He squared his shoulders. “You put me to shame!” he cried abjectly. “I’m—I’m unnerved, that’s all. It was too much of a blow. After we’d got away from those scoundrels so neatly, too. Oh, it’s maddening! I’ll be all right in a minute. You plucky, plucky darling!”
The train whirled through a small hamlet without even slackening its speed. Truxton endeavoured to shout a warning to two men who stood by the gates; but they merely laughed, not comprehending. Then he undertook to arrest the attention of the engineer. He leaned from the door and shouted. The effort was futile, almost disastrous. A lurch came near to hurling him to the rocky road bed. Now and then they passed farmers on the high road far above, bound for the city. They called out to them, but the cries were in vain. With every minute they were running farther and farther away from the city of Edelweiss; every mile was adding to the certainty of the doom which hung over the little Prince and his people.
A second small station flew by. “Ronn: seven kilometers to Edelweiss.” He looked at her in despair.
“We’re going faster and faster,” he grated. “This is the fastest train in the world, Loraine, bar none.”
Just then his gaze alighted on the pathetic breakfast and the wandering cigarettes. He stared as if hypnotised. Was he going mad? An instant later he was on his hands and knees, examining the mysterious feast. She joined him at once; no two faces ever before were so puzzled and perplexed.
“By heaven!” he exclaimed, drawing her away from the spot in quick alarm, comprehension flooding his brain. “I see it all! We’ve been deliberately shanghaied! We’ve been bottled up here, drugged, perhaps, and shipped out of town by fast freight—no destination. Don’t touch that stuff! It’s probably full of poison. Great Scott! What a clever gang they are! And what a blithering idiot they have in me to deal with. Oh, how easy!”
Whereupon he proceeded to kick the unoffending breakfast, cigarettes and all, out of the car door. To their dying day they were to believe that the food had been put there by agents of the great conspirator. It readily may be surmised that neither of them was given to sensible deductions during their astounding flight. If they had thought twice, they might have seen the folly of their quick conclusions. Marlanx’s men would not have sent Loraine off in a manner like this. But the distracted pair were not in an analytical frame of mind just then; that is why the gentle munificence of Sir Vagabond came to a barren waste.
Mile after mile flew by. The unwilling travellers, depressed beyond description, had given up all hope of leaving the car until it reached the point intended by the wily plotters. To their amazement, however, the speed began to slacken perceptibly after they had left the city ten or twelve miles behind. Truxton was leaning against the side of the door, gloomily surveying the bright, green landscape. For some time Loraine had been steadying herself by clinging to his arm. They had cast off the unsightly rain coats and other clumsy articles. Once, through sheer inability to control his impulses, he had placed his arm about her slim waist, but she had gently freed herself. Her look of reproach was sufficient to check all future impulses of a like nature.
“Hello!” said he, coming out of his bitter dream.
“We’re slowing up.” He looked out and ahead. “No station is in sight. There’s a bridge down the road a bit—yes, there’s our same old river. By George!” His face was a study.
“What is it?” she cried, struck by his sudden energy of speech.
“They’re running slow for the bridge. Afraid of the floods. D’ye see? If they creep up to it as they do in the United States when they’re cautious, we’ll politely drop off and—’Pon my soul, she’s coming down to a snail’s pace. We can swing off, Loraine. Now’s our chance!”
The train was barely creeping up to the bridge. He clasped her in the strong crook of his left arm, slid down to a sitting position, and boldly pushed himself clear of the car, landing on his feet. Staggering forward with the impetus he had received, he would have fallen except for a mighty effort. A sharp groan escaped his lips as he lowered her to the ground. She looked anxiously into his face and saw nothing there but relief.
The cars rumbled across the bridge, picked up speed beyond, and thundered off in the distance with never so much as a thought of the two who stood beside the track and laughed hysterically.
“Come along,” said the man briefly. “We must try to reach that station back there. There I can telegraph in. Oh!” His first attempt to walk brought out a groan of pain.
