Lajeune was gone.
He did not feel afraid; only deadly cold and sick as he struggled to his feet. Under their shelter of canvas and snow he was alone; everything else was gone. He fell on his hands and knees, digging furiously in the trodden snow, like a dog.
The gold was gone also.
“My luck,” whispered Desmond, stupidly, “My luck.”
He was still on his knees, shaping a little rounded column of snow; suppose it might be Lajeune’s throat, and he with his hands on each side of it—so. Lajeune’s dark face seemed to lie beneath him, but it was not touched with fear, but with laughter. He was laughing, as the stars had laughed, at Desmond and his luck. Desmond dashed the snow away with a cry.
He scrambled out of the gully. The dog-trail was easy to read, running straight across the silvery plain. He began to run along it.
As he ran he admired Lajeune very much. With what deadly quietness and precision he must have worked! The gully and the deserted camp were a gray streak behind him, were gone. He was running in Lajeune’s very footprints, and he was sure he ran at an immense speed. The glittering levels reeled away behind him. A star flared and fell, staining the world with gold. Desmond had forgotten his gold. He had forgotten food and shelter, life and death. He could think of nothing but Lajeune’s brown throat with the scar across it. That throat, his own hands on each side of it, and an end for ever to the singing and the laughter.
He thought Lajeune was near at hand, laughing at him. He felt the trail, and searched. The dark face was everywhere, and the quick laughter; but silence was waiting.
Again he knelt and groped in the snow; but he could feel nothing firm and living. He tore off his mitts, and groped again, but there was only the snow, drifting in his fingers like dust. Lajeune was near at hand, yet he could not find him. He got up and began to run in circles. His feet and hands were heavy and as cold as ice, and his breath hurt; but Lajeune was alive and warm and lucky and laughing.
He fell, got up, and fell again. The third time he did not get up, for he had caught young Lajeune at last. The brown throat was under his hands, and the stricken face. He, Desmond, was doing all the laughing, for Lajeune was dead.