_Chapter II_
Much of the descent of the long slope was taken at a run, on ploughingheels. He crossed the springy meadow at a jog-trot. But the climb to thefallen man was another matter. The sun was appreciably lower, theshadows already made dusky tangles among the trees, when the mancarrying the canvas roll came at last under the cliffs. From out theseshadows, before his keen eyes found the man they sought, he heard avoice calling faintly:
"That you, Brodie?"
"No. Brodie's gone."
The voice, though very weak, sharpened perceptibly:
"You, who are you?"
"What difference does it make?--if you need help."
"Who said I wanted help? Not Brodie!"
"No. Not Brodie."
He dropped his roll and began working his way through the bushes.Presently he came to a spot from which he could see a figure propped upagainst a tree. There was a rifle across the man's knees, gripped inboth hands. And yet surely the rifle had been whirled out of his handsin his fall. Then he was not hurt badly, after all, since he had managedto work his way back up to it.
"Oh! It's you, is it, King?" The man against the tree did not seemoverjoyed; there was a sullen note in his voice.
King came on, breaking his way through the brush.
"Hello," he said, a little taken aback. "It's you, is it? I thought itwould be----" But he did not say who. He came on and stood over the manon the ground, stooping for an instant to peer close into his face."Hurt much?" he asked.
The answer was a long time coming. The face was bloodlessly grey. Fromit a pair of close-set, shallow brown eyes looked shiftily. A tongue ranback and forth between the colourless lips.
"It's my leg," he said. "I don't know if it's broke. And I'm sort ofbunged up." He looked up sharply. "Oh, I'll be all right," he grunted,"and don't you fool yourself."
"Did Brodie----?"
The man began to tremble; the hands on his gun shook so that the weaponveered and wavered uncertainly.
"Yes, rot his soul." He began to curse, at first softly, then with astrained voice rising into a storm of windy incoherence. Suddenly hebroke off, eyeing King with suspicion upon the surface of his shalloweyes. "What are you after?"
"I didn't know how badly you were hurt. I came to see if I could lendyou a hand."
"You know I don't mean that. What are you after, here in the mountains?"His voice was surly with truculence.
King grew angry and burst out bluntly:
"The devil take you, Andy Parker. I wanted to help you. If you don'ttake my interference kindly, I'll be on my way."
He turned to be off. Why the man was not already dead from that fall hedid not know. But if the fellow was able to shift for himself, it suitedKing well enough. He had business of his own and no desire to step toone side or another to deal with Swen Brodie or Andy Parker, or with anyman who trailed his luck with such as these. But now Parker called tohim, and in an altered voice, a whine running through the words.
"Hold on, King. I'm hung up here for the night, anyhow. And I ain't gota bite of grub, and already I'm burning up with thirst. Get me a drink,will you?"
Without answer, King went to his canvas roll, and Parker, thinkinghimself deserted, began to plead noisily. On his knees King opened hisroll, got out a cup, and began to search for water. Above him there werepatches of snow; he found where a trickle of clear cold water ran in anarrow rivulet, and presently returned to the injured man with abrimming cup. Parker drank thirstily, demanded more, and sank back witha long sigh.
"The thing's unlucky, you know, King," he said queerly.
"Is it?" said King coolly. It was like him not to pretend that he didnot know to what Andy Parker's thoughts had flown.
Parker nodded, pursing his lips, and kept on nodding like a brokenautomatic toy. At the end he jerked his head up and muttered:
"There's been the devil's luck on it for more'n sixty years and maybe athousand years before that! Oh, _you_ know! Look how it went with thoseold-timers. The last one of the Seven got it. Look how it happens withold man Loony Honeycutt, clucking and chuckling and stepping up and downin his shadow all the time; gone nuts from just _smelling_ of it! Lookwhat happens to me, all stove up here." He paused and then spat outvenomously: "Oh, it'll get Swen Brodie and it'll get you, too, MarkKing. You'll see."
"Another drink before I go?" demanded King.
Parker put his fingers to his scalp and examined them for traces ofblood.
"I got a terrible headache," he said. "Aching and singing and sort ofdizzy."
King went for more water, this time filling his one cook-pot. When hereturned Parker was trying to stand. He had drawn himself up, holding tothe tree with both shaking hands, putting his weight gingerly on oneleg. Suddenly his weak hands gave way, he swayed and fell. King,standing over him, thought at first he was dead, so white and still washe. But Parker had only fainted.
