Cheap Jack Zita. Baring-Gould Sabine
perhaps dying, father, urged her on. She saw the dancing lights close before her, she heard voices. She felt the embankment tremble under her feet. Surely some violent commotion was taking place before her; but what it could be she had neither time nor power to conjecture.
Then there went by overhead, invisible in the darkness, a train of wild geese, going south for the winter, and as they flew they uttered loud, wild cries, like the barking of hounds in the clouds—a horrible, startling sound fit to unnerve any who were unaware of the cause.
For a moment she stood still, listening to the aerial ghostly sounds. She held her breath. Then again she ran.
As Zita ran, it seemed to her that assuredly she saw but two lights. There must have been but two, and they were stationary. She tried to call, but her voice failed her; her throat was parched. She could but run.
Next moment the lights blazed large on her, and then she grasped a foot. 'Help! help!'
CHAPTER VII
PROFITS
'WHAT do you want? Who are you?' asked Ki Drownlands, when he had sufficiently recovered his self-possession to see that some one was clinging to him, and that that person was a woman.
'Help! Come back! Father is ill.'
'I don't care. Let go. You hurt me.'
She hurt him by her touch on his boot! His nerves were thrilling, and the pressure of her fingers was unendurable in the surexcitation of every fibre of his system.
'Oh, help! help!' She would not relax her hold.
'I cannot. I've my own concerns to attend.'
Drownlands remained silent for a moment. He was shivering as one in an ague fit—shivering as though the marrow in his bones were touched with frost. Presently he asked in a voice of constraint—
'How long have you been here? What have you seen?'
He stooped to his stirrup, unhitched one of the lanterns and held it aloft, above the person who appealed for his aid.
The dim yellow light fell over a head of thick amber hair and a pale, beautifully moulded face, with large lustrous eyes, looking up entreatingly at him.
His hand that held the lantern was unsteady, and the light quivered. To disguise his agitation, he gave the lantern a pendulous motion, and the reflection glinted and went out, glinted again in those great beseeching eyes, and glowed in that copper-gold hair, as though waves of glory flashed up in the darkness and set again in darkness.
'What have you seen?' he repeated.
'Seen?—I see you. I want help. You will help me?'
'How long have you been here?'
'How long? I am but this instant come. I have run.'
Her bosom was heaving under a gay kerchief, her breath came in little puffs of steam that passed as golden dust in the halo of the lantern.
Drownlands rested both his hands on the pommel of the saddle, with the flail athwart beneath them. He put the handle of the lantern in his mouth, and the upward glare of the light was on his sinister face. He was considering. He did not recognise the girl. His mind was too distraught to think whether or not he had seen her before. She persisted—
'Help us! I have been running. I am out of breath. I saw you ride by on the bank. I called to you, and spoke to you there, and you would do nothing. My dear father is worse. He is dying. You must—you shall help.'
He still looked at her. That beautiful face—the sole object shining out of the darkness—fascinated him, in spite of his alarm, his distress.
'I am Cheap Jack Zita. I am the daughter of the poor Cheap Jack. He is taken ill—he cannot get on. He is on the bank—dying. My father!'
Then she burst into tears; and in the lantern light Ki saw the sparkling drops race down the smooth cheeks, saw them rise in the great eyes and overflow. He slowly removed the lantern handle from his teeth, and said—
'I cannot be plagued with you. I have other matters that concern me.'
He had been alarmed at first, fearing lest his encounter with Runham had been witnessed, lest this girl should be able to testify against him, were he taken to task for the death of his rival and adversary.
'Oh, come! Oh, do come!' sobbed Zita, as she grasped his boot more tightly.
'It was you who called?'
'Yes, it was I.'
'You called me?'
'Yes. There was no one else to call.'
'Oh,' said he, 'you saw no one else? No one with me?'
'No. I ran up the bank as you went by. I spoke to you, but you swore at me.'
'I—I did that?'
There was some mistake. She had taken him for the man now beneath the water.
'You shall not go!' cried the girl, clinging desperately to the stirrup. 'You cannot be so heartless as to let my poor father die.'
'What is your father to me? Let go.'
'I will not let go.'
He pricked his horse on; but she held to the bridle and arrested it.
'Take care!' said Drownlands. 'I will not be stayed against my will.'
She clung to the bridle.
'You may ride over me, and kill me too. I will not let go.'
'What do you mean?' asked he, with a gasp. 'What do you mean by "kill me too"?'
'You shall ride over me, but I shall not let go.'
'But why did you say "kill me too"?' he asked threateningly.
'I will die as well as my father. I do not care to live if he die. How can you leave him? how can you be so cruel?' She broke forth into vehemence that shook her whole frame, and shook the horse whose bridle she grappled.
'What's that?' asked Drownlands, as the horse stumbled.
He held up the lantern.
On the embankment, under the horse's feet, lay the flail that had been twisted into his tiger-skin.
'I know you—I know you,' said the girl. 'It was you who bought the flail.' Then again, 'My father is ill. He is sitting on the bank; he cannot walk. He will die of the cold if you do not help.'
'Let go,' shouted Drownlands, 'or I'll bring the flail down on your hands.'
'You may break them. I will cling with my teeth.'
He brandished the flail angrily.
Then Zita bowed herself, picked up the second flail, and, planting herself across the way, said—
'You are bad and you are cruel. I cannot get you to come to my father for the asking. I will drive you to him—drive you with the flail; I will force you to go.'
He tried to pass the girl, but she would not budge; and before the whirling flapper and her threatening attitude, the horse recoiled and almost threw himself and his rider down the embankment into the drove.
Drownlands uttered a curse, and again attempted to push past, but was again driven back by Zita.
'Take care, or I will ride you down,' he threatened; then shivered, as he recalled how that a few minutes previously Jake Runham had used the same threat to him.
He considered a moment.
He could not allow this girl to retain the flail she had picked up. It was evidence against him. Every one in Burnt Fen, every one in Weldenhall and Soham Fens, would hear of the contest at Ely before the Cheap Jack van. If that flail were known to have been found on the embankment, it would be known at once where it was that Runham fell into the Lark. It might be surmised that a struggle had there taken place, and marks of the struggle would be looked for.
The girl who stood before Drownlands was the sole person who could by any possibility appear as witness against him—could prove that he had been on the spot where Runham had perished;