“I figure I’d not have to worry quite so much about my supper at Carnaby,” he said, and laughed a little as he floundered stiffly up the hill.

It was at least an hour later, and he was limping on, encouraging himself with the expectation of resting in warm repletion beside the snapping fire, when he entered a denser growth of timber.  Alton had like most of his kind been taught by necessity to hold the weaknesses of his body in subjection, but he was a man with the instincts of his fellows, and the thought of the steaming kettle, smell of roasting meat, glare of flickering light, and snug blankets appealed to him, and just then he would not have bartered the blackened can of smoke-tasted tea for all the plate and glass of Carnaby.  His step grew a little steadier, and the sound of the river louder, until he stopped suddenly near a prostrate fir.  There was a gap in the dusky vault above him through which the moon shone down and called up a sparkle from the thin scattering of snow.  Beyond it the dark trunks stretched back, a stupendous colonnade, into the shadow again.  There was nothing unusual in all this, but the man had seen something that made him check his breathing and set his lips.  He knew he might be mistaken, but the glint he had caught for a moment suggested the barrel of a rifle.

He stood, as he realized instinctively, in the shadow with a great trunk behind him, and remained so, motionless, with his blood tingling, because the bushman knows the difficulty of catching the outline of anything that is still.  Then there was a soft snapping, and the glint became visible, in another place, again, while Alton saw that he was not mistaken.  He was also aware that the free prospector does not usually wait the approach of a stranger in silence with the rifle, and it flashed upon him that as the other man had moved there would in place of a shadowy trunk now be a patch of snow behind him.  Alton regretted he had waited so long, and dropping the deer sprang backwards, feeling for the sling of his rifle.

He was, however, a second too late, for there was a thin red flash amidst the undergrowth, and he reeled with a stinging pain somewhere about his knee.  It yielded and grew almost useless under him, and while his rifle fell with a rattle he lurched into a thicket of withered fern.  For a moment he lay still, his face awry with pain, and groaned as he strove to draw his leg up beneath him.  It felt numbed and powerless, and, desisting, he strove to collect his scattered wits, realizing that he had never needed them more than he did just then.

The rifle had fallen outside the thicket where the forest was more open and there was a sprinkling of snow, and Alton knew that an attempt to recover it would probably be fatal.  He was equally convinced that the man who had shot him would not have come out on such an errand without his magazine full, or leave his task unfinished.  There was in the meanwhile no sign of him beyond the smoke that hung about the bushes, and Alton turning over groaned again more loudly as he felt for his long-bladed knife.  It was not done without a purpose, but he had little difficulty in simulating a moan of pain, and when he heard a swish of leaves, lay flat, and dragged himself very softly farther into the fern.