Colomba - Prosper Mérimée (management books to read txt) 📗
- Author: Prosper Mérimée
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Fully expecting a second volley, Orso moved a few steps, to place himself behind one of the burned trees that still stood upright in the maquis. Thus sheltered, he put his gun between his knees, and hurriedly reloaded it. Meanwhile his left arm began to hurt him horribly, and felt as if it were being dragged down by a huge weight.
What had become of his adversaries? He could not understand. If they had taken to flight, if they had been wounded, he would certainly have heard some noise, some stir among the leaves. Were they dead, then? Or, what was far more likely, were they not waiting behind their wall for a chance of shooting at him again. In his uncertainty, and feeling his strength fast failing him, he knelt down on his right knee, rested his wounded arm upon the other, and took advantage of a branch that protruded from the trunk of the burned tree to support his gun. With his finger on the trigger, his eye fixed on the wall, and his ear strained to catch the slightest sound, he knelt there, motionless, for several minutes, which seemed to him a century. At last, behind him, in the far distance, he heard a faint shout, and very soon a dog flew like an arrow down the slope, and stopped short, close to him, wagging its tail. It was Brusco, the comrade and follower of the bandits—the herald, doubtless, of his master’s approach. Never was any honest man more impatiently awaited. With his muzzle in the air, and turned toward the nearest fence, the dog sniffed anxiously. Suddenly he gave vent to a low growl, sprang at a bound over the wall, and almost instantly reappeared upon its crest, whence he gazed steadily at Orso with eyes that spoke surprise as clearly as a dog’s may do it. Then he sniffed again, this time toward the other inclosure, the wall of which he also crossed. Within a second he was back on the top of that, with the same air of astonishment and alarm, and straightway he bounded into the thicket with his tail between his legs, still gazing at Orso, and retiring from him slowly, and sideways, until he had put some distance between them. Then off he started again, tearing up the slope almost as fast as he had come down it, to meet a man, who, in spite of its steepness, was rapidly descending.
“Help, Brando!” shouted Orso, as soon as he thought he was within hearing.
“Hallo! Ors’ Anton’! are you wounded?” inquired Brandolaccio, as he ran up panting. “Is it in your body or your limbs?”
“In the arm.”
“The arm—oh, that’s nothing! And the other fellow?”
“I think I hit him.”
Brandolaccio ran after the dog to the nearest field and leaned over to look at the other side of the wall, then pulling off his cap—
“Signor Orlanduccio, I salute you!” said he, then turning toward Orso, he bowed to him, also, gravely.
“That,” he remarked, “is what I call a man who has been properly done for.”
“Is he still alive?” asked Orso, who could hardly breathe.
“Oh! he wouldn’t wish it! he’d be too much vexed about the bullet you put into his eye! Holy Madonna! What a hole! That’s a good gun, upon my soul! what a weight! That spatters a man’s brains for you! Hark ye, Ors’ Anton’! when I heard the first piff, piff, says I to myself: ‘Dash it, they’re murdering my lieutenant!’ Then I heard boum, boum. ‘Ha, ha!’ says I, ‘that’s the English gun beginning to talk—he’s firing back.’ But what on earth do you want with me, Brusco?”
The dog guided him to the other field.
“Upon my word,” cried Brandolaccio, utterly astonished, “a right and left, that’s what it is! Deuce take it! Clear enough, powder must be dear, for you don’t waste it!”
“What do you mean, for God’s sake?” asked Orso.
“Come, sir, don’t try to humbug me; you bring down the dame, and then you want somebody to pick it up for you. Well! there’s one man who’ll have a queer dessert to-day, and that’s Lawyer Barricini!—you want butcher’s meat, do you? Well, here you have it. Now, who the devil will be the heir?”
“What! is Vincentello dead too?”
“Dead as mutton. Salute a noi! The good point about you is that you don’t let them suffer. Just come over and look at Vincentello; he’s kneeling here with his head against the wall, as if he were asleep. You may say he sleeps like lead, this time, poor devil.”
Orso turned his head in horror.
“Are you certain he’s dead?”
“You’re like Sampiero Corso, who never had to fire more than once. Look at it there, in his chest, on the left—just where Vincileone was hit at Waterloo. I’ll wager that bullet isn’t far from his heart—a right and left! Ah! I’ll never talk about shooting again. Two with two shots, and bullets at that! The two brothers! If he’d had a third shot he’d have killed their papa. Better luck next time. What a shot! Ors’ Anton’! And to think that an honest poor chap like me will never get the chance of a right and a left two gendarmes!”
As he talked the bandit was scanning Orso’s arm, and splitting up his sleeve with his dagger.
