In Secret

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?"