection, with its years of ups and downs, landed him one day in Western Canada with an "Unknown" to match against an Athabasca blacksmith, and a training camp as the prospect for the next six weeks.
There lived there, gradually dying, one Albrecht Dumont, lately head gamekeeper to n.o.bility in the mountains of a Lost Province, and wearing the Iron Cross of 1870 on the ruins of a gigantic and bony chest, now as hollow as a Gothic ruin.
And if, like a thousand fellow patriots, he had been ordered to the Western World to watch and report to his Government the trend and tendency of that Western, English-speaking world, only his Government and his daughter knew it--a child of the Dark Star now grown to early womanhood, with a voice like a hermit thrush and the skill of a sorceress with anything that sped a bullet.
Before the Unknown was quite ready to meet the Athabasca blacksmith, Albrecht Dumont, dying faster now, signed his last report to the Government at Berlin, which his daughter Ilse had written for him--something about Canadian ca.n.a.ls and stupid Yankees and their greed, indifference, cowardice, and sloth.
Dumont"s mind wandered:
"After the well-born Herr Gott relieves me at my post," he whispered, "do thou pick up my burden and stand guard, little Ilse."
"Yes, father."
"Thy sacred promise?"
"My promise."
The next day Dumont felt better than he had felt for a year.
"Ilse, who is the short and broadly constructed American who comes now already every day to see thee and to hear thee sing?"
"His name is Eddie Brandes."
"He is of the fight _gesellschaft_, not?"
"He should gain much money by the fight. A theatre in Chicago may he willingly control, in which light opera shall be given."
"Is it for that he hears so willingly thy voice?"
"It is for that.... And love."
"And what of Herr Max Venem, who has asked of me thy little hand in marriage?"
The girl was silent.
"Thou dost not love him?"