"Why did you come into Les Errues?" he demanded.
"Ask your terrified authorities. Perhaps they"ll tell you--if their teeth stop chattering long enough--that I came here to find out what the Boche are doing on neutral territory."
"Do you mean to say that you believe in that absurd rumour about some secret and gigantic undertaking by the Germans which is supposed to be visible from the plateau below us?"
And, as McKay made no reply: "That is a silly fabrication. If your Government, suspicious of the neutrality of mine, sent you here on any such errand, it was a ridiculous thing to do. Do you hear me, McKay?"
"I hear you."
"Well, then! And let me add also that it is a physical impossibility for any man to reach the plateau below us from the forest of Les Errues!"
"That," said McKay, coldly, "is a lie!"
"What! You offer a Swiss officer such an injury--"
"Yes; and I may add an insulting bullet to the injury in another minute. You"ve lied to me. I have already done what you say is an impossibility. I have reached the plateau below Les Errues by way of this forest. And I"m going there again, Swiss or no Swiss, Hun or no Hun! And if the Boche do drive me out of this forest into the east, where you say there is no water to be found among the brush and bowlders, and where, at last, you say I shall stand with my back to the last sheer precipice, then tell your observation post on the white shoulder of Thusis to turn their telescopes on me!"
"In G.o.d"s name, for what purpose?"
"To take a lesson in how to die from the man your nation has betrayed!" drawled McKay.
Then, lying flat, he levelled his pistol, supporting it across the palm of his left hand.
"Yellow-hair?"" he said in a guarded voice, not turning.
"Yes, Kay."
"Slip the pack over your shoulders. Take the pigeon and the rifle.
Be quick, dear."
"It is done," she said softly.
"Now get up and make no noise. Two men are lying in the scrub behind that fellow across the chasm. I am afraid they have grenades.... Are you ready, Yellow-hair?"
"Ready, dear."
"Go eastward, swiftly, two hundred yards parallel with the precipice. Make no sound, Yellow-hair."
The girl cast a pallid, heart-breaking look at him, but he lay there without turning his head, his steady pistol levelled across the chasm. Then, bending a trifle forward, she stole eastward through the forest dusk, the pigeon in its wicker cage in one hand, and on her back the pack.
And all the while, across the gulf out of which golden vapours curled more thickly as the sun"s burning searchlight spread out across the world, the man in Swiss uniform stood on the chasm"s edge, as though awaiting some further word or movement from McKay.
And, after awhile, the word came, clear, startling, snapped out across the void:
"Unsling that haversack! Don"t touch the flap! Take it off, quick!"
The Swiss seemed astounded. "Quick!" repeated McKay harshly, "or I fire."
"What!" burst out the man, "you offer violence to a Swiss officer on duty within Swiss territory?"
"I tell you I"ll kill you where you stand if you don"t take off that haversack!"
Suddenly from the scrubby thicket behind the Swiss a man"s left arm shot up at an angle of forty degrees, and the right arm described an arc against the sun. Something round and black parted from it, lost against the glare of sunrise.
Then in the woods behind McKay something fell heavily, the solid thud obliterated in the shattering roar which followed.
The man in Swiss uniform tore at the flap of his haversack, and he must have jerked loose the plug of a grenade in his desperate haste, for as McKay"s bullet crashed through his face, the contents of his sack exploded with a deafening crash.
At the same instant two more bombs fell among the trees behind McKay, exploding instantly. Smoke and the thick golden steam from the ravine blotted from his sight the crag opposite. And now, bending double, McKay ran eastward while behind him the golden dusk of the woods roared and flamed with exploding grenades.
Evelyn Erith stood motionless and deathly white, awaiting him.
"Are you all right, Kay?"
"All right, Yellow-hair."
He went up to her, shifting his pistol to the other hand, and as he laid his right arm about her shoulders the blaze in his eyes almost dazzled her.
"We trust no living thing on earth, you and I, Yellow-hair.... I believed that man for awhile. But I tell you whatever is living within this forest is our enemy--and if any man comes in the shape of my dearest friend I shall kill him before he speaks!"
The man was shaking now; the girl caught his right hand and drew it close around her body--that once warm and slender body now become so chill and thin under the ragged clothing of a boy.
"Drop your face on my shoulder," she said.
His wasted cheek seemed feverish, burning against her breast.
"Steady, Kay," she whispered.
"Right!... What got me was the thought of you--there when the grenades fell.... They blew a black pit where your blanket lay!"
He lifted his head and she smiled into the fever-bright eyes set so deeply now in his ravaged visage. There were words on her lips, trembling to be uttered. But she dared not believe they would add to his strength if spoken. He loved her. She had long known that--had long understood that loving her had not hardened his capacity for the dogged duty which lay before him.
To win out was a task sufficiently desperate; to win out and bring her through alive was the double task that was slowly, visibly killing this man whose burning, sunken eyes gazed into hers. She dared not triple that task; the cry in her heart died unuttered, lest he ever waver in duty to his country when in some vital crisis that sacred duty clashed with the obligations that fettered him to a girl who had confessed she loved him.
No; the strength that he might derive from such a knowledge was not that deathless energy and clear thinking necessary to blind, stern, unswerving devotion to the motherland. Love of woman, and her love given, could only make the burden of decision triply heavy for this man who stood staring at s.p.a.ce beside her here in the forest twilight where shreds of the night mist floated like ghosts and a lost sunspot glowed and waned and glowed on last year"s leaves.
The girl pressed her waist with his arm, straightened her shoulders and stood erect; and with a quick gesture cleared her brow of its cloudy golden hair.
"Now," she said coolly, "we carry on, you and I, Kay, to the honour and glory of the land that trusts us in her hour of need... Are you are right again?"
"All right, Yellow-hair," he said pleasantly.
On the third day the drive had forced them from the hilly western woods, eastward and inexorably toward that level belt of s.h.a.ggy forest, scrub growth, and arid, bowlder-strewn table-land where there was probably no water, nothing living to kill for food, and only the terrific ravines beyond where cliffs fell downward to the dim green world lying somewhere below under its blanket of Alpine mist.
On the fourth day, still crowded outward and toward the ragged edge of the mountain world, they found, for the first time, no water to fill their bottles. Realising their plight, McKay turned desperately westward, facing pursuit, ranging the now narrow forest in hopes of an opportunity to break through the closing line of beaters.
But it proved to be a deadline that he and his half-starved comrade faced; shadowy figures, half seen, sometimes merely heard and divined, flitted everywhere through the open woods beyond them. And at night a necklace of fires--hundreds of them--barred the west to them, curving outward like the blade of a flaming scimitar.
On the fifth day McKay, lying in his blanket beside the girl, told her that if they found no water that day they must let their carrier-pigeon go.