initial commit of ebook 35378HEADmain

11 files changed, 25983 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/35378-8.txt b/35378-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..123e8da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8578 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Strength of the Pines, by Edison
+Marshall, Illustrated by W. Herbert Dunton
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Strength of the Pines
+
+
+Author: Edison Marshall
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2011  [eBook #35378]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Michael, Mary Meehan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 35378-h.htm or 35378-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35378/35378-h/35378-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35378/35378-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES
+
+by
+
+EDISON MARSHALL
+
+With Frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Boston
+Little, Brown, and Company
+1921
+
+Copyright, 1921,
+By Little, Brown, and Company.
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Published February, 1921
+
+The Colonial Press
+C. H. Simonds Co., Boston, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    LILLE BARTOO MARSHALL
+    DEAR COMRADE AND GUIDE
+    WHO GAVE ME LIFE
+
+
+[Illustration: He marked the little space of gray squarely between the
+two reddening eyes.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK ONE THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
+
+BOOK TWO THE BLOOD ATONEMENT
+
+BOOK THREE THE COMING OF THE STRENGTH
+
+
+
+
+THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Bruce was wakened by the sharp ring of his telephone bell. He heard its
+first note; and its jingle seemed to continue endlessly. There was no
+period of drowsiness between sleep and wakefulness; instantly he was
+fully aroused, in complete control of all his faculties. And this is not
+especially common to men bred in the security of civilization. Rather it
+is a trait of the wild creatures; a little matter that is quite
+necessary if they care at all about living. A deer, for instance, that
+cannot leap out of a mid-afternoon nap, soar a fair ten feet in the air,
+and come down with legs in the right position for running comes to a sad
+end, rather soon, in a puma's claws. Frontiersmen learn the trait too;
+but as Bruce was a dweller of cities it seemed somewhat strange in him.
+The trim, hard muscles were all cocked and primed for anything they
+should be told to do.
+
+Then he grunted rebelliously and glanced at his watch beneath the
+pillow. He had gone to bed early; it was just before midnight now. "I
+wish they'd leave me alone at night, anyway," he muttered, as he slipped
+on his dressing gown.
+
+He had no doubts whatever concerning the nature of this call. There had
+been one hundred like it during the previous month. His foster father
+had recently died, his estate was being settled up, and Bruce had been
+having a somewhat strenuous time with his creditors. He understood the
+man's real financial situation at last; at his death the whole business
+structure collapsed like the eggshell it was. Bruce had supposed that
+most of the debts had been paid by now; he wondered, as he fumbled into
+his bedroom slippers, whether the thousand or so dollars that were left
+would cover the claim of the man who was now calling him to the
+telephone. The fact that he was, at last, the penniless "beggar" that
+Duncan had called him at their first meeting didn't matter one way or
+another. For some years he had not hoped for help from his foster
+parent. The collapse of the latter's business had put Bruce out of work,
+but that was just a detail too. All he wanted now was to get things
+straightened up and go away--where, he did not know or care.
+
+"This is Mr. Duncan," he said coldly into the transmitter.
+
+When he heard a voice come scratching over the wires, he felt sure that
+he had guessed right. Quite often his foster father's creditors talked
+in that same excited, hurried way. It was rather necessary to be hurried
+and excited if a claim were to be met before the dwindling financial
+resources were exhausted. But the words themselves, however--as soon as
+they gave their interpretation in his brain--threw a different light on
+the matter.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Duncan," the voice answered. "Pardon me if I got you
+up. I want to talk to your son, Bruce."
+
+Bruce emitted a little gasp of amazement. Whoever talked at the end of
+the line obviously didn't know that the elder Duncan was dead. Bruce had
+a moment of grim humor in which he mused that this voice would have done
+rather well if it could arouse his foster father to answer it. "The
+elder Mr. Duncan died last month," he answered simply. There was not the
+slightest trace of emotion in his tone. No wayfarer on the street could
+have been, as far as facts went, more of a stranger to him; there was no
+sense of loss at his death and no cause for pretense now. "This is Bruce
+speaking."
+
+He heard the other gasp. "Old man, I'm sorry," his contrite voice came.
+"I didn't know of your loss. This is Barney--Barney Wegan--and I just
+got in from the West. Haven't had a bit of news for months. Accept my
+earnest sympathies--"
+
+"Barney! Of course." The delight grew on Bruce's face; for Barney Wegan,
+a man whom he had met and learned to know on the gym floor of his club,
+was quite near to being a real friend. "And what's up, Barney?"
+
+The man's voice changed at once--went back to its same urgent, but
+rather embarrassed tone. "You won't believe me if I tell you, so I won't
+try to tell you over the 'phone. But I must come up--right away. May I?"
+
+"Of course--"
+
+"I'll jump in my car and be there in a minute."
+
+Bruce hung up, slowly descended to his library, and flashed on the
+lights.
+
+For the first time he was revealed plainly. His was a familiar type; but
+at the same time the best type too. He had the face and the body of an
+athlete, a man who keeps himself fit; and there was nothing mawkish or
+effeminate about him. His dark hair was clipped close about his temples,
+and even two hours in bed had not disarranged its careful part. It is
+true that men did look twice at Bruce's eyes, set in a brown, clean-cut
+face, never knowing exactly why they did so. They had startling
+potentialities. They were quite clear now, wide-awake and cool, yet they
+had a strange depth of expression and shadow that might mean, somewhere
+beneath the bland and cool exterior, a capacity for great emotions and
+passions.
+
+He had only a few minutes to wait; then Barney Wegan tapped at his door.
+This man was bronzed by the sun, never more fit, never straighter and
+taller and more lithe. He had just come from the far places. The
+embarrassment that Bruce had detected in his voice was in his face and
+manner too.
+
+"You'll think I'm crazy, for routing you out at this time of night,
+Bruce," he began. "And I'm going to get this matter off my chest as
+soon as possible and let you go to bed. It's all batty, anyway. But I
+was cautioned by all the devils of the deep to see you--the moment I
+came here."
+
+"Cigarettes on the smoking-stand," Bruce said steadily. "And tell away."
+
+"But tell me something first. Was Duncan your real father? If he was,
+I'll know I'm up a wrong tree. I don't mean to be personal--"
+
+"He wasn't. I thought you knew it. My real father is something like
+you--something of a mystery."
+
+"I won't be a mystery long. He's not, eh--that's what the old hag said.
+Excuse me, old man, for saying 'hag.' But she was one, if there is any
+such. Lord knows who she is, or whether or not she's a relation of
+yours. But I'll begin at the beginning. You know I was way back on the
+Oregon frontier--back in the Cascades?"
+
+"I didn't know," Bruce replied. "I knew you were somewhere in the wilds.
+You always are. Go on."
+
+"I was back there fishing for steelhead in a river they call the Rogue.
+My boy, a steelhead is--but you don't want to hear that. You want to get
+the story. But a steelhead, you ought to know, is a trout--a fish--and
+the noblest fish that ever was! Oh, Heavens above! how they can strike!
+But while way up on the upper waters I heard of a place called Trail's
+End--a place where wise men do not go."
+
+"And of course you went."
+
+"Of course. The name sounds silly now, but it won't if you ever go
+there. There are only a few families, Bruce, miles and miles apart, in
+the whole region. And it's enormous--no one knows how big. Just ridge on
+ridge. And I went back to kill a bear."
+
+"But stop!" Bruce commanded. He lighted a cigarette. "I thought you were
+against killing bears--any except the big boys up North."
+
+"That's just it. I am against killing the little black fellows--they are
+the only folk with any brains in the woods. But this, Bruce, was a real
+bear,--a left-over from fifty years ago. There used to be grizzlies
+through that country, you see, but everybody supposed that the last of
+them had been shot. But evidently there was one family that still
+remained--in the farthest recesses of Trail's End--and all at once the
+biggest, meanest grizzly ever remembered showed up on the cattle ranges
+of the plateau. With some others, I went to get him. 'The Killer', they
+call him--and he certainly is death on live stock. I didn't get the
+bear, but one day my guide stopped at a broken-down old cabin on the
+hillside for a drink of water. I was four miles away in camp. The guide
+came back and asked me if I was from this very city.
+
+"I told him yes, and asked him why he wanted to know. He said that this
+old woman sent word, secretly, to every stranger that ever came to fish
+or hunt in the region of Trail's End, wanting to know if they came from
+here. I was the first one that answered 'yes.' And the guide said that
+she wanted me to come to her cabin and see her.
+
+"I went--and I won't describe to you how she looked. I'll let you see
+for yourself, if you care to follow out her instructions. And now the
+strange part comes in. The old witch raised her arm, pointed her cane at
+me, and asked me if I knew Newton Duncan.
+
+"I told her there might be several Newton Duncans in a city this size.
+You should have seen the pain grow on her face. 'After so long, after so
+long!' she cried, in the queerest, sobbing way. She seemed to have
+waited years to find some one from here, and when I came I didn't know
+what she wanted. Then she took heart and began again.
+
+"'This Newton Duncan had a son--a foster-son--named Bruce,' she told me.
+And then I said I knew you.
+
+"You can't imagine the change that came over her. I thought she'd die of
+heart failure. The whole thing, Bruce--if you must know--gave me the
+creeps. 'Tell him to come here,' she begged me. 'Don't lose a moment. As
+soon as you get home, tell him to come here.'
+
+"Of course I asked other questions, but I couldn't get much out of her.
+One of 'em was why she hadn't written to Duncan. The answer was simple
+enough--that she didn't know how to write. Those in the mountains that
+could write wouldn't, or couldn't--she was a trifle vague on that
+point--dispatch a letter. Something is up."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Before the gray of dawn came over the land Bruce Duncan had started
+westward. He had no self-amazement at the lightning decision. He was
+only strangely and deeply exultant.
+
+The reasons why went too deep within him to be easily seen. In the first
+place, it was adventure--and Bruce's life had not been very adventurous
+heretofore. It was true that he had known triumphs on the athletic
+fields, and his first days at a great University had been novel and
+entertaining. But now he was going to the West, to a land he had dreamed
+about, the land of wide spaces and great opportunities. It was not his
+first western journey. Often he had gone there as a child--had engaged
+in furious battles with outlaws and Indians; but those had been
+adventures of imagination only. This was reality at last. The clicking
+rails beneath the speeding train left no chance for doubt.
+
+Then there was a sense of immeasurable relief at his sudden and
+unexpected freedom from the financial problems his father had left. He
+would have no more consultations with impatient creditors, no more would
+he strive to gather together the ruins of the business, and attempt to
+salvage the small remaining fragments of his father's fortune. He was
+free of it all, at last. He had never known a darker hour--and none of
+them that this quiet, lonely-spirited man had known had been very
+bright--than the one he had spent just before going to bed earlier that
+evening. He had no plans, he didn't know which way to turn. All at once,
+through the message that Barney had brought him, he had seen a clear
+trail ahead. It was something to do, something at last that mattered.
+
+Finally there remained the eminent fact that this was an answer to his
+dream. He was going toward Linda, at last. The girl had been the one
+living creature in his memory that he had cared for and who cared for
+him--the one person whose interest in him was real. Men are a gregarious
+species. The trails are bewildering and steep to one who travels them
+alone. Linda, the little "spitfire" of his boyhood, had suddenly become
+the one reality in his world, and as he thought of her, his memory
+reviewed the few impressions he had retained of his childhood.
