The Everlasting Whisper | Page 4

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.
King grew angry and burst out bluntly:
"The devil take you, Andy Parker. I wanted to help you. If you don't take my interference kindly, I'll be on my way."
He turned to be off. Why the man was not already dead from that fall he did not know. But if the fellow was able to shift for himself, it suited King well enough. He had business of his own and no desire to step to one side or another to deal with Swen Brodie or Andy Parker, or with any man who trailed his luck with such as these. But now Parker called to him, and in an altered voice, a whine running through the words.
"Hold on, King. I'm hung up here for the night, anyhow. And I ain't got a bite of grub, and already I'm burning up with thirst. Get me a drink, will you?"
Without answer, King went to his canvas roll, and Parker, thinking himself deserted, began to plead noisily. On his knees King opened his roll, got out a cup, and began to search for water. Above him there were patches of snow; he found where a trickle of clear cold water ran in a narrow rivulet, and presently returned to the injured man with a brimming cup. Parker drank thirstily, demanded more, and sank back with a long sigh.
"The thing's unlucky, you know, King," he said queerly.
"Is it?" said King coolly. It was like him not to pretend that he did not know to what Andy Parker's thoughts had flown.
Parker nodded, pursing his lips, and kept on nodding like a broken automatic toy. At the end he jerked his head up and muttered:
"There's been the devil's luck on it for more'n sixty years and maybe a thousand years before that! Oh, you know! Look how it went with those old-timers. The last one of the Seven got it. Look how it happens with old man Loony Honeycutt, clucking and chuckling and stepping up and down in his shadow all the time; gone nuts from just smelling of it! Look what happens to me, all stove up here." He paused and then spat out venomously: "Oh, it'll get Swen Brodie and it'll get you, too, Mark King. You'll see."
"Another drink before I go?" demanded King.
Parker put his fingers to his scalp and examined them for traces of blood.
"I got a terrible headache," he said. "Aching and singing and sort of dizzy."
King went for more water, this time filling his one cook-pot. When he returned Parker was trying to stand. He had drawn himself up, holding to the tree with both shaking hands, putting his weight gingerly on one leg. Suddenly his weak hands gave way, he swayed and fell. King, standing over him, thought at first he was dead, so white and still was he.