The sun sank lower; the shadows down about the lake shores thickenedand began to run, more and more swiftly, up the surrounding slopes. Thetall peaks caught the last of the fading light, and like so manywatch-towers blazed across the wilderness. Upward, about their bases,surged the flooding shadows like a dark tide rising swiftly; the lighton the tallest spire winked and went out; and all of a sudden the rushof air through the pine tops strengthened and a growing murmur like thevoice of a distant surf made it seem that one could hear the flood ofthe night sweeping through gorge and canon and inundating the world.And, despite all that Mark King could do, the sunset glow had gone andthe first big star was shining before Andy Parker stirred.
His first call was for water. Then he complained of a terrible pain inhis vitals, a pain that stabbed him through from chest to abdomen.Thereafter he was never coherent again, though for the most part hebabbled like a noisy brook. He spoke of Swen Brodie and old LoonyHoneycutt and Gus Ingle all in one breath, and King knew that Gus Inglewas sixty years dead; he dwelt hectically on the "luck of the unluckySeven." And when, far on in the night, he at length grew silent and Kingwent to peer into his face by the light of his camp-fire, Andy Parkerwas dead.
* * * * *
Mark King made the grave in the dawn. In his roll, the handle slippedout so that it might lie snug against the steel head, was a shortminer's pick. A little below where Parker lay in his last wide-eyedvigil under the stars, King found a fairly level space free of rock andcarpeted in young grass. Here with a pine-tree to mark head and foot, heworked at the shallow grave. He put his own blanket down, laid the quietfigure gently upon it, bringing the ends over to cover him. He markedthe spot with a pile of rocks; he blazed the two trees. It was all thathe could do; far more than Andy Parker would have done for him or forany other man.
The sun was rising when, he made his way to the top of the ridge andcame to stand where he had seen Parker and Swen Brodie side by side. Heclambered on until he came to the very crest over which Swen Brodie haddisappeared. Just where had Brodie gone? He wondered. The answer camebefore the question could have been put into words. Though it was fullday across the heights where King stood, it would be an hour and longerbefore the sun got down into the canons and meadows. He saw the flare ofa camp-fire shining bright through the dark of a low-lying flat twomiles or more from his vantage-point. Brodie would be cooking hisbreakfast now.
After that King did not again climb up where his body would stand outagainst the sky which was filling so brightly with the new morning. Hemoved along the ridge steadily and swiftly like a man with a definiteobjective who did not care to be spied on. In twenty minutes, after manya hazardous passage along a steep bare surface, he came to a spot wherethe knife edge of the ridge was broken down and blunted into a fairlylevel space a hundred yards across. Here was an accumulation of soilworn down from the granite above, and here, an odd, isolated tuft ofscrawny verdure, grew a small grove of trees, stunted pine andscraggling brush.
Toward the far end of this upland flat was the disintegrating ruin of acabin. The walls had disappeare
d long ago, save for two or three rottinglogs, but a small rectangle of slightly raised ground indicated how theyhad extended. Even the rock chimney had fallen away, but something ofthe fireplace, black with burning, stood where labouring hands hadplaced it more than half a century before.
Here he made his own breakfast from what was ready cooked in his pack,dispensing with the fire, which would inevitably tell Brodie of hispresence. For Brodie, callously brutish as he was, must be somethingless than human not to turn his chill blue Icelandic eyes toward thespot where he had abandoned his fallen companion.
King's first interest was centred on the ground underfoot. He went backand forth and about the ruin of the cabin several times seeking anysign that would tell him if Brodie and Andy Parker had been here beforehim. But there were no tracks in the softer soil, no trodden-down grass.It was very likely that no foot had come here since King's own lastOctober. A look of satisfaction shone for an instant in his eyes. Then,done with this keen examination, they went with curious eagerness to themore distant landscape. He passed through the storm-broken trees and tothe far rim of the flat, where he stood a long time staring frowninglyat one after another of the spires and ridges lifted against the sky,probing into the mystery of the night still slumbering in the ravines.Now his look had to do, in intent concentration, with a slope not fivehundred yards off; now with a blue-and-white summit toward which a manmight toil all day and all night before reaching.
He might have been the figure of the "Explorer," grim and hard anddetermined; silent and solitary in a land of silence and solitude,brooding over a region where "the trails run out and stop." Somethingurged, something called, and his blood responded. About him rose thevoice of the endless leagues of pines in a hushed utterance which mighthave been the whisper:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges-- Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"
He made sure that he had left no sign of his visit here, not so much asa fallen crust of bread, caught up his pack and found the familiar waydown the cliffs, striking off toward the higher mountains and the highpass through which he would travel to-night.