+
+First was the Square House--the orphanage--where the Woman had turned
+him over to the nurse in charge. Sometimes, when tobacco smoke was heavy
+upon him, Bruce could catch very dim and fleeting glimpses of the
+Woman's face. He would bend his mind to it, he would probe and probe,
+with little, reaching filaments of thought, into the dead years--and
+then, all at once, the filaments would rush together, catch hold of a
+fragment of her picture, and like a chain-gang of ants carrying a straw,
+come lugging it up for him to see. It was only a fleeting glimpse, only
+the faintest blur in half-tone, and then quite gone. Yet he never gave
+up trying. He never quit longing for just one second of vivid
+remembrance. It was one of the few and really great desires that Bruce
+had in life.
+
+The few times that her memory-picture did come to him, it brought a
+number of things with it. One of them was a great and overwhelming
+realization of some terrible tragedy and terror the nature of which he
+could not even guess. There had been terrible and tragic events--where
+and how he could not guess--lost in those forgotten days of his
+babyhood.
+
+"She's been through fire," the nurse told the doctor when he came in and
+the door had closed behind the Woman. Bruce _did_ remember these words,
+because many years elapsed before he completely puzzled them out. The
+nurse hadn't meant such fires as swept through the far-spread evergreen
+forests of the Northwest. It was some other, dread fire that seared the
+spirit and burned the bloom out of the face and all the gentle lights
+out of the eyes. It did, however, leave certain lights, but they were
+such that their remembrance brought no pleasure to Bruce. They were just
+a wild glare, a fixed, strange brightness as of great fear or insanity.
+
+The Woman had kissed him and gone quickly; and he had been too young to
+remember if she had carried any sort of bundle close to her breast. Yet,
+the man considered, there must have been such a bundle--otherwise he
+couldn't possibly account for Linda. And there were no doubts about
+her, at all. Her picture was always on the first page of the photograph
+album of his memory; he had only to turn over one little sheet of years
+to find her.
+
+Of course he had no memories of her that first day, nor for the first
+years. But all later memories of the Square House always included her.
+She must have been nearly four years younger than himself; thus when he
+was taken to the house she was only an infant. But thereafter, the
+nurses put them together often; and when Linda was able to talk, she
+called him something that sounded like Bwovaboo. She called him that so
+often that for a long time he couldn't be sure that wasn't his real
+name. Now, in manhood, he interpreted.
+
+"Brother Bruce, of course. Linda was of course a sister."
+
+Linda had been homely; even a small boy could notice that. Besides,
+Linda was nearly six when Bruce had left for good; and he was then at an
+age in which impressions begin to be lasting. Her hair was quite blond
+then, and her features rather irregular. But there had been a light in
+her eyes! By his word, there had been!
+
+She had been angry at him times in plenty--over some childish game--and
+he remembered how that light had grown and brightened. She had flung at
+him too, like a lynx springing from a tree. Bruce paused in his
+reflections to wonder at himself over the simile--for lynx were no
+especial acquaintances of his. He knew them only through books, as he
+knew many other things that stirred his imagination. But he laughed at
+the memory of her sudden, explosive ferocity,--the way her hands had
+smacked against his cheeks, and her sharp little nails had scratched
+him. Curiously, he had never fought back as is the usual thing between
+small boys and small girls. And it wasn't exactly chivalry either,
+rather just an inability to feel resentment. Besides, there were always
+tears and repentance afterward, and certain pettings that he openly
+scorned and secretly loved.
+
+"I must have been a strange kid!" Bruce thought.
+
+It was true he had; and nothing was stranger than this attitude toward
+Baby Sister. He was always so gentle with her, but at the same time he
+contemplated her with a sort of amused tolerance that is to be expected
+in strong men rather than solemn little boys. "Little Spitfire" he
+sometimes called her; but no one else could call her anything but Linda.
+For Bruce had been an able little fighter, even in those days.
+
+There was other evidence of strangeness. He was fond of drawing
+pictures. This was nothing in itself; many little boys are fond of
+drawing pictures. Nor were his unusually good. Their strangeness lay in
+his subjects. He liked to draw animals in particular,--the animals he
+read about in school and in such books as were brought to him. And
+sometimes he drew Indians and cowboys. And one day--when he wasn't half
+watching what he was doing--he drew something quite different.
+
+Perhaps he wouldn't have looked at it twice, if the teacher hadn't
+stepped up behind him and taken it out of his hands. It was "geography"
+then, not "drawing", and he should have been "paying attention." And he
+had every reason to think that the teacher would crumple up his picture
+and send him to the cloak-room for punishment.
+
+But she did no such thing. It was true that she seized the paper, and
+her fingers were all set to crumple it. But when her eyes glanced down,
+her fingers slowly straightened. Then she looked again--carefully.
+
+"What is this, Bruce?" she asked. "What have you been drawing?"
+
+Curiously, she had quite forgotten to scold him for not paying
+attention. And Bruce, who had drawn the picture with his thoughts far
+away from his pencil, had to look and see himself. Then he couldn't be
+sure.
+
+"I--I don't know," the child answered. But the picture was even better
+than his more conscious drawings, and it did look like something. He
+looked again, and for an instant let his thoughts go wandering here and
+there. "Those are trees," he said. A word caught at his throat and he
+blurted it out. "Pines! Pine trees, growing on a mountain."
+
+Once translated, the picture could hardly be mistaken. There was a range
+of mountains in the background, and a distinct sky line plumed with
+pines,--those tall, dark trees that symbolize, above all other trees,
+the wilderness.
+
+"Not bad for a six-year-old boy," the teacher commented. "But where,
+Bruce, have you ever seen or heard of such pines?" But Bruce did not
+know.
+
+Another puzzling adventure that stuck in Bruce's memory had happened
+only a few months after his arrival at the Square House when a man had
+taken him home on trial with the idea of adoption. Adoption, little
+Bruce had gathered, was something like heaven,--a glorious and happy end
+of all trouble and unpleasantness. Such was the idea he got from the
+talk of the other Orphans, and even from the grown-ups who conducted the
+establishment.
+
+All the incidents and details of the excursion with this prospective
+parent were extremely dim and vague. He did not know to what city he
+went, nor had he any recollection whatever of the people he met there.
+But he did remember, with remarkable clearness, the perplexing talk that
+the man and the superintendent of the Square House had together on his
+return.
+
+"He won't do," the stranger had said. "I tried him out and he won't fill
+in in my family. And I've fetched him back."
+
+The superintendent must have looked at the little curly-haired boy with
+considerable wonder; but he didn't ask questions. There was no
+particular need of them. The man was quite ready to talk, and the fact
+that a round-eyed child was listening to him with both ears open, did
+not deter him a particle.
+
+"I believe in being frank," the man said, "and I tell you there's
+something vicious in that boy's nature. It came out the very first
+moment he was in the house, when the Missus was introducing him to my
+eight-year-old son. 'This is little Turner,' she said--and this boy
+sprang right at him. I'd never let little Turner learn to fight, and
+this boy was on top of him and was pounding him with his fists before we
+could pull him off. Just like a wildcat--screaming and sobbing and
+trying to get at him again. I didn't understand it at all."
+
+Nor did the superintendent understand; nor--in these later years--Bruce
+either.
+
+He was quite a big boy, nearly ten, when he finally left the Square
+House. And there was nothing flickering or dim about the memory of this
+occasion.
+
+A tall, exceedingly slender man sat beside the window,--a man well
+dressed but with hard lines about his mouth and hard eyes. Yet the
+superintendent seemed particularly anxious to please him. "You will like
+this sturdy fellow," he said, as Bruce was ushered in.
+
+The man's eyes traveled slowly from the child's curly head to his
+rapidly growing feet; but no gleam of interest came into the thin face.
+"I suppose he'll do--as good as any. It was the wife's idea, anyway, you
+know. What about parentage? Anything decent at all?"
+
+The superintendent seemed to wait a long time before answering. Little
+Bruce, already full of secret conjectures as to his own parentage,
+thought that some key might be given him at last. "There is nothing that
+we can tell you, Mr. Duncan," he said at last. "A woman brought him
+here--with an infant girl--when he was about four. I suppose she was
+his mother--and she didn't wait to talk to me. The nurse said that she
+wore outlandish clothes and had plainly had a hard time."
+
+"But she didn't wait--?"
+
+"She dropped her children and fled."
+
+A cold little smile flickered at the man's lips.
+
+"It looks rather damnable," he said significantly. "But I'll take the
+little beggar--anyway."
+
+And thus Bruce went to the cold fireside of the Duncans--a house in a
+great and distant city where, in the years that had passed, many things
+scarcely worth remembering had transpired. It was a gentleman's
+house--as far as the meaning of the word usually goes--and Bruce had
+been afforded a gentleman's education. There was also, for a while, a
+certain amount of rather doubtful prosperity, a woman who died after a
+few months of casual interest in him, and many, many hours of almost
+overwhelming loneliness. Also there were many thoughts such as are not
+especially good for the spirits of growing boys.
+
+There is a certain code in all worlds that most men, sooner or later,
+find it wisest to adopt. It is simply the code of forgetfulness. The
+Square House from whence Bruce had come had been a good place to learn
+this code; and Bruce--child though he was--had carried it with him to
+the Duncans'. But there were two things he had been unable to forget.
+One was the words his foster father had spoken on accepting him,--words
+that at last he had come to understand.
+
+A normal child, adopted into a good home, would not have likely given a
+second thought to a dim and problematical disgrace in his unknown and
+departed family. He would have found his pride in the achievements and
+standing of his foster parents. But the trouble was that little Bruce
+had not been adopted into any sort of home, good or bad. The place where
+the Duncans lived was a house, but under no liberal interpretation of
+the word could it be called a home. There was nothing homelike in it to
+little Bruce. It wasn't that there was actual cruelty to contend with.
+Bruce had never known that. But there was utter indifference which
+perhaps is worse. And as always, the child filled up the empty space
+with dreams. He gave all the love and worship that was in him to his own
+family that he had pictured in imagination. Thus any disgrace that had
+come upon them went home to him very straight indeed.
+
+The other lasting memory was of Linda. She represented the one living
+creature in all his assemblage of phantoms--the one person with whom he
+could claim real kinship. Never a wind blew, never the sun shone but
+that he missed her, with a terrible, aching longing for which no one has
+ever been able to find words. He had done a bold thing, after his first
+few years with the Duncans. He planned it long and carried it out with
+infinite care as to details. He wrote to Linda, in care of the
+superintendent of the orphanage.
+
+The answer only deepened the mystery. Linda was missing. Whether she had
+run away, or whether some one had come by in a closed car and carried
+her off as she played on the lawns, the superintendent could not tell.
+They had never been able to trace her. He had been fifteen then, a tall
+boy with rather unusual muscular development, and the girl was eleven.
+And in the year nineteen hundred and twenty, ten years after the reply
+to his letter, Bruce had heard no word from her. A man grown, and his
+boyish dreams pushed back into the furthest deep recesses of his mind,
+where they could no longer turn his eyes away from facts, he had given
+up all hope of ever hearing from her again. "My little sister," he said
+softly to a memory. Then bitterness--a whole black flood of it--would
+come upon him. "Good Lord, I don't even know that she _was_ my sister."
