She answered the call, but it was not repeated, and she quickly chose a way to reach the shelf. She saw that the trail from the ford up the bluff was lost in shifting granite; and, for a long distance, passage up the fir was obstructed by a network of boughs; but the fallen cedar, slowly dying, had lost many of its branches; those remaining were still pliable. She left her horse, and, pushing through a litter of snapped saplings and broken limbs, reached this tree. Its top was splintered and set like a brace against the trunk of a standing hemlock. Ragged boughs at first retarded her; she was forced to work on her knees, through their meshes. Sometimes she swung herself down to trudge ankle-deep, knee-deep through the soft fill around a barrier. She crawled over suspended boulders, under tilting slabs that had found lodgment on the great bole. In one of these places, where a mighty fragment of rock had struck, the bark was stripped loose in lengths. Later she remembered this. At last she gained the end of the tree, and sinking in an accumulation of earth, found the support of a root and drew herself up, slowly, bringing her eyes to the top of the barricade. The color went from her face; her shoulders shook; her limbs; but she pulled herself higher and leaned on the rim. This man was not Stratton. His body was buried; only his head and one shoulder were uncovered; the face was turned from her. But this man was not Stratton. She drew herself over the rampart and ran, stumbling in loose mold, to reach him. But when she saw his face a hand of iron seemed to tighten on her throat; her limbs gave under her. "Paul," she said. "Oh, Paul, Paul!" The next moment she started up, her weakness gone. Her cheek had touched his; it was warm. A light breath had come from his lips. And he had called, he had been able to call, not long ago. She began to throw the loose earth from his chest, his breast; digging, working like a beaver with her two hands. Presently she laid her palm on his heart and caught a faint action. She felt in the pocket of his shirt for the emergency flask a timber-cruiser keeps about him in the wilderness, but it was not there. Still, the pocket was shallow, it might have dropped near, and she resumed her task, prodding at intervals for the flask. She freed his arm; his side. She had found no rocks around the upper part of his body; nothing but soft soil. To be quite sure she reached, feeling, under his back. And this brought from him a groan. A quiver swept his face, but when she had withdrawn her arm, he rested white and still as before.