“Hide that damned skull, I tell you!” Donaldson growled in an undertone.
They were almost together now. Kimball shoved the skull under his coat. As he did so, it nearly dropped from his sweaty hands and, in an effort to hold it, his finger slid into one of the eyeless sockets.
The point of the arrow, protruding through the bone, scratched his skin. For the moment he forgot it in the happiness of meeting the woman he loved.
“Dad wanted to make a trading trip out this way, and brought me along for company,” she was saying, as he stepped forward to grasp her outstretched hand. “Say that you’re surprised to see me.”
Before she could reach him, his legs doubled under him and he fell forward. The skull, dropping from beneath his coat, rolled and bounded half a dozen yards away, bringing up at the foot of a little hummock.
They leaped forward to catch him as he fell. But too late. With a mighty effort he raised himself to his knees.
“Hansen!” he screamed. “I killed him! He swore that he’d get even, and he has! The—damned—thing—was poisoned!”
He pitched forward onto his face.
At the foot of the hummock, the skull grinned sardonically.
