Edgar Burroughs - The Red Hawk

“I shall find some nearly inaccessible place in the hills and build myself a shelter,” she replied.

“But you cannot live here in the hills alone,” I remonstrated.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Where may I live, then?”

“For a little while, perhaps,” I suggested, “until the Kalkars are driven into the sea.”

“Who will drive them into the sea?” she asked.

“We,” I replied proudly.

“And if you do, how much better off shall I be? Your people will set their hounds upon me-you have said so yourself. But you will not drive the Kalkars into the sea. You have no conception of their numbers. All up and down the coast, days’ journeys north and south, wherever there is a fertile valley, they have bred like flies. For days they have been coming from all directions, marching toward the Capitol. I do not know why they congregate now, nor why only the warriors come. Are they threatened, do you think?” A sudden thought seemed to burst upon her. “It cannot be,” she exclaimed, “that the Yanks have attacked them! Have your people come out of the desert again?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Yesterday we attacked their great camp; to-day my warriors must have eaten their evening meal in the stone tents of the Kalkars.”

“You mean the Capitol?”

“Yes.”

“Your forces have reached the Capitol? It seems incredible! Never before have you come so far. You have a great army?”

“Twenty-five thousand warriors marched down out of the desert beneath the Flag,” I told her, “and we drove the Kalkars from the pass of the ancients back to the Capitol, as you call their great camp.”

“You have lost many warriors?”

“Many fell,” I replied; “thousands.”

“Then you are not twenty-five thousand now, and the Kalkars are like ants. Kill them, and more will come. They will wear you down until your few survivors will be lucky if they can escape back to their desert.”

“You do not know us,” I told her. “We have brought our women, our children, our flocks and herds down into the orange groves of the Kalkars, and there we shall remain. If we cannot drive the Kalkars into the sea to-day, we shall have to wait until to-morrow. It has taken us three hundred years to drive them this far, but in all that time we have never given back a step that we have once gained; we have never retreated from any position to which we have brought our families and our stock.”

“You have a large family?” she asked.

“I have no wife,” I replied as I arose to add fuel to the fire.

As I returned with a handful of sticks I saw that she hugged closer to the blaze and that she shivered with the cold. I removed my Kalkar robe and threw it across her shoulders.

“No,” she cried, rising. “I cannot take it. You will be cold.”

“Keep it,” I said. “The night will be cold, and you cannot go until morning without covering.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she repeated. “I cannot accept favors from an enemy who hates me.”

She stood there, holding the red robe out toward me. Her chin was high and her expression haughty.

I stepped forward and took the robe and as her hand dropped to her side I threw the woolen garment about her once more and held it there upon her slim figure. She tried to pull away from it, but my arm was about her, holding the robe in place, and as I guessed her intention I pressed the garment more closely around her, which drew her to me until we stood face to face, her body pressed against mine. As I looked down into her upturned face our eyes met, and for a moment we stood there as if turned to stone.

I do not know what happened. Her eyes, wide and half frightened, looked up into mine, her lips were parted, and she caught her breath once in what was almost a sob. Just for an instant we stood thus, and then her eyes dropped and she bent her head and turned it half away and at the same time her muscles relaxed and she went almost limp in my arms.

Very gently I lowered her to her seat beside the fire and adjusted the robe about her. Something had happened to me. I did not know what it was, but of a sudden nothing seemed to matter so much in all the world as the comfort and safety of Bethelda.

In silence I sat down opposite her and looked at her as though I never before had laid eyes upon her, and well might it have been that I had never; for, by the Flag, I had not seen her before, or else, like some of the tiny lizards of the desert, she had the power to change her appearance as they change their colors, for this was not the same girl to whom I had been talking a moment since; this was a new and wonderful creature of a loveliness beyond all compare.

No, I did not know what had happened, nor did I care. I just sat there and devoured her with my eyes. And then she looked up and spoke four words that froze my heart in my bosom.

She looked up and her eyes were dull and filled with pain. Something had happened to her, too-I could see it.

“I am an Or-tis,” she said, and dropped her head again.

I could not speak. I just sat there staring at the slender little figure of my blood enemy, sitting, dejected, in the firelight. After a long time she lay down beside the fire and slept, and I suppose that I must have slept, too, for once, when I opened my eyes, the fire was out, I was almost frozen, and the light of a new day was breaking over rugged hilltops to the east. I arose and rekindled the fire. After that I would get Red Lightning and ride away before she awakened; but when I had found him, feeding a short distance from the camp, I did not mount and ride away, but came back to the camp again. Why, I do not know. I did not want to see her again ever, yet something drew me to her.

She was awake and standing looking all about, up and down the canon, when I first saw her, and I was sure that there was an expression of relief in her eyes when she discovered me.

She smiled wistfully, and I could not be hard, as I should have been to a blood enemy.

I was friendly with her brother, I thought-why should I not be friendly with her? Of course, I shall go away and not see her again; but at least I may be pleasant to her while I remain. Thus I argued, and thus I acted.

“Good morning,” I said as I approached. “How are you?”

“Splendid,” she replied. “And how are you?”

Her tones were rich and mellow and her eyes intoxicated me like old wine. Oh, why was she an enemy?

The Nipons came from their little tents. The naked children scampered around, playing with the dogs in an attempt to get warm. The women built the fires, around which the men huddled while their mates prepared the morning meal.

After we had eaten I took Red Lightning and started off down the canon to hunt, and although I was dubious as to what results I should achieve with the heavy Kalkar bow, I did better than I had expected, for I got two bucks although the chase carried me much farther from camp than I had intended going.

The morning must have been half spent as Red Lightning toiled up the canon trail beneath the weight of the two carcasses and myself to the camp. I noticed that he seemed nervous as we approached, keeping his ears pricked forward and occasionally snorting, but I had no idea of the cause of his perturbation and was only the more on the alert myself, as I always am when warned by Red Lightning’s actions that something may be amiss.

And when I came to the camp site I did not wonder that he had been aroused, for his keen nostrils had scented tragedy long before my dull senses could become aware of it. The happy, peaceful camp was no more. The little tents lay flat upon the ground and near them the corpses of two of my tiny friends-two little naked warriors. That was all. Silence and desolation brooded where there had been life and happiness a few short hours before. Only the dead remained.