31st inst.:
In an hour. All ready. It’s hard to believe that the Hun has so terrorised the Swiss Government as to force it into such an outrageous concession. Nous verrons.
A perfect day. Everything arranged. Calm and confident. Think much of Constance but no nerves. Early this morning Manitou, who had been persistently hulking at my heels and squealing invitations to take wing with him, became impatient and went up.
I saw him in time and whistled him down; and I told the old chap very plainly that he could come up with me when I was ready or not at all.
He understood and sat on the table sulking, and cocking his silver head at me while I talked to him. That’s one thing about Manitou. Except for a wild Canada goose I never before saw a bird who seemed to have the slightest trace of brain. I know, of course, it’s not affection that causes him to trail me, answer his whistle, and obey when he doesn’t wish to obey. It’s training and habit. But I like to pretend that the old chap is a little fond of me.
I’m of in a few minutes. Manitou is aboard. Glorious visibility. Now for Fritz and his occult designs — if there are any.
A little note to Connie — I scarcely know why. Not a nerve. Most happy. Noticed a small butterfly quite unfamiliar to me. No time now to investigate.
Engines! Manitou yelling with excitement. Symptoms of taking wing, but whistle checks insubordination…. All ready. Wish Connie were here.
McKay closed the little book, strapped and buckled the cover.
“Exit Sir W. Blint,” he said, not flippantly. “I think I should like to have known that man.”
The girl, lying there with the golden water swirling around her knees and her golden head on the moss, looked up through the foliage in silence.
The eagle was soaring lower over the forest now. After a little while she reached out and let her fingers touch McKay’s hand where it rested on the moss:
“Kay?”
“Yes, Yellow-hair.”
“It isn’t possible, of course…. But are there any eagles in Europe that have white heads and tails?”
“No.”
“I know…. I wish you’d look up at that eagle. He is not very high.”
McKay lifted his head. After a moment he rose to his feet, still looking intently skyward. The eagle was sailing very low now.
“THAT’S AN AMERICAN EAGLE!”
The words shot out of McKay’s lips. The girl sat upright, electrified.
And now the sun struck full across the great bird as he sheered the tree-tops above. HEAD AND TAIL WERE A DAZZLING WHITE.
“Could — could it be that dead man’s eagle?” said the girl. “Oh, could it be Manitou? COULD it, Kay?”
McKay looked at her, and his eye fell on the gold whistle hanging from her wrist on its jewelled chain.
“If it is,” he said, “he might notice that whistle. Try it!”
She nodded excitedly, set the whistle to her lips and blew a clear, silvery, penetrating blast upward.
“Kay! Look!” she gasped.
For the response had been instant. Down through the tree-tops sheered the huge bird, the air shrilling through his pinions, and struck the solid ground and set his yellow claws in it, grasping the soil of the Old World with mighty talons. Then he turned his superb head and looked fearlessly upon his two compatriots.
“Manitou! Manitou!” whispered the girl. And crept toward him on her knees, nearer, nearer, until her slim outstretched hand rested on his silver crest.
“Good God!” said McKay in the low tones of reverence.
McKay had drawn a duplicate of his route-map on thin glazed paper.
Evelyn Erith had finished a duplicate copy of his notes and reports.
Of these and the trinkets of the late Sir W. Blint they made two flat packets, leaving one of them unsealed to receive the brief letter which McKay had begun:
“Dear Lady Blint —
It is not necessary to ask the wife of Sir W. Blint to have courage.
He died as he had lived — a fine and fearless British sportsman.
His death was painless. He lies in the forest of Les Errues. I enclose a map for you.
I and my comrade, Evelyn Erith, dare believe that his eagle, Manitou, has not forgotten the air-path to England and to you. With God’s guidance he will carry this letter to you. And with it certain objects belonging to your husband. And also certain papers which I beg you will have safely delivered to the American Ambassador.
