Beatrice's last defense had fallen, seriously wounded; and Ray's arm seized her as, screaming, she tried to flee.
XL
The shot that wounded Jeffery Neilson carried far through the forest aisles, reëchoing against the hills, and arresting, for one breathless moment, all the business of the wilderness. The feeding caribou swung his horns and tried to catch the scent; the moose, grubbing for water roots in the lake bottom, lifted his grotesque head and stood like a form in black iron. It came clear as a voice to the cavern where Ben lay.
The man started violently in his cot. His entire nervous system seemed to react. Then there ensued a curious state in which his physical functions seemed to cease,—his heart motionless in his breast, his body tensely rigid, his breath held. There was an infinite straining and travail in his mind.
The truth was that the sound acted much as a powerful stimulant to his retarded nervous forces. It was the one thing his resting nerve-system needed; it was as if chemicals were in suspension in a crucible, and at a slight jar of the glass they made mysterious union and expelled a precipitation. Almost instantly he recognized the sound that had reached him, with a clear and unmistakable recognition such as he had not experienced since the night of the accident, as the report of a rifle. His mind gave a great leap and remembered its familiar world.
A rifle—probably discharged by Beatrice in a hunt after big game. It was true that their meat supply was low; he remembered now. Yet it was curious that she should be hunting after dark. The gloom was deep at the cavern mouth. Besides, he had always kept his rifle from her, fearing that she might turn it against him. He looked about him, trying to locate the source of the flood of light on the cavern floor. It was the moon, and it showed that the girl was gone. He started to sit up.
But his left arm did not react just properly to the command of his brain. It impeded him, and its old strength was impaired. For a moment more he lay quiet, deep in thought. Of course—he had been injured by the falling tree. He remembered clearly, now. And the rifle had been broken.
The only possible explanation for the shot was that a rifle had been fired by some invader in their valley—in all probability Neilson or one of his men. Beatrice's absence would also indicate this fact: perhaps she had already joined her father and was on her way back to Snowy Gulch with him. In that case, why had he himself been spared?