Why should this man enjoy so much while I had so 271 little, I thought. I was handicapped by poverty, and his wealth lay like an impassable barrier between Grace and myself. Then, though I tried hard, I could not drive out the reflection that all would have been different if he had not found our camp. Our partner had gone down in the black pool; we could not save him, but chance had made it easy to succor the one man who could bring me sorrow in his necessity. Then, as I struggled to shake off the feeling of sullen resentment, Ormond perhaps noticed my preoccupation, for he remarked:
“In other circumstances how we should enjoy this prospect, Lorimer!”
We halted a few minutes, and I agreed with him as I glanced about me. A great slope of snow ran upward above us, and as far as eye could see there was a white confusion of glittering ranges. The footprints of our comrades wound in zig-zags among deep drifts and outcrops of ice-touched rock across the foreground, and perhaps twenty feet below the ledge on which we stood a smooth slide of frozen snow dropped steeply toward the edge of a precipice, through a gully in which we could see the tops of the climbing pines far beneath. A few small clumps of bushes and spruce rose out of this snow.
“It’s an awkward place for a lame man, but if we wait much longer we will lose the others,” said Ormond, pointing to the distant figures struggling across the dazzling incline.
He moved a few steps, then there was a stumble and a sudden cry. I saw him for a moment slipping down the slanted surface of the rock, and when I reached the edge he hung apparently with one foot on a slippery stone, and his left hand clawing wildly at the snow, which yielded under it. I think his other fingers were in a crevice. The fall might not be dangerous in itself, but it seemed impossible 272 that anybody launched upon that declivity could escape a glissade over the precipice. This struck me in an instant and, grasping a shrub which grew in a crevice, I held out my right hand toward him.
“Get hold, lift yourself with your foot, and I’ll drag you up!” I said.
He made a desperate effort, for I could see the veins swell on his forehead, but it was the injured foot which had found hold, and when his chest was level with the edge, still clawing at the treacherous covering, he commenced to slip back again.
“Can’t do it. Let go, before I pull you over too!” he gasped.
One reads that in cases of imminent peril men’s memories have been quickened and past events rise up before them, but nothing of this kind happened to me, for as far as recollection serves I was conscious only that I could not recover my own balance now, and that there were great beads of sweat on the forehead of the man struggling for his life below who stared up with starting eyes, while my right arm seemed slowly being drawn out of its socket. So I fought for breath, and held on, while I fancy Ormond choked out again: “You fool, let go!” and then, with slow rending, the roots of the shrub gave way, and we plunged downward together.
Ormond was undermost, and he must have struck an uncovered rock heavily, for I heard a thudding shock, and the next moment, driving my heels into the snow, I swept down the incline at a speed which threatened to drive the little sense left in me completely away. Nevertheless, I noticed that Ormond rushed downward head foremost several yards away, and there was a loud crash when he charged through a juniper thicket, and then struck violently against a spruce, which brought him up almost on the verge 273 of the gully. By good luck I slid into a clump of stout saplings, and presently rose to my knees, blinking about me in a dazed fashion. One thing, however, was evident—any rash move would launch me over the sheer fall. Ormond lay still against the slender trunk, and several minutes passed before he raised his head. There was a red stain on the snow beside him, and his voice was uneven.