If, madam, we come out of this business alive, my comrade and I will do ourselves the honour of waiting on you if, as we suppose, you would care to hear from us how we discovered the body of the late Sir W. Blint.
Madam, accept homage and deep respect from two Americans who are, before long, rather likely to join your gallant husband in the great adventure.”
“Yellow-hair?”
She came, signed the letter. Then McKay signed it, and it was enclosed in one of the packets.
Then McKay took the dead carrier pigeon from the cage and tossed it on the moss. And Manitou planted his terrible talons on the inert mass of feathers and tore it to shreds.
Evelyn attached the anklet and whistling bell; then she unwound a yard of surgeon’s plaster, and kneeling, spread the eagle’s enormous pinions, hold-ing them horizontal while McKay placed the two packets and bound them in place under the out-stretched wings.
The big bird had bolted the pigeon. At first he submitted with sulky grace, not liking what was happening, but offering no violence.
And even now, as they backed away from him, he stood in dignified submission, patiently striving to adjust his closed wings to these annoying though light burdens which seemed to have no place among his bronze feathers.
Presently, irritated, the bird partially unclosed one wing as though to probe with his beak for the seat of his discomfort. At the same time he moved his foot, and the bell rattled on his anklet.
Instantly his aspect changed; stooping he inspected the bell, struck it lightly with his beak as though in recognition.
WAS it the hated whistling bell? Again the curved beak touched it.
And recognition was complete.
Mad all through, disgust, indecision, gave rapid place to nervous alarm. Every quill rose in wrath; the snowy crest stood upright; the yellow eyes flashed fire.
Then, suddenly, the eagle sprang into the air, yelping fierce protest against such treatment: the shrilling of the bell swept like a thin gale through the forest, keener, louder, as the enraged bird climbed the air, mounting, mounting into the dazzling blue above until the motionless watchers in the woods below saw him wheel.
Which way would he turn? ‘Round and round swept the eagle in wider and more splendid circles; in tensest suspense the two below watched motionless.
Then the tension broke; and a dry sob escaped the girl.
For the eagle had set his lofty course at last. Westward he bore through pathless voids uncharted save by God alone — who has set His signs to mark those high blue lanes, lest the birds — His lesser children — should lose their way betwixt earth and moon.
CHAPTER IX
THE BLINDER TRAIL
There was no escape that way. From the northern and eastern edges of the forest sheer cliffs fell away into bluish depths where forests looked like lawns and the low uplands of the Alsatian border resembled hillocks made by tunnelling moles. And yet it was from somewhere not far away that a man once had been, carried safely into Alsace on a sudden snowslide. That man now lay among the trees on the crag’s edge looking down into the terrific chasm below. He and the girl who crouched in the thicket of alpine roses behind him seemed a part of the light-flecked forest — so inconspicuous were they among dead leaves and trees in their ragged and weather-faded clothing.
They were lean from physical effort and from limited nourishment. The skin on their faces and hands, once sanguine and deeply burnt by Alpine wind and sun and snow glare, now had become almost colourless, so subtly the alchemy of the open ope
rates on those whose only bed is last year’s leaves and whose only shelter is the sky. Even the girl’s yellow hair had lost its sunny brilliancy, so that now it seemed merely a misty part of the lovely, subdued harmony of the woods.
The man, still searching the depths below with straining, patient gaze, said across his shoulder:
“It was here somewhere — near here, Yellow-hair, that I went over, and found what I found…. But it’s not difficult to guess what you and I should find if we try to go over now.”
“Death?” she motioned with serene lips.
He had turned to look at her, and he read her lips.
“And yet,” he said, “we must manage to get down there, somehow or other, alive.”
She nodded. Both knew that, once down there, they could not expect to come out alive. That was tacitly understood. All that could be hoped was that they might reach those bluish depths alive, live long enough to learn what they had come to learn, release the pigeon with its message, then meet destiny in whatever guise it confronted them.
