Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/523

 marched on. It died away upon the snow-laden air, and he retraced his steps to the shed with an armful of dry leaves and twigs, with which, by the sacrifice of one of his few remaining cartridges, he speedily made a blazing fire. Vickers lay quiet, watching him through half-shut lids.

"Say, Roland," he said, presently, "what sort of game is this?"

"I'm going to see if I can pull you through," said Roland, with an affectation of cheerfulness.

"You can't," said Vickers; "I heard what Ned said just now. I'm booked for the journey through, I know it. Don't you be a fool. Follow the boys, and leave me here. I'm beyond any man's help. You won't? Well, you always were a nutmeg-headed sort of creature. I never knew you have more than one idea at a time, and that one wasn't worth much, as a general thing. But this is madness, sheer, stark madness! Look at the snow! Another hour or two, and we shall be snowed up. It's just chucking a good life after a bad one. I know you ain't doing it for me. It's for Rose. Well, if it was any use, I wouldn't say no. But it isn't. I shall be a dead man in twenty-four hours at most. Nothing can save me."

"I'm just going to the wood," said Roland, taking up his gun, and speaking in a quite casual tone. "If there's any game about, this weather will drive it under cover. I'll be back presently, anyhow."

He flung some of the broken timber of the shed upon the fire, and went out.

He had not taken six paces through the blinding flakes, when Vickers' voice rang out with startling loudness and suddenness, "Good-bye, Roland," and a loud report seemed to shake the crazy old hut to its foundation.

Roland ran back. Vickers was lying dead, with the firelight playing brightly on the barrel of a revolver clenched in his left hand.

Ten minutes later he was lying in a deep snow drift, and Roland was tramping through the snow on the track of his detachment.