“She asked him what ’twas, of course, and he wouldn’t tell her. But he said he’d show her if she’d hurry up to the top of the Wall. He said the detectives had got into the rocks down under the Wall, and when she could see what they were up to she’d ’most die laughin’. But she’d have to come and see it her own self.
“Well, Lou, she—she ain’t very bright, you know. And she was so glad to see him good-natured and so curious about this joke onto the detectives, she went right ’long up there with him. And he went right to the edge and looked round a little, and then he says: ‘There! See ’em, right up under here? It’s a-gittin’ dark down there, but look close and you’ll make ’em out. Ain’t that funny, now?’
“Lou, she couldn’t see anything but rocks. But he kept a-tellin’ her she was too far back, so she edged up closer and closer, still a-lookin’. Then all of a sudden she heard Snake laugh again, and he had sneaked behind her, and that laugh scairt her. She looked round quick, and he was grinnin’ like death. And before she could move he shoved her off. The murderin’ copperhead! He’d brought her up there jest to kill her.”
Her fingers, twining and intertwining over one knee while she talked, gripped hard. Unable longer to sit still, she sprang up.
“D’you know where he is? If you do, git him quick! Lou wasn’t a friend to me—she hated me—but he’s got to be kilt for what he done! He——”
“Go on,” he broke in. “Tell me all of it. Then I’ll see what we can do.”
“Yes—yes, that’s right. Well, Lou would have been kilt right quick, only for one thing. There was a tree part-way down, growin’ right off the face of the wall, the way they do sometimes—a hemlock, stickin’ out on a slant. And Lou struck right into it. She was fallin’ awful fast, and she hit it so hard it—it hurt her terrible; and the tree tore off from the little ledge, and it went ’long down with her. She landed into the rocks, of course. But that tree had stopped her enough so that the rocks didn’t kill her.
“She laid there a long time, and when she got her senses back it was all dark. But then a light showed right close by, and what d’you s’pose she saw? Snake! Snake, with an ax into one hand and a lantern into the other, a-lookin’ for her!
“He must have seen that tree stop her, and he’d come down through the Gap and worked ’long through the rocks to be sure she was dead. He was a-callin’ to her, and sayin’ he’d help her, and so on. But she kept dead still. She was into a shadow beside one of the rocks, and he went right by her. She never moved till he quit lookin’ and come back, swearin’ at her and the dark and everything. And then when she was sure he was gone, she started crawlin’.”
She stopped again, her hands clenched. Douglas, visioning that awful scene at the base of the night-bound crags, stood with jaw set. Presently she resumed the tragic narrative.