+But now he was going to find her and his heart was full of joy and eager
+anticipation.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+There had not been time to make inquiry as to the land Bruce was going
+to. He only knew one thing,--that it was the wilderness. Whether it was
+a wilderness of desert or of great forest, he did not know. Nor had he
+the least idea what manner of adventure would be his after he reached
+the old woman's cabin; and he didn't care. The fact that he had no
+business plans for the future and no financial resources except a few
+hundred dollars that he carried in his pocket did not matter one way or
+another. He was willing to spend all the money he had; after it was
+gone, he would take up some work in life anew.
+
+He had a moment's wonder at the effect his departure would have upon the
+financial problem that had been his father's sole legacy to him. He
+laughed a little as he thought of it. Perhaps a stronger man could have
+taken hold, could have erected some sort of a structure upon the ruins,
+and remained to conquer after all. But Bruce had never been particularly
+adept at business. His temperament did not seem suited to it. But the
+idea that others also--having no business relations with his
+father--might be interested in this western journey of his did not even
+occur to him. He would not be missed at his athletic club. He had
+scarcely any real friends, and none of his acquaintances kept
+particularly close track of him.
+
+But the paths men take, seemingly with wholly different aims, crisscross
+and become intertwined much more than Bruce knew. Even as he lay in his
+berth, the first sweet drifting of sleep upon him, he was the subject of
+a discussion in a far-distant mountain home; and sleep would not have
+fallen so easily and sweetly if he had heard it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It might have been a different world. Only a glimpse of it, illumined by
+the moon, could be seen through the soiled and besmirched window pane;
+but that was enough to tell the story. There were no tall buildings,
+lighted by a thousand electric lights, such as Bruce could see through
+the windows of his bedroom at night. The lights that could be discerned
+in this strange, dark sky were largely unfamiliar to Bruce, because of
+the smoke-clouds that had always hung above the city where he lived.
+There were just stars, but there were so many of them that the mind was
+unable to comprehend their number.
+
+There is a perplexing variation in the appearance of these twinkling
+spheres. No man who has traveled widely can escape this fact. Likely
+enough they are the same stars, but they put on different faces. They
+seem almost insignificant at times,--dull and dim and unreal. It is not
+this way with the stars that peer down through these high forests. Men
+cannot walk beneath them and be unaware of them. They are incredibly
+large and bright and near, and the eyes naturally lift to them. There
+are nights in plenty, in the wild places, where they seem much more real
+than the dim, moonlit ridge or even the spark of a trapper's campfire,
+far away. They grow to be companions, too, in time. Perhaps after many,
+many years in the wild a man even attains some understanding of them,
+learning their infinite beneficence, and finding in them rare comrades
+in loneliness, and beacons on the dim and intertwining trails.
+
+There was also a moon that cast a little square of light, like a fairy
+tapestry, on the floor. It was not such a moon as leers down red and
+strange through the smoke of cities. It was vivid and quite white,--the
+wilderness moon that times the hunting hours of the forest creatures.
+But the patch that it cast on the floor was obscured in a moment because
+the man who had been musing in the big chair beside the empty fireplace
+had risen and lighted a kerosene lamp.
+
+The light prevented any further scrutiny of the moon and stars. And what
+remained to look at was not nearly so pleasing to the spirit. It was a
+great, white-walled room that would have been beautiful had it not been
+for certain unfortunate attempts to beautify it. The walls, that should
+have been sweeping and clean, were adorned with gaudily framed pictures
+which in themselves were dim and drab from many summers' accumulation of
+dust. There was a stone fireplace, and certain massive, dust-covered
+chairs grouped about it. But the eyes never would have got to these.
+They would have been held and fascinated by the face and the form of
+the man who had just lighted the lamp.
+
+No one could look twice at that massive physique and question its might.
+He seemed almost gigantic in the yellow lamplight. In reality he stood
+six feet and almost three inches, and his frame was perfectly in
+proportion. He moved slowly, lazily, and the thought flashed to some
+great monster of the forest that could uproot a tree with a blow. The
+huge muscles rippled and moved under the flannel shirt. The vast hand
+looked as if it could seize the glass bowl of the lamp and crush it like
+an eggshell.
+
+The face was huge, big and gaunt of bone; and particularly one would
+notice the mouth. It would be noticed even before the dark, deep-sunken
+eyes. It was a bloodhound mouth, the mouth of a man of great and
+terrible passions, and there was an unmistakable measure of cruelty and
+savagely about it. But there was strength, too. No eye could doubt that.
+The jaw muscles looked as powerful as those of a beast of prey. But it
+was not an ugly face, for all the brutality of the features. It was even
+handsome in the hard, mountain way. One would notice straight, black
+hair--the man's age was about thirty-nine--long over rather dark ears,
+and a great, gnarled throat. The words when he spoke seemed to come from
+deep within it.
+
+"Come in, Dave," he said.
+
+In this little remark lay something of the man's power. The visitor had
+come unannounced. His visit had been unexpected. His host had not yet
+seen his face. Yet the man knew, before the door was opened, who it was
+that had come.
+
+The reason went back to a certain quickening of the senses that is the
+peculiar right and property of most men who are really residents of the
+wilderness. And resident, in this case, does not mean merely one who
+builds his cabin on the slopes and lives there until he dies. It means a
+true relationship with the wild, an actual understanding. This man was
+the son of the wild as much as the wolves that ran in the packs. The
+wilderness is a fecund parent, producing an astounding variety of types.
+Some are beautiful, many stronger than iron, but her parentage was never
+more evident than in the case of this bronze-skinned giant that called
+out through the open doorway. Among certain other things he had acquired
+an ability to name and interpret quickly the little sounds of the
+wilderness night. Soft though it was, he had heard the sound of
+approaching feet in the pine needles. As surely as he would have
+recognized the dark face of the man in the doorway, he recognized the
+sound as Dave's step.
+
+The man came in, and at once an observer would have detected an air of
+deference in his attitude. Very plainly he had come to see his chief. He
+was a year or two older than his host, less powerful of physique, and
+his eyes did not hold quite so straight. There was less savagery but
+more cunning in his sharp features.
+
+He blurted out his news at once. "Old Elmira has got word down to the
+settlements at last," he said.
+
+There was no muscular response in the larger man. Dave was plainly
+disappointed. He wanted his news to cause a stir. It was true, however,
+that his host slowly raised his eyes. Dave glanced away.
+
+"What do you mean?" the man demanded.
+
+"Mean--I mean just what I said. We should have watched closer.
+Bill--Young Bill, I mean--saw a city chap just in the act of going in to
+see her. He had come on to the plateaus with his guide--Wegan was the
+man's name--and Bill said he stayed a lot longer than he would have if
+he hadn't taken a message from her. Then Young Bill made some
+inquiries--innocent as you please--and he found out for sure that this
+Wegan was from--just the place we don't want him to be from. And he'll
+carry word sure."
+
+"How long ago was this?"
+
+"Week ago Tuesday."
+
+"And why have you been so long in telling me?"
+
+When Dave's chief asked questions in this tone, answers always came
+quickly. They rolled so fast from the mouth that they blurred and ran
+together. "Why, Simon--you ain't been where I could see you. Anyway,
+there was nothin' we could have done."
+
+"There wasn't, eh? I don't suppose you ever thought that there's yet two
+months before we can clinch this thing for good, and young Folger
+might--I say might--have kicking about somewhere in his belongings the
+very document we've all of us been worrying about for twenty years."
+Simon cursed--a single, fiery oath. "I don't suppose you could have
+arranged for this Wegan to have had a hunting accident, could you? Who
+in the devil would have thought that yelping old hen could have ever
+done it--would have ever kept at it long enough to reach anybody to
+carry her message! But as usual, we are yelling before we're hurt. It
+isn't worth a cussword. Like as not, this Wegan will never take the
+trouble to hunt him up. And if he does--well, it's nothing to worry
+about, either. There is one back door that has been opened many times to
+let his people go through, and it may easily be opened again."
+
+Dave's eyes filled with admiration. Then he turned and gazed out through
+the window. Against the eastern sky, already wan and pale from the
+encroaching dawn, the long ridge of a mountain stood in vivid and
+startling silhouette. The edge of it was curiously jagged with many
+little upright points.
+
+There was only one person who would have been greatly amazed by that
+outline of the ridge; and the years and distance had obscured her long
+ago. This was a teacher at an orphanage in a distant city, who once had
+taken a crude drawing from the hands of a child. Here was the original
+at last. It was the same ridge, covered with pines, that little Bruce
+had drawn.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The train came to a sliding halt at Deer Creek, paused an infinitesimal
+fraction of a second, and roared on in its ceaseless journey. That
+infinitesimal fraction was long enough for Bruce, poised on the bottom
+step of a sleeping car, to swing down on to the gravel right-of-way. His
+bag, hurled by a sleepy porter, followed him.
+
+He turned first to watch the vanishing tail light, speeding so swiftly
+into the darkness; and curiously all at once it blinked out. But it was
+not that the switchmen were neglectful of their duties. In this certain
+portion of the Cascades the railroad track is constructed something
+after the manner of a giant screw, coiling like a great serpent up the
+ridges, and the train had simply vanished around a curve.
+
+Duncan's next impression was one of infinite solitude. He hadn't read
+any guidebooks about Deer Creek, and he had expected some sort of town.
+A western mining camp, perhaps, where the windows of a dance hall would
+gleam through the darkness; or one of those curious little
+mushroom-growth cities that are to be found all over the West. But at
+Deer Creek there was one little wooden structure with only three
+sides,--the opening facing the track. It was evidently the waiting room
+used by the mountain men as they waited for their local trains.
+
+There were no porters to carry his bag. There were no shouting
+officials. His only companions were the stars and the moon and, farther
+up the slope, certain tall trees that tapered to incredible points
+almost in the region where the stars began. The noise of the train died
+quickly. It vanished almost as soon as the dot of red that had been its
+tail light. It was true that he heard a faint pulsing far below him, a
+sound that was probably the chug of the steam, but it only made an
+effective background for the silence. It was scarcely more to be heard
+than the pulse of his own blood; and as he waited even this faded and
+died away.
+
+The moon cast his shadow on the yellow grass beside the crude station,
+and a curious flood of sensations--scarcely more tangible than its
+silver light--came over him. The moment had a quality of enchantment;
+and why he did not know. His throat suddenly filled, a curious weight
+and pain came to his eyelids, a quiver stole over his nerves. He stood
+silent with lifted face,--a strange figure in that mystery of moonlight.
+
+The whole scene, for causes deeper than any words may ever seek and
+reveal, moved him past any experience in his life. It was wholly new.
+When he had gone to sleep in his berth, earlier that same night, the
+train had been passing through a level, fertile valley that might have
+been one of the river bottoms beyond the Mississippi. When darkness had
+come down he had been in a great city in the northern part of the
+State,--a noisy, busy place that was not greatly different from the city
+whence he had come. But now he seemed in a different world.
+
+Possibly, in the long journey to the West, he had passed through forest
+before. But some way their appeal had not got to him. He was behind
+closed windows, his thoughts had been busy with reading and other
+occupations of travel. There had been no shading off, no gradations; he
+had come straight from a great seat of civilization to the heart of the
+wilderness.
+
+He turned about until the wind was in his face. It was full of
+fragrances,--strange, indescribable smells that seemed to call up a
+forgotten world. They carried a message to him, but as yet he hadn't
+made out its meaning. He only knew it was something mysterious and
+profound: great truths that flickered, like dim lights, in his
+consciousness, but whose outline he could not quite discern. They went
+straight home to him, those night smells from the forest. One of them
+was a balsam: a fragrance that once experienced lingers ever in the
+memory and calls men back to it in the end. Those who die in its
+fragrance, just as those who go to sleep, feel sure of having pleasant
+dreams. There were other smells too--delicate perfumes from mountain
+flowers that were deep-hidden in the grass--and many others, the nature
+of which he could not even guess.
