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The highest mountain-tops are covered with snow, and beneath the snow-level to the sea they are as green as Irish or as English hills, but nearly uninhabited and uncultivated. Valleys of almost Alpine verdure are succeeded by tracts of chestnut wood and scattered pines, or deep and flowery brushwood the 'maquis' of Corsica, which yields shelter to its traditional outlaws and bandits.
"Well, you got your nerve about you, I'll say that," McKenna commented. "You sit there and talk about it like it was something that was going to happen to Joe Doakes and Oscar Zilch." He looked at Rand intently. "You want us to keep an eye on you?" Rand leaned over and spat into the brass cuspidor, a gesture of braggadocio he had picked up among the French maquis. "Hell, no!
She rose at once, and laying Orso's head, without further ceremony, on Miss Lydia's lap, she ran after the bandits. Miss Nevil, somewhat startled at finding herself thus left in sole charge of a handsome young Corsican gentleman in the middle of a maquis, was rather puzzled what to do next. For she was afraid that any sudden movement on her part might hurt the wounded man.
The deed done, he flies to the maquis, the mountain thicket, and there he will hide, dodging the gendarmes, fighting off his enemies an outlaw with a price upon his head, but pitied or admired by all Corsicans outside the feud, and succored by his clan. It is a far cry from the Mediterranean to our own Appalachia: so why this prelude? Our mountaineers never heard of Corsica.
"My future sister-in-law doesn't like the maquis," laughed Colomba. "She got too great a fright in one of them." "Well," said Orso, "you are resolved to stay here? So be it! But tell me whether there is anything I can do for you?" "Nothing," said Brandolaccio. "You've heaped kindnesses upon us.
"Very well, this child is the first of his race to commit treason." Fortunato's sobs and gasps redoubled as Falcone kept his lynx-eyes upon him. Then he struck the earth with his gun-stock, shouldered the weapon, and turned in the direction of the mâquis, calling to Fortunato to follow. The boy obeyed. Giuseppa hastened after Mateo and seized his arm.
Do listen to the row the Padre is making with your gun, Ors' Anton'! Unluckily, it's as black as pitch, and nobody takes much harm from being shot at in the dark." "Hush!" cried Colomba. "I hear a horse. We're saved!" Startled by the firing, a horse which had been wandering through the maquis, was really coming close up to them. "Saved, indeed!" repeated Brandolaccio.
This man was an outlaw, who, having gone to the town by night to buy powder, had fallen on the way into an ambuscade of Corsican light-infantry. After a vigorous defense he was fortunate in making his retreat, closely followed and firing from rock to rock. But he was only a little in advance of the soldiers, and his wound prevented him from gaining the mâquis before being overtaken.
"Brandolaccio is an upright man," said Colomba; "but as to Castriconi, I have heard he is quite unprincipled." "I think," said Orso, "that he is as good as Brandolaccio, and Brandolaccio is as good as he. Both of them are at open war with society. Their first crime leads them on to fresh ones, every day, and yet they are very likely not half so guilty as many people who don't live in the maquis."
This was the "Maquis," composed of scrub oak, juniper, arbutus, mastic, privet, gorse, laurel, myrtle and boxwood, intertwined with clematis, huge ferns, honeysuckle, cytisus, rosemary, lavender and brambles, which covered the sides of the mountain with an impenetrable fleece. They were hungry.
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