Toward mid-afternoon their opportunity approached; for here was the first water they had encountered--and the afternoon had become burning hot--and their own throats were cracking with that fierce thirst of high places where, even in the summer air, there is that thirst-provoking hint of ice and snow. For a moment, however, McKay feared that the man meant to go on, leaving the thin, icy rivulet untasted among its rocks and mosses; for he crossed the course of the little stream at right angles, leaping lithely from one rock to the next and travelling upstream on the farther bank. Then suddenly he stopped stock-still and looked back along his trail--nearly blind save for a few patches of flattened dead leaves which his moccasined tread had patted smooth in the shadier stretches where moisture lingered undried by the searching rays of the sun. For a few moments the unknown man searched his own back-trail, standing as motionless as the trunk of a lichened beech-tree. Then, very slowly, he knelt on the dead leaves, let go his pack, and, keeping his rifle in his right hand, stretched out his sinewy length above the pool on the edge of which he had halted. Twice, before drinking, he lifted his head to sweep the woods around him, his parched lips still dry. Then, with the abruptness--not of man but of some wild thing--he plunged his sweating face into the pool. And McKay covered him where he lay, and spoke in a voice which stiffened the drinking man to a statue prone on its face: "I've got you right! Don't lift your head! You'll understand me if you're American!" The man lay as though dead. McKay came nearer; Evelyn Erith was at his elbow. "Take his rifle, Eve." The girl walked over and coolly picked up the Winchester. "Now cover him!" continued McKay. "Find a good rest for your gun and keep him covered, Eve." She laid the rifle level across a low branch, drew the stock snug and laid her cheek to it and her steady finger on the trigger. "When I say'squeeze,' let him have it! Do you understand, Eve?" "Perfectly." Then, with one pistol poised for a drop shot, McKay stepped forward and jerked open the man's pack. And the man neither stirred nor spoke. For a few minutes McKay remained busy with the pack, turning out packets of concentrated rations of American manufacture, bits of personal apparel, a meagre company outfit, spare ammunition--the dozen-odd essentials to be always found in an American hunter's pack. Then McKay spoke again: "Eve, keep him covered. Shoot when I say shoot." "Right," she replied calmly. And to the recumbent and unstirring figure McKay gave a brief order: "Get up! Hands up!" The man rose as though made of steel springs and lifted both hands. Water still ran from his chin and lips and sweating cheeks. But McKay, resting the muzzle of his pistol against the man's abdomen, looked into a face that twitched with laughter.