The Pursuit Part 26

"Monsieur has seen the bravest man and the finest leader of all the troops of France," he remarked.

"Major Maillot?"

"But certainly the major, Monsieur. He needs no medals to prove what he is and where he has been. His deeds are witnessed on his brow and hands."

He hesitated and then spoke quickly.

"I have no wish to vaunt the deeds of Frenchmen to you, a foreigner, Monsieur, but that is a man in whom we may take an honest pride. The scar you saw came to him by Settat. He and a picket were cut off from the main body by a hidden reserve of the enemy. They retreated fighting and were within measurable distance of safety. And then one of our fallen, whom they had left for dead, cried aloud out of the hands of the enemy. How these savages were dealing with him I shall not disgust Monsieur by telling. Suffice it to say that they were working the will of devils upon him and, in spite of his manhood, he shrieked. The major heard, and like a thunderbolt turned and charged straight for the enemy, and his men, without a thought of the peril, turned with him, a dozen perhaps, against five score. But those hundred Moors were in full retreat before the main body of the regiment raced up to the rescue, and they picked their major up wounded as you have seen, lying across the body of the man he had fought to save, with seven dead foes ringed round him.... They have a confident air, these Tirailleurs of ours. Some say an insolent one. Well, Monsieur, they have their pride, it must be allowed, but G.o.d knows when they are led as that man leads they have a right to it."

Aylmer nodded. Slowly they turned their horses' heads forestwards again.

Perinaud looked at the line of trees abstractedly and then back again at the receding column.

"France does not desert her children if she remembers," he remarked quietly. "It is well that we met these men and their major. He is a man who will see to it that we are not forgotten, if chance wills that we do not soon return. The task of seeking us would be one after his own heart, and his Tirailleurs would think with him." He smiled confidently.

"So we may go forward with an easy mind, _mon Capitaine_. We are pioneers, as the major said. To pioneers should come adventures, if they are worthy of their name."

He touched his stallion's flank with the spur. The little band of hors.e.m.e.n cantered up and into the shadow of the cork trees. And there was an air of arrogance and recklessness about the riders. All trace of discomfiture of an hour back was gone. It was as if the Tirailleurs had breathed an infection of valor around them--a bacillus of intrepidity which their major had cultivated with the point of his untiring sword.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TRAP

"That our friends have left is obvious," said Daoud. "The question is how long ago and whither."

The litter of a recently disturbed encampment c.u.mbered the ground. Rags, the feathers of lately plucked chickens, the ashes of recently extinguished fires abounded. But whether the camp had been struck days or only hours before it was impossible to determine. Night as well as day had been rainless, and the dry dust left no trail perceptible to European eyes. Daoud, however, examined the soil carefully.

"They have gone south," he declared at last. "They have struck out of the forest and back towards the plain. This grows interesting."

Perinaud gave a sniff.

"The reason is obvious," he said a little contemptuously. "Where did they obtain water? From the spring which welled up at the foot of that cactus to the left. But now it is dry and cracking mud."

Daoud nodded grudgingly.

"Possibly," he allowed. "The nearest wells are at Ain Djemma."

"Held in force by two companies of the Legion," said Perinaud. "They are hardly likely to show themselves there. No, if they have gone south they are seeking the Wad el Mella. They will follow the stream through the gorge towards their own foothills from which it issues."

"This river? How far is it?" asked Aylmer.

"Eight kilometres, possibly ten," said Perinaud. "There are _duars_ and encampments along its banks in a dozen places. We ought to get news of our men, even if we do not overtake them."

"Our horses have come a matter of thirty kilometres already," said Aylmer.

"Then as soon as possible they must do ten more," answered the sergeant, energetically. "Without water we cannot camp, any more than our friends of the Beni M'Geel. _En avance!_"

Aylmer drew his horse up beside Perinaud's as for the second time they left the shelter of the trees and ambled out on to the plain. The westering sun was turning it to broad belts of dun, and yellow, and green, as the slanting beams fell upon earth, or marigold weed, or crops. Four or five miles distant to their front the rolling uplands culminated in a belt of squat but far-branching trees.

"There, one may suppose, are the river and the gorge," he suggested.

"The inhabitants of these _duars_, of which you speak? How will they greet us?"

Perinaud shrugged his shoulders.

"It remains for Fate to show us, Monsieur. There were some drastic whippings of the Moors within this district a few weeks back. How well they have learned the lesson taught them then we shall have to prove."

