The forest pressed round them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree
stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that--blackness, and,
so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing
puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly
down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a
million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single
visible effect. _Other_ life pulsed about them--and was gone.
Defago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face had turned to a dirty
grey.
"I never said I heered--or smelt--nuthin'," he said slowly and
emphatically, in an oddly altered voice that conveyed somehow a touch of
defiance. "I was only--takin' a look round--so to speak. It's always a
mistake to be too previous with yer questions." Then he added suddenly
with obvious effort, in his more natural voice, "Have you got the
matches, Boss Simpson?" and proceeded to light the pipe he had half
filled just before he began to sing.
Without speaking another word they sat down again by the fire. Defago
changing his side so that he could face the direction the wind came
from. For even a tenderfoot could tell that. Defago changed his position
in order to hear and smell--all there was to be heard and smelt. And,
since he now faced the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
nothing in the forest that had sent so strange and sudden a warning to
his marvelously trained nerves.
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