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