THE BLINDER TRAIL
There was no escape that way. From the northern and eastern edges of
the forest sheer cliffs fell away into bluish depths where forests
looked like lawns and the low uplands of the Alsatian border
resembled hillocks made by tunnelling moles. And yet it was from
somewhere not far away that a man once had been, carried safely into
Alsace on a sudden snowslide. That man now lay among the trees on
the crag's edge looking down into the terrific chasm below. He and
the girl who crouched in the thicket of alpine roses behind him
seemed a part of the light-flecked forest--so inconspicuous were
they among dead leaves and trees in their ragged and weather-faded
clothing.
They were lean from physical effort and from limited nourishment.
The skin on their faces and hands, once sanguine and deeply burnt by
Alpine wind and sun and snow glare, now had become almost
colourless, so subtly the alchemy of the open operates on those
whose only bed is last year's leaves and whose only shelter is the
sky. Even the girl's yellow hair had lost its sunny brilliancy, so
that now it seemed merely a misty part of the lovely, subdued
harmony of the woods.
The man, still searching the depths below with straining, patient
gaze, said across his shoulder:
"It was here somewhere--near here, Yellow-hair, that I went over,
and found what I found.... But it's not difficult to guess what you
and I should find if we try to go over now."
"Death?" she motioned with serene lips.
He had turned to look at her, and he read her lips.
"And yet," he said, "we must manage to get down there, somehow or
other, alive."
She nodded. Both knew that, once down there, they could not expect
to come out alive. That was tacitly understood. All that could be
hoped was that they might reach those bluish depths alive, live long
enough to learn what they had come to learn, release the pigeon with
its message, then meet destiny in whatever guise it confronted them.
For Fate was not far off. Fate already watched them--herself unseen.
She had caught sight of them amid the dusk of the ancient trees--was
following them, stealthily, murderously, through the dim aisles of
this haunted forest of Les Errues.
These two were the hunted ones, and their hunters were in the
forest--nearer now than ever because the woodland was narrowing
toward the east.
Also, for the first time since they had entered the Forbidden
Forest, scarcely noticeable paths appeared flattening the carpet of
dead leaves--not trails made by game--but ways trodden at long
intervals by man--trails unused perhaps for months--then rendered
vaguely visible once more by the unseen, unheard feet of lightly
treading foes.
Here for the first time they had come upon the startling spoor of
man--of men and enemies--men who were hunting them to slay them, and
who now, in these eastern woods, no longer cared for the concealment
that might lull to a sense of false security the human quarry that
they pursued.
And yet the Hun-pack hunting them though the forbidden forest of Les
Errues had, in their new indifference to their quarry's alarm, and
in the ferocity of their growing boldness, offered the two fugitives
a new hope and a new reason for courage:--the grim courage of those
who are about to die, and who know it, and still carry on.
For this is what the Huns had done--not daring to use signals
visible to the Swiss patrols on nearer mountain flanks.
Nailed to a tree beside the scarcely visible trail of flattened
leaves--a trail more imagined and feared than actually visible--was
a sheet of white paper. And on it was written in the tongue of the
Hun,--and in that same barbarous script also--a message, the free
translation of which was as follows:
"WARNING!"
The three Americans recently sent into Les Errues by the Military
Intelligence Department of the United States Army now fighting in
France are still at large somewhere in this forest. Two of them are
operating together, the well-known escaped prisoner, Kay McKay, and
the woman secret-agent, Evelyn Erith. The third American, Alexander
Gray, has been wounded in the left hand by one of our riflemen, but
managed to escape, and is now believed to be attempting to find and
join the agents McKay and Erith.
This must be prevented. All German agents now operating in Les
Errues are formally instructed to track down and destroy without
traces these three spies whenever and wherever encountered according
to plan. It is expressly forbidden to attempt to take any one or all
of these spies alive. No prisoners! No traces! Germans, do your
duty! The Fatherland is in peril!
(Signed) "HOCHSTIM."
McKay wriggled cautiously backward from the chasm's granite edge and
crawled into the thicket of alpine roses where Evelyn Erith lay.
"No way out, Kay?" she asked under her breath.
"No way THAT way, Yellow-hair."
"Then?"
"I don't--know," he said slowly.
"You mean that we ought to turn back."
"Yes, we ought to. The forest is narrowing very dangerously for us.