“This is nothing,” said he. “But this coat of yours will give Signorina Colomba work to do. Ha! what’s this I see? this gash upon your chest? Nothing went in there, surely? No! you wouldn’t be so brisk as you are! Come, try to move your finger. Do you feel my teeth when I bite your little finger? Not very well? Never mind! It won’t be much. Let me take your handkerchief and your neckcloth. Well, your coat’s spoilt, anyhow! What the devil did you make yourself so smart for? Were you going to a wedding? There! drink a drop of wine. Why on earth don’t you carry a flask? Does any Corsican ever go out without a flask?”
Then again he broke off the dressing of the wound to exclaim:
“A right and left! Both of them stone dead! How the Padre will laugh! A right and left! Oh, here’s that little dawdle Chilina at last!”
Orso made no reply—he was as pale as death and shaking in every limb.
“Chili!” shouted Brandolaccio, “go and look behind that wall!”
The child, using both hands and feet, scrambled onto the wall, and the moment she caught sight of Orlanduccio’s corpse she crossed herself.
“That’s nothing,” proceeded the bandit; “go and look farther on, over there!”
The child crossed herself again.
“Was it you, uncle?” she asked timidly.
“Me! Don’t you know I’ve turned into a useless old fellow! This, Chili, is the signor’s work; offer him your compliments.”
“The signorina will be greatly rejoiced,” said Chilina, “and she will be very much grieved to know you are wounded, Ors’ Anton’.”
“Now then, Ors’ Anton’,” said the bandit, when he had finished binding up the wound. “Chilina, here, has caught your horse. You must get on his back, and come with me to the Stazzona maquis. It would be a sly fellow who’d lay his hand on you there. When we get to the Cross of Santa Christina, you’ll have to dismount. You’ll give over your horse to Chilina, who’ll go off and warn the signorina. You can say anything to the child, Ors’ Anton’. She would let herself be cut in pieces rather than betray her friends,” and then, fondly, he turned to the little girl, “That’s it, you little hussy; a ban on you, a curse on you—you jade!” For Brandolaccio, who was superstitious, like most bandits, feared he might cast a spell on a child if he blessed it or praised it, seeing it is a well-known fact that the mysterious powers that rule the Annocchiatura[*] have a vile habit of fulfilling our wishes in the very opposite sense to that we give them.
eye or by spoken words.
“Where am I to go, Brando?” queried Orso in a faint voice.
“Faith! you must choose; either to jail or to the maquis. But no della Rebbia knows the path that leads him to the jail. To the maquis, Ors’ Anton’.”
“Farewell, then, to all my hopes!” exclaimed the wounded man, sadly.
“Your hopes? Deuce take it! Did you hope to do any better with a double-barrelled gun? How on earth did the fellows contrive to hit you? The rascals must have been as hard to kill as cats.”
“They fired first,” said Orso.
“True, true; I’d forgotten that!—piff, piff—boum, boum! A right and left, and only one hand! If any man can do better, I’ll go hang myself. Come! now you’re safely mounted! Before we start, just give a glance at your work. It isn’t civil to leave one’s company without saying good-bye.”
Orso spurred his horse. He would not have looked at the two poor wretches he had just destroyed, for anything on earth.
“Hark ye, Ors’ Anton’,” quoth the bandit, as he caught hold of the horse’s bridle, “shall I tell you the truth? Well, no offence to you! I’m sorry for those poor young fellows! You’ll pardon me, I hope; so good-looking, so strong, so young. Orlanduccio, I’ve shot with him so often! Only four days ago he gave me a bundle of cigars, and Vincentello—he was always so cheery. Of course you’ve only done what you had to do, and indeed the shot was such a splendid one, nobody could regret it. But I, you see, had nothing to do with your vengeance. I know you’re perfectly in the right. When one has an enemy one must get rid of him. But the Barricini were an old family. Here’s another of them wiped out, and by a right and left too! It’s striking.”
As he thus spoke his funeral oration over the Barricini, Brandolaccio hastily guided Orso, Chilina, and Brusco, the dog, toward the Stazzona maquis.
CHAPTER XVIII
Meanwhile, very shortly after Orso’s departure, Colomba’s spies had warned her that the Barricini were out on the warpath, and from that moment she was racked by the most intense anxiety. She was to be seen moving hither and thither all over the house, between the kitchen and the rooms that were being made ready for her guests, doing nothing, yet always busy, and constantly stopping to look out of a window for any unusual stir in the village. Toward eleven o’clock, a somewhat numerous cavalcade rode into Pietranera. This was the colonel, with his daughter, their servants, and their guide. Colomba’s first word, as she welcomed them, was “Have you seen my brother?” Then she
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