Aylmer hesitated.

"It is not with the purpose of getting embroiled in skirmishes that I have come," he said quietly. "You understand that my duty, for the moment, is to keep myself alive until my object is achieved."

Perinaud grinned drily.

"That is a remark which a poltroon would not have dared to make, Monsieur, and shows you to be a brave man. Be a.s.sured that my efforts towards maintaining an unperforated skin will be as energetic as your own. Hysterical madness, such as we were involved in in the forest, shall not recur, if I can help it. My purpose is to camp, as soon as we reach water, and then to allow your omniscient Monsieur Daoud to conduct his investigations under cover of the darkness."

As the red disk of the sun sank below the seaward horizon, they topped the gentle rise which terminated in a belt of trees. Not far below them, belling musically through the dusk, came the song of the ripples. Half a mile away, on the far side of the gorge, a dim light twinkled in the growing darkness.

Perinaud pointed towards a group of palms.

"Here, Monsieur," he explained, "you will find dry earth. You have your cloak. Your saddle is a practical pillow. I have bread, a ration or two of preserved soup, some beans, coffee, a tin of milk, sugar. At the _duar_, where we see that light, are--possibly--chickens. But we are quite as likely to receive a bullet. What does Monsieur advise?"

Aylmer smiled.

"An immediate picnic. In the friendliest of _duars_ cannibal hordes thirsting for our blood would await us, if we were reckless enough to sleep among them. I prefer to housekeep _a la belle etoile_."

The sergeant nodded and gave his orders. Sentries slipped right and left into the night. A tiny fire was kindled in a hollow between two boulders. The tins of preserved soup gave up their secrets, and the ration bread proved that the military bakers of France have discovered the secret of making loaves which will remain fresh and eatable through a whole week of desert marches. Coffee succeeded--coffee made in the empty vegetable tin, and worthy of Maxim's or the Ritz.

Daoud drank his portion, shrugged his shoulders fatalistically at the sleeping places which the Goumiers were preparing, and then, without comment, vanished into the night.

Aylmer lay back upon his cloak, his head pillowed upon his arm, his pipe between his teeth. He was enjoying to the full the sensations of a pleasantly weary and well-fed horseman. The first drowsy challenge of sleep touched his eyes and brain.

The very next instant, as it seemed to him, he was on his feet, revolver in hand, searching the dark aisles of the forest on either side. A shout had echoed from one of the sentries, a hoa.r.s.e challenge followed almost on the instant by a shot.

The cry was repeated, shriller this time with the insistence of anxiety.

"_Au secours!_" came the Goumier's voice. "_Au secours!_ There are a score of them; they are all around me!"

In silence, but with a wave of the hand, Perinaud dispersed his men into open order and doubled towards the sounds of conflict. Aylmer ran with them, making more noise in his heavy boots than the whole of the party made in their _souliers_. He heard Perinaud whisper an emphatic oath of disgust as he tripped over a fallen branch and smashed heavily through a cactus bush. The next instant both of them fell together, over a soft, woolly obstruction, which stirred faintly under their feet. Meanwhile, half a dozen rifles were flas.h.i.+ng red in the night, and the woodland echoes tossed the reports from thicket to thicket.

Perinaud swore again viciously, scrambled to his feet, and shouted.

"Imbeciles! Cease fire!" he thundered. "They are sheep, these Moors of yours, sheep! A pretty night's work! You have killed probably a dozen, and we have no means of transport."

Shamefacedly the Goumiers crowded round to feel the fatness of the victim which had lain in Aylmer's path. As they felt and appraised it, their voices resumed a note of philosophic content. It was indeed a slur upon the collectedness of the Goumiers as a whole that Ha.s.san el Fehmi, the sentry, had been betrayed into this indiscretion. But the dead sheep, look you, was of an unlooked-for plumpness, and breakfast must be partaken of sooner or later. There would be cutlets, and room might be found on a saddle or two for a couple of _gigots_. No, this was not all loss, this night alarm. There were compensations.

Perinaud declined to meet these representations in the spirit in which they were made.

"Looters! Robbers of hen roosts!" he cried. "The whole of your thoughts are centered, as ever, on your unworthy stomachs. The compensation for this outrage will be made to the owners from your pay, let me tell you, from your pay! You have raised the country on us with your shootings; within a matter of minutes we shall have the Moors here in earnest, be a.s.sured of that!"