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He did not think of the jewelled thing hidden under a bit of bark or the cardboard box in its nest in the grass. He went swiftly. The town was sleeping, would not awake for another hour. His eyes were upon Marquette's house as soon as the rambling building came into view. There were no fires; window shades were drawn, doors closed. He came to Ygerne's window. It, too, was closed.
So, just as I let Marc in, Marc was forced to allow Sefton to become the third member of our party." A wild enough tale, certainly, and yet Drennen doubted no word of it. Wilder things have been true. And, perhaps, no words issuing from that red mouth of Ygerne's would have failed to ring true in her lover's ears. "You said that I could help?" "Yes."
Garcia had seen them leave the Settlement and had followed. Then the burning wrath changed quickly to hard, cold, watchful anger. Through a mere whim of the little gods of chance he had seen another face in the thicket or young elms not twenty paces from Ygerne's log, a face with hard, malevolent eyes, peaked at the bottom with a coppery Vandyck beard.
Put them between your white breasts that are as cold and bloodless as the stones themselves. I'll get them." "You . . . you unspeakable cur!" she panted, in a flash scarlet-faced. Garcia was edging slowly, noiselessly along the wall toward the two revolvers, his and Ygerne's. Drennen whipped about upon him with a snapping curse. "Stand where you are, do you hear?
Drennen's dry laugh, the old, bitter snarl, cut through the room like a curse. They had not seen him; they had been too busy with their own thoughts. Now, as they whirled toward the door which framed him, Garcia's hand went swiftly to his pocket, Ygerne's face grew as white as death. "So," said the Mexican softly. "You are come, señor!" The muzzle of Drennen's rifle moved in a quick arc.
As soon as Lemarc had returned she had gone. Sefton had gone with them. Ramon Garcia, too. Why Garcia? A scene he had not forgotten, which now he could never forget, occupied his mind so vividly that he did not see the material things among which he was walking: Ramon Garcia at Ygerne's window, the gift of a few field flowers, the kissing of a white hand.
New shoots of faith, bursting upward under Ygerne's influence from the dry roots of the old, were in an instant shrivelled and killed. He came to see that in an old world there was no basic law but that law which had held from the first day in the new world. There was no good; bad was only a term coined for fools by other fools.
Ygerne's note he never read the second time. He had had no need to. He burned the paper and washed his hands free of the ashes which he had crumpled in his palm. The third day he rose early, saddled Major and left the Settlement, riding slowly toward Lebarge. He had an idea that they might have gone there to take the train.
After all of these bitter empty months she was at last only fifty yards away! He came on slowly, making no sound. He drew near the corner of the building. The voices came more distinctly, each word clear. The other voice was the musical utterance of Ramon Garcia. Again Drennen stopped for a brief instant. Were Sefton and Lemarc in there, too? Ygerne's laughter drove a frown into his eyes.
Then she went into the house, closing the door softly. Drennen, making his slow way homeward, met the men Lemarc and Sefton in a place where the light from an open door streamed across the road. Before Lemarc cried out Drennen had seen the working muscles of his face; the man was in the grip of a terrible rage. "Damn you," cried Lemarc wildly. "What have you done? That was Ygerne's gun; I know it.
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