"Suppose, whoever made that path, had pulled over his shoes a heavy woolen sock." He nodded.
"I feel, somehow, that the Hun flattened out those leaves," she went on. "I am sure that had an American made the trail he would also have contrived to let us know—given us some indication of his identity."
The girl's low voice suddenly failed and her hand clutched McKay's shoulder.
They lay among the alpine roses like two stones, never stirring, the dappled sunlight falling over them as harmoniously and with no more and no less accent than it spotted tree-trunk and rock and moss around them.
And, as they lay there, motionless, her head resting on his thigh, a man came out of the dimmer woods into the white sunshine that flooded the verge of the granite chasm.
The man was very much weather-beaten; his tweeds were torn; he carried a rifle in his right hand. And his left was bound in bloody rags. But what instantly arrested McKay's attention was the pack strapped to his back and supported by a "tump-line."
Never before had McKay seen such a pack carried in such a manner excepting only in American forests.
The man stood facing the sun. His visage was burnt brick colour, a hue which seemed to accentuate the intense blue of his eyes and make his light-coloured hair seem almost white.
He appeared to be a man of thirty, superbly built, with a light, springy step, despite his ragged and weary appearance.
McKay's eyes were fastened desperately upon him, upon the strap of the Indian basket which crossed his sun-scorched forehead, upon his crystal-blue eyes of a hunter, upon his wounded left hand, upon the sinewy red fist that grasped a rifle, the make of which McKay should have known, and did know. For it was a Winchester 45-70—no chance for mistaking that typical American weapon. And McKay fell a-trembling in every limb.