“Well, I’ve changed my mind. I—I’ll give you a chance. I’ll save you. Come with me. I won’t take you up there. We’ll go out of the country. You know what it’d mean to go up there. Well,—I’ll marry you.”
Many things happened in the next few seconds. The man threw himself like a wild beast beside the sledge, caught the woman’s face in his hands and kissed her bestially upon the helpless lips.
The girl did not struggle or cry out. Only her wide eyes looked up to the top of the cliff, looked questioningly, speculatively, calmly. He of the hairy face caught the direction of her look and sprang up and whirled around, the glove flying from his right hand, and a six-shooter leaping into it apparently from nowhere.
His face was upturned, and he fired even as the big rock smote him on the forehead and crushed him shapelessly into the snow. Reivers dragged forward another stone and waited, but the man was too obviously dead to render caution necessary.
“He was experienced and quick,” said Reivers to the woman, “but I was too hungry to miss him. Did you think I did it to save you? Oh, no! Just a minute, till I get down; you’ll know me better.”
He staggered and fell as he rose to pick his way down, for the cast with the heavy stone had tapped the last reservoirs of his depleted strength, had wrenched open the wounded shoulder and started the blood. Painfully he dragged himself on hands and knees to a snow-covered slope, and slipping and sliding made his way to the valley-bottom and came staggering up to the sledge. The woman to him for the time being did not exist.
“Steady, Body,” he muttered, as he tore open the grub-bag on the sleigh. “Here’s food.”
His fingers fell first on a huge chunk of cooked venison, and he looked no farther. Down in the snow at the side of the helpless woman he squatted and proceeded to eat. Only when the pang in his stomach had been appeased did he look at the woman. Then, for a time, he forgot about eating.
It was not a woman but a girl. Her face was fair and her hair golden red. Her big eyes were looking at him appraisingly. There was no fear in them, no apprehension. She noted the hollowness of his cheeks, the fever in his eyes. Reivers almost dropped his meat in amazement. The girl actually was pitying him!
He stood up, thrust the meat back into the grub-bag and stood swaying and towering over her. The girl’s eyes looked back unwaveringly.