Tartarin On The Alps Part 15

Tartarin regretted that he had not brought his carbine.

"Wait a minute, and I 'll speak to the landlord."

It so happened that the landlord was an old chamois hunter; he offered his gun, his powder, his buck-shot, and even himself as guide to a haunt he knew.

"Forward, _zou!_" cried Tartarin, granting to his happy Alpinists the opportunity to show off the prowess of their chief. It was only a slight delay, after all; the Jungfrau lost nothing by waiting.

Leaving the inn at the back, they had only to walk through an orchard, no bigger than the garden of a station-master, before they found themselves on a mountain, gashed with great creva.s.ses, among the fir-trees and underbrush.

The innkeeper took the advance, and the Taras-conese presently saw him far up the height, waving his arms and throwing stones, no doubt to rouse the chamois. They rejoined him with much pain and difficulty over that rocky slope, hard especially to persons who had just been eating and were as little used to climbing as these good Alpinists of Tarascon.

The air was heavy, moreover, with a tempest breath that was slowly rolling the clouds along the summits above their heads.

"_Boufre!_" groaned Bravida.

Excourbanies growled: "_Outre!_"

"What shall I be made to say!" added the gentle, bleating Pascalon.

But the guide having, by a violent gesture, ordered them to hold their tongues, and not to stir, Tartarin remarked, "Never speak under arms,"

with a sternness that rebuked every one, although the president alone had a weapon. They stood stock still, holding their breaths. Suddenly, Pas-calon cried out:

"_Ve _ the chamois, _ve_.."

About three hundred feet above them, the upright horns, the light buff coat and the four feet gathered together of the pretty creature stood defined like a carved image at the edge of the rock, looking at them fearlessly. Tartarin brought his piece to his shoulder methodically, as his habit was, and was just about to fire when the chamois disappeared.

"It is your fault," said the Commander to Pascalon... "you whistled...

and that frightened him."

"I whistled!.. I?"

"Then it was Spiridion..."

"Ah, _va!_ never in my life."

Nevertheless, they had all heard a whistle, strident, prolonged. The president settled the question by relating how the chamois, at the approach of enemies, gives a sharp danger signal through the nostrils.

That devil of a Tartarin knew everything about this kind of hunt, as about all others!

At the call of their guide they started again; but the acclivity became steeper and steeper, the rocks more ragged, with bogs between them to right and left. Tartarin kept the lead, turning constantly to help the delegates, holding out his hand or his carbine: "Your hand, your hand, if you don't mind," cried honest Bravida, who was very much afraid of loaded weapons.

Another sign of the guide, another stop of the delegation, their noses in the air.

"I felt a drop!" murmured the Commander, very uneasy. At the same instant the thunder growled, but louder than the thunder roared the voice of Excourbanies: "Fire, Tartarin!" and the chamois bounded past them, crossing the ravine like a golden flash, too quickly for Tartarin to take aim, but not so fast that they did not hear that whistle of his nostrils.

"I 'll have him yet, _coquin de sort!_" cried the president, but the delegates protested. Excourbanies, becoming suddenly very sour, demanded if he had sworn to exterminate them.

"Dear ma-a-aster," bleated Pascalon, timidly, "I have heard say that chamois if you corner them in abysses turn at bay against the hunter and are very dangerous."

"Then don't let us corner him!" said Bravida hastily.

Tartarin called them milksops. But while they were arguing, suddenly, abruptly, they all disappeared from one another's gaze in a warm thick vapour that smelt of sulphur, through which they sought each other, calling:

"Hey! Tartarin."

"Are you there, Placide?"

"Ma-a-as-ter!"

"Keep cool! Keep cool!"

A regular panic. Then a gust of wind broke through the mist and whirled it away like a torn veil clinging to the briers, through which a zigzag flash of lightning fell at their feet with a frightful clap of thunder.

