Read Online Reply Paid by H. F. Heard - Free Book Online

fiber fall from his lips.”
    That desert holly trail took us much farther than I had feared, but at last it, too, gave out.
    We had reached a sort of low saddle. Behind us we could look back, for the ground I now noticed had been gently rising all the while, along the whole chain of dried lakes. In the next wide and shallow depression, I suppose, once had gathered the streams, torrents, and headwaters whose overflows filled the areas below. The opening in our forward view gave us a welcome pause, for Mr. Mycroft again swept the area with his glasses. He had climbed another boulder and, at last convinced that there was nothing ahead, was taking a last sweep of the landscape well away from our direction, far out to the right. I was watching him with some impatience, for I felt that he was just refusing to give up, trying to find excuses for not going back and so looking in directions where there could be nothing, just to waste time.
    I was, indeed, about to call to him that obviously nothing could be expected in that direction, the rocks sloped right up and ended in a mountain wall, when as I rose to catch his attention I saw that his sweeping gaze had become fixed. He was, through his glasses, attentively studying something. A breeze quite strong, but anything but refreshing—rather like a draught from an oven—was now blowing up from behind us. Through it he called down to me, “From here I can see, I’m sure, something fluttering.” He took his bearings carefully. Then he scrambled down and set off in the direction he had sighted.
    Of course it was farther than I had imagined. I’d thought, I’d hoped he’d seen some clue comparatively close. In the end, though, after dips in which we lost sight of the place where he said it lay and rises in which the rocks to which he pointed looked no nearer, we saw clearly across a small canyon. It couldn’t be, now I caught a clear look of it, withered leaves on an old branch—but it was that color. It dipped and wavered in the wind, which now was unpleasantly strong. Mr. Mycroft stopped and looked. He didn’t raise his binoculars.
    â€œCareless,” was his only description of what he made out. He then looked carefully onto the ground from where we stood toward the waving branch. “No clues here” he remarked. “Walk carefully and notice anything on the ground that might be a trace.”
    As I was trying to do this and following him, I did not notice that we had reached the foot of the canyon and had come some distance up the other side. Mr. Mycroft had stopped, we had evidently reached our objective. Even now, looking down on it, I couldn’t for a moment see exactly what it was. It wasn’t a branch. It stuck out from under some stones. A second look and I glanced up to see Mr. Mycroft watching me.
    â€œI said ‘careless,’ didn’t I?”
    It didn’t seem to me the time to draw attention to one’s “dicta.”
    â€œThat,” I said, drawing back as I said it, “That’s—that has been a human hand and arm!”
    He was already kneeling down. I gingerly approached again.
    â€œIt was said of a desolate land, ‘In that place there is not water to drown a man, a tree to hang him on, or earth to bury him in,’” he remarked over his shoulder. “Well, it’s even harder here to dispose of your dead. And here, you see, death is an embalmer.”
    He took the poor withered limb. After the first shock of recognizing what it was, I saw that there was nothing really repugnant in it. It was beautiful almost, this bone, wound about with shrunken sinew and perfectly desiccated flesh. To and fro it waved in the wind, a gesture attractive in a growing tree. It was as flexible as a spring. Mr. Mycroft had already removed the greater part of what, it was now clear, was a hastily made low cairn. I helped, and as we uncovered what it had almost hidden, I felt strongly