"He hasn't!" Drennen grinned. "He doesn't know it yet!"

And that was all that Charlie Madden, though he pleaded and waxed wroth, could get out of him.

Drennen, pa.s.sing out, nodded pleasantly to Marc Lemarc, coming in.

Lemarc stared after him wonderingly. Drennen looked up and down the street as though searching for some one. His eyes moved restlessly; his agitation was so obvious that any man, seeing him, might see it, too.

It was far too early to hope to see Ygerne. After a brief hesitation Drennen returned thoughtfully to his dugout. His door open, his pipe lighted only to die and grow cold, forgotten, he waited. Now and then when a man pa.s.sed as infrequently happened, Drennen looked up quickly.

He frowned each time as the man went on.

A little after nine o'clock a man did stop at his door, carrying a note in his hand. Drennen's thoughts went swiftly to Ygerne, and a quickened beating of his heart sent the blood throbbing through him.

But the note was from Sothern and said briefly:

"I have gone on to Lebarge. You were not mistaken. But it is n.o.body's business but yours and mine. I shall expect you to come on as soon as you are able to make the trip."

The man who had brought the message had gone on up the street. Drennen sat and stared out through his door, across the river, his face set and inscrutable. The eager light in his eyes was not without its anguish.

Suddenly he stood up, his gaunt form straight and rigid, his shoulders squared, his jaw thrust out, his fist clenched.

"By Heaven!" he cried aloud, as though he were going to voice the purpose gripping him. Then he broke off, an odd smile upon his lips.

And the smile told nothing.

CHAPTER XV

THE TALE OF LE BEAU DIABLE

His meeting with Ygerne two hours before noon cast out from his mind all thoughts which did not have to do with her. There was a new glory about her this morning, crowning her like an aureole. Partly was this due to a greater care in her dress and the arranging of her copper-brown hair; partly to the emotions which at sight of him charged through her. She was going down to her breakfast at Joe's when he saw her. He crossed the street to her, his face brightening like a boy's.

As he moved along at her side, having had only a fleeting, tantalising glimpse of the grey of her eyes from under the wide brim of her hat, he whispered:

"Do you love me, Ygerne?"

There were men on the street who, though they might not hear the words, could not misread the look. She flushed a little, sent another flashing sidelong glance at him, making him no other answer than that.

He asked none other. He accompanied her to Joe's and where they had dined the other evening in the privacy of the half shut-off room, they breakfasted now. Drennen ordered another cup of coffee for himself and forgot to drink it as he had forgotten the first.

Ygerne, on the other hand, ate her meal with composure. When he sought in a lover's undertone to refer to last night she remarked evasively upon the weather. When he said, over and over, "And you do love me, Ygerne?" she turned her eyes anywhere but upon his and refused to hear.

And he laughed a new laugh, so different from that of yesterday, and worshipped man fashion and man fashion yearned to have her in his arms.

When at last she had paid her own score, so insistent upon it that Drennen gave over amusedly, they went out together.

"We're going down the river," he told her quite positively. "I want you to sit upon a certain old log I know while I talk to you."

For a little he thought that she would refuse. Then, a hotter flush in her cheeks, she turned with him, pa.s.sing down the river bank. They drew abreast of his dugout, Ygerne glancing swiftly in at the open door. They had grown silent, even Drennen finding little to say as they moved on. But at length they came to the log, having pa.s.sed around many green willowed kinks in the Little MacLeod. The girl, sitting, either consciously or through chance, took the att.i.tude in which Drennen had come upon her with the dual fever in his blood.

Thus Drennen's idyl began. Ygerne, staring straight out before her with wide, unseeing eyes, spoke swiftly, her voice a low monotone that fitted in well with the musing eyes. She loved him; she told him so in a strangely quiet tone and Drennen, wishing to believe, believed and thrilled under her words like the strings of an instrument under a sweeping hand. She told him that while he had been unsleeping last night neither had she slept.

"I didn't know that love came this way," she said. "It was easy to find interest in you; you were wrapped in it like a cloak. Then I think I came to hate you, just as you said that you hated me . . ."

"I was mad, Ygerne!" he broke in contritely.

"Or are we mad now?" she laughed, a vague hint of trouble on her lips.

