Whatever the thing was, it was evidently attempting to gain entrance without awakening her.It was just beyond the pitiful little contraption of slender boughs that she had bound together with grasses and called a door--only a few inches lay between the thing and her.Rising to her knees she reached out with her left hand and felt until she found a place where a crooked branch had left an opening a couple of inches wide near the center of the barrier.Into this she inserted the point of her spear.The thing must have heard her move within for suddenly it abandoned its efforts for stealth and tore angrily at the obstacle.At the same moment Jane thrust her spear forward with all her strength.She felt it enter flesh.There was a scream and a curse from without, followed by the crashing of a body through limbs and foliage.Her spear was almost dragged from her grasp, but she held to it until it broke free from the thing it had pierced.
It was Obergatz; the curse had told her that.From below came no further sound.Had she, then, killed him? She prayed so--with all her heart she prayed it.To be freed from the menace of this loathsome creature were relief indeed.During all the balance of the night she lay there awake, listening.Below her, she imagined, she could see the dead man with his hideous face bathed in the cold light of the moon--lying there upon his back staring up at her.
She prayed that ja might come and drag it away, but all during the remainder of the night she heard never another sound above the drowsy hum of the jungle.She was glad that he was dead, but she dreaded the gruesome ordeal that awaited her on the morrow, for she must bury the thing that had been Erich Obergatz and live on there above the shallow grave of the man she had slain.
She reproached herself for her weakness, repeating over and over that she had killed in self-defense, that her act was justified;
but she was still a woman of today, and strong upon her were the iron mandates of the social order from which she had sprung, its interdictions and its superstitions.
At last came the tardy dawn.Slowly the sun topped the distant mountains beyond Jad-in-lul.And yet she hesitated to loosen the fastenings of her door and look out upon the thing below.But it must be done.She steeled herself and untied the rawhide thong that secured the barrier.She looked down and only the grass and the flowers looked up at her.She came from her shelter and examined the ground upon the opposite side of the tree--there was no dead man there, nor anywhere as far as she could see.Slowly she descended, keeping a wary eye and an alert ear ready for the first intimation of danger.
At the foot of the tree was a pool of blood and a little trail of crimson drops upon the grass, leading away parallel with the shore of Jad-ben-lul.Then she had not slain him! She was vaguely aware of a peculiar, double sensation of relief and regret.Now she would be always in doubt.He might return; but at least she would not have to live above his grave.
She thought some of following the bloody spoor on the chance that he might have crawled away to die later, but she gave up the idea for fear that she might find him dead nearby, or, worse yet badly wounded.What then could she do? She could not finish him with her spear--no, she knew that she could not do that, nor could she bring him back and nurse him, nor could she leave him there to die of hunger or of thirst, or to become the prey of some prowling beast.It were better then not to search for him for fear that she might find him.
That day was one of nervous starting to every sudden sound.The day before she would have said that her nerves were of iron; but not today.She knew now the shock that she had suffered and that this was the reaction.Tomorrow it might be different, but something told her that never again would her little shelter and the patch of forest and jungle that she called her own be the same.There would hang over them always the menace of this man.
No longer would she pass restful nights of deep slumber.The peace of her little world was shattered forever.
That night she made her door doubly secure with additional thongs of rawhide cut from the pelt of the buck she had slain the day that she met Obergatz.She was very tired for she had lost much sleep the night before; but for a long time she lay with wide-open eyes staring into the darkness.What saw she there?
Visions that brought tears to those brave and beautiful eyes--visions of a rambling bungalow that had been home to her and that was no more, destroyed by the same cruel force that haunted her even now in this remote, uncharted corner of the earth; visions of a strong man whose protecting arm would never press her close again; visions of a tall, straight son who looked at her adoringly out of brave, smiling eyes that were like his father's.Always the vision of the crude simple bungalow rather than of the stately halls that had been as much a part of her life as the other.But he had loved the bungalow and the broad, free acres best and so she had come to love them best, too.
At last she slept, the sleep of utter exhaustion.How long it lasted she did not know; but suddenly she was wide awake and once again she heard the scuffing of a body against the bark of her tree and again the limb bent to a heavy weight.He had returned!
She went cold, trembling as with ague.Was it he, or, O God! had she killed him then and was this--? She tried to drive the horrid thought from her mind, for this way, she knew, lay madness.
And once again she crept to the door, for the thing was outside just as it had been last night.Her hands trembled as she placed the point of her weapon to the opening.She wondered if it would scream as it fell.