His body began to sag, and Hollister knelt beside him and supported him. He shook his head when Lawanne offered him a drink. His eyes closed. Only the feeble motion of his fingers on the dead woman's face and the slow heave of his breast betokened the life that still clung so tenaciously to him.
He opened his eyes again, to look at Hollister.
"I used to think—dying—was tough," he whispered. "It isn't. Like going—to sleep—when you're tired—when you're through—for the day."
That was his last word. He went limp suddenly and slid out of Hollister's grasp. And they let him lie, a dead man beside the dead woman on the floor. They stood up themselves and stared at the bodies with that strange incredulity men sometimes feel in the face of sudden death.
Both Lawanne and Hollister were familiar with death, death by the sniper's bullet, by machine gun and shell, by bayonet and poison gas. This was different. It was not war. It was something that touched them more deeply than any of the killing they had seen in war. The low hum of foraging bees about the door, the foxglove swaying in summer airs, the hushed peace of the distant hills and nearer forest,—this was no background for violence and death. It shocked them, chilled and depressed them. Hollister felt a new sort of ache creep into his heart. His eyes stung. And Lawanne suddenly turned away with a choking sound muffled in his throat.
They went out into the sunlight. Away down the valley a donkey engine tooted and whirred. High above them an eagle soared, wheeling in great circles about his aerial business. The river whispered in its channel. The blue jays scolded harshly among the thickets, and a meadow lark perched on a black stump near at hand, warbling his throaty song. Life went on as before.
"What'll we do?" Lawanne said presently. "We've got to do something."
"There's not much we can do, now," Hollister replied. "You go down to Carr's and tell them to send a man with a gas-boat out to Powell River with word to the Provincial Police of what has happened. I'll keep watch until you come back."
In an hour Lawanne returned with two men from the settlement. They laid the bodies out decently on a bed and left the two men to keep vigil until sundown, when Hollister and Lawanne would take up that melancholy watch for the night.
"I wonder," Hollister said to Lawanne, as they walked home, "what'll become of Bland? Will he give himself up, or will they have to hunt him?"