It runs to a point five miles farther east, overlooking impassable
gulfs.... We should be in a cul-de-sac, Yellow-hair."
"I know."
He mused for a few moments, cool, clear-eyed, apparently quite
undisturbed by their present peril and intent only on the mission
which had brought them here, and how to execute it before their
unseen trackers executed them.
"To turn now, and attempt to go back along this precipice, is to
face every probability of meeting the men we have so far managed to
avoid," he said aloud in his pleasant voice, but as though
presenting the facts to himself alone.
"Of course we shall account for some of the Huns; but that does not
help us to win through.... Even an exchange of shots would no doubt
be disastrous to our plans. We MUST keep away from them....
Otherwise we could never hope to creep into the valley alive,...
Tell me, Yellow-hair, have you thought of anything new?"
The girl shook her head.
"No, Kay.... Except that chance of running across this new man of
whom we never had heard before the stupid Boche advertised his
presence in Les Errues."
"Alexander Gray," nodded McKay, taking from his pocket the paper
which the Huns had nailed to the great pine, and unfolding it again.
The girl rested her chin on his shoulder to reread it--an apparent
familiarity which he did not misunderstand. The dog that believes in
you does it--from perplexity sometimes, sometimes from loneliness.
Or, even when afraid--not fearing with the baser emotion of the
poltroon, but afraid with that brave fear which is a wisdom too, and
which feeds and brightens the steady flame of courage.
"Alexander Gray," repeated McKay. "I never supposed that we would
send another man in here--at least not until something had been
heard concerning our success or failure.... I had understood that
such a policy was not advisable. You know yourself, Yellow-hair,
that the fewer people we have here the better the chance. And it was
so decided before we left New York.... And--I wonder what occurred
to alter our policy."
"Perhaps the Boches have spread reports of our capture by Swiss
authorities," she said simply.
"That might be. Yes, and the Hun newspapers might even have printed
it. I can see their scare-heads: 'Gross Violation of Neutral Soil!
"'Switzerland invaded by the Yankees! Their treacherous and impudent
spies caught in the Alps!'--that sort of thing. Yes, it might be
that... and yet--"
"You think the Boche would not call attention to such an attempt
even to trap others of our agents for the mere pleasure of murdering
them?"
"That's what I think, Eve."
He called her "Eve" only when circumstances had become gravely
threatening. At other times it was usually "Yellow-hair!"
"Then you believe that this man, Gray, has been sent into Les Errues
to aid us to carry on independently the operation in which we have
so far failed?"
"I begin to think so." The girl's golden eyes became lost in
retrospection.
"And yet," she ventured after a few moments' thought, "he must have
come into Les Errues learning that we also had entered it; and
apparently he has made no effort to find us."
"We can't know that, Eve."
"He must be a woodsman," she argued, "and also he must suppose that
we are more or less familiar with American woodcraft, and fairly
well versed in its signs. Yet--he has left no sign that we could
understand where a Hun could not."
"Because we have discovered no sign we can not be certain that this
man Gray has made none for us to read," said McKay.
"No.... And yet he has left nothing that we have discovered--no
blaze; no moss or leaf, no stone or cairn--not a broken twig, not a
peeled stick, and no trail!"
"How do we know that the traces of a trail marked by flattened
leaves might not be his trail? Once, on that little sheet of sand
left by rain in the torrent's wake, you found the imprint of a
hobnailed shoe such as the Hun hunters wear," she reminded him. "And
there we first saw the flattened trail of last year's leaves--if
indeed it be truly a trail."
"But, Eve dear, never have we discovered in any dead and flattened
leaf the imprint of hobnails,--let alone the imprint of a human
foot."
"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.
Presently the man cautiously turned, scanned his back trail with
that slow-stirrng wariness of a woodsman who never moves abruptly or
without good reason; then he went back a little way, making no sound
on the forest floor.
AND MCKAY SAW THAT HE WORE KNEE MOCCASINS.
At the same time Evelyn Erith drew her little length noiselessly
along his, and he felt her mouth warm against his ear:
"Gray?" He nodded.
"I think so, too. His left hand is injured. He wears American
moccasins. But in God's name be careful, Kay. It may be a trap."
He nodded almost imperceptibly, keeping his eyes on the figure which
now stood within the shade of the trees in an attitude which might
suggest listening, or perhaps merely a posture of alert repose.
Evelyn's mouth still rested against his ear and her light breath
fell warmly on him. Then presently her lips moved again:
"Kay! He LOOKS safe."
