I came round with that to the problem of just how the whole thing had seemed to him. He looked completely undamaged--so far, good; he was neither scared nor unhinged, he was simply tremendously satisfied with the afternoon"s entertainment, and there in his arms were the four parcels.
Confound it! what could be in them?
"Um!" I said. "Little boys can"t go to shops like that every day."
He received this with his usual stoicism, and for a moment I was sorry I was his father and not his mother, and so couldn"t suddenly there, coram publico, in our hansom, kiss him. After all, I thought, the thing wasn"t so very bad.
But it was only when we opened the parcels that I really began to be rea.s.sured. Three of them contained boxes of soldiers, quite ordinary lead soldiers, but of so good a quality as to make Gip altogether forget that originally these parcels had been Magic Tricks of the only genuine sort, and the fourth contained a kitten, a little living white kitten, in excellent health and appet.i.te and temper.
I saw this unpacking with a sort of provisional relief. I hung about in the nursery for quite an unconscionable time....
That happened six months ago. And now I am beginning to believe it is all right. The kitten had only the magic natural to all kittens, and the soldiers seem as steady a company as any colonel could desire. And Gip--?
The intelligent parent will understand that I have to go cautiously with Gip.
But I went so far as this one day. I said, "How would you like your soldiers to come alive, Gip, and march about by themselves?"
"Mine do," said Gip. "I just have to say a word I know before I open the lid."
"Then they march about alone?"
"Oh, QUITE, dadda. I shouldn"t like them if they didn"t do that."
I displayed no unbecoming surprise, and since then I have taken occasion to drop in upon him once or twice, unannounced, when the soldiers were about, but so far I have never discovered them performing in anything like a magical manner.
It"s so difficult to tell.
There"s also a question of finance. I have an incurable habit of paying bills. I have been up and down Regent Street several times, looking for that shop. I am inclined to think, indeed, that in that matter honour is satisfied, and that, since Gip"s name and address are known to them, I may very well leave it to these people, whoever they may be, to send in their bill in their own time.
3. THE VALLEY OF SPIDERS
Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and s.p.a.cious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.
For a s.p.a.ce they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes.
It spread remoter and remoter, with only a few cl.u.s.ters of sere thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless ravine, to break its desolation of yellow gra.s.s. Its purple distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills--hills it might be of a greener kind--and above them invisibly supported, and seeming indeed to hang in the blue, were the snowclad summits of mountains that grew larger and bolder to the north-westward as the sides of the valley drew together. And westward the valley opened until a distant darkness under the sky told where the forests began. But the three men looked neither east nor west, but only steadfastly across the valley.
The gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. "Nowhere," he said, with a sigh of disappointment in his voice. "But after all, they had a full day"s start."
"They don"t know we are after them," said the little man on the white horse.
"SHE would know," said the leader bitterly, as if speaking to himself.
"Even then they can"t go fast. They"ve got no beast but the mule, and all to-day the girl"s foot has been bleeding---"
The man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage on him.
"Do you think I haven"t seen that?" he snarled.
"It helps, anyhow," whispered the little man to himself.
The gaunt man with the scarred lip stared impa.s.sively. "They can"t be over the valley," he said. "If we ride hard--"
He glanced at the white horse and paused.
"Curse all white horses!" said the man with the silver bridle, and turned to scan the beast his curse included.
The little man looked down between the melancholy ears of his steed.
"I did my best," he said.
The two others stared again across the valley for a s.p.a.ce. The gaunt man pa.s.sed the back of his hand across the scarred lip.
"Come up!" said the man who owned the silver bridle, suddenly. The little man started and jerked his rein, and the horse hoofs of the three made a mult.i.tudinous faint pattering upon the withered gra.s.s as they turned back towards the trail....
They rode cautiously down the long slope before them, and so came through a waste of p.r.i.c.kly, twisted bushes and strange dry shapes of h.o.r.n.y branches that grew amongst the rocks, into the levels below.
And there the trail grew faint, for the soil was scanty, and the only herbage was this scorched dead straw that lay upon the ground. Still, by hard scanning, by leaning beside the horses" necks and pausing ever and again, even these white men could contrive to follow after their prey.
There were trodden places, bent and broken blades of the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, and ever and again the sufficient intimation of a footmark. And once the leader saw a brown smear of blood where the half-caste girl may have trod. And at that under his breath he cursed her for a fool.
The gaunt man checked his leader"s tracking, and the little man on the white horse rode behind, a man lost in a dream. They rode one after another, the man with the silver bridle led the way, and they spoke never a word. After a time it came to the little man on the white horse that the world was very still. He started out of his dream. Besides the little noises of their horses and equipment, the whole great valley kept the brooding quiet of a painted scene.
Before him went his master and his fellow, each intently leaning forward to the left, each impa.s.sively moving with the paces of his horse; their shadows went before them--still, noiseless, tapering attendants; and nearer a crouched cool shape was his own. He looked about him. What was it had gone? Then he remembered the reverberation from the banks of the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles.
And, moreover--? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber. And the sky open and blank, except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in the upper valley.
He straightened his back, fretted with his bridle, puckered his lips to whistle, and simply sighed. He turned in his saddle for a time, and stared at the throat of the mountain gorge out of which they had come.
Blank! Blank slopes on either side, with never a sign of a decent beast or tree--much less a man. What a land it was! What a wilderness! He dropped again into his former pose.
It filled him with a momentary pleasure to see a wry stick of purple black flash out into the form of a snake, and vanish amidst the brown.
After all, the infernal valley WAS alive. And then, to rejoice him still more, came a little breath across his face, a whisper that came and went, the faintest inclination of a stiff black-antlered bush upon a little crest, the first intimations of a possible breeze. Idly he wetted his finger, and held it up.
He pulled up sharply to avoid a collision with the gaunt man, who had stopped at fault upon the trail. Just at that guilty moment he caught his master"s eye looking towards him.
For a time he forced an interest in the tracking. Then, as they rode on again, he studied his master"s shadow and hat and shoulder, appearing and disappearing behind the gaunt man"s nearer contours. They had ridden four days out of the very limits of the world into this desolate place, short of water, with nothing but a strip of dried meat under their saddles, over rocks and mountains, where surely none but these fugitives had ever been before--for THAT!
And all this was for a girl, a mere wilful child! And the man had whole cityfuls of people to do his basest bidding--girls, women! Why in the name of pa.s.sionate folly THIS one in particular? asked the little man, and scowled at the world, and licked his parched lips with a blackened tongue. It was the way of the master, and that was all he knew. Just because she sought to evade him....
His eye caught a whole row of high plumed canes bending in unison, and then the tails of silk that hung before his neck flapped and fell. The breeze was growing stronger. Somehow it took the stiff stillness out of things--and that was well.
"Hullo!" said the gaunt man.
All three stopped abruptly.
"What?" asked the master. "What?"
"Over there," said the gaunt man, pointing up the valley.
"What?"