Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active riflemen were nearer every moment.
Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back; lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands were clutched full of grass and earth.
"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max, for God's sake."
But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeballs. Morton had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes, glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn through his heart on its way.
The whole passed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them, the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He snatched Max's pistol, which had fallen on the grass, and, blind with grief and fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned. Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a hunted wolf.
Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught in a complete cul de sac. He might have climbed the precipices, but, in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and desperation, he turned savagely at bay.
Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned, one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another, and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping mass of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.
Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their shaggy arms to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground, and commended his desperate fortunes to the God of the waste and the mountain.