He had turned his ankle in the leap to the ground. She was deeply concerned, but he sought to laugh it off. Gritting his teeth determinedly, he led the way back along the track.
“Lean on me,” she cried despairingly.
“Nonsense,” he said with grim stubbornness. “I don’t mind the pain. We can’t stop for a sprained ankle. It’s an old one I got playing football. We may have to go a little slow, but we’ll not stop, my dear—not till we get word to Dangloss!”
She found a long, heavy stick for him; thereafter he hobbled with greater speed and less pain. At a wagon-road crossing they paused to rest, having covered two miles. The strain was telling on him; perspiration stood out in great drops upon his brow; he was beginning to despair. Her little cry of joy caused him to look up from the swollen ankle which he was regarding with dubious concern. An oxcart was approaching from the west.
“A ride!” she cried joyously. She had been ready to drop with fatigue; her knees were shaking. His first exclamation of joy died away in a groan of dismay. He laughed bitterly.
“That thing couldn’t get us anywhere in a week,” he said.
“But it will help,” she cried brightly, an optimist by force of necessity.
They stopped the cart and bargained for a ride to Ronn. The man was a farmer, slow and suspicious. He haggled.
“The country’s full of evil men and women these days,” he demurred. “Besides I have a heavy enough load as it is for my poor beasts.”
Miss Tullis conducted the negotiations, making the best of her year’s acquaintance with the language of the country.
“Don’t tell him why we are in such a hurry,” cautioned King. “He may be a Marlanx sympathiser.”
“You have nothing in your cart but melons,” she said to the farmer, peeping under the corner of the canvas covering.
“I am not going through Ronn, but by the high road to Edelweiss,” he protested. “A good ten kilometers.”
“But carry us until we come up with some one who can give us horses.”
“Horses!” he croaked. “Every horse in the valley is in Edelweiss by this time. This is the great day there. The statue of—”
“Yes, yes, I know. We are bound for Edelweiss. Can you get us there in two hours?”
“With these beasts, poor things? Never!”
“It will be worth your while. A hundred gavvos if you carry us to a place where we can secure quicker transportation.”
In time she won him over. He agreed to carry them along the way, at his best speed, until they came up with better beasts or reached the city gates. It was the best he could do. The country was practically deserted on this day. At best there were but few horses in the valley; mostly oxen. They climbed up to the seat and the tortuous journey began. The farmer trotted beside the wheel nearly all of the way, descanting warmly in painful English on the present condition of things in the hills.
“The rascals have made way with the beautiful Miss Tullis. She is the American lady stopping at the Castle. You should see her, sir. Excepting our dear Princess Yetive—God rest her soul—she is the most beautiful creature Graustark has ever seen. I have seen her often. Not quite so grand as the Countess Ingomede, but fairer, believe me. She is beloved by everyone. Many a kind and generous word has she spoken to me. My onion beds are well known to her. She has come to my farm time and again, sir, with the noble personages, while riding, and she has in secret bought my little slips of onions. She has said to me that she adores them, but that she can only eat them
in secret. Ah, sir, it is a sad day for Graustark that evil has happened to her. Her brother, they say, is off in the Dawsbergen hills searching for her. He is a grand man.”
His passengers were duly interested. She nudged the lugubrious Truxton when the man spoke of the onions. “What a fibber! I hate onions.”
“She is to be married to the Count Vos Engo; a fine lad, sir. Now she is gone, I don’t know what he will do. Suicide, mayhap. Many is the time I have cautioned her not to ride in the hills without a strong guard. These bandits are getting very bold.”
“Do you know the great Count Marlanx?” demanded King, possessed of a sudden thought. The man faced him at the mention of the name, a suspicious gleam in his eyes.
“Count Marlanx!” he snorted. Without another word, he drew the beasts to a standstill. There was no mistaking the angry scowl. “Are you friends of that snake? If you are, get out of my cart.”
“He’s all right,” cried Truxton. “Tell him who we are, Loraine, and why we must get to the city.”