+
+Perhaps there were sounds, but they only seemed part of the silence. The
+faintest rustle in the world reached him from the forests above of many
+little winds playing a running game between the trunks, and the stir of
+the Little People, moving in their midnight occupations. Each of these
+sounds had its message for Bruce. They all seemed to be trying to tell
+him something, to make clear some great truth that was dawning in his
+consciousness.
+
+He was not in the least afraid. He felt at peace as never before. He
+picked up his bag, and with stealing steps approached the long slope
+behind. The moon showed him a fallen log, and he found a comfortable
+seat on the ground beside it, his back against its bark. Then he waited
+for the dawn to come out.
+
+Not even Bruce knew or understood all the thoughts that came over him in
+that lonely wait. But he did have a peculiar sense of expectation, a
+realization that the coming of the dawn would bring him a message
+clearer than all these messages of fragrance and sound. The moon made
+wide silver patches between the distant trees; but as yet the forest had
+not opened its secrets to him. As yet it was but a mystery, a profundity
+of shadows and enchantment that he did not understand.
+
+The night hours passed. The sense of peace seemed to deepen on the man.
+He sat relaxed, his brown face grave, his eyes lifted. The stars began
+to dim and draw back farther into the recesses of the sky. The round
+outline of the moon seemed less pronounced. And a faint ribbon of light
+began to grow in the east.
+
+It widened. The light grew. The night wind played one more little game
+between the tree trunks and slipped away to the Home of Winds that lies
+somewhere above the mountains. The little night sounds were slowly
+stilled.
+
+Bruce closed his eyes, not knowing why. His blood was leaping in his
+veins. An unfamiliar excitement, almost an exultation, had come upon
+him. He lowered his head nearly to his hands that rested in his lap,
+then waited a full five minutes more.
+
+Then he opened his eyes. The light had grown around him. His hands were
+quite plain. Slowly, as a man raises his eyes to a miracle, he lifted
+his face.
+
+The forest was no longer obscured in darkness. The great trees had
+emerged, and only the dusk as of twilight was left between. He saw them
+plainly,--their symmetrical forms, their declining limbs, their tall
+tops piercing the sky. He saw them as they were,--those ancient, eternal
+symbols and watchmen of the wilderness. And he knew them at last,
+acquaintances long forgotten but remembered now.
+
+"The pines!" he cried. He leaped to his feet with flashing eyes. "I have
+come back to the pines!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The dawn revealed a narrow road along the bank of Deer Creek,--a brown
+little wanderer which, winding here and there, did not seem to know
+exactly where it wished to go. It seemed to follow the general direction
+of the creek bed; it seemed to be a prying, restless little highway,
+curious about things in general as the wild creatures that sometimes
+made tracks in its dust, thrusting now into a heavy thicket, now
+crossing the creek to examine a green and grassy bank on the opposite
+side, now taking an adventurous tramp about the shoulder of a hill,
+circling back for a drink in the creek and hurrying on again. It made
+singular loops; it darted off at a right and left oblique; it made
+sudden spurts and turns seemingly without reason or sense, and at last
+it dimmed away into the fading mists of early morning. Bruce didn't know
+which direction to take, whether up or down the creek.
+
+He gave the problem a moment's thought. "Take the road up the Divide,"
+Barney Wegan had said; and at once Bruce knew that the course lay up the
+creek, rather than down. A divide means simply the high places between
+one water-shed and another, and of course Trail's End lay somewhere
+beyond the source of the stream. The creek itself was apparently a
+sub-tributary of the Rogue, the great river to the south.
+
+There was something pleasing to his spirit in the sight of the little
+stream, tumbling and rippling down its rocky bed. He had no vivid
+memories of seeing many waterways. The river that flowed through the
+city whence he had come had not been like this at all. It had been a
+great, slow-moving sheet of water, the banks of which were lined with
+factories and warehouses. The only lining of the banks of this little
+stream were white-barked trees, lovely groves with leaves of glossy
+green. It was a cheery, eager little waterway, and more than once--as he
+went around a curve in the road--it afforded him glimpses of really
+striking beauty. Sometimes it was just a shimmer of its waters beneath
+low-hanging bushes, sometimes a distant cataract, and once or twice a
+long, still place on which the shadows were still deep.
+
+These sloughs were obviously the result of dams, and at first he could
+not understand what had been the purpose of dam-building in this lonely
+region. There seemed to be no factories needing water power, no
+slow-moving mill wheels. He left the road to investigate. And he
+chuckled with delight when he knew the truth.
+
+These dams had not been the work of men at all. Rather they were
+structures laid down by those curious little civil engineers, the
+beavers. The cottonwood trees had been felled so that the thick branches
+had lain across the waters, and in their own secret ways the limbs had
+been matted and caked until no water could pass through. True, the
+beavers themselves did not emerge for him to converse with. Perhaps
+they were busy at their under-water occupations, and possibly the
+trappers who sooner or later penetrate every wilderness had taken them
+all away. He looked along the bank for further evidence of the beavers'
+work.
+
+Wonderful as the dams were, he found plenty of evidence that the beavers
+had not always used to advantage the crafty little brains that nature
+has given them. They had made plenty of mistakes. But these very
+blunders gave Bruce enough delight almost to pay for the extra work they
+had occasioned. After all, he considered, human beings in their works
+are often just as short-sighted. For instance, he found tall trees lying
+rotting and out of reach, many feet back from the stream. The beavers
+had evidently felled them in high water, forgetting that the stream
+dwindled in summer and the trees would be of no use to them. They had
+been an industrious colony! He found short poles of cottonwood sharpened
+at the end, as if the little fur bearers had intended them for braces,
+but which--through some wilderness tragedy--had never been utilized.
+
+But Bruce was in a mood to be delighted, these early morning hours. He
+was on the way to Linda; a dream was about to come true. The whole
+adventure was of the most thrilling and joyous anticipations. He did not
+feel the load of his heavy suitcase. It was nothing to his magnificent
+young strength. And all at once he beheld an amazing change in the
+appearance of the stream.
+
+It had abruptly changed to a stream of melted, shimmering silver. The
+waters broke on the rocks with opalescent spray; the whole coloring was
+suggestive of the vivid tints of a Turner landscape. The waters gleamed;
+they danced and sparkled as they sped about the boulders of the river
+bed; the leaves shimmered above them. And it was all because the sun had
+risen at last above the mountain range and was shining down.
+
+At first Bruce could hardly believe that just sunlight could effect such
+a transformation. For no other reason than that he couldn't resist doing
+so, he left his bag on the road and crept down to the water's edge.
+
+He stood very still. It seemed to him that some one had told him, far
+away and long ago, that if he wished to see miracles he had only to
+stand very still. Not to move a muscle, so that his vivid shadow would
+not even waver. It is a trait possessed by all men of the wilderness,
+but it takes time for city men to learn it. He waited a long time. And
+all at once the shining surface of a deep pool below him broke with a
+fountain of glittering spray.
+
+Something that was like light itself flung into the air and down again
+with a splash. Bruce shouted then. He simply couldn't help it. And all
+the time there was a strange straining and travail in his brain, as if
+it were trying to give birth to a memory from long ago. He knew now what
+had made that glittering arc. Such a common thing,--it was singular that
+it should yield him such delight. It was a trout, leaping for an insect
+that had fallen on the waters.
+
+It was strange that he had such a sense of familiarity with trout. True,
+he had heard Barney Wegan tell of them. He had listened to many tales of
+the way they seized a fly, how the reel would spin, and how they would
+fight to absolute exhaustion before they would yield to the landing net.
+"The King among fish," Barney had called them. Yet the tales seemingly
+had meant little to him then. His interest in them had been superficial
+only; and they had seemed as distant and remote as the marsupials of
+Australia. But it wasn't this way now. He had a sense of long and close
+acquaintance, of an interest such as men have in their own townsmen.
+
+He went on, and the forest world opened before him. Once a flock of
+grouse--a hen and a dozen half-grown chickens--scurried away through the
+underbrush at the sound of his step. One instant, and he had a clear
+view of the entire covey. The next, and they had vanished like so many
+puffs of smoke. He had a delicious game of hide-and-seek with them
+through the coverts, but he was out-classed in every particular. He knew
+that the birds were all within forty feet of him, each of them pressed
+flat to the brown earth, but in this maze of light and shadow he could
+not detect their outline. Nature has been kind to the grouse family in
+the way of protective coloration. He had to give up the search and
+continue up the creek for further adventure.
+
+Once a pair of mallards winged by on a straight course above his head.
+Their sudden appearance rather surprised him. These beautiful game
+birds are usually habitants of the lower lakes and marshes, not
+rippling mountain streams. He didn't know that a certain number of these
+winged people nested every year along the Rogue River, far below, and
+made rapturous excursions up and down its tributaries. Mallards do not
+have to have aëroplanes to cover distance quickly. They are the very
+masters of the aërial lanes, and in all probability this pair had come
+forty miles already that morning. Where they would be at dark no man
+could guess. Their wings whistled down to him, and it seemed to him that
+the drake stretched down his bright green head for a better look. Then
+he spurted ahead, faster than ever.
+
+Once, at a distance, Bruce caught a glimpse of a pair of peculiar,
+little, sawed-off, plump-breasted ducks that wagged their tails, as if
+in signals, in a still place above a dam. He made a wide circle,
+intending to wheel back to the creekside for a closer inspection of the
+singular flirtation of those bobbing, fan-like tails. He rather thought
+he could outwit these little people, at least. But when he turned back
+to the water's edge they were nowhere to be seen.
+
+If he had had more experience with the creatures of the wild he could
+have explained this mysterious disappearance. These little
+ducks--"ruddies" the sportsmen call them--have advantages other than an
+extra joint in their tails. One of them seems to be a total and
+unprincipled indifference to the available supply of oxygen. When they
+wish to go out of sight they simply duck beneath the water and stay
+apparently as long as they desire. Of course they have to come up some
+time--but usually it is just the tip of a bill--like the top of a
+river-bottom weed, thrust above the surface. Bruce gaped in amazement,
+but he chuckled again when he discovered his birds farther up the creek,
+just as far distant from him as ever.
+
+The sun rose higher, and he began to feel its power. But it was a kindly
+heat. The temperature was much higher than was commonly met in the
+summers of the city, but there was little moisture in the air to make it
+oppressive. The sweat came out on his bronze face, but he never felt
+better in his life. There was but one great need, and that was
+breakfast.
+
+A man of his physique feels hunger quickly. The sensation increased in
+intensity, and the suitcase grew correspondingly heavy. And all at once
+he stopped short in the road. The impulse along his nerves to his leg
+muscles was checked, like an electric current at the closing of a
+switch, and an instinct of unknown origin struggled for expression
+within him.
+
+In an instant he had it. He didn't know whence it came. It was nothing
+he had read or that any one had told him. It seemed to be rather the
+result of some experience in his own immediate life, an occurrence of so
+long ago that he had forgotten it. He suddenly knew where he could find
+his breakfast. There was no need of toiling farther on an empty stomach
+in this verdant season of the year. He set his suitcase down, and with
+the confidence of a man who hears the dinner call in his own home, he
+struck off into the thickets beside the creek bed. Instinct--and really,
+after all, instinct is nothing but memory--led his steps true.
