'n sixty years and maybe a
thousand years before that! Oh, _you_ know! Look how it went with those
old-timers. The last one of the Seven got it. Look how it happens with
old man Loony Honeycutt, clucking and chuckling and stepping up and down
in his shadow all the time; gone nuts from just _smelling_ of it! Look
what happens to me, all stove up here." He paused and then spat out
venomously: "Oh, it'll get Swen Brodie and it'll get you, too, Mark
King. You'll see."

"Another drink before I go?" demanded King.

Parker put his fingers to his scalp and examined them for traces of
blood.

"I got a terrible headache," he said. "Aching and singing and sort of
dizzy."

King went for more water, this time filling his one cook-pot. When he
returned Parker was trying to stand. He had drawn himself up, holding to
the tree with both shaking hands, putting his weight gingerly on one
leg. Suddenly his weak hands gave way, he swayed and fell. King,
standing over him, thought at first he was dead, so white and still was
he. But Parker had only fainted.

The sun sank lower; the shadows down about the lake shores thickened
and began to run, more and more swiftly, up the surrounding slopes. The
tall peaks caught the last of the fading light, and like so many
watch-towers blazed across the wilderness. Upward, about their bases,
surged the flooding shadows like a dark tide rising swiftly; the light
on the tallest spire winked and went out; and all of a sudden the rush
of air through the pine tops strengthened and a growing murmur like the
voice of a distant surf made it seem that one could hear the flood of
the night sweeping through gorge and canon and inundating the world.
And, despite all that Mark King could do, the sunset glow had gone and
the first big star was shining before Andy Parker stirred.

His first call was for water. Then he complained of a terrible pain in
his vitals, a pain that stabbed him through from chest to abdomen.
Thereafter he was never coherent again, though for the most part he
babbled like a noisy brook. He spoke of Swen Brodie and old Loony
Honeycutt and Gus Ingle all in one breath, and King knew that Gus Ingle
was sixty years dead; he dwelt hectically on the "luck of the unlucky
Seven." And when, far on in the night, he at length grew silent and King
went to peer into his face by the light of his camp-fire, Andy Parker
was dead.

* * * * *

Mark King made the grave in t