She reloaded, and stood for a moment waiting for Trafford’s answer. No answer came. “Queer!” she whispered, “queer!”—and suddenly such a horror of anticipation assailed her that she started running and floundering through the snow to escape it. Twice she called his name, and once she just stopped herself from firing a shot.
Over the ridge she would find him. Surely she would find him over the ridge!
She now trampled among rocks, and there was a beaten place where Trafford must have waited and crouched. Then on and down a slope of tumbled boulders. There came a patch where he had either thrown himself down or fallen; it seemed to her he must have been running.
Suddenly, a hundred feet or so away, she saw a patch of violently disturbed snow—snow stained a dreadful color, a snow of scarlet crystals! Three strides and Trafford was in sight.
She had a swift conviction that he was dead. He was lying in a crumpled attitude on a patch of snow between [v]convergent rocks, and the lynx, a mass of blood-smeared, silvery fur, was in some way mixed up with him. She saw as she came nearer that the snow was disturbed round about them, and discolored [v]copiously, yellow, and in places bright red, with congealed and frozen blood. She felt no fear now and no emotion; all her mind was engaged with the clear, bleak perception of the fact before her. She did not care to call to him again. His head was hidden by the lynx’s body, as if he was burrowing underneath the creature; his legs were twisted about each other in a queer, unnatural attitude.
Then, as she dropped off a boulder, and came nearer, Trafford moved. A hand came out and gripped the rifle beside him; he suddenly lifted a dreadful face, horribly scarred and torn, and crimson with frozen blood; he pushed the gray beast aside, rose on an elbow, wiped his sleeve across his eyes, stared at her, grunted, and flopped forward. He had fainted.
Marjorie was now as clear-minded and as self-possessed as a woman in a shop. In another moment she was kneeling by his side. She saw, by the position of his knife and the huge rip in the beast’s body, that he had stabbed the lynx to death as it clawed his head; he must have shot and wounded it and then fallen upon it. His knitted cap was torn to ribbons, and hung upon his neck. Also his leg was manifestly injured—how, she could not tell. It was evident that he must freeze if he lay here, and it seemed to her that perhaps he had pulled the dead brute over him to protect his torn skin from the extremity of cold. The lynx was already rigid, its clumsy paws asprawl,—and the torn skin and clot upon Trafford’s face were stiff as she put her hands about his head to raise him. She turned him over on his back—how heavy he seemed?—and forced brandy between his teeth. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she poured a little brandy on his wounds.
She glanced at his leg, which was surely broken, and back at his face. Then she gave him more brandy, and his eyelids flickered. He moved his hand weakly. “The blood,” he said, “kept getting in my eyes.”
She gave him brandy once again, wiped his face, and glanced at his leg. Something ought to be done to that, Marjorie thought. But things must be done in order.
The woman stared up at the darkling sky with its gray promise of snow, and down the slopes of the mountain. Clearly they must stay the night here. They were too high for wood among these rocks, but three or four hundred yards below there were a number of dwarfed fir trees. She had brought an ax, so that a fire was possible. Should she go back to camp and get the tent?