The Everlasting Whisper | Page 4

roll came at last under the cliffs. From out these

shadows, before his keen eyes found the man they sought, he heard a
voice calling faintly:
"That you, Brodie?"
"No. Brodie's gone."
The voice, though very weak, 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