The Everlasting Whisper | Page 3

oft-repeated visits, and that among his plans to the
contrary a desire to climb them insisted. He glanced at the sun again,
shook his head, and took the first step slantingly downward along the
slope. But only once more to grow as still as the big trees about him.
Slowly he drew back into the shadows to watch and not be seen.

For abruptly two figures had appeared upon the rocky head of the
mountain across the lake. They had come up from the further side, and
when he saw them first stood clear-cut against the sky. They might
have been hunters since each carried a rifle. And yet the watcher's
brows gathered in a frown and his eyes glinted angrily.
The two figures separated, one going along the crest of the ridge, the
other climbing downward cautiously until he stood at the edge of the
cliffs. He craned his body to look down as though seeking a way to the
lake; he straightened and stared for a long time toward the snow tops of
the more distant altitudes. The sun lay in pools all about him, and
across the distance separating him and his companion from the man
who watched them so intently, his gestures could be followed readily.
He turned and must have said something to his companion, who leaped
down from a boulder and came to his side. The second man towered
over him, head and shoulder. This the eyes upon the other slope were
quick to note; they cleared briefly as though with a new understanding,
only to grow harder than before.
They talked together, and yet the only sound to carry across the lake
and meadow was the rush of air through innumerable tree-tops. The
blue water glinted softly under the westering sun; in the blue void of
the sky the hawk wheeled, silent and graceful and watchful. The
smaller man pointed, his arm outheld steadily. The other drew nearer,
towering above him. He, too, pointed or seemed about to point. They
stood so close together that the two figures merged. From a distance
they looked like one man now.
It was with startling abruptness that the two figures were torn apart,
each resolved again into an individual. One, the towering man, had
drawn suddenly back; the other was falling. And yet the silence was
unbroken. There was never a cry to echo through the gorges from a
horror-clutched throat. The falling man plunged straight down a dozen
feet, struck against a ragged rock, writhed free, fell again a few feet,
and began to roll. There had been the flash of the sun on the rifle in his
hand; he had clutched wildly at that as though it could save him. Now it
flew from his grasp as he rolled over and over, plunging down the steep

flank of the mountain.
The man who had watched from across the lake had not stirred. The big
man on the cliffs came back slowly to the brink and crouched there,
looking down, motionless so long that it was hard for the eye to be sure
of him, to know if it were really a human being or a poised boulder
squatting there. There came no call from below; the hawk wheeled and
wheeled, lost interest, drifting away. In the little hollow where the lake
glinted it was very still with the soft perfection of the first spring days.
The man on the cliff stood up, holding his rifle. He had done with
looking down; now he pivoted slowly, looking off in all other
directions. Presently he began climbing back up the few feet to the
knife-like crest from which he had descended not five minutes ago. He
paused there for hardly more than an instant and then went on, down
the further side, out of sight.
The man who had seen all this from his own slope caught up his canvas
roll again and hurried down toward the lake. For the first time he spoke
aloud, saying:
"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