Five minutes later, the farmer, overcome by the stupendous news, was lashing his oxen with might and main; the astonished beasts tore down the road to Ronn so bravely that there seemed some prospect of getting a telegram through in time. All the way the excited countryman groaned and swore and sputtered his prayers. At Ronn they learned that the operator had been unable to call Edelweiss since seven o’clock. The wires were down or had been cut. Truxton left a message to be sent to Dangloss in case he could get the wire, and off they started again for the city gates, having lost considerable time by the diverted mile or two.
Not man, woman or child did they encounter as the miles crept by. The country was barren of humanity. Ahead of them was the ascent to be conquered by oxen so old and feeble that the prospect was more than dubious.
“If it should be that my team gives out, I will run on myself to give the alarm,” cried the worthy, perspiring charioteer. “It shall not be! God preserve us!”
Three times the oxen broke down, panting and stubborn; as many times he thwacked them and kicked them and cursed them into action again. They stumbled pitifully, but they did manage to go forward.
In time the city gates came in sight—far up the straight, narrow road. “Pray God we may not be too late,” groaned the farmer. “Damn the swine who took their horses to town before the sun was up. Curse them for fools and imbeciles. Fools never get into heaven. Thank the good Lord for that.”
It seemed to the quivering Americans that the gates were mocking them by drawing farther away instead of coming nearer.
“Are we going backward?” groaned Truxton, his hands gripping the side of the bounding seat.
Near the gates, which were still open, it occurred to him in a single flash of dismay that he and Loraine would be recognised and intercepted by Marlanx watchers. Between the fierce jolts of the great cart he managed to convey his fears to her.
It was she who had the solution. They might succeed in passing the gates if they hid themselves in the bed of the cart, underneath the thick canvas covering. The farmer lifted the cloth and they crawled down among the melons. In this fashion they not only covered the remainder of the distance, half stifled by the heat and half murdered by the uncomfortable position, but passed through the gates and were taken clattering down the streets toward the centre of town.
“To the Tower!” cried the anxious Truxton.
“Impossible!” shouted the farmer. “The streets are roped off and the crowds are too great.”
“Then let us out as near to the Tower as possible, cried the other.
“Here we are,” cried the driver, a few minutes later, pulling up his half dead oxen and leaping to the ground. He threw off the covering and they lost no time in tumbling from their bed of melons to the cobble-stone pavement of a narrow alley into which he had turned for safety. “Through this passage!” he gasped, hoarse with excitement. “The Tower is below. Follow me! My oxen will stand. I am going with you!” His rugged face was aglow.
Off through the alley they hurried, King disdaining the pain his ankle was giving him. They came to the crowded square a few minutes later. The clock in the Cathedral pointed to twelve o’clock and after! The catastrophe had not yet taken place; the people were laughing and singing and shouting. They were in time. Everywhere they heard glad voices crying out that the Prince was coming! It was the Royal band that they heard through dinning ears!
“Great God!” cried Truxton, stopping suddenly and pointing with trembling hand to a spot across the street and a little below where they had pushed through the resentful, staring throng on the sidewalk. “There she is! At the corner! Stop her!”
He had caught sight of Olga Platanova.
The first row of dragoons was already passing in front of her. Less than two hundred feet away rolled the royal coach of gold! All this flashed before the eyes of the distracted pair, who were now dashing frantically into the open street, disregarding the shouts of the police and the howls of the crowd.
“An anarchist!” shouted King hoarsely. He looked like one himself. “The bomb! The bomb! Stop the Prince!”
Colonel Quinnox recognised this bearded, uncouth figure, and the flying, terrified girl at his heels. King was dragging her along by the hand. There was an instant of confusion on the part of the vanguard, a drawing of sabres, a movement toward the coach in which the Prince rode.
Quinnox alone prevented the dragoons from cutting down the pallid madman who stumbled blindly toward the coaches beyond. He whirled his steed after an astonished glance in all directions, shouting eager commands all the while. When he reached the side of the gasping American, that person had stopped and was pointing toward the trembling Olga, who had seen and recognised him.
