But before he struck the match he remembered his foe without; he would be quick to fire through the window if a light showed him his target. Even now he might be crouched in the snow, his rifle in his arms, waiting for just this chance. Bill snatched a blanket from the cot, shielded them with it, and lighted the match behind it. "He can't see the light through this," he told her. "If he does—I guess it doesn't much matter."
He groped for the fallen candle, lighted it, and held it close. "You'll have to look and see yourself, Virginia," he told her. "You remember—of course——"
Yes, she remembered his blindness. She looked down at the little stain of red on her left shoulder. "I can't tell," she told him. "It went in right here—give me your hand."
She took his warm hand and rested it against the wound. Someway, it comforted her. "Close to the top of the shoulder, then," he commented. Then he groped till his sensitive fingers told him he had found the egress of the bullet—on her arm just down from her shoulder. "But there's nothing I can do—it's not a wound I can dress. It's cleaner now than anything we've got to clean it with. The only thing is to lie still—so it won't bleed."
"Do you think I'll die?" she asked him quietly. There was no fear—only sorrow—in her tones. "Tell me frankly, Bill."
"I don't think the wound is serious in itself—if we could get you down to a doctor," he told her. "It isn't bleeding much now, because you are lying still, but it has been bleeding pretty freely. It's just a flesh wound, really. But you see——"
Her mind leaped at once to his thought. "You mean—it's the same, either way?" she questioned.
"It doesn't make much difference." The man spoke quietly, just as she might have expected him to speak in such a moment as this. "Oh, Virginia—we've fought so hard—it's bitter to lose now. You see, don't you—you couldn't walk with that wound—you don't know the way, so I could walk and pull you on the sled—and Harold is gone. He won't show us the way or help us now. We haven't any food here—the grizzly has been eaten by wolves. One of us blind and one of us wounded—you see—what chance we've got against the North. If we had the grizzly flesh, we could stay here till my sight returned—and still, perhaps, get you out in time to save you from the injury. If you knew the way to the settlements, I might haul you on the sled—you guiding me—and take a chance of running into some meat on the way down. But none of those things are true."
"Then what"—the girl spoke breathlessly—"does it mean?"
"It means death—that's all it means." There was no sentimentality, no tremor in his voice now. He was looking his fate in the face; he knew he could not spare the girl by keeping the truth from her. "Death as sure as we're here—from hunger and your wound—if Harold or the cold doesn't get us first. We've been cheated, Virginia. We've played with a crooked dealer. I don't care on my own account——"