“I thought—” he began, groping for words.
“Yes, yes!” she broke in. “You could not know how crumbling, how treacherous to the climber those rocks are up there. I tried to warn you. Are you very much hurt?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he answered, still frowning. And then, “You—where did you come from?”
She laughed, sitting back from him—her hands clasped about her two knees, her chin tip-tilted, a glimpse of her round throat telling that the bronze and copper of her coloring were not racial, that the slender body was of wonderful white and pink.
“No, you’re not badly hurt. Or you wouldn’t be wondering about other folks!”
With an effort of will he drew his eyes away from her and turned them out across the lake. He had come to find a man, the man who had killed his partner; and instead, this was what he had found. This Naiad of a creature who was no shy backwoods lass, tongue-tied and blushing, but who looked at him with clear, amused eyes.
Was Johnny Watson wrong about this Devil’s Pocket, after all? He had said that few men ever came into it; that they never came back; that they never lived here. Then how came this sparkling, radiant woodland maid here? Where had she come from now in her light canoe? Where was she going? Were there others?
Slowly his eyes came back to her.
“I didn’t know any one lived here. I thought——”
“Then what brought you here?” she asked.