McKay turned his head with infinite caution and she inclined hers to
his lips:
"I think it is Gray. But we've got to be certain, Eve." She nodded.
"He does look right," whispered McKay. "No Boche cradles a rifle in
the hollow of his left arm so naturally. It is HABIT, because he
does it in spite of a crippled left hand."
She nodded again.
"Also," whispered McKay, "everything else about him is
convincing--the pack, tump-line, moccasins, Winchester: and his
manner of moving.... I know deer-stalkers in Scotland and in the
Alps. I know the hunters of ibex and chamois, of roe-deer and red
stag, of auerhahn and eagle. This man is DIFFERENT. He moves and
behaves like our own woodsmen--like one of our own hunters."
She asked with dumb lips touching his ear: "Shall we chance it?"
"No. It must be a certainty."
"Yes. We must not offer him a chance."
"Not a ghost of a chance to do us harm," nodded McKay. "Listen
attentively, Eve; when he moves on, rise when I do; take the pigeon
and the little sack because I want both hands free. Do you
understand, dear?"
"Yes."
"Because I shall have to kill him if the faintest hint of suspicion
arises in my mind. It's got to be that way, Eve."
"Yes, I know."
"Not for our own safety, but for what our safety involves," he
added.
She inclined her head in acquiescence.
Very slowly and with infinite caution McKay drew from their holsters
beneath his armpits two automatic pistols.
"Help me, Eve," he whispered.
So she aided him where he lay beside her to slip the pack straps
over his shoulders. Then she drew toward her the little osier cage
in which their only remaining carrier-pigeon rested secured by
elastic bands, grasped the smaller sack with the other hand, and
waited.
They had waited an hour and more; and the figure of the stranger had
moved only once--shifted merely to adjust itself against a
supporting tree-trunk and slip the tump-line.
But now the man was stirring again, cautiously resuming the
forehead-straps.
Ready, now, to proceed in whichever direction he might believe lay
his destination, the strange man took the rifle into the hollow of
his left arm once more, remained absolutely motionless for five full
minutes, then, stirring stealthily, his moccasins making no sound,
he moved into the forest in a half-crouching attitude.
And after him went McKay with Evelyn Erith at his elbow, his
sinister pistols poised, his eyes fixed on the figure which passed
like a shadow through the dim forest light ahead.
Toward mid-afternoon their opportunity approached; for here was the
first water they had encountered--and the afternoon had become
burning hot--and their own throats were cracking with that fierce
thirst of high places where, even in the summer air, there is that
thirst-provoking hint of ice and snow.
For a moment, however, McKay feared that the man meant to go on,
leaving the thin, icy rivulet untasted among its rocks and mosses;
for he crossed the course of the little stream at right angles,
leaping lithely from one rock to the next and travelling upstream on
the farther bank.
Then suddenly he stopped stock-still and looked back along his
trail--nearly blind save for a few patches of flattened dead leaves
which his moccasined tread had patted smooth in the shadier
stretches where moisture lingered undried by the searching rays of
the sun.
For a few moments the unknown man searched his own back-trail,
standing as motionless as the trunk of a lichened beech-tree. Then,
very slowly, he knelt on the dead leaves, let go his pack, and,
keeping his rifle in his right hand, stretched out his sinewy length
above the pool on the edge of which he had halted.
Twice, before drinking, he lifted his head to sweep the woods around
him, his parched lips still dry. Then, with the abruptness--not of
man but of some wild thing--he plunged his sweating face into the
pool.
And McKay covered him where he lay, and spoke in a voice which
stiffened the drinking man to a statue prone on its face:
"I've got you right! Don't lift your head! You'll understand me if
you're American!"
The man lay as though dead. McKay came nearer; Evelyn Erith was at
his elbow.
"Take his rifle, Eve."
The girl walked over and coolly picked up the Winchester.
"Now cover him!" continued McKay. "Find a good rest for your gun and
keep him covered, Eve."
She laid the rifle level across a low branch, drew the stock snug
and laid her cheek to it and her steady finger on the trigger.
"When I say'squeeze,' let him have it! Do you understand, Eve?"
"Perfectly."
Then, with one pistol poised for a drop shot, McKay stepped forward
and jerked open the man's pack. And the man neither stirred nor
spoke. For a few minutes McKay remained busy with the pack, turning
out packets of concentrated rations of American manufacture, bits of
personal apparel, a meagre company outfit, spare ammunition--the
dozen-odd essentials to be always found in an American hunter's
pack.
