“N—no! Once!”
There was a little hesitation before the reply was given. It was but the fraction of a second, but the policeman marked it, and suspected that the other had been a little uncertain as to what he ought to answer.
“But I heard two shots—one on the heels of the other,” answered Bracknell.
“One may have been the echo,” suggested Rayner. “Up here when it is still, sounds are easily duplicated.”
“No, it was not an echo,” asserted the corporal. “I am quite sure of that. I have lived in the wilds too long to be deceived in a small matter of that sort. The second shot was as real as the first. And there is another thing I ought to tell you, Mr. Raynor. Immediately after the second shot I heard a woman cry out.”
Mr. Rayner looked interested. “Are you quite sure it was a woman?” he asked. “It may have been the death-cry of this man—er—Koona Dick, which you heard.”
“That is just possible,” agreed the corporal. “Yet it seemed to me like the cry of a woman in terror.”
“It is easy even for trained ears to be mistaken up here,” said the other suavely. “Since I came here I have heard a hare scream like a child in agony. The cry you heard may have been no more than that of some small creature falling a victim to the law of the wild, which is that the strongest takes the prey.”
“Maybe!” said Bracknell laconically. In his heart he did not accept the explanation, plausible though it was.
“I am sure of it,” answered the other, as if determined to convince him. “In the silence of these northern forests, as I have noticed often of late, sounds seem to take strange qualities. The loneliness accentuates them, and if one has any reason for suspecting the presence of other humans besides one’s self, then every sound one hears seems to have some bearing on the unseen presences.”