No human eye could follow the lightning events of the next fraction of a second. All that occurred was over and done in the duration of one heart-beat,—before the shudder and explosion in the air from the rifle's report had passed away. One instant, and the three figures seemed all together; Bill crouched with rifle held pointed in his arms, Virginia behind him, the grizzly full upon them both. The next, and Harold stood alone in the snow and the silence,—awed, terrified, and estranged as if in a dream.
Except for the three forms that lay still, half-buried and concealed in the drifts, it was as if the adventure never occurred. The spruce trees stood straight and aloof as ever. The silence stretched unbroken; its immensity had swallowed and smothered the last echo of the rifle report and the grizzly's roar. There was no movement, seemingly no life,—only the drifts and the winter forest and the futile sun, shining down between the snow-laden trees.
Yet he knew vaguely what had occurred. The bullet had gone true. It had pierced the animal's neck, breaking the vertebrae of the spinal column, and life had gone out of him as a flame goes out in the wind. But it had come too late to destroy the full force of the charge. Bill had been struck with some portion of the bear's body as he fell and had been hurled like a lifeless doll into the drifts. Virginia, too, had received some echo of that shock, probably from Bill's body as he shattered down. Now all three lay half-hidden in the snow. Which of them lived and which were dead Harold dared not guess.
But he had no time to go forward and investigate before Bill had sprung to his feet. He had received only a glancing blow; the drifts into which he had fallen were soft as pillows. In reality he had never even lost consciousness. Still subject to the one thought that guided and shaped his actions throughout the adventure, he crawled over to Virginia's side.
No living man had ever seen his face as white as it was now. His eyes were wide with the image of horror; he didn't know what wounds the dying bear might have inflicted on the girl. There was no rend in her white flesh, however; and his eye kindled and his face blazed when he saw that she yet lived.
He didn't waste even a small part of his energies by futile pleadings for her to waken. He seized her shoulders and shook her gently.
Instantly her eyes opened. Her full consciousness returned to her with a rush. She was not scratched, not even shocked by the fall, and she reached up for Bill's hands. And instantly, with a laugh on her lips, she sprang to her feet.
"You killed him?" she asked.
It was the first breath she had wasted, and no man might hold it against her. She had only to look at the huge gray form in the drifts to know her answer. Bill, because he was a woodsman first, last, and always, slipped additional shells into Harold's rifle; then walked over to the bear. He gazed down at its filming eyes.
"Bear's all dead," he answered cheerfully. And Virginia's heart raced and thrilled, and a delicious exaltation swept through her, when she glanced down at this woodsman's hands. Big and strong and brown, there was not a tremor in their fingers.