Keeko watched. She watched with wide, apprehensive eyes. It was a fear quite new to her. A vivid imagination possessed her. She saw the great body of this man lying crushed and broken upon the rocks below, and the terror of it left her with nerves and muscles straining. She did not pause to consider the reason of her fears. She knew it, and acknowledged it to herself. In the battle of life which she had been forced to fight a champion had suddenly appeared. A champion such as she had sometimes dreamed of. And with perfect trust and simple faith she had yielded her soul to him.
Foot by foot Marcel moved out, always thrusting his trophy ahead of him. There was a growing vibration in the leaning tree. It laboured under his weight. He pressed on, his whole mind and purpose concentrated. Keeko watched the roots for a sign of the strain. There was none. She glanced out at the distance he yet had to go. And the length of it prompted a warning cry she dared not utter. Farther and farther he passed on. Then came a pause that suggested uncertainty.
Keeko's heart leapt. Was he dizzy? Had he suddenly become aware of the perilous depth below him? Was his nerve——?
The moment passed. He was moving on again. The far off head of the tree was coming nearer, but the vibration had increased with his movements. Would the roots hold? Could they be expected to with the balance so heavily against them? Keeko could look no longer, and, in the agony of the moment, she seized hold of the upstanding roots and clung to them in a ridiculously impotent frenzy of hope that the weight of her own light body might help him.
The vibrations of the tree ceased and Keeko raised her terrified eyes for the meaning.
A wave of partial relief swept over her. Marcel had reached his goal. He had swung up the great moose head to set it in position. It was a breathless moment. She understood that his greatest difficulties had begun, and again she withdrew her gaze. But she clung to the roots of the tree, desperately determined that if the tree fell it should drag her to the disaster waiting upon him.
The suspense seemed endless. But at last there was renewed vibration in the tree. Keeko raised her eyes again. Marcel was moving backwards, and there, right at the broken head of the tree, the fleshless skull with its magnificent antlers was set up in its place.
The girl was still clinging to the upstanding roots when Marcel leapt from his seat on the trunk and stood confronting her. His quick, smiling eyes took in the meaning of the situation at once. He reached out and removed the hands from their task, and, in doing so, he retained them longer than was necessary.
"You guessed you could hold that up if it—fell?" he asked.
And Keeko's reply was full of confusion.