The Flaming Forest | Page 7

movement. The wood warbler was cheeping inquiringly at this sudden
change in the deportment of his friend behind the shoulder of shale.
The sandpiper, a bit startled, had gone back to the edge of the river and
was running a race with himself along the wet sand. And the two
quarrelsome jays had brought their family squabble to the edge of the
timber.
It was their wrangling that roused Carrigan to the fact that he was not
dead. It was a thrilling discovery--that and the fact that he made out
clearly a patch of sunlight in the sand. He did not move, but opened his
eyes wider. He could see the timber. On a straight line with his vision
was the thick clump of balsam. And as he looked, the boughs parted
and a figure came out. Carrigan drew a deep breath. He found that it
did not hurt him. He gripped the fingers of the hand that was under his
body, and they closed on the butt of his service automatic. He would
win yet, if God gave him life a few minutes longer.
His enemy advanced. As he drew nearer, Carrigan closed his eyes more
and more. They must be shut, and he must appear as if dead, when the
other came up. Then, when the scoundrel put down his gun, as he
naturally would--his chance would be at hand. If a quiver of his eyes
betrayed him--
He closed them tight. Dizziness began to creep over him, and the fire in
his brain grew hot again. He heard footsteps, and they stopped in the
sand close beside him. Then he heard a human voice. It did not speak in
words, but gave utterance to a strange and unnatural cry. With a mighty
effort Carrigan assembled his last strength. It seemed to him that he
brought himself up quickly, but his movement was slow, painful--the

effort of a man who might be dying. The automatic hung limply in his
hand, its muzzle pointing to the sand. He looked up, trying to swing
into action that mighty weight of his weapon. And then from his own
lips, even in his utter physical impotence, fell a cry of wonder and
amazement.
His enemy stood there in the sunlight, staring down at him with big,
dark eyes that were filled with horror. They were not the eyes of a man.
David Carrigan, in this most astounding moment of his life, found
himself looking up into the face of a woman.

III
For a matter of twenty seconds--even longer it seemed to Carrigan --the
life of these two was expressed in a vivid and unforgettable tableau.
One half of it David saw--the blue sky, the dazzling sun, the girl in
between. The pistol dropped from his limp hand, and the weight of his
body tottered on the crook of his under-elbow. Mentally and physically
he was on the point of collapse, and yet in those few moments every
detail of the picture was painted with a brush of fire in his brain. The
girl was bareheaded. Her face was as white as any face he had ever
seen, living or dead; her eyes were like pools that had caught the
reflection of fire; he saw the sheen of her hair, the poise of her slender
body--its shock, stupefaction, horror. He sensed these things even as
his brain wobbled dizzily, and the larger part of the picture began to
fade out of his vision. But her face remained to the last. It grew clearer,
like a cameo framed in an iris--a beautiful, staring, horrified face with
shimmering tresses of jet-black hair blowing about it like a veil. He
noticed the hair, that was partly undone as if she had been in a struggle
of some sort, or had been running fast against the breeze that came up
the river.
He fought with himself to hold that picture of her, to utter some word,
make some movement. But the power to see and to live died out of him.
He sank back with a queer sound in his throat. He did not hear the
answering cry from the girl as she flung herself, with a quick little

prayer for help, on her knees in the soft, white sand beside him. He felt
no movement when she raised his head in her arm and with her bare
hand brushed back his sand- littered hair, revealing where the bullet
had struck him. He did not know when she ran back to the river.
His first sensation was of a cool and comforting something trickling
over his burning temples and his face. It was water. Subconsciously he
knew that, and in the same way he began to think. But it was hard to
pull his thoughts together. They