“Stop the coach!” cried King. Loraine was running frantically through the ranks of horsemen, screaming her words of alarm.
The Duke of Perse leaped from his carriage and ran forward, shouting to the soldiers to seize the disturbers. Panic seized the crowd. There was a mad rush for the corner above. Olga Platanova stood alone, her eyes wide and glassy, staring as if petrified at the face of Truxton King.
He saw the object in her wavering hand. With a yell he dashed for safety down the seething avenue. The Duke of Perse struck at him as he passed, ignoring the frantic cry of warning that he uttered. A plain, white-faced farmer in a smock of blue was crossing the street with mighty bounds, his eyes glued upon the arm of the frail, terrified anarchist. If he could only arrest that palsied, uncertain arm!
But she hurled the bomb, her hands going to her eyes as she fell upon her knees.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE THROWING OF THE BOMB
The scene that followed beggars all powers of description.
A score of men and horses lay writhing in the street; others crept away screaming with pain; human flesh and that of animals lay in the path of the frenzied, panic-stricken holiday crowd; blood mingled with the soft mud of Regengetz Circus, slimy, slippery, ugly!
Rent bodies of men in once gaudy uniforms, now flattened and bruised in warm, oozy death, were piled in a mass where but a moment before the wondering vanguard of troopers had clustered. For many rods in all directions stunned creatures were struggling to their feet after the stupendous shock that had felled them. The clattering of frightened horses, the shouts and screams of men and women, the gruesome rush of ten thousand people in stampede—all in twenty seconds after the engine of death left the hand of Olga Platanova.
Olga Platanova! There was nothing left of her! She had failed to do the deed expected of her, but she would not hear the execrations of those who had depended upon her to kill the Prince. We draw a veil across the picture of Olga Platanova after the bomb left her hand; no one may look upon the quivering, shattered thing that once was a living, beautiful woman. The glimpse she had of Truxton King’s haggard face unnerved her. She faltered, her strength of will collapsed; she hurled the bomb in a panic of indecision. Massacre but not conquest!
Down in an alley below the Tower, a trembling, worn team of oxen stood for a day and night, awaiting the return of a master who was never to come back to them. God rest his simple soul!
Truxton King picked himself up from the street, dazed, bewildered but unhurt. Everywhere about him mad people were rushing and screeching. Scarcely knowing what he did, he fled with the crowd. From behind him came the banging of guns, followed by new shouts of terror. He knew what it meant! The revolutionists had begun the assault on the paralysed minions of the government.
Scores of Royal Guardsmen swept past him, rushing to the support of the coach of gold. The sharp, shrill scream of a single name rose above the tumult. Some one had seen the Iron Count!
“Marlanx!”
He looked back toward the gory entrance to the Circus. There was Marlanx, mounted and swinging a sabre on high. Ahead was the mass of carriages, filled with the white-faced, palsied prey from the Court of Graustark. Somewhere in that huddled, glittering crowd were two beings he willingly would give his own life to save.
Foot soldiers, policemen and mounted guardsmen began firing into the crowd at the square, without sense or discretion, falling back, nevertheless, before the well-timed, deliberate advance of the mercenaries. From somewhere near the spot where Olga Platanova fell came a harsh, penetrating command:
“Cut them off! Cut them off from the Castle!”
It was his cue. He dashed into the street and ran toward the carriages, shouting with all his strength:
“Turn back! It is Marlanx! To the Castle!”
Then it was that he saw the Prince. The boy was standing on a seat on the royal coach of state, holding out his eager little hands to some one in the thick of the crowd that surged about him. He was calling some one’s name, but no one could have heard him.
Truxton’s straining eyes caught sight of the figure in grey that struggled forward in response to the cries and the extended hands. He pushed his way savagely through the crowd; he came up with her as she reached the side of the coach, and with a shout of encouragement grasped her in his arms.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 96