“Oh, you poor thing!” He prodded me carelessly with the butt of his rifle. “For two cents I’d give you a clout that’d take the ache out of that head for good.”
The minutes went by in silence. Half an hour later, perhaps, I saw Barry’s vigilance begin to relax.
My right hand dropped languidly at my side and found a round stone, slightly larger than a baseball. Barry did not see.
More time passed. At last Barry, catching himself nodding, straightened up and again prodded me with the butt.
“Don’t do that again,” I whined. “Please don’t.”
“‘Please don’t!’” mocked Barry.
In his estimation I was such a weakling that he had no need to be cautious. The rifle-butt again touched my side. I grasped it suddenly with my left hand, the fingers fastening themselves around the trigger-guard, and sprang up, the stone in my right hand. Barry jerked at the rifle, drawing me close, and I felled him to the ground with a blow from the stone on the temple.
I had the rifle now, and as he strove to rise I struck him on the head with the heavy barrel and he lay still. I stood over him, ready to strike again, but he did not move and with the rifle in my hand I ran through the green-leaved brush which fringed the fiord and started to climb the rocky hills that walled it in.
What I had to do I knew must be done in a hurry, before Brack or Madigan were in a position to keep a watch on the lake, and I ran on, regardless of the fissures and gaps with which the hill was pitted. In my haste I paid little attention to my path, and near the top I plunged suddenly through a tangle of brush and fell into what proved to be the mouth of a cave-like opening in the rocky portion of the hill.
The cave was so well hidden by the spring foliage that I had literally to walk into it before suspecting its existence. I hid the rifle there, clambered out and went on. If my senses of direction and distance were right the lake should be straight north and about a mile and a half away.