The Aftermath

Supper was over. With kindly hands night had laid her deep purple mantle
over the new-made mound back of the cabin, hiding it from the grieving
gaze of the three who sat before the door in painful silence beneath the
star-pierced dome of heaven. In the poignancy of her own sorrow, and her
overwhelming sympathy for Donald, when she had come to a realization of
the meaning of the bundle which he brought out of the woods and laid so
tenderly down on the grass before the cabin's stoop, every vestige of
Smiles' anger had instantly vanished.

"Oh, the pity, the uselessness of it," cried Donald's heart, as his
thoughts again and again turned back to the tragic series of events
which had made the afternoon a thing of horror. The bitter
culmination,--the death of Mike, poor, courageous, self-sacrificing
little Mike--was the most needless of all, for, although he had not
mentioned the fact to Big Jerry, Donald knew that in all human
probability Judd's rifle was empty of cartridges. And, although Jerry
himself uttered no word of complaint, the physician knew, only too well,
that the gripping excitement, against which he had warned the old man
only a few hours earlier, had brought its inevitable aftermath. The
giant's breath came with labored, audible gasps, and his very appearance
told the story of the increased pain within his breast. For these
disasters--as well as the mortal enmity of the young mountaineer and the
heart-ache of the innocent girl--he, and he alone, was to blame. Donald
groaned under his breath.