For Fate was not far off. Fate already watched them — herself unseen. She had caught sight of them amid the dusk of the ancient trees — was following them, stealthily, murderously, through the dim aisles of this haunted forest of Les Errues.
These two were the hunted ones, and their hunters were in the forest — nearer now than ever because the woodland was narrowing toward the east.
Also, for the first time since they had entered the Forbidden Forest, scarcely noticeable paths appeared flattening the carpet of dead leaves — not trails made by game — but ways trodden at long intervals by man — trails unused perhaps for months — then rendered vaguely visible once more by the unseen, unheard feet of lightly treading foes.
Here for the first time they had come upon the startling spoor of man — of men and enemies — men who were hunting them to slay them, and who now, in these eastern woods, no longer cared for the concealment that might lull to a sense of false security the human quarry that they pursued.
And yet the Hun-pack hunting them though the forbidden forest of Les Errues had, in their new indifference to their quarry’s alarm, and in the ferocity of their growing boldness, offered the two fugitives a new hope and a new reason for courage: — the grim courage of those who are about to die, and who know it, and still carry on.
For this is what the Huns had done — not daring to use signals visible to the Swiss patrols on nearer mountain flanks.
Nailed to a tree beside the scarcely visible trail of flattened leaves — a trail more imagined and feared than actually visible — was a sheet of white paper. And on it was written in the tongue of the Hun, — and in that same barbarous script also — a message, the free translation of which was as follows:
“WARNING!”
The three Americans recently sent into Les Errues by the Military Intelligence Department of the United States Army now fighting in France are still at large somewhere in this forest. Two of them are operating together, the well-known escaped prisoner, Kay McKay, and the woman secret-agent, Evelyn Erith. The third American, Alexander Gray, has been wounded in the left hand by one of our riflemen, but managed to escape, and is now believed to be attempting to find and join the agents McKay and Erith.
This must be prevented. All German agents now operating in Les Errues are formally instructed to track down and destroy without traces these three spies whenever and wherever encountered according to plan. It is expressly forbidden to attempt to take any one or all of these spies alive. No prisoners! No traces! Germans, do your duty! The Fatherland is in peril!
(Signed) “HOCHSTIM.”
McKay wriggled cautiously backward from the chasm’s granite edge and crawled into the thicket of alpine roses where Evelyn Erith lay.
“No way out, Kay?” she asked under her breath.
“No way THAT way, Yellow-hair.”
“Then?”
“I don’t — know,” he said slowly.
“You mean that we ought to turn back.”
“Yes, we ought to. The forest is narrowing very dangerously for us. It runs to a point five miles farther east, overlooking impassable gulfs…. We should be in a cul-de-sac, Yellow-hair.”
“I know.”
He mused for a few moments, cool, clear-eyed, apparently quite undisturbed by their present peril and intent only on the mission which had brought them here, and how to execute it before their unseen trackers executed them.
“To turn now, and attempt to go back along this precipice, is to face every probability of meeting the men we have so far managed to avoid,” he said aloud in his pleasant voice, but as though presenting the facts to himself alone.
“Of course we shall account for some of the Huns; but that does not help us to win through…. Even an exchange of shots would no doubt be disastrous to our plans. We MUST keep away from them…. Otherwise we could never hope to creep into the valley alive,… Tell me, Yellow-hair, have you thought of anything new?”
The girl shook her head.
“No, Kay…. Except that chance of running across this new man of whom we never had heard before the stupid Boche advertised his presence in Les Errues.”
“Alexander Gray,” nodded McKay, taking from his pocket the paper which the Huns had nailed to the great pine, and unfolding it again.
The girl rested her chin on his shoulder to reread it — an apparent familiarity which he did not misunderstand. The dog that believes in you does it — from perplexity sometimes, sometimes from loneliness. Or, even when afraid — not fearing with the baser emotion of the poltroon, but afraid with that brave fear which is a wisdom too, and which feeds and brightens the steady flame of courage.
