Along a dim, winding trail, through baffling undergrowth and around half-buried blocks of stone and over prostrate tree-trunks, a man and a maid passed in silence. Under foot the damp leaves, not yet dried by sun or wind, gave out no betraying crackle. The pair spoke no word, made hardly a rustle as they touched bare stems or twigs. They seemed bound on an all-day hunting trip, for the man carried a shotgun, and the girl a little apron knotted into a bag, containing food. Yet it was the girl who led the way.
Upward, ever upward they climbed on a slope whose pitch grew more and more steep. At length they paused at the edge of a gigantic mass of bowlders, above which towered stark crags split by a yard-wide fissure.
“We go up into that crack, then ’long the top of the ledge to the left, then down again,” Marion breathed.
“Why?” he remonstrated. “Why not work along here without going up and down?”
“You ain’t much of a detective if you can’t guess that,” she laughed. “Up on top we can watch back and see if we’re follered. Down here we can’t.”
“Quite right,” he conceded. “You’re a better dodger than I am. A better climber, too, probably. These boots don’t grip bare rock very well.”
“Go ’long, and go slow. Don’t bump and scrape. We’ve got all day.”
After surveying the jumble above, he began working up into it, moving with caution but with creditable speed. For a time he was so engrossed with the toil of quietly moving himself, his damp-soled boots, and his gun, that he gave no attention to her. When at length he paused at the foot of the fissure he looked back—and found her close at his heels.
“You’re awful slow and stiff,” she taunted, as if she had not just warned him to proceed cautiously. “I’ll go ’long up and wait. G’by.”
And up she went with a flash of tanned ankles and a swirl of swaying skirt, her toes gripping with unerring surety at the soil slanting down within the crevice, her lithe young body swinging with easy grace, her hair flaming like an upshooting meteor. At the top she swung and laughed once more with the exhilaration of strenuous activity. Then she moved from sight.