"My cap!" cried Spiridion, as the tempest bared his head, its hairs erect and crackling with electric sparks. They were in the very heart of the storm, the forge itself of Vulcan. Bravida was the first to fly, at full speed, the rest of the delegation flew behind him, when a cry from the president, who thought of everything, stopped them:

"Thunder!.. beware of the thunder!.."

At any rate, outside of the very real danger of which he warned them, there was no possibility of running on those steep and gullied slopes, now transformed into torrents, into cascades, by the pouring rain. The return was awful, by slow steps under that crazy cliff, amid the sharp, short flashes of lightning followed by explosions, slipping, falling, and forced at times to halt. Pascalon crossed himself and invoked aloud, as at Tarascon: "Sainte Marthe and Sainte Helene, Sainte Marie-Madeleine," while Excourbanies swore: "_Coquin de sort!_" and Bravida, the rearguard, looked back in trepidation:

"What the devil is that behind us?.. It is galloping... it is whistling... there, it has stopped..."

The idea of a furious chamois flinging itself upon its hunters was in the mind of the old warrior. In a low voice, in order not to alarm the others, he communicated his fears to Tartarin, who bravely took his place as the rearguard and marched along, soaked to the skin, his head high, with that mute determination which is given by the imminence of danger. But when he reached the inn and saw his dear Alpinists under shelter, drying their wet things, which smoked around a huge porcelain stove in a first floor chamber, to which rose an odour of grog already ordered, the president s.h.i.+vered and said, looking very pale: "I believe I have taken cold."

"Taken cold!" No question now of starting again; the delegation asked only for rest Quick, a bed was warmed, they hurried the hot wine grog, and after his second gla.s.s the president felt throughout his comfort-loving body a warmth, a tingling that augured well. Two pillows at his back, a "_plumeau_" on his feet, his m.u.f.fler round his head, he experienced a delightful sense of well-being in listening to the roaring of the storm, inhaling that good pine odour of the rustic little room with its wooden walls and leaden panes, and in looking at his dear Alpinists, gathered, gla.s.s in hand, around his bed in the anomalous character given to their Gallic, Roman or Saracenic types by the counterpanes, curtains, and carpets in which they were bundled while their own clothes steamed before the stove. Forgetful of himself, he questioned each of them in a sympathetic voice:

"Are you well, Placide?.. Spiridion, you seemed to be suffering just now?.."

No, Spiridion suffered no longer, all that had pa.s.sed away on seeing the president so ill. Bravida, who adapted moral truths to the proverbs of his nation, added cynically: "_Neighbour's ill comforts, and even cures_." Then they talked of their hunt, exciting one another with the recollection of certain dangerous episodes, such as the moment when the animal turned upon them furiously; and without complicity of lying, in fact, most ingenuously, they fabricated the fable they afterwards related on their return to Tarascon.

Suddenly, Pascalon, who had been sent in search of another supply of grog, reappeared in terror, one arm out of the blue-flowered curtain that he gathered about him with the chaste gesture of a Polyeucte.

He was more than a second before he could articulate, in a whisper, breathlessly: "The chamois!.."

"Well, what of the chamois?.."

"He's down there, in the kitchen... warming himself..."

"Ah! _va_..."

"You are joking..."

"Suppose you go and see, Placide."

Bravida hesitated. Excourbanies descended on the tips of his toes, but returned almost immediately, his face convulsed... More and more astounding!.. the chamois was drinking grog.

They certainly owed it to him, poor beast, after the wild run he had been made to take on the mountain, dispatched and recalled by his master, who, as a usual thing, put him through his evolutions in the house, to show to tourists how easily a chamois could be trained.

"It is overwhelming!" said Bravida, making no further effort at comprehension; as for Tartarin, he dragged the m.u.f.fler over his eyes like a nightcap to hide from the delegates the soft hilarity that overcame him at encountering wherever he went the dodges and the performers of Bompard's Switzerland.