His backward movement to avoid the horse took Forrest, stumbling, across the crack in the cliff which moatwise shut off the tower. The seam had widened during the night, and was full of water, which, where the rock formation failed, was undermining the soil, carrying the wash down through a small subcut into the trail towards the ford.
Stratton threw out his hand, grasping the fir to break his fall, and staggered erect. Blood streamed from his lips, which had struck the rough bole; but he set his teeth under them, hard. The steel flashed in his eyes. He turned on Forrest and all the latent passion in him broke into flame. The fineness in him, the high resolve shrank small. He confronted suddenly, in this man, the instrument of his disgrace and many-sided defeat. The three words he spoke were repeated slowly, in a low tone, and yet they seemed hurled by some force from the depths of his chest.
Forrest did not answer. He glanced behind him measuring the ground, which lifted a little to the left of the tower and dropped again abruptly to the precipice. It was this sink at the foundation which lowered the outer column, tilting the whole structure. He threw off his coat and moved back a pace, taking advantage of the rise, which brought him nearer Stratton's height, and waited, watchful, eyes steady, head up, feet firm, hands loose at his sides. His whole altitude said plainly, "I'm ready; come."
It all happened swiftly. In the moment Stratton crossed the break there came a tremendous jar. Instantly he recoiled. Behind Forrest the whole tower toppled, block on block, over the abyss. The cliff under him heaved; its face split, detaching at the seam. He ran, clearing it in a leap, and, like the crack of doom, the sounds of that downfall filled the gorge. He felt the next layer, a strata of soft earth, give beneath his feet. He struggled for firm ground; he would have gained it, but Stratton blocked the way. He thrust a hand against the shoulder of the reeling man, gave him backward impetus, and sprang away. Another instant, and with the last onrush Forrest went down.
Stratton retreated a little further. He turned, feeling his steps, with one hand outstretched, the other pressed to his eyes. Then he stopped, listening, fixing his fogged gaze on that awful brink, while the grinding, the striking of rock on rock, the crash of falling trees, started anew by that slide of soft earth, reverberated, multiplied echo on echo, from bluff and spur. He called once, but there was no human response. Then came—Silence.
He made his way to the rock which had been Forrest's seat, and sinking down, set his elbows on the larger boulder and dropped his face in his palms. It rained for a time heavily, but he paid little attention to the pelting drops which the wind brought slanting upon his head. After awhile the aroma of the cup which the lost man had filled, seeped over his senses. He drank it off at a draught, and groping for the coffee-pot, carefully, with difficulty, his hands shaking, poured a second cup; another. But the savor of the pheasant no longer attracted him.
"Oh, my God," he said at last, "what brought him to this place? What insane weakness brought me back? But I must see her. My God,"—his voice rose half in threat, half prayer—"I must see her, before—he—is found."
He got to his feet and commenced to grope his way down to the main trail. He was able to see the path, but a yard ahead it ended in a blur. It occurred to him that, at the time of the slide, the teacher must have started to school, and when he reached the better track he turned back towards the Nisqually as far as the cut. He made frequent stops, resting on logs or stones and closing his eyes to husband that glimmer of sight. Sometimes he stretched his spent body in complete relaxation on the wet leaves. The drip, drip of the foliage was continuous around him, but he knew when the rain ceased, for, though it was not possible to distinguish objects more clearly, he saw the filtered brightness of the sun among the trees. Then again the mist closed in, cloaking the timber. His wet clothes gathered weight; they chilled, numbed him. He quickened his steps and other footfalls seemed to follow. It was the tread of that unseen presence, which he had felt and defied, the day Smith was overtaken, and he stood on the buttress above the rockslide in the Pass. Always it stalked with him, behind him, beside him; when he halted it crowded him close.
He had hoped to meet Alice returning through the cut, but he reached the schoolhouse finally, only to find the door locked; the children and their teacher gone. He turned on the steps and looked up that steep trail through the burn. "She must have taken that way, around by the Myers claim, on some errand," he told himself. Then it flashed over him that somewhere, during those wretched halts in the wilderness, he had lost a day; this was not Friday, as he had conjectured, but Saturday, the week-end holiday.
He sank down on the steps and looked back over the level stretch of track he had just travelled. It was impossible to take up the return tramp to the headwaters so soon, but Laramie would give him some sort of bed and supper, and in the morning it might not be too late. He pulled himself together and rose. Then he stopped, listening. He had caught the sound of galloping hoofs. In a moment he whistled, his old, imperative note, that Sir Donald so well understood. The hoof-beats fell to a trot and the chestnut appeared. Stratton repeated the summons, but with a new, uncertain key, for his lip, stiff and swollen from the accident at the tower, had lost flexibility. The horse halted, head up, ears erect, sensitive, eyes dilating. But when his master started towards him he wheeled a little, and the stirrup, swinging high from the shifted saddle, struck him smartly. He crashed off through the jungle. His dragging bridle looped a snag, but he jerked free, and, making a détour around the clearing, struck the trail, breaking again into a mad gallop, back in the direction of the Nisqually.