+
+He glanced here and there, not even wondering at the singular fact that
+he did not know exactly what manner of food he was seeking. In a moment
+he came to a growth of thorn-covered bushes, a thicket that only the
+she-bear knew how to penetrate. But it was enough for Bruce just to
+stand at its edges. The bushes were bent down with a load of delicious
+berries.
+
+He wasn't in the least surprised. He had known that he would find them.
+Always, at this season of the year, the woods were rich with them; one
+only had to slip quickly through the back door--while the mother's eye
+was elsewhere--to find enough of them not only to pack the stomach full
+but to stain and discolor most of the face. It seemed a familiar thing
+to be plucking the juicy berries and cramming them into his mouth,
+impervious as the old she-bear to the remonstrance of the thorns. But it
+seemed to him that he reached them easier than he expected. Either the
+bushes were not so tall as he remembered them, or--since his first
+knowledge of them--his own stature had increased.
+
+When he had eaten the last berry he could possibly hold, he went to the
+creek to drink. He lay down beside a still pool, and the water was cold
+to his lips. Then he rose at the sound of an approaching motor car
+behind him.
+
+The driver--evidently a cattleman--stopped his car and looked at Bruce
+with some curiosity. He marked the perfectly fitting suit of dark
+flannel, the trim, expensive shoes that were already dust-stained, the
+silken shirt on which a juicy berry had been crushed. "Howdy," the man
+said after the western fashion. He was evidently simply feeling
+companionable and was looking for a moment's chat. It is a desire that
+often becomes very urgent and most real after enough lonely days in the
+wilderness.
+
+"How do you do," Bruce replied. "How far to Martin's store?"
+
+The man filled his pipe with great care before he answered. "Jump in the
+car," he replied at last, "and I'll show you. I'm going up that way
+myself."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Martin's was a typical little mountain store, containing a small sample
+of almost everything under the sun and built at the forks in the road.
+The ranchman let Bruce off at the store; then turned up the right-hand
+road that led to certain bunch-grass lands to the east. Bruce entered
+slowly, and the little group of loungers gazed at him with frank
+curiosity.
+
+Only one of them was of a type sufficiently distinguished so that
+Bruce's own curiosity was aroused. This was a huge, dark man who stood
+alone almost at the rear of the building,--a veritable giant with
+savage, bloodhound lips and deep-sunken eyes. There was a quality in his
+posture that attracted Bruce's attention at once. No one could look at
+him and doubt that he was a power in these mountain realms. He seemed
+perfectly secure in his great strength and wholly cognizant of the hate
+and fear, and at the same time, the strange sort of admiration with
+which the others regarded him.
+
+He was dressed much as the other mountain men who had assembled in the
+store. He wore a flannel shirt over his gorilla chest, and corduroy
+trousers stuffed into high, many-seamed riding boots. A dark felt hat
+was crushed on to his huge head. But there was an aloofness about the
+man; and Bruce realized at once he had taken no part in the friendly
+gossip that had been interrupted by his entrance.
+
+The dark eyes were full upon Bruce's face. He felt them--just as if they
+had the power of actual physical impact--the instant that he was inside
+the door. Nor was it the ordinary look of careless speculation or
+friendly interest. Mountain men have not been taught it is not good
+manners to stare, but no traveler who falls swiftly into the spirit of
+the forest ordinarily resents their open inspection. But this look was
+different. It was such that no man, to whom self-respect is dear, could
+possibly disregard. It spoke clearly as words.
+
+Bruce flushed, and his blood made a curious little leap. He slowly
+turned. His gaze moved until it rested full upon the man's eyes. It
+seemed to Bruce that the room grew instantly quiet. The merchant no
+longer tied up his bundles at the counter. The watching mountain men
+that he beheld out of the corners of his eyes all seemed to be standing
+in peculiar fixed attitudes, waiting for some sort of explosion. It took
+all of Bruce's strength to hold that gaze. The moment was charged with a
+mysterious suspense.
+
+The stranger's face changed too. He did not flush, however. His lips
+curled ever so slightly, revealing an instant's glimpse of strong,
+rather well-kept teeth. His eyes were narrowing too; and they seemed to
+come to life with singular sparkles and glowings between the lids.
+
+"Well?" he suddenly demanded. Every man in the room--except
+one--started. The one exception was Bruce himself. He was holding hard
+on his nerve control, and he only continued to stare coldly.
+
+"Are you the merchant?" Bruce asked.
+
+"No, I ain't," the other replied. "You usually look for the merchant
+behind the counter."
+
+There was no smile on the faces of the waiting mountain men, usually to
+be expected when one of their number achieves repartee on a tenderfoot.
+Nevertheless, the tension was broken. Bruce turned to the merchant.
+
+"I would like to have you tell me," he said quite clearly, "the way to
+Mrs. Ross's cabin."
+
+The merchant seemed to wait a long time before replying. His eye stole
+to the giant's face, found the lips curled in a smile; then he flushed.
+"Take the left-hand road," he said with a trace of defiance in his tone.
+"It soon becomes a trail, but keep right on going up it. At the fork in
+the trail you'll find her cabin."
+
+"How far is it, please?"
+
+"Two hours' walk; you can make it easy by four o'clock."
+
+"Thank you." His eyes glanced over the stock of goods and he selected a
+few edibles to give him strength for the walk. "I'll leave my suitcase
+here if I may," he said, "and will call for it later." He turned to go.
+
+"Wait just a minute," a voice spoke behind him. It was a commanding
+tone--implying the expectation of obedience. Bruce half turned. "Simon
+wants to talk to you," the merchant explained.
+
+"I'll walk with you a way and show you the road," Simon continued. The
+room seemed deathly quiet as the two men went out together.
+
+They walked side by side until a turn of the road took them out of
+eye-range of the store. "This is the road," Simon said. "All you have to
+do is follow it. Cabins are not so many that you could mistake it. But
+the main thing is--whether or not you want to go."
+
+Bruce had no misunderstanding about the man's meaning. It was simply a
+threat, nothing more nor less.
+
+"I've come a long way to go to that cabin," he replied. "I'm not likely
+to turn off now."
+
+"There's nothing worth seeing when you get there. Just an old hag--a
+wrinkled old dame that looks like a witch."
+
+Bruce felt a deep and little understood resentment at the words. Yet
+since he had as yet established no relations with the woman, he had no
+grounds for silencing the man. "I'll have to decide that," he replied.
+"I'm going to see some one else, too."
+
+"Some one named--Linda?"
+
+"Yes. You seem quite interested."
+
+They were standing face to face in the trail. For once Bruce was glad of
+his unusual height. He did not have to raise his eyes greatly to look
+squarely into Simon's. Both faces were flushed, both set; and the eyes
+of the older man brightened slowly.
+
+"I am interested," Simon replied. "You're a tenderfoot. You're fresh
+from cities. You're going up there to learn things that won't be any
+pleasure to you. You're going into the real mountains--a man's land such
+as never was a place for tenderfeet. A good many things can happen up
+there. A good many things have happened up there. I warn you--go back!"
+
+Bruce smiled, just the faint flicker of a smile, but Simon's eyes
+narrowed when he saw it. The dark face lost a little of its insolence.
+He knew men, this huge son of the wilderness, and he knew that no coward
+could smile in such a moment as this. He was accustomed to implicit
+obedience and was not used to seeing men smile when he uttered a threat.
+"I've come too far to go back," Bruce told him. "Nothing can turn me."
+
+"Men have been turned before, on trails like this," Simon told him.
+"Don't misunderstand me. I advised you to go back before, and I usually
+don't take time or trouble to advise any one. Now I _tell_ you to go
+back. This is a man's land, and we don't want any tenderfeet here."
+
+"The trail is open," Bruce returned. It was not his usual manner to
+speak in quite this way. He seemed at once to have fallen into the
+vernacular of the wilderness of which symbolic reference has such a
+part. Strange as the scene was to him, it was in some way familiar too.
+It was as if this meeting had been ordained long ago; that it was part
+of an inexorable destiny that the two should be talking together, face
+to face, on this winding mountain road. Memories--all vague, all
+unrecognized--thronged through him.
+
+Many times, during the past years, he had wakened from curious dreams
+that in the light of day he had tried in vain to interpret. He was never
+able to connect them with any remembered experience. Now it was as if
+one of these dreams were coming true. There was the same silence about
+him, the dark forests beyond, the ridges stretching ever. There was some
+great foe that might any instant overwhelm him.
+
+"I guess you heard me," Simon said; "I told you to go back."
+
+"And I hope you heard me too. I'm going on. I haven't any more time to
+give you."
+
+"And I'm not going to take any more, either. But let me make one thing
+plain. No man, told to go back by me, ever has a chance to be told
+again. This ain't your cities--up here. There ain't any policeman on
+every corner. The woods are big, and all kinds of things can happen in
+them--and be swallowed up--as I swallow these leaves in my hand."
+
+His great arm reached out with incredible power and seized a handful of
+leaves off a near-by shrub. It seemed to Bruce that they crushed like
+fruit and stained the dark skin.
+
+"What is done up here isn't put in the newspapers down below. We're
+mountain men; we've lived up here as long as men have lived in the West.
+We have our own way of doing things, and our own law. Think once more
+about going back."
+
+"I've already decided. I'm going on."
+
+Once more they stood, eyes meeting eyes on the trail, and Simon's face
+was darkening with passion. Bruce knew that his hands were clenching,
+and his own muscles bunched and made ready to resist any kind of attack.
+
+But Simon didn't strike. He laughed instead,--a single deep note of
+utter and depthless scorn. Then he drew back and let Bruce pass on up
+the road.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Bruce couldn't mistake the cabin. At the end of the trail he found
+it,--a little shack of unpainted boards with a single door and a single
+window.
+
+He stood a moment in the sunlight. His shadow was already long behind
+him, and the mountains had that curious deep blue of late afternoon. The
+pine needles were soft under his feet; the later-afternoon silence was
+over the land. He could not guess what was his destiny behind that rude
+door. It was a moment long waited; for one of the few times in his life
+he was trembling with excitement. He felt as if a key, long lost, was
+turning in the doorway of understanding.
+
+He walked nearer and tapped with his knuckles on the door.
+
+If the forests have one all-pervading quality it is silence. Of course
+the most silent time is at night, but just before sunset, when most of
+the forest creatures are in their mid-afternoon sleep, any noise is a
+rare thing. What sound there is carries far and seems rather out of
+place. Bruce could picture the whole of the little drama that followed
+his knock by just the faint sounds--inaudible in a less silent
+land--that reached him from behind the door. At first it was just a
+start; then a short exclamation in the hollow, half-whispering voice of
+old, old age. A moment more of silence--as if a slow-moving, aged brain
+were trying to conjecture who stood outside--then the creaking of a
+chair as some one rose. The last sounds were of a strange hobbling
+toward him,--a rustle of shoes half dragged on the floor and the
+intermittent tapping of a cane.
+
+The face that showed so dimly in the shadowed room looked just as Bruce
+had expected,--wrinkled past belief, lean and hawk-nosed from age. The
+hand that rested on the cane was like a bird's claw, the skin blue and
+hard and dry. There were a few strands of hair drawn back over her lean
+head, but all its color had faded out long ago. She stood bowed over her
+cane.
+
+Yet in that first instant Bruce had an inexplicable impression of being
+in the presence of a power. He did not have the wave of pity with which
+one usually greets the decrepit. And at first he didn't know why. But
+soon he grew accustomed to the shadows and he could see the woman's
+eyes. Then he understood.
