"And then?" asked the husband, recovering himself, and prosaically detached from the possible sensations of a dead enemy, but Dêh-Yān paused.
Yes, what then?—for there seemed no way out of this stale-mate. The man might cling on there until the woman above him perished of the night's wind-frost, of exhaustion, or thirst, or made some despairing attempt and met her death so.
But, what of the other, the brute denizens of the glen? The rapid movement of a chase hath a stimulating influence upon whatever is within sight or hearing. Have we not seen the apparition of a pack of hounds in full cry set a whole countryside in motion?—horses at grass, calves, colts, sows, pigs of all sizes, breaking bounds, yea, the heavy-footed Wessex labourer, school-children, the curate upon his rounds, and the village postman upon his, swept out of their several orbits and drawn into the tail of the passing comet?
Yes, these four racing figures had been seen, and noted, and followed as far as appetite prompted or means of progression allowed. A lean, lone wolf with a festering fore-pad struck the trail and limped on at a steady, questing, three-legged trot, in hopes that the end of the matter might provide something toothsome. The rapid movements of parties of men had been known to have such an effect even at that time (as since).
But the chief watchers and followers had been the fowls of the air.
Every mountain peak had then, and many have still, a planetary system of birds of prey. In clear weather these swing in circles at unimaginable heights, scrutinising in turn every radiating glen, and remarking all that moves therein.
Yes, man and beast, each fly-tormented mule, new-yeaned ibex kid and German botanist climbing economically without a guide, is marked, scrutinised, summed up and kept under day-long observation, and his probabilities of life assessed upon certain grim actuarial tables known only to the tribes who seek their meat from God. You had not thought it? You scarce credit it. "Have never seen them." But they have seen you, and in the Hautes Pyrénées, or the Atlas, your every step has been marked from your rising up to your lying down.
Without counting the buzzards, which are chiefly concerned with mice, there are at least three kinds of watchers of the world below.
First, and most in evidence, is the griffon, a lordly creature to the eye, with vast, square-cut wings and a small woolly head sunk into a snow-white ruff; a vulture he, with a vulture's appetite for carrion—and for nothing else. His interest in a man begins when that man is in the act of falling, and becomes urgent only in the case of the fall proving fatal.
The eagle is smaller, but more powerful; he, too, is a carrion feeder, but will carry off grouse, marmot and red-deer calf. In hard weather Scottish eagles will pack and destroy a full-grown hind, whilst the larger race of Tibet is credited with killing wolf in fair fight. But the fear of man is on him—he learned it long ago, and there is no record of this bird attacking even a small boy. Sooth to say, he is both cowardly and stupid, though all-glorious to see.