In Secret Part 41

He nodded.

She said: "Now that the Boche have left Mount Terrible--except that wretched creature whose bones lie on the shelf below--we might venture to kill whatever game we can find."

"I'm going to," he said. "The Swiss troops have cleared out. I've got to risk it. Of course, down there in Les Errues, some Hun guarding some secret chamois trail into the forbidden wilderness may hear our shots."

"We shall have to take that chance," she remarked.

He said in the low, quiet voice which always thrilled her a little: "You poor child--you are hungry."

"So are you, Kay."

"Hungry? These rations act like c.o.c.ktails: I could barbecue a roebuck and finish him with you at one sitting!"

"Monsieur et Madame Gargantua," she mocked him with her enchanting laughter. Then, wistful: "Kay, did you see that very fat and saucy auerhahn which the Swiss soldiers scared out of the pines down there?"

"I did," said McKay. "My mouth watered."

"He was quite as big as a wild turkey," sighed the girl.

"They're devils to get," said McKay, "and with only a pistol--well, anyway we'll try to-night. Did you mark that bird?"

"Mark him?"

"Yes; mark him down?"

She shook her pretty head.

"Well, I did," grinned McKay. "It's habit with a man who shoots.

Besides, seeing him was like a bit of Scotland--their auerhahn is kin to the black-c.o.c.k and capercailzie. So I marked him to the skirt of Thusis, yonder--in line with that needle across the gulf and, through it, to that bunch of pinkish-stemmed pines--there where the brook falls into silver dust above that gorge. He'll lie there. Just before daybreak he'll mount to the top of one of those pines. We'll hear his yelping. That's our only chance at him."

"Could you ever hit him in the dark of dawn, Kay?"

"With a pistol? And him atop a pine? No, not under ordinary conditions. But I'm hungry, dear Yellow-hair, and that is not all: you are hungry--" He looked at her so intently that the colour tinted her face and the faint little thrill again possessed her.

Her glance stole involuntarily toward the white b.u.t.terflies. One had disappeared. The two others, drunk with their courtship, clung to a scented blossom.

Gravely Miss Erith lifted her young eyes to the eternal peaks--to Thusis, icy, immaculate, chastely veiled before the stealthy advent of the night.

Oddly, yet without fear, death seemed to her very near. And love, also--both in the air, both abroad and stirring, yet neither now of vital consequence. Only service meant anything now to this young man so near her--to herself. And after that--after accomplishment--love?--death?--either might come to them then. And find them ready, perhaps.

The awful, witch-like screaming of the lammergeier saluted the falling darkness where he squatted, a huge huddle of unclean plumage amid the debris of decay and death.

"I don't believe I could have faced that," murmured the girl. "You have more courage than I have, Kay."

"No! I was scared stiff. A bird like that could break a man's arm with a wing-blow.... That--that thing he'd been feeding on--it must have been a Boche of high military rank to carry these papers."

"You could not find out?"

"There were only the rags of his mufti there and these papers inside them. Nothing to identify him personally--not a tag, not a shred of anything. Unless the geier bolted it--"

She turned aside in disgust at the thought.

"When do you suppose he happened to fall to his death there, Kay?"

"In the darkness when the Huns scattered after the crucifixion.

Perhaps the horror of it came suddenly upon him--G.o.d knows what happened when he stepped outward into depthless s.p.a.ce and went crashing down to h.e.l.l."

They had stayed their hunger on the rations. It was bitter cold in the leafy lap of Thusis, but they feared to light a fire that night.

McKay fed and covered the pigeons in their light wicker box which was carried strapped to his mountain pack.

Evelyn Erith fell asleep in her blanket under the dead leaves piled over her by McKay. After awhile he slept too; but before dawn he awoke, took a flash-light and his pistol and started down the slope for the wood's edge.

Her sweet, sleepy voice halted him: "Kay dear?"

"Yes, Yellow-hair."

"May I go?"

"Don't you want to sleep?"

"No."

She sat up under a tumbling shower of silvery dead leaves, shook out her hair, gathered it and twisted it around her brow like a turban.

Then, flashing her own torch, she sprang to her feet and ran lightly down to where the snow brook whirled in mossy pools below.

When she came back he took her cold smooth little hand fresh from icy ablutions: "We must beat it," he said; "that auerhahn won't stay long in his pine-tree after dawn. Extinguish your torch."

She obeyed and her warning fingers clasped his more closely as together they descended the path of light traced out before them by his electric torch.

Down, down, down they went under hard-wood and evergreen, across little fissures full of fern, skirting great slabs of rock, making detours where tangles checked progress.

Through tree-tops the sky glittered--one vast sheet of stars; and in the forest was a pale l.u.s.tre born of this celestial splendour--a pallid dimness like that unreal day which reigns in the regions of the dead.

"We might meet the shade of Helen here," said the girl, "or of Eurydice. This is a realm of spirits. ... We may be one with them very soon--you and I. Do you suppose we shall wander here among these trees as long as time lasts?"

"It's all right if we're together, Yellow-hair."

There was no accent from his fingers clasped in hers; none in hers either.

"I hope we'll be together, then," she said.

"Will you search for me, Yellow-hair?"

"Yes. Will you, Kay?"

"Always."