She inclined her head in acquiescence.

Very slowly and with infinite caution McKay drew from their holsters beneath his armpits two automatic pistols.

“Help me, Eve,” he whispered.

So she aided him where he lay beside her to slip the pack straps over his shoulders.  Then she drew toward her the little osier cage in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with the other hand, and waited.

They had waited an hour and more; and the figure of the stranger had moved only once—­shifted merely to adjust itself against a supporting tree-trunk and slip the tump-line.

But now the man was stirring again, cautiously resuming the forehead-straps.

Ready, now, to proceed in whichever direction he might believe lay his destination, the strange man took the rifle into the hollow of his left arm once more, remained absolutely motionless for five full minutes, then, stirring stealthily, his moccasins making no sound, he moved into the forest in a half-crouching attitude.

And after him went McKay with Evelyn Erith at his elbow, his sinister pistols poised, his eyes fixed on the figure which passed like a shadow through the dim forest light ahead.

Toward mid-afternoon their opportunity approached; for here was the first water they had encountered—­and the afternoon had become burning hot—­and their own throats were cracking with that fierce thirst of high places where, even in the summer air, there is that thirst-provoking hint of ice and snow.

For a moment, however, McKay feared that the man meant to go on, leaving the thin, icy rivulet untasted among its rocks and mosses; for he crossed the course of the little stream at right angles, leaping lithely from one rock to the next and travelling upstream on the farther bank.

Then suddenly he stopped stock-still and looked back along his trail—­nearly blind save for a few patches of flattened dead leaves which his moccasined tread had patted smooth in the shadier stretches where moisture lingered undried by the searching rays of the sun.

For a few moments the unknown man searched his own back-trail, standing as motionless as the trunk of a lichened beech-tree.  Then, very slowly, he knelt on the dead leaves, let go his pack, and, keeping his rifle in his right hand, stretched out his sinewy length above the pool on the edge of which he had halted.

Twice, before drinking, he lifted his head to sweep the woods around him, his parched lips still dry.  Then, with the abruptness—­not of man but of some wild thing—­he plunged his sweating face into the pool.

And McKay covered him where he lay, and spoke in a voice which stiffened the drinking man to a statue prone on its face: 

“I’ve got you right!  Don’t lift your head!  You’ll understand me if you’re American!”

The man lay as though dead.  McKay came nearer; Evelyn Erith was at his elbow.