+
+They were set deep behind grizzled brows, but they glowed like coals.
+There was no other word. They were not the eyes of one whom time is
+about to conquer. Her bodily strength was gone; any personal beauty that
+she might have had was ashes long and long ago, but some great fire
+burned in her yet. As far as bodily appearance went the grave should
+have claimed her long since; but a dauntless spirit had sustained her.
+For, as all men know, the power of the spirit has never yet been
+measured.
+
+She blinked in the light. "Who is it?" she croaked.
+
+Bruce did not answer. He had not prepared a reply for this question. But
+it was not needed. The woman leaned forward, and a vivid light began to
+dawn in her dark, furrowed face.
+
+Even to Bruce, already succumbed to this atmosphere of mystery into
+which his adventure had led him, that dawning light was the single most
+startling phenomenon he had ever beheld. It is very easy to imagine a
+radiance upon the face. But in reality, most all facial expression is
+simply a change in the contour of lines. But this was not a case of
+imagination now. The witchlike face seemed to gleam with a white flame.
+And Bruce knew that his coming was the answer to the prayer of a whole
+lifetime. It was a thought to sober him. No small passion, no weak
+desire, no prayer that time or despair could silence could effect such a
+light as this.
+
+"Bruce," he said simply. It did not even occur to him to use the surname
+of Duncan. It was a name of a time and sphere already forgotten. "I
+don't know what my real last name is."
+
+"Bruce--Bruce," the woman whispered. She stretched a palsied hand to him
+as if it would feel his flesh to reassure her of its reality. The wild
+light in her eyes pierced him, burning like chemical rays, and a great
+flood of feeling yet unknown and unrecognized swept over him. He saw her
+snags of teeth as her dry lips half-opened. He saw the exultation in her
+wrinkled, lifted face. "Oh, praises to His Everlasting Name!" she
+cried. "Oh, Glory--Glory to on High!"
+
+And this was not blasphemy. The words came from the heart. No matter how
+terrible the passion from which they sprang, whether it was such evil as
+would cast her to hell, such a cry as this could not go unheard. The
+strength seemed to go out of her as water flows. She rocked on her cane,
+and Bruce, thinking she was about to fall, seized her shoulders. "At
+last--at last," she cried. "You've come at last."
+
+She gripped herself, as if trying to find renewed strength. "Go at
+once," she said, "to the end of the Pine-needle Trail. It leads from
+behind the cabin."
+
+He tried to emerge from the dreamlike mists that had enveloped him. "How
+far is it?" he asked her steadily.
+
+"To the end of Pine-needle Trail," she rocked again, clutched for one of
+his brown hands, and pressed it between hers.
+
+Then she raised it to her dry lips. Bruce could not keep her from it.
+And after an instant more he did not attempt to draw it from her
+embrace. In the darkness of that mountain cabin, in the shadow of the
+eternal pines, he knew that some great drama of human life and love and
+hatred was behind the action; and he knew with a knowledge unimpeachable
+that it would be only insolence for him to try further to resist it. Its
+meaning went too deep for him to see; but it filled him with a great and
+wondering awe.
+
+Then he turned away, up the Pine-needle Trail. Clear until the deeper
+forest closed around him her voice still followed him,--a strange
+croaking in the afternoon silence. "At last," he heard her crying. "At
+last, at last."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+In almost a moment, Duncan was out of the thickets and into the big
+timber, for really the first time. In his journey up the mountain road
+and on the trail that led to the old woman's cabin, he had been many
+times in the shade of the tall evergreens, but always there had been
+some little intrusion of civilization, some hint of the works of man
+that had kept him from the full sense of the majesty of the wild. At
+first it had been the gleaming railroad tracks, and then a road that had
+been built with blasting and shovels. To get the full effect of the
+forest one must be able to behold wide-stretching vistas, and that had
+been impossible heretofore because of the brush thickets. But this was
+the virgin forest. As far as he could see there was nothing but the
+great pines climbing up the long slope of the ridge. He caught glimpses
+of them in the vales at either side, and their dark tops made a curious
+background at the very extremity of his vision. They stood straight and
+aloof, and they were very old.
+
+He fell into their spirit at once. The half-understood emotions that had
+flooded him in the cabin below died within him. The great calm that is,
+after all, the all-pervading quality of the big pines came over him. It
+is always this way. A man knows solitude, his thoughts come clear,
+superficialities are left behind in the lands of men. Bruce was rather
+tremulous and exultant as he crept softly up the trail.
+
+It was the last lap of his journey. At the end of the trail he would
+find--Linda! And it seemed quite fitting that she would be waiting
+there, where the trail began, in the wildest heart of the pine woods. He
+was quite himself once more,--carefree, delighting in all the little
+manifestations of the wild life that began to stir about him.
+
+No experience of his existence had ever yielded the same pleasure as
+that long walk up the trail. Every curve about the shoulder of a hill,
+every still glen into which he dipped, every ridge that he surmounted
+wakened curious memories within him and stirred him in little secret
+ways under the skin. His delight grew upon him. It was a dream coming
+true. Always, it seemed to him, he had carried in his mind a picture of
+this very land, a sort of dream place that was a reality at last. He had
+known just how it would be. The wind made the same noise in the tree
+tops that he expected. Yet it was such a little sound that it could
+never be heard in a city at all. His senses had already been sharpened
+by the silence and the calm.
+
+He had always known how the pine shadows would fall across the carpet of
+needles. The trees themselves were the same grave companions that he had
+expected, but his delight was all the more because of his expectations.
+
+He began to catch glimpses of the smaller forest creatures,--the Little
+People that are such a delight to all real lovers of the wilderness.
+Sometimes it was a chipmunk, trusting to his striped skin--blending
+perfectly with the light and shadow--to keep him out of sight. These are
+quivering, restless, ever-frightened little folk, and heaven alone knows
+what damage they may do to the roots of a tree. But Bruce wasn't in the
+mood to think of forest conservation to-day. He had left a number of his
+notions in the city where he had acquired them,--and this little,
+bright-eyed rodent in the tree roots had almost the same right to the
+forests that he had himself. Before, he had a measure of the same
+arrogance with which most men--realizing the dominance of their
+breed--regard the lesser people of the wild; but something of a
+disastrous nature had happened to it. He spoke gayly to the chipmunk and
+passed on.
+
+As the trail climbed higher, the sense of wilderness became more
+pronounced. Even the trees seemed larger and more majestic, and the
+glimpses of the wild people were more frequent. The birds stopped their
+rattle-brained conversation and stared at him with frank curiosity. The
+grouse let him get closer before they took to cover.
+
+Of course the bird life was not nearly so varied as in the pretty groves
+of the Middle West. Most birds are gentle people, requiring an easy and
+pleasant environment, and these stern, stark mountains were no place for
+them. Only the hardier creatures could flourish here. Their songs would
+have been out of place in the great silences and solemnity of the
+evergreen forest. This was no land for weaklings. Bruce knew that as
+well as he knew that his legs were under him. The few birds he saw were
+mostly of the hardier varieties,--hale-fellows-well-met and cheerful
+members of the lower strata in bird society. "Good old roughnecks," he
+said to them, with an intuitive understanding.
+
+That was just the name for them,--a word that is just beginning to
+appear in dictionaries. They were rough in manner and rough in speech,
+and they pretended to be rougher than they were. Yet Bruce liked them.
+He exulted in the easy freedom of their ways. Creatures have to be rough
+to exist in and love such wilderness as this. Life gets down to a matter
+of cold metal,--some brass but mostly iron! He rather imagined that they
+could be fairly capable thieves if occasion arose, making off with the
+edibles he had bought without a twitch of a feather. They squawked and
+scolded at him, after their curiosity was satisfied. They said the most
+shocking things they could think of and seemed to rejoice in it. He
+didn't know their breeds, yet he felt that they were old friends. They
+were rather large birds, mostly of the families of jays and magpies.
+
+The hours passed. The trail grew dimmer. Now it was just a brown serpent
+in the pine needles, coiling this way and that,--but he loved every foot
+of it. It dipped down to a little stream, of which the blasting sun of
+summer had made only a succession of shallow pools. Yet the water was
+cold to his lips. And he knew that little brook trout--waiting until
+the fall rains should make a torrent of their tiny stream and thus
+deliver them--were gazing at him while he drank.
+
+The trail followed the creek a distance, and at last he found the spring
+that was its source. It was only a small spring, lost in a bed of deep,
+green ferns. He sat down to rest and to eat part of his lunch. The
+little wind had died, leaving a profound silence.
+
+By a queer pounding of his blood Bruce knew that he was in the high
+altitudes. He had already come six miles from the cabin. The hour was
+about six-thirty; in two hours more it would be too dark to make his way
+at all.
+
+He examined the mud about the spring, and there was plenty of evidence
+that the forest creatures had passed that way. Here was a little
+triangle where a buck had stepped, and farther away he found two pairs
+of deer tracks,--evidently those of a doe with fawn. A wolf had stopped
+to cool his heated tongue in the waters, possibly in the middle of some
+terrible hunt in the twilight hours.
+
+There was a curious round track, as if of a giant cat, a little way
+distant in the brown earth. It told a story plainly. A cougar--one of
+those great felines that is perhaps better called puma--had had an
+ambush there a few nights before. Bruce wondered what wilderness tragedy
+had transpired when the deer came to drink. Then he found another huge
+abrasion in the mud that puzzled him still more.
+
+At first he couldn't believe that it was a track. The reason was simply
+that the size of the thing was incredible,--as if some one had laid a
+flour sack in the mud and taken it up again. He did not think of any of
+the modern-day forest creatures as being of such proportions. It was
+very stale and had been almost obliterated by many days of sun. Perhaps
+he had been mistaken in thinking it an imprint of a living creature. He
+went to his knees to examine it.
+
+But in one instant he knew that he had not been mistaken. It was a track
+not greatly different from that of an enormous human foot; and the
+separate toes were entirely distinct. It was a bear track, of course,
+but one of such size that the general run of little black bears that
+inhabited the hills could almost use it for a den of hibernation!
+
+His thought went back to his talk with Barney Wegan; and he remembered
+that the man had spoken of a great, last grizzly that the mountaineers
+had named "The Killer." No other animal but the great grizzly bear
+himself could have made such a track as this. Bruce wondered if the
+beast had yet been killed.
+
+He got up and went on,--farther toward Trail's End. He walked more
+swiftly now, for he hoped to reach the end of Pine-needle Trail before
+nightfall, but he had no intention of halting in case night came upon
+him before he reached it. He had waited too long already to find Linda.
+
+The land seemed ever more familiar. A high peak thrust a white head
+above a distant ridge, and it appealed to him almost like the face of an
+old friend. Sometime--long and long ago--he had gazed often at a white
+peak of a mountain thrust above a pine-covered ridge.
+
+Another hour ended the day's sunlight. The shadows fell quickly, but it
+was a long time yet until darkness. He yet might make the trail-end. He
+gave no thought to fatigue. In the first place, he had stood up
+remarkably well under the day's tramp for no other reason than that he
+had always made a point of keeping in the best of physical condition.
+Besides, there was something more potent than mere physical strength to
+sustain him now. It was the realization of the nearing end of the
+trail,--a knowledge of tremendous revelations that would come to him in
+a few hours more.
+
+Already great truths were taking shape in his brain; he only needed a
+single sentence of explanation to connect them all together. He began to
+feel a growing excitement and impatience.
