Something in his voice made the girl shiver.  It was as if the vanishing point of mercy had been reached, and savages were at their backs.  She heard the wounded man moan again as they stole through the deeper shadows of the corrals toward the nigger-head bottom.  And then she noticed that the mist was no longer in her face.  The sky was clearing.  She could see Alan more clearly, and when they came to the narrow trail over which they had fled once before that night it reached out ahead of them like a thin, dark ribbon.  Scarcely had they reached this point when a rifle shot sounded not far behind.  It was followed by a second and a third, and after that came a shout.  It was not a loud shout.  There was something strained and ghastly about it, and yet it came distinctly to them.

“The wounded man,” said Alan, in a voice of dismay.  “He is calling the others.  I should have killed him!”

He traveled at a half-trot, and the girl ran lightly at his side.  All her courage and endurance had returned.  She breathed easily and quickened her steps, so that she was setting the pace for Alan.  They passed along the crest of the ridge under which lay the willows and the pool, and at the end of this they paused to rest and listen.  Trained to the varied night whisperings of the tundras Alan’s ears caught faint sounds which his companion did not hear.  The wounded man had succeeded in giving his message, and pursuers were scattering over the plain behind them.

“Can you run a little farther?” he asked.

“Where?”

He pointed, and she darted ahead of him, her dark hair streaming in a cloud that began to catch a faint luster of increasing light.  Alan ran a little behind her.  He was afraid of the light.  Only gloom had saved them this night, and if the darkness of mist and fog and cloud gave way to clear twilight and the sun-glow of approaching day before they reached the kloof he would have to fight in the open.  With Stampede at his side he would have welcomed such an opportunity of matching rifles with their enemies, for there were many vantage points in the open tundra from which they might have defied assault.  But the nearness of the girl frightened him.  She, after all, was the hunted thing.  He was only an incident.  From him could be exacted nothing more than the price of death; he would be made to pay that, as Sokwenna had paid.  For her remained the unspeakable horror of Graham’s lust and passion.  But if they could reach the kloof, and the hiding-place in the face of the cliff, they could laugh at Graham’s pack of beasts while they waited for the swift vengeance that would come with Stampede and the herdsmen.

He watched the sky.  It was clearing steadily.  Even the mists in the hollows were beginning to melt away, and in place of their dissolution came faintly rose-tinted lights.  It was the hour of dawn; the sun sent a golden glow over the disintegrating curtain of gloom that still lay between it and the tundras, and objects a hundred paces away no longer held shadow or illusionment.