"He didn't fly over!" muttered Wolfe to himself. "And yet——"
Ever suspecting trickery, he searched the thick woodland around him with his eyes. Everything seemed quite as it should be. Another moment, and his gaze fell upon a great wild vine that hung within arm's reach of him; it ran almost to the top of a tall hemlock, and—it had been cut at a point near the snowy ground.
"I see—" Wolfe smiled—"he swung himself across by means of this!"
It was not an unreasonable conclusion. The distance over was not more than thirty feet; the vine's first fastening was on a branch fully twenty yards above. Human destinies sometimes hinge upon the tiniest things; if Wolfe had but noted that there were no footprints on the other side of the little canyon, for instance——
He tested the vine; it held his weight with no sign whatever of giving away. He looked below, and considered; if he fell, he would be hurt: neither the snow that covered the farther half of the canyon's bottom, nor the water that covered the nearer half, would keep him from being hurt if he fell. Therefore, he tested the strength of the vine again. Again it held his weight without the least sign of breaking or tearing loose in the tree overhead.
"I should be able to do anything that the other fellow can do," he told himself.
With that, Wolfe proceeded to fasten his rifle and the bundle of food to his cartridge-belt. Then he took a firm hold on the vine, stepped fifteen steps backward, ran forward swiftly, and launched himself out over the chasm—and the vine parted high in the tree with a sharp snap. He loosed his grip on it and flung out his arms, turned completely twice in the air, and landed hard upon the ice-coated stones beside the rippling creek. A few seconds of spasmodic writhing, a faint moan, and he lay face-downward, motionless and silent.
Had he been unconscious for long, doubtless he would have frozen. Perhaps the penetrating chill helped to bring him to. He sat up dazedly, and dazedly noted that his hat, coat, rifle, cartridge-belt and rations were gone—and that there were dozens of fresh footprints, the same footprints that he had been trailing, in the snow about him.
In spite of his watchfulness, he had fallen into a trap very neatly!
Wolfe tried to get upon his feet then. A fiery streak of pain in his right leg wrung a hoarse cry of pain from him. He dragged himself to the shelter of a nearby overhanging ledge, and on the way came upon his bundle of food; it had been torn from his belt in the fall, and the friendly snow had hidden it from the robber's eyes. He sat up on the dry earth, and hurriedly took stock of his injuries. His forehead was bruised and swollen; six inches above his right ankle there was a fractured bone.