It was all but dark, and the stars were coming out like the
lights on a sea-wall, hard and cold and gleaming. Just in the throat of
the pass a huge boulder had fallen and left a passage not two yards
wide. Beyond there was a sharp descent of a dozen feet to the gravelled
bottom which fell away in easier stages to the other watershed. Here
was a place made by nature for his plans. With immense pains he rolled
the biggest stones he could move to the passage, so that they were
poised above the slope. He tried the great boulder, too, with his
shoulders, and it seemed to quiver. In the last resort this mass of
rock might be sent crashing down the incline, and by the blessing of God
it should account for its man.
He brought his rifles forward to the stones, loaded them and felt the
cartridges easy in his pocket. They were for the thirty-yards range;
his pistol would be kept for closer quarters. He tried one after the
other, cuddling the stocks to his cheek. They were all dear-loved
weapons, used in deer-stalking at home and on many a wilder beat. He
knew the tricks of each, and he had little pet devices laughed at by his
friends. This one had clattered down fifty feet of rock in Ross-shire
as the scars on the stock bore witness, and another had his initials
burned in the wood, the relic of a winter's night in a Finnish camp. A
thousand old pleasant memories came back to him, the sights and scents
and sounds of forgotten places, the zest of toil and escapade, the joy
of food and warmth and rest.
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