The Pursuit Part 25

He leaped from the saddle, drew his carbine from the bucket, and flung to Aylmer the reins of both horses.

"If Monsieur will be so obliging?" he said quickly, and turned towards the nearest tree, a cedar which towered twenty feet above the dwarfed bolls of cork. He climbed lithely, rapidly, resting, at last, within a few feet of the top. He leaned his carbine upon a bough, took a steady aim, and fired.

A shriek answered the report--a shriek m.u.f.fled in the blanket of the broom.

"_Courage, mes enfants!_" said Perinaud, placidly. "That accounted for one, and from here I see all. There are but six. Give me time and the affair completes itself effectually."

Again he dwelled upon his aim, hesitated, fired, shook his head in self-reproach and fired again. This time he gave a little nod of satisfaction.

"Two!" he cried complacently. "Two, my children!" and the report of his rifle punctuated the announcement. "So!" went on the sergeant, as if he commented on the score at a rifle range. "So! We write full stop to _Monsieur le troisieme_. Aha! _Messieurs quatrieme_, _cinquieme_ and _sixieme_--it is poor stuff to push through, the broom. No, I do not see you, Messieurs, but I see where you run like rabbits, and perhaps we may chance a bullet--there!"

The report of the last cartridge in the magazine was answered by another yell. A brown-clad body shot into the air out of the undergrowth and subsided limply. Perinaud nodded again.

"Through the brain, my friend, through the brain. Yes, I still see you, my two little doves. We have to reload. Four for one magazine of five cartridges is not bad, you will allow. You are trapped, are you not? In the broom you cannot escape me; in the open you will be ridden down.

Well, it is to be in the broom, is it? So! _Voila, Monsieur le cinquieme!_ That closes your account. As for you, my sixth friend, you have chosen the thicket, have you? You are very still; we must speculate, we must invite the co-operation of chance, who is a good friend to Sergeant Perinaud as a rule. There! No, is that not in the middle of the target? We must try again. Umph! I wonder if you are, after all, dead, my pigeon. Hola, there! Monsieur le Commandant. If you will be good enough to step fifteen long paces to the right, following the motion of my hand, you will be able to inform me if my last shot was a bull's-eye, an outer, or even--shame to me if it is so--a miss. Yes, Monsieur, that is the spot. Where the patch of broom outcrops between those two stumps of cork."

Rattier beat a road laboriously through the clinging stems as the sergeant's finger motioned. A sudden m.u.f.fled exclamation burst from him; he lurched sideways, stumbled, and fell p.r.o.ne. The green stalks rustled and shook as something brown and indistinguishable shot through them in the direction in which the waiting Goumiers were thickest.

Perinaud gave a warning cry.

"Look to yourselves! I cannot shoot; he is in line between us!"

One of the hors.e.m.e.n shouted and spurred his stallion towards the fringe of the undergrowth furthest from the point at which the charge had entered it. His impulsive action countered Perinaud's manifest purpose of firing, for he, too, had seen the agitation of the mallow in that direction. The horseman bounded forward, the horse clearing the obstructions in a series of jerky little leaps. Beside the edge of the clearing they halted, the man searching the cover in front of him and on each side keenly.

A brown something snaked out of the thicket at his back. Steel flashed in the sun. The Goumier toppled from the saddle, and a brown figure, bowing flat across the horse's withers, seemed to have replaced him almost in the moment of his fall. Spurred desperately by his new rider, the stallion burst away down the cork tree alleys.

A ragged volley rattled out. Splinters flew wide from a dozen trees, but horse and rider fled on. The Goumiers called fiercely on the name of a dozen saints of Islam to qualify their rage as they thrust their chargers out of the tangle in pursuit. Perinaud and their officer yelled strenuous commands.

Crestfallen and sullen, the troopers reined in, listening in silence to the commination addressed to them from the pulpit of the cedar.

"Is one lesson insufficient?" thundered Perinaud. "Do we practise the arts of war or are we conducting a _ralli-papier_? Like hares you were decoyed into this ambush, and, flinging your red-hot experience to the winds, you are prepared to be drawn, as likely as not, into another.

Collect yourselves, morally as well as physically, if you please."

They reined in among the cork trees, and half a dozen, flinging their reins to comrades, pushed back on foot into the cover. A string of oaths and maledictions, twice repeated, told of what they found. They came back with the sullen tread of those bearing the heavy burdens of defeat and death. They laid the bodies of their two comrades at the foot of the cedar.

Rattier, leaning upon Aylmer's arm, swore vehemently. The blood dripped from a gash across his wrist, but he raised it to shake a fist in the direction taken by the fugitive.

"Another item in M. de Landon's ledger, name of all names!" he cried.

"But we shall see, my friends, we shall see. The hand is not played out yet, believe me!"

"Perhaps not," agreed Aylmer, "but you, at any rate, have cut out of the deal, or have been cut out," he added significantly, pointing to the wounded arm.

