"No, sir, I'm sure," he said. "I could show you where his heels went in if it would do you any good. Harry was coming along quick as he could, thinking about his supper, and the other fellow was crouching here, clawing his rifle and waiting until he came into the moonlight."
The blood surged into Seaforth's forehead, and he clenched one hand.
"The condemned villain! It was devilish," he said.
Okanagan nodded gravely, and his rugged face was stern.
"Oh, yes, but, slinging names at him's not much use," he said. "Well,
I feel it in me that we're going to see more of that man by and by, and
that's just why I'm working up the whole thing from the beginning. Now
I'll show you some more of it."
They floundered through one or two thickets until Okanagan stopped again, and pointed to the red smear upon the fern and withered pine-needles. "That's where Harry lay and waited for him," he said. "He was bleeding pretty bad, but he knew the other fellow meant to finish him."
"Waited for him when he was almost helpless and the man meant to murder him?" said Seaforth, with cold rage and horror in his face.
Okanagan laughed a little almost silent laugh that had a very grim undertone in it. "Yes, sir. That's just what he did. Don't you know Harry yet?" he said. "Still, he didn't figure that all the killing would be done by the other man. See here, this is where he gripped him, and tried to get the knife in. They fell over together there. Harry was played out and bleeding hard, or that man would never have got away when he once had his hands on him."
Seaforth stared at the rent-down undergrowth, and had no great difficulty in reconstructing the scene. Smashed fern and scattered leaves as well as the red smears on the snow bore plain testimony to the fierceness of that struggle, and he pictured his comrade grappling with his adversary while his strength flowed from him with that horrible red trickle. The light that came down between towering trunks showed that his face was grey and stern, and Okanagan, who looked at him, nodded as it were approvingly.
"I've seen enough," said the former. "If I can find that man he will not get away from me."
"Well," said Okanagan simply, "we're short of the bullet now, and I'll know better what to do with Harry when we find it. It's low down in one of those cedars yonder."