“Alexander Gray,” repeated McKay. “I never supposed that we would send another man in here — at least not until something had been heard concerning our success or failure…. I had understood that such a policy was not advisable. You know yourself, Yellow-hair, that the fewer people we have here the better the chance. And it was so decided before we left New York…. And — I wonder what occurred to alter our policy.”
“Perhaps the Boches have spread reports of our capture by Swiss authorities,” she said simply.
“That might be. Yes, and the Hun newspapers might even have printed it. I can see their scare-heads: ‘Gross Violation of Neutral Soil!
“‘Switzerland invaded by the Yankees! Their treacherous and impudent spies caught in the Alps!’ — that sort of thing. Yes, it might be that… and yet—”
“You think the Boche would not call attention to such an attempt even to trap others of our agents for the mere pleasure of murdering them?”
“That’s what I think, Eve.”
He called her “Eve” only when circumstances had become gravely threatening. At other times it was usually “Yellow-hair!”
“Then you believe that this man, Gray, has been sent into Les Errues to aid us to carry on independently the operation in which we have so far failed?”
“I begin to think so.” The girl’s golden eyes became lost in retrospection.
“And yet,” she ventured after a few moments’ thought, “he must have come into Les Errues learning that we also had entered it; and apparently he has made no effort to find us.”
“We can’t know that, Eve.”
“He must be a woodsman,” she argued, “and also he must suppose that we are more or less familiar with American woodcraft, and fairly well versed in its signs. Yet — he has left no sign that we could understand where a Hun could not.”
“Because we have discovered no sign we can not be certain that this man Gray has made none for us to read,” said McKay.
“No…. And yet he has left nothing that we have discovered — no blaze; no moss or leaf, no stone or cairn — not a broken twig, not a peeled stick, and no trail!”
“How do we know that the traces of a trail marked by flattened leaves might not be his trail? Once, on that little sheet of sand left by rain in the torrent’s wake, you f
ound the imprint of a hobnailed shoe such as the Hun hunters wear,” she reminded him. “And there we first saw the flattened trail of last year’s leaves — if indeed it be truly a trail.”
“But, Eve dear, never have we discovered in any dead and flattened leaf the imprint of hobnails, — let alone the imprint of a human foot.”
“Suppose, whoever made that path, had pulled over his shoes a heavy woolen sock.” He nodded.
“I feel, somehow, that the Hun flattened out those leaves,” she went on. “I am sure that had an American made the trail he would also have contrived to let us know — given us some indication of his identity.”
The girl’s low voice suddenly failed and her hand clutched McKay’s shoulder.
They lay among the alpine roses like two stones, never stirring, the dappled sunlight falling over them as harmoniously and with no more and no less accent than it spotted tree-trunk and rock and moss around them.
And, as they lay there, motionless, her head resting on his thigh, a man came out of the dimmer woods into the white sunshine that flooded the verge of the granite chasm.
The man was very much weather-beaten; his tweeds were torn; he carried a rifle in his right hand. And his left was bound in bloody rags. But what instantly arrested McKay’s attention was the pack strapped to his back and supported by a “tump-line.”
Never before had McKay seen such a pack carried in such a manner excepting only in American forests.
The man stood facing the sun. His visage was burnt brick colour, a hue which seemed to accentuate the intense blue of his eyes and make his light-coloured hair seem almost white.
He appeared to be a man of thirty, superbly built, with a light, springy step, despite his ragged and weary appearance.
McKay’s eyes were fastened desperately upon him, upon the strap of the Indian basket which crossed his sun-scorched forehead, upon his crystal-blue eyes of a hunter, upon his wounded left hand, upon the sinewy red fist that grasped a rifle, the make of which McKay should have known, and did know. For it was a Winchester 45-70 — no chance for mistaking that typical American weapon. And McKay fell a-trembling in every limb.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 911