+
+For the first time he began to notice a strange breathlessness in the
+air. He paused, just for an instant, his face lifted to the wind. He did
+not realize that all his senses were at razor edge, trying to interpret
+the messages that the wind brought. He felt that the forest was
+wakening. A new stir and impulse had come in the growing shadows. All at
+once he understood. It was the hunting hour.
+
+Yet even this seemed familiar. Always, it seemed to him, he had known
+this same strange thrill at the fall of darkness, the same sense of
+deepening mystery. The jays no longer gossiped in the shrubs. They had
+been silenced by the same awe that had come over Bruce. And now the man
+began to discern, here and there through the forest, queer rustlings of
+the foliage that meant the passing through of some of the great beasts
+of prey.
+
+Once two deer flashed by him,--just a streak that vanished quickly. The
+dusk deepened. The further trees were dimming. The sky turned green,
+then gray. The distant mountains were enfolded in gloom. Bruce headed
+on--faster, up the trail.
+
+The heaviness in his limbs had changed to an actual ache, but he gave no
+thought to it. He was enthralled by the change that was on the
+forest,--a whipping-back of a thousand-thousand years to a young and
+savage world. There was the sense of vast and tragic events all in
+keeping with the gathering gloom of the forest. He was awed and
+mystified as never before.
+
+It was quite dark now, and he could barely see the trail. For the first
+time he began to despair, feeling that another night of overpowering
+impatience must be spent before he could reach Trail's End. The stars
+began to push through the darkening sky. Then, fainter than the gleam of
+a firefly, he saw the faint light of a far distant camp fire.
+
+His heart bounded. He knew what was there. It was the end of the trail
+at last. And it guided him the rest of the way. When he reached the top
+of a little rise in the trail, the whole scene was laid out in mystery
+below him.
+
+The fire had been built at the door of a mountain house,--a log
+structure of perhaps four rooms. The firelight played in its open
+doorway. Something beside it caught his attention, and instinctively he
+followed it with his eyes until it ended in an incredible region of the
+stars. It was a great pine tree, the largest he had ever
+seen,--seemingly a great sentinel over all the land.
+
+But the sudden awe that came over him at the sight of it was cut short
+by the sight of a girl's figure in the firelight. He had an instant's
+sense that he had come to the wilderness's heart at last, that this tall
+tree was its symbol, that if he could understand the eternal watch that
+it kept over this mountain world, he would have an understanding of all
+things,--but all these thoughts were submerged in the realization that
+he had come back to Linda at last.
+
+He had known how the mountains would seem. All that he had beheld to-day
+was just the recurrence of things beheld long ago. Nothing had seemed
+different from what he had expected; rather he had a sense that a lost
+world had been returned to him, and it was almost as if he had never
+been away. But the girl in the firelight did not answer in the least
+degree the picture he had carried of Linda.
+
+He remembered her as a blond-headed little girl with irregular features
+and a rather unreasonable allowance of homeliness. All the way he had
+thought of her as a baby sister,--not as a woman in her flower. For a
+long second he gazed at her in speechless amazement.
+
+Her hair was no longer blond. Time, it had peculiar red lights when the
+firelight shone through it; but he knew that by the light of day it
+would be deep brown. He remembered her as an awkward little thing that
+was hardly able to keep her feet under her. This tall girl had the
+wilderness grace,--which is the grace of a deer and only blind eyes
+cannot see it. He dimly knew that she wore a khaki-colored skirt and a
+simple blouse of white tied with a blue scarf. Her arms were bare in the
+fire's gleam. And there was a dark beauty about her face that simply
+could not be denied.
+
+She came toward him, and her hands were open before her. And her lips
+trembled. Bruce could see them in the firelight.
+
+It was a strange meeting. The firelight gave it a tone of unreality, and
+the whole forest world seemed to pause in its whispered business as if
+to watch. It was as if they had been brought face to face by the
+mandates of an inexorable destiny.
+
+"So you've come," the girl said. The words were spoken unusually soft,
+scarcely above a whisper; but they were inexpressibly vivid to Bruce. In
+his lifetime he had heard many words that were just so many lifeless
+selections from a dictionary,--flat utterances with no overtones to give
+them vitality. He had heard voices in plenty that were merely the
+mechanical result of the vibration of vocal cords. But these words--not
+for their meaning but because of the quality of the voice that had
+spoken them--really lived. They told first of a boundless relief and joy
+at his coming. But more than that, in these deep vibrant tones was the
+expression of an unquenchable life and spirit. Every fiber of her body
+lived in the fullest sense; he knew this fact the instant that she
+spoke.
+
+She smiled at him, ever so quietly. "Bwovaboo," she said, recalling the
+name by which she called him in her babyhood, "you've come to Linda."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+As the fire burned down to coals and the stars wheeled through the sky,
+Linda told her story. The two of them were seated in the soft grass in
+front of the cabin, and the moonlight was on Linda's face as she talked.
+She talked very low at first. Indeed there was no need for loud tones.
+The whole wilderness world was heavy with silence, and a whisper carried
+far. Besides, Bruce was just beside her, watching her with narrowed
+eyes, forgetful of everything except her story.
+
+It was a perfect background for the savage tale that she had to tell.
+The long shadow of the giant pine tree fell over them. The fire made a
+little circle of red light, but the darkness ever encroached upon it.
+Just beyond the moonlight showed them silver-white patches between the
+trees, across which shadows sometimes wavered from the passing of the
+wild creatures.
+
+"I've waited a long time to tell you this," she told him. "Of course,
+when we were babies together in the orphanage, I didn't even know it. It
+has taken me a long time since to learn all the details; most of them I
+got from my aunt, old Elmira, whom you talked to on the way out. Part of
+it I knew by intuition, and a little of it is still doubtful.
+
+"You ought to know first how hard I have tried to reach you. Of course,
+I didn't try openly except at first--the first years after I came here,
+and before I was old enough to understand." She spoke the last word with
+a curious depth of feeling and a perceptible hardness about her lips and
+eyes. "I remembered just two things. That the man who had adopted you
+was Newton Duncan; one of the nurses at the asylum told me that. And I
+remembered the name of the city where he had taken you.
+
+"You must understand the difficulties I worked under. There is no rural
+free delivery up here, you know, Bruce. Our mail is sent from and
+delivered to the little post-office at Martin's store--over fifteen
+miles from here. And some one member of a certain family that lives near
+here goes down every week to get the mail for the entire district.
+
+"At first--and that was before I really understood--I wrote you many
+letters and gave them to one of this family to mail for me. I was just a
+child then, you must know, and I lived in the same house with these
+people. And queer letters they must have been."
+
+For an instant a smile lingered at her lips, but it seemed to come hard.
+It was all too plain that she hadn't smiled many times in the past days.
+But for some unaccountable reason Bruce's heart leaped when he saw it.
+It had potentialities, that smile. It seemed to light her whole face. He
+was suddenly exultant at the thought that once he understood everything,
+he might bring about such changes that he could see it often.
+
+"They were just baby letters from--from Linda-Tinda to Bwovaboo--letters
+about the deer and the berries and the squirrels--and all the wild
+things that lived up here."
+
+"Berries!" Bruce cried. "I had some on the way up." His tone wavered,
+and he seemed to be speaking far away. "I had some once--long ago."
+
+"Yes. You will understand, soon. I didn't understand why you didn't
+answer my letters. I understand now, though. You never got them."
+
+"No. I never got them. But there are several Duncans in my city. They
+might have gone astray."
+
+"They went astray--but it was before they ever reached the post-office.
+They were never mailed, Bruce. I was to know why, later. Even then it
+was part of the plan that I should never get in communication with you
+again--that you would be lost to me forever.
+
+"When I got older, I tried other tacks. I wrote to the asylum, enclosing
+a letter to you. But those letters were not mailed, either.
+
+"Now we can skip a long time. I grew up. I knew everything at last and
+no longer lived with the family I mentioned before. I came here, to this
+old house--and made it decent to live in. I cut my own wood for my fuel
+except when one of the men tried to please me by cutting it for me. I
+wouldn't use it at first. Oh, Bruce--I wouldn't touch it!"
+
+Her face was no longer lovely. It was drawn with terrible passions. But
+she quieted at once.
+
+"At last I saw plainly that I was a little fool--that all they would do
+for me, the better off I was. At first, I almost starved to death
+because I wouldn't use the food that they sent me. I tried to grub it
+out of the hills. But I came to it at last. But, Bruce, there were many
+things I didn't come to. Since I learned the truth, I have never given
+one of them a smile except in scorn, not a word that wasn't a word of
+hate.
+
+"You are a city man, Bruce. You are what I read about as a gentleman.
+You don't know what hate means. It doesn't live in the cities. But it
+lives up here. Believe me if you ever believed anything--that it lives
+up here. The most bitter and the blackest hate--from birth until death!
+It burns out the heart, Bruce. But I don't know that I can make you
+understand."
+
+She paused, and Bruce looked away into the pine forest. He believed the
+girl. He knew that this grim land was the home of direct and primitive
+emotions. Such things as mercy and remorse were out of place in the game
+trails where the wolf pack hunted the deer.
+
+"When they knew how I hated them," she went on, "they began to watch me.
+And once they knew that I fully understood the situation, I was no
+longer allowed to leave this little valley. There are only two trails,
+Bruce. One goes to Elmira's cabin on the way to the store. The other
+encircles the mountain. With all their numbers, it was easy to keep
+watch of those trails. And they told me what they would do if they found
+me trying to go past."
+
+"You don't mean--they threatened you?"
+
+She threw back her head and laughed, but the sound had no joy in it.
+"Threatened! If you think threats are common up here, you are a greener
+tenderfoot than I ever took you for. Bruce, the law up here is the law
+of force. The strongest wins. The weakest dies. Wait till you see Simon.
+You'll understand then--and you'll shake in your shoes."
+
+The words grated upon him, yet he didn't resent them. "I've seen Simon,"
+he told her.
+
+She glanced toward him quickly, and it was entirely plain that the quiet
+tone in his voice had surprised her. Perhaps the faintest flicker of
+admiration came into her eyes.
+
+"He tried to stop you, did he? Of course he would. And you came anyway.
+May Heaven bless you for it, Bruce!" She leaned toward him, appealing.
+"And forgive me what I said."
+
+Bruce stared at her in amazement. He could hardly realize that this was
+the same voice that had been so torn with passion a moment before. In an
+instant all her hardness was gone, and the tenderness of a sweet and
+wholesome nature had taken its place. He felt a curious warmth stealing
+over him.
+
+"They meant what they said, Bruce. Believe me, if those men can do no
+other thing, they can keep their word. They didn't just threaten death
+to me. I could have run the risk of that. Badly as I wanted to make them
+pay before I died, I would have gladly run that risk.
+
+"You are amazed at the free way I speak of death. The girls you know, in
+the city, don't even know the word. They don't know what it means. They
+don't understand the sudden end of the light--the darkness--the
+cold--the awful fear that it is! It is no companion of theirs, down in
+the city. Perhaps they see it once in a while--but it isn't in their
+homes and in the air and on the trails, like it is here. It's a reality
+here, something to fight against every hour of every day. There are just
+three things to do in the mountains--to live and love and hate. There's
+no softness. There's no middle ground." She smiled grimly. "Let them
+live up here with me--those girls you know--and they'd understand what a
+reality Death is. They'd know it was something to think about and fight
+against. Self-preservation is an instinct that can be forgotten when you
+have a policeman at every corner. But it is ever present here.