"You say we don't know much of each other. It is worse than just that.

What little I know of you is not pretty knowledge. What little I have told you of myself, what you have seen of my companions here, what you have guessed, is hardly the sort of thing to make you choose me, is it?

You called me adventuress more than once. Are you sure now that I am not what you named me?"

"I am sure," he answered steadily, his faith in his idol strong upon him. "You are a sweet woman and a true, Ygerne. And if you weren't . . . why, just so you loved me I should not care!"

So they pa.s.sed from matters vital to mere lovers' talk that was none the less vital to them. Drennen, having long lived a starving existence, his soul pent up within his own self, opened his heart to her and poured out the thoughts which not even to himself had he hitherto acknowledged. He told of his old life in the cities; of the shame and disgrace that had driven him an alien into a sterner land where the names of men meant less than the might and cunning of their right hands; of his restless life leading him up and down upon a trail of flint; of disappointment and disillusion encountered on every hand until all of the old hopes and kindly thoughts were stripped from him; of the evil days which had turned sour within him the milk of human kindness.

Two things alone he would not talk of. He laughed at her, a ringing, boyish laugh when she mentioned them, one after the other. The first was what lay back in her own life, the thing which had driven her here.

"Don't you want me to tell you of that?" she had asked, looking at him swiftly.

"No," he had answered. "Not now. When we are married, Ygerne, then if you want to tell me I want to hear."

His faith in her was perfect, that was all. He wanted her to know that it was and took this method of telling her.

The other matter was his gold.

"You haven't told me of your discovery," she reminded him, again after a brief, keen scrutiny. "Aren't you going to tell me . . . David?"

It was the first time she had called him David, and the foolish joy at the little incident drove him to take her again to his arms. But with a steady purpose he refused to tell her. He had his reason and to give the reason would thwart his purpose. He meant to go to Lebarge and attend to the routine work there in connection with a new claim. That matter settled, and another, he would return swiftly to MacLeod's Settlement. He would seek Ygerne and they two would slip away together. He would take her with him so that her eyes might be the first to see with him the golden gash in the breast of earth. He would tell her: "It is yours, Ygerne."

So he just said lightly:

"Wait a little, Ygerne. Wait until I come back from Lebarge. I'll be gone a week at most. And then . . . and then, Ygerne . . ."

He had been holding her a little away from him so that he could look into her eyes, his soul drinking deep of the wine of them. Now he broke off sharply, a swift frown driving for the instant the radiance of his joy from his face. He had forgotten that he and Ygerne Bellaire were not in truth the only two created beings upon the bosom of earth.

And now, from around a bend in the river came a low voice singing, Garcia coming into view, Garcia's eternal song upon his lips:

"The perfume of roses, of little red roses; (Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet, _corazon_!)"

Garcia's eyes, a little glint of slumbrous fire in their midnight depths, were upon the man and the girl. He paused a moment, stared, bowed deeply with the old dramatic sweep of his hat. A hot spurt of rage flared across Drennen's brain; this was no accidental meeting.

Garcia had seen them leave the Settlement and had followed. Then the burning wrath changed quickly to hard, cold, watchful anger. Through a mere whim of the little G.o.ds of chance he had seen another face in the thicket or young elms not twenty paces from Ygerne's log, a face with hard, malevolent eyes, peaked at the bottom with a coppery Vandyck beard. If Ramon Garcia had seen, certainly Sefton had both seen and heard.

When Drennen's long strides had carried him to the thicket there was only the down trodden gra.s.s to show him where Sefton had stood for perhaps ten minutes. When he had come back to Ygerne Ramon Garcia had ended his stare, had turned with his shoulders lifting, and twirling his mustaches had gone back toward the Settlement.

"Ygerne," cried Drennen harshly, "why do you travel with men like that Sefton and Lemarc?"

Her voice was cool, her eyes were cool, as she answered him.

"Marc Lemarc is my cousin. Captain Sefton is his friend. Is that reason enough?"

"No. What have the three of you in common?"

She caught up one knee between her clasped hands, once more seated, and looked up at him curiously. For a moment she seemed to hesitate; then she spoke quietly, her eyes always intent upon his.