Then McKay spoke again:
"Eve, keep him covered. Shoot when I say shoot."
"Right," she replied calmly. And to the recumbent and unstirring
figure McKay gave a brief order:
"Get up! Hands up!"
The man rose as though made of steel springs and lifted both hands.
Water still ran from his chin and lips and sweating cheeks. But
McKay, resting the muzzle of his pistol against the man's abdomen,
looked into a face that twitched with laughter.
"You think it's funny?" he snarled, but the blessed relief that
surged through him made his voice a trifle unsteady.
"Yes," said the man, "it hits me that way."
"Something else may hit you," growled McKay, ready to embrace him
with sheer joy.
"Not unless you're a Boche," retorted the man coolly. "But I guess
you're Kay McKay--"
"Don't get so damned familiar with names!"
"That's right, too. I'll just call you Seventy-Six, and this young
lady Seventy-Seven.... And I'm Two Hundred and Thirty."
"What else?"
"My name?"
"Certainly."
"It isn't expected--"
"It is in this case," snapped McKay, wondering at himself for such
ultra precaution.
"Oh, if you insist then, I'm Gray.... Alec Gray of the States United
Army Intelligence Serv--"
"All right.... Gad!... It's all right, Gray!"
He took the man's lifted right hand, jerked it down and crushed it
in a convulsive grasp: "It's good to see you.... We're in a
hole--deadlocked--no way out but back!" he laughed nervously. "Have
you any dope for us?"
Gray's blue eyes travelled smilingly toward Evelyn and rested on the
muzzle of the Winchester. And McKay laughed almost tremulously:
"All clear, Yellow-hair! This IS Gray--God be thanked!"
The girl, pale and quiet and smiling, lowered the rifle and came
forward offering her hand.
"It's pleasant to see YOU," she said quite steadily. "We were afraid
of a Boche trick."
"So I notice," said Gray, intensely amused.
Then the weather-tanned faces of all three sobered.
"This is no place to talk things over," said Gray shortly.
"Do you know a better place?"
"Yes. If you'll follow me."
He went to his pack, put it swiftly in order, hoisted it, resumed
the tump-line, and looked around at Evelyn for his rifle.
But she had already slung it across her own shoulders and she
pointed at his wounded hand and its blood-black bandage and motioned
him forward.
The sun hung on the shoulder of a snow-capped alp when at last these
three had had their brief understanding concerning one another's
identity, credentials, and future policy.
Gray's lair, in a bushy hollow between two immense jutting cakes of
granite, lay on the very brink of the chasm. And there they sat,
cross-legged in the warmth of the declining sun in gravest
conference concerning the future.
"Recklow insisted that I come," repeated Gray. "I was in the 208th
Pioneers--in a sawmilll near La Roche Rouge--Vosges--when I got my
orders."
"And Recklow thinks we're caught and killed?"
"So does everybody in the Intelligence. The Mulhausen paper had it
that the Swiss caught you violating the frontier, which meant to
Recklow that the Boche had done you in."
"I see," nodded McKay.
"So he picked me."
"And you say you guided in Maine?"
"Yes, when I was younger. After I was on my own I kept store at
South Carry, Maine, and ran the guides there."
"I noticed all the ear-marks," nodded McKay.
Gray smiled: "I guess they're there all right if a man knows 'em
when he sees 'em."
"Were you badly shot up?"
"Not so bad. They shoot a pea-rifle, single shot all over silver and
swallowtail stock--"
"I know," smiled McKay.
"Well, you know them. It drills nasty with a soft bullet, cleaner
with a chilled one. My left hand's a wreck but I sha'n't lose it."
"I had better dress it before night," said Evelyn.
"I dressed it at noon. I won't disturb it again to-day," said Gray,
thanking her with his eloquent blue eyes.
McKay said: "So you found the place where I once slid off?"
"It's plain enough, windfall and general wreckage mark it."
"You say it's a dozen miles west of here?"
"About."
"That's odd," said McKay thoughtfully. "I had believed I recognised
this ravine. But these deep gulfs all look more or less alike. And I
saw it only once and then under hair-raising circumstances."
Gray smiled, but Evelyn did not. McKay said:
"So that's where they winged you, was it?"
