“Swen Brodie.  There’s not another man in the mountains brute enough for that.”

He hastened on, taking the shortest way, making nothing of the steepest slopes.  He was going straight toward the nearer end of the lake, which he must skirt to come up the further mountain and to the man who had fallen; and, by the way, straight toward the peak, still bright in the sunlight, which he had wanted to revisit all along.

Chapter II

Much of the descent of the long slope was taken at a run, on ploughing heels.  He crossed the springy meadow at a jog-trot.  But the climb to the fallen man was another matter.  The sun was appreciably lower, the shadows already made dusky tangles among the trees, when the man carrying the canvas roll came at last under the cliffs.  From out these shadows, before his keen eyes found the man they sought, he heard a voice 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 up against a tree.  There was a rifle across the man’s knees, gripped in both hands.  And yet surely the rifle had been whirled out of his hands in his fall.  Then he was not hurt badly, after all, since he had managed to work his way back up to it.

“Oh!  It’s you, is it, King?” The man against the tree did not seem overjoyed; 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 it would be——­” But he did not say who.  He came on and stood over the man on 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.  From it a pair of close-set, shallow brown eyes looked shiftily.  A tongue ran back and forth between the colourless lips.

“It’s my leg,” he said.  “I don’t know if it’s broke.  And I’m sort of bunged 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 weapon veered and wavered uncertainly.

“Yes, rot his soul.”  He began to curse, at first softly, then with a strained voice rising into a storm of windy incoherence.  Suddenly he broke off, eyeing King with suspicion upon the surface of his shallow eyes.  “What are you after?”

“I didn’t know how badly you were hurt.  I came to see if I could lend you a hand.”

“You know I don’t mean that.  What are you after, here in the mountains?” His voice was surly with truculence.