up his hand to clear them his fingers touched wetness.
Then through a raw, red fog he saw a girl's face bending above him, and
blue eyes that seemed misty as an April sky through showers, though
perhaps it was only his uncertain vision that made them so.
"Please say something--if you can hear me!" said a low, clear voice as
his senses came back fully.
"All right," he said. "I'm all right, I guess. What's holding me? What's
on me?"
As his eyes shifted downward, a huge mound of brown fur rose against
them, hiding the landscape. It was the carcass of the bear which lay
across his legs, burying them from the waist down.
"I can't move it," the girl told him. "Oh, are you badly hurt? Can you
take a drink of water? I'll lift your head!" She spoke all in a breath,
tremulously, for she had considered him almost a dead man. She lifted
his head from where it lay in her lap, and held an old tin can full of
spring water to his lips.
Angus drank and felt better.
"I don't think I'm hurt much," he said. "Where is all the blood coming
from?" He put his hand to his head, touching gingerly a four-inch rip in
his scalp. There was a pain in his side which was worse when he moved,
but he said nothing about that and otherwise he could find nothing
wrong.
"You must get out from under that brute," the girl told him. "I've tried
to pull it off, and I've tried to pull you out, but I'm not strong
enough."
She stooped behind him, her hands beneath his shoulders, and he drew his
legs clear of the weight. When he got to his feet he was giddy for a
moment and leaned against her for support. With her assistance he got to
the spring, and washed off the coagulated blood, while she made a
bandage of their handkerchiefs and fitted it deftly. The icy water
cleared away the last of the fog, and save for a growing stiffness and
soreness he felt well enough. He looked at the girl who sat beside him
on the brown grass and wondered who she was and where on earth she had
come from.
The girl was tall, and clean and graceful as a young pine. She carried
her head well lifted, which Angus considered a good sign in horses and
human beings. A mass of fair hair was coiled low at the base of it and
drawn smoothly back from a broad forehead. Her eyes were a clear blue
which reminded Angus of certain mountain lakes, and yet a little weary
and troubled as if some shadow overcast them. Her smooth cheeks, too,
were pale, with but little of the color that
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