"Yes. I was about to negotiate the slide--you remember the V-shaped
slate cleft?"
"Yes."
"Well, I was just starting into that when the rifle cracked and I
jumped for a tree with a broken wing and a bad scare."
"You saw the man?"
"I did later. He came over to look for dead game, and I ached to let
him go; but it was too risky with Les Errues swarming alive with
Boches, and me with the stomach-sickness of a shot-up man. Figure it
out, McKay, for yourself."
"Of course, you did the wise thing and the right one."
"I think so. I travelled until I fainted." He turned and glanced
around. "Strangely enough I saw black right here!--fell into this
hole by accident, and have made it my home since then."
"It was a Godsend," said the girl.
"It was, Miss Erith," said Gray, resting his eloquent eyes on her.
"And you say," continued McKay, "that the Boche are sitting up day
and night over that slide?"
"Day and night. The swine seem to know it's the only way out. I go
every day, every night. Always the way is blocked; always I discover
one or more of their riflemen there in ambush while the rest of the
pack are ranging Les Errues."
"And yet," said McKay, "we've got to go that way, sooner or later."
There was a silence: then Gray nodded.
"Yes," he said, "but it is a question of waiting."
"There is a moon to-night," observed Evelyn Erith.
McKay lifted his head and looked at her gravely: Gray's blue eyes
flashed his admiration of a young girl who quietly proposed to face
an unknown precipice at night by moonlight under the rifles of
ambushed men.
"After all," said McKay slowly, "is there ANY other way?"
In the silence which ensued Evelyn Erith, who had been lying between
them on her stomach, her chin propped up on both hands, suddenly
raised herself on one arm to a sitting posture.
Instantly Gray shrank back, white as a sheet, lifting his mutilated
hand in its stiffened and bloody rags; and the girl gasped out her
agonised apology:
"Oh--CAN you forgive me! It was unspeakable of me!"
"It--it's all right," said Gray, the colour coming back to his face;
but the girl in her excitement of self-reproach and contrition
begged to be allowed to dress the mutilated hand which her own
careless movement had almost crushed.
"Oh, Kay-I set my hand on his wounded fingers and rested my full
weight! Oughtn't he to let us dress it again at once?"
But Gray's pluck was adamant, and he forced a laugh, dismissing the
matter with another glance at Evelyn out of clear blue eyes that
said a little more than that no harm had been done--said, in one
frank and deep-flashing look, more than the girl perhaps cared to
understand.
The sun slipped behind the rocky flank of a great alp; a burst of
rosy glory spread fan-wise to the zenith.
Against it, tall and straight and powerful, Gray rose and walking
slowly to the cliff's edge, looked down into the valley mist now
rolling like a vast sea of cloud below them.
And, as he stood there, Evelyn's hand grasped McKay's arm:
"If he touches his rifle, shoot! Quick, Kay!"
McKay's right hand fell into his side-pocket--where one of his
automatics lay. He levelled it as he grasped it, hidden within the
side-pocket of his coat.
"HIS HAND IS NOT WOUNDED," breathed the girl. "If he touches his
rifle he is a Hun!"
McKay's head nodded almost imperceptibly. Gray's back was still
turned, but one hand was extended, carelessly reaching for the rifle
that stood leaning against the cake of granite.
"Don't touch it!" said McKay in a low but distinct voice: and the
words galvanised the extended arm and it shot out, grasping the
rifle, as the man himself dropped out of sight behind the rock.
A terrible stillness fell upon the place; there was not a sound, not
a movement.
Suddenly the girl pointed at a shadow that moved between the
rocks--and the crash of McKay's pistol deafened them.
Then, against the dazzling glory of the west a dark shape staggered
up, clutching a wavering rifle, reeling there against the rosy glare
an instant; and the girl turned her sick eyes aside as McKay's
pistol spoke again.
Like a shadow cast by hell the black form swayed, quivered, sank
away outward into the blinding light that shone across the world.
Presently a tinkling sound came up from the fog-shrouded depths--the
falling rifle striking ledge after ledge until the receding sound
grew fainter and more distant, and finally was heard no more.
But that was the only sound they heard; for the man himself lay
still on the chasm's brink, propped from the depths by a tuft of
alpine roses in full bloom, his blue eyes wide open, a blue hole
just between them, and his bandaged hand freed from its camouflage,
lying palm upward and quite uninjured on the grass!