The commandant drew himself away with a fierce jerk.

"I!" he cried. "Is a cut finger--a graze--to send me weeping to the ambulance? The scoundrel who deceived me I pursue to the world's end! He has scored once more. It is the last time--this!"

He raised himself to his full height in a grandiloquent gesture and--fell fainting into Perinaud's arms. The sergeant grunted morosely and pointed to a crimson stain which had welled through the blue tunic and was rapidly spreading.

"If it is not serious, I thank Our Lady and all the listening Saints for this!" he said devoutly. "He is impossible as a colleague on reconnaissance, this energetic commandant. It was his recklessness which led these men into a trap which at any other moment they would have avoided. We have lost two men and five horses by the result of this escapade. What are your suggestions now, Monsieur?"

Aylmer hesitated.

"For the moment have you not done enough?" he asked. "After all, your service is to France, not to intruders like myself. My Moorish servant and I might continue to reconnoitre alone. Your hands are full enough, are they not?"

The other looked at him queerly.

"Perhaps Monsieur thinks that so far we have been a hindrance rather than a help to his purposes. Monsieur has reason. At the same time we might justly, in my opinion, be permitted another chance to repair our prestige."

Aylmer smiled. Perinaud's voice was chilly. The glance he directed at the crestfallen Goumiers let it be inferred that his words were also designed to reach their address. They shuffled and kicked at the ground restlessly as they listened.

"It is for you, of course, to direct matters, Sergeant!" he said quickly. "But the commandant, without a doubt, must be removed at once to hospital."

"Without a doubt, Monsieur," agreed Perinaud, with sudden cheerfulness.

"We will escort him and the dismounted men out of the forest into the open farm lands, where patrols are not infrequent and nothing is to be feared. They will then be about twenty kilometres from the town. The best mounted will proceed as quickly as possible to fetch the ambulance.

Of the others, twenty will escort the commandant's stretcher--it is perfectly feasible to make a good one of poles which we will cut and over which we will b.u.t.ton two greatcoats--the five new-made _fanta.s.sins_ will walk. The remaining dozen and you and I, Monsieur, will proceed--with energy, if you please, but certainly with prudence."

Perinaud closed his little homily with the satisfied air of an orator who has arrived at and correctly delivered an antic.i.p.ated peroration.

And chance, who may have been listening, offered yet another of her favors to her protege. As the little column debouched from the trees into the open expanse of alluvial country, a cloud of brown dust was rising on the far side of the fringing barley fields. Perinaud gave an exclamation of content.

"It is the Tirailleurs with their major," he explained. "They have patrolled the Ber Rechid road and made a reconnaissance to get cattle.

They will have an ambulance, or at least a mule litter."

He put his horse to the gallop. The others, following more sedately, saw him reach and disappear among the ranks of white-uniformed men, whose c.u.mmerbunds and tarbooshes winked a cheerful scarlet against the dun fallow or green cropping of the fields. And there was an air of animation about the column accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that innumerable kids frisked about their mothers as the captured goats were herded along the track, while droves of small, wiry cattle bellowed and b.u.t.ted at each other, their captors, and every moving object within reach of their serviceable little horns.

Perinaud, who had dismounted, was standing and speaking with an air of respect and precision to a mounted officer. The latter turned as Aylmer and his companions approached, and the former could barely restrain a start of consternation and surprise. For a deep, flaming groove dinted the man's forehead from temple to temple, while the hand which he raised in salute was one huge scar from knuckles to wrist. His brown eyes inspected Aylmer with friendly attention.

"At your service, _mon Capitaine_," he said. "Sergeant Perinaud has explained your needs."

Aylmer began to express his thanks. The other nodded pleasantly and gave an order. From the rear an ambulance was trotted forward: a gray-moustached doctor in uniform swung himself from his saddle and bent over Rattier, who was still unconscious.

A moment later he looked up.

"Loss of blood," he said laconically. "He has a gash two fingers deep behind the shoulder. Severe, but not serious--with care. We will see to him."

The officer nodded again. He looked at Aylmer.

"And yourself, Monsieur?" he asked.

Aylmer made a gesture towards the forest and the distant uplands.

"With your leave, we will continue our--investigations, Major," he said.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"The forest, _mon ami_? We, do you see, have confined our operations so far to the plough lands, the open. I have no store of experience to draw upon for your advice. You will be pioneers. I shall hope to have the benefit of your experience on your return. Maillot is my name, Monsieur, and I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at the headquarters of my regiment outside the Fedallah Gate. For the moment, then, _au revoir_!"

He smiled cheerfully, saluted, and gave an order. The tramp and jingle of the march were renewed. The dust cloud began to form again where it had settled, and the Tirailleurs swung off seawards with the elastic step which those who wear the _G.o.dillot_ acquire, and which makes them the envy of their colleagues in the regulars who are doomed to the precise lacing of the _soulier_. Perinaud made a gesture of admiration, as with Aylmer and his half score of Goumiers he watched them go.