"I understand," she said, "oh, I understand; but tell me this, in the end, if there had been no Philip, would it have made a difference?"
"No." His look returned to her face; his voice deepened and shook. "You ought to know that. You ought to know there never can be a living woman so dear to me as just the memory of you. It came to that, a memory, the day Judge Kingsley told me—how much he thought of you. I saw you were meant for that future he had to offer; and I promised—I promised not to stand in his way."
The furrow deepened between his brows, and he moved a little and laid his hand on the rope. She rose, gathering her hair swiftly into that braid, and hurried to relieve him of the strain. And, presently, when the improvised sled was drawn close up between the trees, and he had dragged himself aboard, and stored the useless leg, he gave the word and she cast off the line.
She propelled him with a careful shove out between the trunks, and gathering momentum, he moved more and more swiftly, ploughing a trail through the soft mold, drawing small avalanches behind him that might at any instant result in the fresh start of the whole slide. She followed down the cedar. It was impossible to overtake him on the higher and sharper portion of the pitch, but midway the sled entered a deeper fill. The incline lessened there, and the bark clogged with accumulations, which taxed Forrest's strength to clear. At last he could do no more. The toboggan stopped, crept on, and stopped again, fixed.
Instantly she was down from the log and making her way out to him. She gave him the remaining draught from the flask, and, clearing the track, started the sled with a long push, that carried it into the sharper pitch below. The next moment, while she turned to regain the cedar, she knew that the danger, which had been so imminent above, had overtaken them. The slide was in motion.
She ran with it, yet contrived to shift her course diagonally, back to the log. Crowding rock underneath began to lift points and edges through the soft fill. They tripped her, cut through her shoes. Still she kept her footing. A bough heaved up and, for a moment, its meshes entrapped her; but she held herself erect, and, like a river man, going with a swift and riffled current, swung alertly on. Presently she noticed that the avalanche did not gain impetus; then that it lost a little, and finally, almost as suddenly as it had started, it came to a halt. Looking down, while she finished the remaining steps to the cedar, she saw that Forrest had been carried before this upheaval. The sled was slowing at the end of the slope. A good yard short of the wreckage it came to a stop.
At the same time Eben Myers, coming up the canyon, skirted the standing alders, and stopped to look at the demolished cliff. The cloud was lifting from the summit; it parted in trailing ends, showing where the granite bastion had stood. "Kingdom Come!" he said slowly; "it was ther tower. Thundered like—"
He paused in astonishment, for, his glance moving down the pitch, rested on the teacher, making her way through the boughs of the fallen cedar. "Well, I be durned," he added, and, seeing the figure stretched on the improvised toboggan, he repeated profoundly, "I be durned."
He was the first to reach the sled. Forrest stirred and looked up at him with a faint smile. "Hello Eben," he said weakly. "How's the petrified man?"
Myers laughed, half in relief, half in embarrassment, and lifted his hand to part his black whiskers. "I dunno," he said. "I'd orter o' got ter his dum head by now, but I ain't lit on it this trip, an' my rations is plumb give out. I dug, you kin bet on that, I dug ter satisfy that ther blame Gov'ment dep'ty, Bates. You see he's b'en ter Washington, an' let on he knew er sight 'bout museums, an' mummies, an' stuffed animals, an' bones, so's I showed him them ther legs an' arms. An' he 'lowed they wa'n't nothin' but petrified trees."