For a space he did not ask himself how he had come there. He was
looking at the river and the white strip of sand. Out there were
the rock and his dunnage pack. Also his rifle. Instinctively his
eyes turned to the balsam ambush farther down. That, too, was in a
blaze of sunlight now. But where he lay, or sat, or stood--he was
not sure what he was doing at that moment--it was shady and
deliciously cool. The green of the cedar and spruce and balsam was
close about him, inset with the silver and gold of the thickly-
leaved birch. He discovered that he was bolstered up partly
against the trunk of this birch and partly against a spruce
sapling. Between these two, where his head rested, was a pile of
soft moss freshly torn from the earth. And within reach of him was
his own kit pail filled with water.

He moved himself cautiously and raised a hand to his head. His
fingers came in contact with a bandage.

For a minute or two after that he sat without moving while his
amazed senses seized upon the significance of it all. In the first
place he was alive. But even this fact of living was less
remarkable than the other things that had happened. He remembered
the final moments of the unequal duel. His enemy had got him. And
that enemy was a woman! Moreover, after she had blown away a part
of his head and had him helpless in the sand, she had--in place of
finishing him there--dragged him to this cool nook and tied up his
wound. It was hard for him to believe, but the pail of water, the
moss behind his shoulders, the bandage, and certain visions that
were reforming themselves in his brain convinced him. A woman had
shot him. She had worked like the very devil to kill him. And
afterward she had saved him! He grinned. It was final proof that