I bowed. "Yes. I did not think it could be done. You are an able man, monsieur."
He did not answer for a moment, and he followed me silently along the edge of the maize field. Then he touched my shoulder.
"Monsieur, how strange the world looks to-night. The moon—have you ever seen it so remote and chill? Oh, we are puppets! No, it was not my wit that carried me through. It was Fate. Life has been hard on me. She is saving me now for some further trick she has to play. I pray that it may not bring you ill, monsieur."
I knew not how to answer, for I was moved. As he said, the moon made the world strange. Great beauty is disturbing, and the night was like enchantment. He had come to me like a dream spirit in his woman's dress. I felt the need of a dash of cold water on my spirit.
"You must not put on woman's fancies with your petticoats, monsieur," I cautioned over my shoulder. "Now we had best not talk till we are safe afloat in the canoes."
The men were ebon, the canoes vague gray, and the water like sheet ice under the moon. The Englishman and I crept across the pebbles with panther feet, and the splash of a frightened otter was the only sound. I laid my finger on my lips, and my men checked their breathing. We were silent as figures in a mirror. I tapped the Englishman on the shoulder, and motioned where he should sit in the canoe.
And then, from the timber fringe behind us, came a call. "Singing
Arrow! Singing Arrow! Stop! Stop!"
Sword unsheathed, I dashed across the open space of moonlight toward the trees. Who called, or why, I did not question. But I must smother the noise. "Singing Arrow!" the call came again, and the roar of it in the quiet night made my flesh crawl.
I had not taken two strides into the timber when I saw a man running toward me. He was still calling. I leaped upon him, winding an arm about his neck, and covering his mouth. He was a small armful; a weazened body to have sheltered so great a power of lung.
"Hush! For the Virgin's sake, hush!" I stormed in noisy whispers. "Father Carheil, is it you? Hush! Hush!" I dropped my hand from his mouth. "Now speak in whispers," I implored.
The father shook his cassock free from my fingers. My embrace had been fervid, and his cassock was rumpled, and his scant hair was stringing wildly from under his skullcap. But shrunken and tumbled as he was, he was impressive. With some men, if you disarrange their outer habit, you lower their inner dignity as well. It was not so with Father Carheil.
He looked at me closely, with a sober gentleness that became him well, and that he did not often use. "Why should I go quietly?" he asked. "My errand is righteous. It is only black work that needs the cover of a silent tongue. My son, you are letting your men abduct Singing Arrow. Did your promise to me count for so little in your mind?"
I bowed, and mumbled something meaningless to gain time. I was not clear as to my course. "Why do you think that we have Singing Arrow?" I blurted out finally.
"Pemaou told me."
Pemaou again! But we had tricked him. I grinned with joy to think of him with his nose still rooted close to the deserted hole. I could almost forgive him for the trouble he was causing now.
"Pemaou lied," I said cheerfully. "Singing Arrow is not with us, Father Carheil. Will you go back now? My mission is urgent and demands secrecy."
He looked at the ground. "You swear to this? You swear that Singing
Arrow is not with you?"
I laid my hand on my sword, and bared my head. "I swear."
He turned away. "You seem a gentleman," he said reluctantly. "I regret that I troubled you. I wish you fair winds, monsieur."
Beshrew me, but the man could get close to my heart. "Thank you, father," I cried earnestly. "I wish that I might requite your trust with greater candor. But, in the end, I hope to justify my means. I would that I might have your blessing on my mission and my cargo."
Blockhead that I was, not to have let well enough alone. For I was to blame for what followed. I may have grown unconsciously rhetorical, and waved my hand in the direction of the canoes. I do not know. I do know that at the word "cargo" Father Carheil turned and looked toward the shore. There, in my canoe, with gaze searching the timber where I had disappeared, stood a figure—a woman's figure in Singing Arrow's dress and blanket.
Father Carheil looked at me. He did not speak; it was not necessary. I endured his gaze for a moment, then sold my prudence to save my honor. I laid my finger on the priest's arm.
"Come with me to the canoes," I demanded. "If you find yourself in the wrong, it may teach you to trust a man's word against your own eyesight."
He assented. We walked swiftly across the moon-lighted open, and I had scant time for fear. Yet I was afraid. I could give the Englishman no helping hand, no word of warning. Would he rise to the moment?
He did. He turned his back upon us, Indian-fashion, and squatted in his blanket. He lost all suggestion of Singing Arrow's slim elasticity, and sat in a shapeless huddle. I laughed with relief.
"Where is Singing Arrow now?" I twitted the priest. "Is this she?"
The old priest peered. "No," he meditated. "No, this is not Singing Arrow." He wheeled on me with one of his flashes of temper. "I cannot recognize this girl. Let her take off her blanket."
I motioned my men to take stations in the canoes. "Father Carheil, I beg you to let me go at once," I implored. "You see you were wrong. As to this Indian, you never saw her; she is a stranger here."
But the father was not pacified. "Let her take off her blanket," he repeated, with all the aimless persistency of age.
Did I say that the man had grown close to my heart? Why, I could have shaken him. But the Englishman cut the knot. He turned with a hunch of the shoulder, and peered at us over the corner of his blanket. Gesture, and roll of the head, he was an Indian. I was so pleased at the mimicry, that I gave way to witless laughter.
"Now!" I cried triumphantly. "Now, are you satisfied?"
But the priest did not reply. He stared, and his eyes grew ferret-sharp. Then he shifted his position, and stared again. It beat into my brain that he had lived thirty years among the Indians, and that his eyes were trained. He could see meanings, where I saw a blank wall.
"This is no Indian woman," he said slowly, with a wagging forefinger that beat off his words like the minute hand of Fate. "This is—this is—why, this is the English prisoner!"
He brought out the last words in a crescendo, and again my hand clapped tight against his mouth.
"Be still! Be still!" I spluttered wildly, and I threw a disordered glance at the horizon, and at my astonished crew. I had not meant that the men, except Pierre, should be taken into the secret until we were well afloat. Here was another contretemps.
"Are you mad, Father Carheil!" I began, with a sorry show of dignity, while my palm stuck like a leech against his lips. "This is not"——
"Not any one but the prisoner himself," interrupted the Englishman's voice. He dropped his blanket, and sprang to the sand. "Do not lie for me, monsieur," he went on in his indolent, drawling French that already had come to have a pleasant quaintness in my ears. "Monsieur, let me speak to the father."
If Nature had given me a third hand, I should have used it to throttle the Englishman. "Get back in the canoe!" I stormed.
He motioned me away. Standing slim and tall in Singing Arrow's dress, he put me—such creatures of outward seeming are we—absurdly in the wrong, as if I had been rude to a woman.
"Father Carheil," he began, "your ears at least are not fettered. Listen, if you will. This man is not to blame. I was thrown in his way, and he took me from pity, to save my life. Now that I am discovered, I will go back to prison with you. Let this man go west. Whatever his business, it is pressing."