Hark to the whistle and the shout!—
The chase is up,—but they shall know,
The stag at bay's a dangerous foe.—Lady of the Lake.
Three or four weeks passed. They were deep within the bounds of Tyrol. By avoiding towns and highways, travelling often in the night, making prize of every stray sheep, pig, or fowl, and a diligent robbing of henroosts, they had thus far contrived to elude arrest, and support life.
Morton was greatly changed. Body and mind, he was formed for hardship, and toils which would have broken a weaker frame had nerved and strengthened his. But of late their suffering had increased. They found but poor forage among the poverty-pinched mountaineers, and for two days, had had no better sustenance than the soft inner bark of the pine trees. This, with previous abstinence, had sunk them to the last extremity, and brought Max to the verge of despair.
It was a rainy afternoon; rain drizzling in the valleys, clouds hanging on the mountains, dark vapors steaming up from the chasms, and clinging sullenly to the edge of the pine forests. Max and Morton sat under a dripping rock, on a mountain which overhangs a nameless little valley, not far to the north of the Val di Sole.
"Keep a good heart, Max," said Morton, "it shall go hard but you and I will get out of this scrape yet."
Max shook his head despondingly. His bold spirit was starved out of him. Morton's courage, unlike that of his companion, was the result more of his mental habits than of a native constitutional intrepidity, and was therefore much less subject to the changes of his bodily condition. He had proved Max, and knew him to be brave as he was warm and true-hearted; but the corporal's valor, like that of Homer's heroes, was best displayed on a full stomach.
"There's nothing else for it," said Morton; "we must take the bull by the horns. One of those houses below is an inn, or something that pretends to be one. I can see the bush fastened to the door post. We must go and buy food; or else lie here and die."
"It is better to be shot than starve," said Max.
"Come on, then. You must be spokesman. I am go for nothing in that way; but if there's any trouble, I'll stand by you as well as I can."
Max had had a little money in copper and silver, the greater part of which he had consigned to the keeping of Morton, as the more careful treasurer. With this for their passport, they issued from the cover of the woods, and began to cross the mountain slopes and rough pasture that lay between them and the hamlet.
The latter, as they drew near, seemed by no means so insignificant as at first, a rising ground having hidden a part of it. They came to the inn, a low stone building of a most respectable antiquity, and pushing open the door, were met by a short man who seemed to be the owner. Max produced a handful of kreutzers, and asked for bread and meat. The host looked at the strangers, then at their money; seemed satisfied with both, and showed them up a flight of broken steps to a large room above the half-sunken kitchen. Here, at his call, a girl brought the food and placed it on a table. He next asked if they would not have beer; and Max assenting, went out to bring it.
The fugitives now addressed themselves to their meal with the keenness of starving men; but the prudent Morton took care, at the same time, to secure the more portable of the viands for future need. Having dulled the edge of his appetite, he began to grow uneasy at the landlord's long absence.
"What is that man doing? He might have brewed the beer by this time."
"He does take his time," responded Max, also growing anxious.
"This is no place for us. Take the rest of that biscuit, and let's be off."
Max was following this counsel, when—— "Hark!" cried Morton; "what noise is that?"
"Go to the window and look."
Morton did so.
"My God!" he exclaimed, recoiling, his face ghastly with dismay.
Max sprang to the window. Below, at the door, four or five men were standing, and among them two gendarmes, while others were in the act of entering.
The outlandish dress of the two strangers had at once roused the landlord's suspicion. Of Max's character he had not a moment's doubt; for in him no disguise could hide the look and port of the trained soldier. By ill luck, a party of gendarmes were in the village, weather-bound on their way from Latsch. Having secured his guests' money, the landlord thought to make a farther profit from them; and, sure of his reward, reported to the officer in command, that there were in his house two men, the taller of whom was certainly a deserter, while the other could not be a peasant, though he wore the dress of one. The officer mustered his followers, and hastened to beat up the game.
He entered as Max turned from the window, and came up to him, sword in hand.
"I arrest you. Give yourselves up, you and the other."
But before the words were well out of his mouth, the fist of Max fell between his eyes like a battering ram, and dashed him back against the soldier next behind him.
"Come on," cried Max to Morton, and leaped through the open window at the farther end of the room. Morton followed in time to escape two or three bayonet thrusts which were made after him. They both vaulted over a fence, and ran through the narrow passage between an old shed and a huge square stack of the last year's hay. A musket or two were let off at them, but to no effect; and splashing across a shallow brook, they made at headlong speed for the shelter of the mountains.
As they reached the base, Max looked back. Seven or eight gendarmes were after them, and behind, later joining the chase, ran two or three men in a different dress.
"Riflemen!" muttered Max, with an oath.
Breasting the rough heights, clinging to stumps, roots, and bushes, they made their way up with all the speed which desperate need could give them. They were soon among thick trees, hidden from the pursuers, and almost from each other. But the shouts of the soldiers came up from below: they all gave tongue like so many hounds.
"Curse your yelping throats!" gasped Morton. Breathless and half spent, he was clinging to a sapling on the edge of a steep pitch of the hill. One of the soldiers saw him. A musket shot rang from below, the hollow hum of the ball passing high above his head.
Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active riflemen were nearer every moment.
Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back; lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands were clutched full of grass and earth.
"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max, for God's sake."
But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeballs. Morton had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes, glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn through his heart on its way.
The whole passed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them, the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He snatched Max's pistol, which had fallen on the grass, and, blind with grief and fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned. Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a hunted wolf.
Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught in a complete cul de sac. He might have climbed the precipices, but, in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and desperation, he turned savagely at bay.
Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned, one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another, and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping mass of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.
Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their shaggy arms to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground, and commended his desperate fortunes to the God of the waste and the mountain.