A man of stalwart frame, well built and spare, hairy and grizzled, but ruddy with health, sat in a cabin hidden among the trees not forty paces away, and prepared his meal of roasting quail suspended over the fire in his chimney and potatoes baking in the ashes.
He lifted his head with a jerk, and swung the quail away from the heat, leaving it still suspended, and taking his rifle from its pegs stood for a moment in his door listening. For months he had not heard the sound of a human voice, nor the nicker of any horse other than his own. He called a word of greeting, “Hello, stranger!” but receiving no response he ventured farther from his door.
Goldbug was eagerly grazing––too eagerly for his own good. The man recognized the signs of starvation and led him to a tree, where he brought him a little water in his own great tin dipper. Then he relieved him of saddle and bridle and left him tied while he hastily stowed a few hard-tack and a flask of whisky in his pocket, and taking a lasso over his arm, started up the trail on his own horse.
“Some poor guy has lost his way and gone over the cliff,” he muttered.
The young man still lay as he had fallen, but now his eyes were open and staring at the sky. Had he not been too weak to move he would have gone down; as it was, he waited, not knowing if he were dead or in a dream, seeing only the blue above him, and hearing only the scream of the eagle.
“Lie still. Don’t ye move. Don’t ye stir a hair. I’ll get ye. Still now––still.”
The big man’s voice came to him as out of a great chasm, scarcely heard for the roaring in his head, although he was 171 quite near. His arms hung down and one leg swung free, but his body rested easily balanced in the branches. Presently he felt something fall lightly across his chest, slip down to his hand, and then crawl slowly up his arm to the shoulder, where it tightened and gripped. A vague hope awoke in him.
“Now, wait. I’ll get ye; don’t move. I’ll have a noose around ye’r leg next,––so.” The voice had grown clearer, and seemed nearer, but the young man could make no response with his parched throat.
“Now if I hurt ye a bit, try to stand it.” The man carried the long loop of his lasso around the cliff and wound it securely around another scrub oak, and then began slowly and steadily to pull, until the young man moaned with pain,––to cry out was impossible.