The man, still searching the depths below with straining, patient gaze, said across his shoulder:
"It was here somewhere--near here, Yellow-hair, that I went over, and found what I found.... But it"s not difficult to guess what you and I should find if we try to go over now."
"Death?" she motioned with serene lips.
He had turned to look at her, and he read her lips.
"And yet," he said, "we must manage to get down there, somehow or other, alive."
She nodded. Both knew that, once down there, they could not expect to come out alive. That was tacitly understood. All that could be hoped was that they might reach those bluish depths alive, live long enough to learn what they had come to learn, release the pigeon with its message, then meet destiny in whatever guise it confronted them.
For Fate was not far off. Fate already watched them--herself unseen.
She had caught sight of them amid the dusk of the ancient trees--was following them, stealthily, murderously, through the dim aisles of this haunted forest of Les Errues.
These two were the hunted ones, and their hunters were in the forest--nearer now than ever because the woodland was narrowing toward the east.
Also, for the first time since they had entered the Forbidden Forest, scarcely noticeable paths appeared flattening the carpet of dead leaves--not trails made by game--but ways trodden at long intervals by man--trails unused perhaps for months--then rendered vaguely visible once more by the unseen, unheard feet of lightly treading foes.
Here for the first time they had come upon the startling spoor of man--of men and enemies--men who were hunting them to slay them, and who now, in these eastern woods, no longer cared for the concealment that might lull to a sense of false security the human quarry that they pursued.
And yet the Hun-pack hunting them though the forbidden forest of Les Errues had, in their new indifference to their quarry"s alarm, and in the ferocity of their growing boldness, offered the two fugitives a new hope and a new reason for courage:--the grim courage of those who are about to die, and who know it, and still carry on.
For this is what the Huns had done--not daring to use signals visible to the Swiss patrols on nearer mountain flanks.
Nailed to a tree beside the scarcely visible trail of flattened leaves--a trail more imagined and feared than actually visible--was a sheet of white paper. And on it was written in the tongue of the Hun,--and in that same barbarous script also--a message, the free translation of which was as follows:
"WARNING!"
The three Americans recently sent into Les Errues by the Military Intelligence Department of the United States Army now fighting in France are still at large somewhere in this forest. Two of them are operating together, the well-known escaped prisoner, Kay McKay, and the woman secret-agent, Evelyn Erith. The third American, Alexander Gray, has been wounded in the left hand by one of our riflemen, but managed to escape, and is now believed to be attempting to find and join the agents McKay and Erith.
This must be prevented. All German agents now operating in Les Errues are formally instructed to track down and destroy without traces these three spies whenever and wherever encountered according to plan. It is expressly forbidden to attempt to take any one or all of these spies alive. No prisoners! No traces! Germans, do your duty! The Fatherland is in peril!
(Signed) "HOCHSTIM."
McKay wriggled cautiously backward from the chasm"s granite edge and crawled into the thicket of alpine roses where Evelyn Erith lay.
"No way out, Kay?" she asked under her breath.
"No way THAT way, Yellow-hair."
"Then?"
"I don"t--know," he said slowly.
"You mean that we ought to turn back."
"Yes, we ought to. The forest is narrowing very dangerously for us.
It runs to a point five miles farther east, overlooking impa.s.sable gulfs.... We should be in a cul-de-sac, Yellow-hair."
"I know."
He mused for a few moments, cool, clear-eyed, apparently quite undisturbed by their present peril and intent only on the mission which had brought them here, and how to execute it before their unseen trackers executed them.
"To turn now, and attempt to go back along this precipice, is to face every probability of meeting the men we have so far managed to avoid," he said aloud in his pleasant voice, but as though presenting the facts to himself alone.
"Of course we shall account for some of the Huns; but that does not help us to win through.... Even an exchange of shots would no doubt be disastrous to our plans. We MUST keep away from them....
Otherwise we could never hope to creep into the valley alive,...
Tell me, Yellow-hair, have you thought of anything new?"
The girl shook her head.
"No, Kay.... Except that chance of running across this new man of whom we never had heard before the stupid Boche advertised his presence in Les Errues."
"Alexander Gray," nodded McKay, taking from his pocket the paper which the Huns had nailed to the great pine, and unfolding it again.
The girl rested her chin on his shoulder to reread it--an apparent familiarity which he did not misunderstand. The dog that believes in you does it--from perplexity sometimes, sometimes from loneliness.
Or, even when afraid--not fearing with the baser emotion of the poltroon, but afraid with that brave fear which is a wisdom too, and which feeds and brightens the steady flame of courage.
"Alexander Gray," repeated McKay. "I never supposed that we would send another man in here--at least not until something had been heard concerning our success or failure.... I had understood that such a policy was not advisable. You know yourself, Yellow-hair, that the fewer people we have here the better the chance. And it was so decided before we left New York.... And--I wonder what occurred to alter our policy."
"Perhaps the Boches have spread reports of our capture by Swiss authorities," she said simply.
"That might be. Yes, and the Hun newspapers might even have printed it. I can see their scare-heads: "Gross Violation of Neutral Soil!
""Switzerland invaded by the Yankees! Their treacherous and impudent spies caught in the Alps!"--that sort of thing. Yes, it might be that... and yet--"
"You think the Boche would not call attention to such an attempt even to trap others of our agents for the mere pleasure of murdering them?"
"That"s what I think, Eve."
He called her "Eve" only when circ.u.mstances had become gravely threatening. At other times it was usually "Yellow-hair!"
"Then you believe that this man, Gray, has been sent into Les Errues to aid us to carry on independently the operation in which we have so far failed?"
"I begin to think so." The girl"s golden eyes became lost in retrospection.
"And yet," she ventured after a few moments" thought, "he must have come into Les Errues learning that we also had entered it; and apparently he has made no effort to find us."
"We can"t know that, Eve."
"He must be a woodsman," she argued, "and also he must suppose that we are more or less familiar with American woodcraft, and fairly well versed in its signs. Yet--he has left no sign that we could understand where a Hun could not."
"Because we have discovered no sign we can not be certain that this man Gray has made none for us to read," said McKay.
"No.... And yet he has left nothing that we have discovered--no blaze; no moss or leaf, no stone or cairn--not a broken twig, not a peeled stick, and no trail!"
"How do we know that the traces of a trail marked by flattened leaves might not be his trail? Once, on that little sheet of sand left by rain in the torrent"s wake, you found the imprint of a hobnailed shoe such as the Hun hunters wear," she reminded him. "And there we first saw the flattened trail of last year"s leaves--if indeed it be truly a trail."
"But, Eve dear, never have we discovered in any dead and flattened leaf the imprint of hobnails,--let alone the imprint of a human foot."