And away it flew with a rising and falling motion and down into the cup below, from where its cry came up again. It is difficult for me to tell you exactly what that bird meant to me then. My heart that was like a stone seemed cloven asunder on hearing that bird’s liquid cry. That there was something eerie in the sound of it, so like human speech, did in nowise affect me. To terror, to the weird, to the unknown I now was heedless. But at that bird’s cry my heart seemed just to break in sunder and I wept again, a weeping that relieved me much, so that when it was over I felt less miserable and heartsore. And I prayed a brief prayer as I had never prayed before, and was wondrously lightened after that; and turning to the horse, as men will do when alone, I spoke to it, caressing its nose and pulling its pricked ears. And then it occurred to me that if Donoghue had survived his wound, Apache Kid might still be alive. It had been for Apache, indeed, that I had entertained greater hope. "Shall we go down to the valley and see if my friend still lives?" I said, speaking to the horse; and just then the beast flung his head up from me and his eyeballs started. I looked in the direction of his fear—and there was Apache Kid and no other, climbing up from the direction of the bush whence the bird had flown away. I rushed down the rise upon him with outspread arms, and at our meeting embraced him in my relief and joy, and dragged him up to my fire, and had all my story of my doings of the night, the day, and the night told him, and of Donoghue and of Canlan—a rattling volley of talk, he listening quietly all the while, and smiling a little every time I broke in upon my tale with: "You do not blame me, Apache?" And then I asked him, all my own selfish heart being outpoured, how it was that I found him here alive. "As for your accusations," he said, "dismiss them from your mind. In all you have told me I think you acted with great presence of mind and forethought. As for my escape from death, and Larry’s, it must have been due entirely to the condition of that reptile’s nerves, as you describe him to me." He had been standing with his back to where Donoghue lay, and now in the light that took all that black hillside at a bound, I saw a sight that I shall never forget. For there, where should have been the dead man’s face, was nought but a skull, and perched upon the breast of the man and licking its chops, showing its front teeth, was one of the great mountain rats. Apache Kid followed the gaze of my eyes, looked at me again with that knitting of the brows, as in anger almost, or contempt. "Brace up!" he said sharply. "Brace up!" I cried. "Is it you who tell me to brace up, you who brought me into this hideous place, you who are to blame for all this! I was a lad when you asked me to accompany you that day at Baker City—it feels like years ago. Now, now," and I heard my voice breaking, "now I am like a man whose life is blighted."