He brought up with his feet on the balsam roots; they were slippery, for the snow had peeled them of bark as you peel an orange. He turned with caution and stooped to his friend. He was trembling, the strong young man, like a girl. He scarcely dared touch that motionless head, raise the pale face streaked with scarlet, bind the rope about the body. It was long, and new, and unfrayed, and he thanked God for it. When he had adjusted it, and rested Jack once more against the roots, there was plenty of slack. He climbed again to the ledge and rested there a moment. Then, by sheer muscle, hauled the other up, drew him over, laid him on the planed and polished rocks, and went down beside him.
He could do no more for awhile. His strength was as water. He could not even stretch out a hand to find if Rainger still lived.
By and by he drew himself to his knees. He turned to Jack, and lifted his head to an easier position. How pale he was, dear old fellow . . . . He slipped a shaking hand under the torn shirt to feel if the heart beat at all; and sky and hills grew to an awful stillness in their places, as his fingers closed on and drew out a little canvas bag.
It had hung about Rainger’s neck. That same awful stillness of the heights was on Charron as he felt within it a little metal prong headed by a carved ball.
A silver hairpin . . . .
“I can’t stick it up now the other hairpin’s lost. P’raps I’ve given that to someone else, you old silly!”
The remembered words beat upon him in hammer-blows, for all their music of laughter and speech. He looked about him half-stupidly, thinking to see beside him the elfish, teasing face in the cloud of loosened hair. He saw only the ice-veins in the rock, a single fan of golden lichen the avalanche had spared, and then that other face—Jack’s face—frowning now, flushed a little with returning life, trembling back to consciousness.
And all those long months Jack had worn against his heart that other silver hairpin from Maisie’s fair head. Traitor, that he was, to Charron—to Laure. Or was there another traitor! Had he taken it, or had Maisie given it to him?
Charron shrank and twisted as he had writhed away from the snow-slide. But no space could separate him from that doubt. It leapt full-armed to life. It came irresistibly as a tide, drowning every foothold of faith in a moment, washing away every barrier, laying waste the soul. He turned heavily in that aching stillness. He wanted to tear the bag from its cord, grind it into a little scrap of rubbish, and throw it into the deep—that was his first thought. He had let it fall again on Rainger’s breast; he laid a twitching, ice-cold hand on it; and Rainger lifted his own hand and laid it over Charron’s.
“Will!” he said, faintly. Then, in a stronger voice: “Did the slide catch me? I don’t remember. My head’s very bad. Did I go over with it?”