"I fear not," she answered. "I have the perfect love."
Along the top of a tall boulder to their right appeared a dark red line—the arm of a savage, with clutching fingers. Above it, very slowly and cautiously, there rose first an eagle's feather, then a coarse black scalp lock, then a high forehead and fierce eyes. The echo of Landless's shot reverberated through the cliffs, and when the smoke cleared only the bare gray boulder faced him. But from behind it came a derisive yell.
"Thou wilt think me a poor marksman, my dear," he said, smiling, as he reloaded his musket. "I have missed again."
"It is because you are wounded," she said. "I would I had thy wounds."
"I had a wounded heart, but you have healed it," he said, and looked at her with shining eyes.
The sun sank and the long twilight of the hills set in. The evening star was brightening through the pale amethyst of the sky when Landless said quietly: "The last charge," and emptied it into an arm which for one incautious moment had waved above the rocks.
"It is the end, then," said Patricia.
"Yes, it is the end. We have beaten them back for the moment, but presently they will find that all we could do we have done, and then—"
She left her post beside the gap in the front, and came and knelt beside him, and he took her in his arms.
"It is not Death before us, but Life," she said in a low voice.