He mushed a while in silence. "I suppose I haven't got to tell you, Virginia," he said at last. "That you—your own courage—saved my life."
She looked up to him with lustrous eyes. The man thrilled to the last little nerve. In her comradeship for him their luster was almost like that of which he had dreamed so often. "I know it's true," she answered frankly. "And I'm glad that—that it was mine, and not somebody else's." She too seemed to be having difficulty in shaping her thoughts. "I've never been happier about any other thing. To pay—just a little bit of debt. But in paying it, I incurred another—so the obligation is just as big as ever. You know—you saved my life, too."
He nodded. This was no time for deception, for pretty lies.
"I saw you throw yourself in front of me," she went on. "I can never forget it. I'll see that picture, over and over again, till I die—how you plunged through the snow and got in front. So since we each did for the other—the only thing we could do—there's nothing more to be said about it. Isn't that so, Bill?"
The man agreed, but his lips trembled as they never did during the charge of the grizzly.
"I've learned a lesson up here—that words aren't much good and don't seem to get anywhere." The girl spoke softly. "Only deeds count. After they're done, there is nothing much—that one can say."
So they did not speak of the matter again. They came to the bear's body and back-tracked him through the snow. They pushed through the young spruce from whose limbs the grizzly had knocked the snow. They they came out upon the cavern mouth.
Instantly Bill understood how the fall of the tree had knocked away the snow from the maw. "There's been a landslide here too, or a snowslide," he said. "You see—only the top of the cave mouth is left open. The dirt's piled around the bottom."
He crawled up over the pile of rocks and dirt and, stooping, stepped within the cavern. The girl was immediately behind him. Back five feet from the opening the interior was dark as night: the cavern walls, gray at the mouth, slowly paled and faded and were obliterated in the gloom. But there was no stir of life in the darkness, no sign of any other habitant. But the walls themselves, where the light from without revealed them, held Bill's fascinated gaze.
The girl stood behind him, silent, wondering what was in his mind. "This cave—I've never seen a cave just like this. Virginia——"