+
+"I've lived with death, and I've heard of it, and I've seen it all my
+life. If there hadn't been any other way, I would have seen it in the
+dramas of the wild creatures that go on around me all the time. You'll
+get down to cases here, Bruce--or else you'll run away. These men said
+they'd do worse things to me than kill me--and I didn't dare take the
+risk.
+
+"But once or twice I was able to get word to old Elmira--the only ally I
+had left. She was of the true breed, Bruce. You'll call her a hag, but
+she's a woman to be reckoned with. She could hate too--worse than a
+she-rattlesnake hates the man that killed her mate--and hating is all
+that's kept her alive. You shrink when I say the word. Maybe you won't
+shrink when I'm done. Hating is a thing that gentlefolk don't do--but
+gentlefolk don't live up here. It isn't a land of gentleness. Up here
+there are just men and women, just male and female.
+
+"This old woman tried to get in communication with every stranger that
+visited the hills. You see, Bruce, she couldn't write herself. And the
+one time I managed to get a written message down to her, telling her to
+give it to the first stranger to mail--one of my enemies got it away
+from her. I expected to die that night. I wasn't going to be alive when
+the clan came. The only reason I didn't was because Simon--the greatest
+of them all and the one I hate the most--kept his clan from coming. He
+had his own reasons.
+
+"From then on she had to depend on word of mouth. Some of the men
+promised to send letters to Newton Duncan--but there was more than one
+Newton Duncan--as you say--and possibly if the letters were sent they
+went astray. But at last--just a few weeks ago--she found a man that
+knew you. And it is your story from now on."
+
+They were still a little while. Bruce arose and threw more wood on the
+fire.
+
+"It's only the beginning," he said.
+
+"And you want me to tell you all?" she asked hesitantly.
+
+"Of course. Why did I come here?"
+
+"You won't believe me when I say that I'm almost sorry I sent for you."
+She spoke almost breathlessly. "I didn't know that it would be like
+this. That you would come with a smile on your face and a light in your
+eyes, looking for happiness. And instead of happiness--to find _all
+this_!"
+
+She stretched her arms to the forests. Bruce understood her perfectly.
+She did not mean the woods in the literal sense. She meant the primal
+emotions that were their spirit.
+
+She went on with lowered tones. "May Heaven forgive me if I have done
+wrong to bring you here," she told him. "To show you--all that I have to
+show--you who are a city man and a gentleman. But, Bruce, I couldn't
+fight alone any more. I had to have help.
+
+"To know the rest, you've got to go back a whole generation. Bruce, have
+you heard of the terrible blood-feuds that the mountain families
+sometimes have?"
+
+"Of course. Many times."
+
+"These mountains of Trail's End have been the scene of as deadly a
+blood-feud as was ever known in the West. And for once, the wrong was
+all on one side.
+
+"A few miles from here there is a wonderful valley, where a stream
+flows. There is not much tillable land in these mountains, Bruce, but
+there, along that little stream, there are almost five sections--three
+thousand acres--of as rich land as was ever plowed. And Bruce--the home
+means something in the mountains. It isn't just a place to live in, a
+place to leave with relief. I've tried to tell you that emotions are
+simple and direct up here, and love of home is one of them. That tract
+of land was acquired long ago by a family named Ross, and they got it
+through some kind of grant. I can't be definite as to the legal aspects
+of all this story. They don't matter anyway--only the results remain.
+
+"These Ross men were frontiersmen of the first order. They were virtuous
+men too--trusting every one, and oh! what strength they had! With their
+own hands they cleared away the forest and put the land into rich
+pasture and hay and grain. They built a great house for the owner of the
+land, and lesser houses for his kinsfolk that helped him work it on
+shares. Then they raised cattle, letting them range on the hills and
+feeding them in winter. You see, the snow is heavy in winter, and unless
+the stock are fed many of them die. The Rosses raised great herds of
+cattle and had flocks of sheep too.
+
+"It was then that dark days began to come. Another family--headed by the
+father of the man I call Simon--migrated here from the mountain
+districts of Oklahoma. But they were not so ignorant as many mountain
+people, and they were _killers_. Perhaps that's a word you don't know.
+Perhaps you didn't know it existed. A killer is a man that has killed
+other men. It isn't a hard thing to do at all, Bruce, after you are used
+to it. These people were used to it. And because they wanted these great
+lands--my own father's home--they began to kill the Rosses.
+
+"At first they made no war on the Folgers. The Folgers, you must know,
+were good people too, honest to the last penny. They were connected, by
+marriage only, to the Ross family. They were on our side clear through.
+At the beginning of the feud the head of the Folger family was just a
+young man, newly married. And he had a son after a while.
+
+"The newcomers called it a feud. But it wasn't a feud--it was simply
+murder. Oh, yes, we killed some of them. Folger and my father and all
+his kin united against them, making a great clan--but they were nothing
+in strength compared to the usurpers. Simon himself was just a boy when
+it began. But he grew to be the greatest power, the leader of the enemy
+clan before he was twenty-one.
+
+"You must know, Bruce, that my own father held the land. But he was so
+generous that his brothers who helped him farm it hardly realized that
+possession was in his name. And father was a dead shot. It took a long
+time before they could kill him."
+
+The coldness that had come over her words did not in the least hide her
+depth of feeling. She gazed moodily into the darkness and spoke almost
+in a monotone.
+
+"But Simon--just a boy then--and Dave, his brother, and the others of
+them kept after us like so many wolves. There was no escape. The only
+thing we could do was to fight back--and that was the way we learned to
+hate. A man can hate, Bruce, when he is fighting for his home. He can
+learn it very well when he sees his brother fall dead, or his father--or
+a stray bullet hit his wife. A woman can learn it too, as old Elmira
+did, when she finds her son's body in the dead leaves. There was no law
+here to stop it. The little semblance of law that was in the valleys
+below regarded it as a blood-feud, and didn't bother itself about it.
+Besides--at first we were too proud to call for help. And after our
+numbers were few, the trails were watched--and those who tried to go
+down into the valleys--never got there.
+
+"One after another the Rosses were killed, and I needn't make it any
+worse for you than I can help--by telling of each killing. Enough to say
+that at last no one was left except a few old men whose eyes were too
+dim to shoot straight, and my own father. And I was a baby then--just
+born.
+
+"Then one night my father--seeing the fate that was coming down upon
+him--took the last course to defeat them. Matthew Folger--a connection
+by marriage--was still alive. Simon's clan hadn't attacked him yet. He
+had no share in the land, but instead lived in this house I live in now.
+He had a few cattle and some pasture land farther down the Divide. There
+had been no purpose in killing him. He hadn't been worth the extra
+bullet.
+
+"One night my father left me asleep and stole through the forests to
+talk to him. They made an agreement. I have pieced it out, a little at a
+time. My father deeded all his land to Folger.
+
+"I can understand now. The enemy clan pretended it was a blood-feud
+only--and that it was fair war to kill the Rosses. Although my father
+knew their real aim was to obtain the land, he didn't think they would
+dare kill Matthew Folger to get it. He knew that he himself would fall,
+sooner or later, but he thought that to kill Folger would show their
+cards--and that would be too much, even for Simon's people. But he
+didn't know. He hadn't foreseen to what lengths they would go."
+
+Bruce leaned forward. "So they killed--Matthew Folger?" he asked.
+
+He didn't know that his face had gone suddenly stark white, and that a
+curious glitter had come to his eyes. He spoke breathlessly. For the
+name--Matthew Folger--called up vague memories that seemed to reveal
+great truths to him. The girl smiled grimly.
+
+"Let me go on. My father deeded Folger the land. The deed was to go on
+record so that all the world would know that Folger owned it, and if the
+clan killed him it was plainly for the purposes of greed alone. But
+there was also a secret agreement--drawn up in black and white and to be
+kept hidden for twenty-one years. In this agreement, Folger promised to
+return to me--the only living heir of the Rosses--the lands acquired by
+the deed. In reality, he was only holding them in trust for me, and was
+to return them when I was twenty-one. In case of my father's death,
+Folger was to be my guardian until that time.
+
+"Folger knew the risk he ran, but he was a brave man and he did not
+care. Besides, he was my father's friend--and friendship goes far in the
+mountains. And my father was shot down before a week was past.
+
+"The clan had acted quick, you see. When Folger heard of it, before the
+dawn, he came to my father's house and carried me away. Before another
+night was done he was killed too."
+
+The perspiration leaped out on Bruce's forehead. The red glow of the
+fire was in his eyes.
+
+"He fell almost where this fire is built, with a thirty-thirty bullet in
+his brain. Which one of the clan killed him I do not know--but in all
+probability it was Simon himself--at that time only eighteen years of
+age. And Folger's little boy--something past four years old--wandered
+out in the moonlight to find his father's body."
+
+The girl was speaking slowly now, evidently watching the effect of her
+words on her listener. He was bent forward, and his breath came in
+queer, whispering gusts. "Go on!" he ordered savagely. "Tell me the
+rest. Why do you keep me waiting?"
+
+The girl smiled again,--like a sorceress. "Folger's wife was from the
+plains' country," she told him slowly. "If she had been of the mountains
+she might have remained to do some killing on her own account. Like old
+Elmira herself remained to do--killing on her own account! But she was
+from cities, just as you are, but she--unlike you--had no mountain blood
+in her. She wasn't used to death, and perhaps she didn't know how to
+hate. She only knew how to be afraid.
+
+"They say that she went almost insane at the sight of that strong, brave
+man of hers lying still in the pine needles. She hadn't even known he
+was out of the house. He had gone out on some secret business--late at
+night. She had only one thing left--her baby boy and her little
+foster-daughter--little Linda Ross who is before you now. Her only
+thought was to get those children out of that dreadful land of bloodshed
+and to hide them so that they could never come back. And she didn't even
+want them to know their true parentage. She seemed to realize that if
+they had known, both of them would return some time--to collect their
+debts. Sooner or later, that boy with the Folger blood in him and that
+girl with the Ross blood would return, to attempt to regain their
+ancient holdings, and to make the clan pay!
+
+"All that was left were a few old women with hate in their hearts and a
+strange tradition to take the place of hope. They said that sometime, if
+death spared them, they would see Folger's son come back again, and
+assert his rights. They said that a new champion would arise and right
+their wrongs. But mostly death didn't spare them. Only old Elmira is
+left.
+
+"What became of the secret agreement I do not know. I haven't any hope
+that you do, either. The deed was carried down to the courts by Sharp,
+one of the witnesses who managed to get past the guard, and put on file
+soon after it was written. The rest is short. Simon and his clan took up
+the land, swearing that Matthew Folger had deeded it to them the day he
+had procured it. They had a deed to show for it--a forgery. And the one
+thing that they feared, the one weak chain, was that this secret
+agreement between Folger and my father would be found.
+
+"You see what that would mean. It would show that he had no right to
+deed away the land, as he was simply holding it in trust for me. Old
+Elmira explained the matter to me--if I get mixed up on the legal end
+of it, excuse it. If that document could be found, their forged deed
+would be obviously invalid. And it angered them that they could not find
+it.
+
+"Of course they never filed their forged deed--afraid that the forgery
+would be discovered--but they kept it to show to any one that was
+interested. But they wanted to make themselves still safer.
+
+"There had been two witnesses to the agreement. One of them, a man named
+Sharp, died--or was killed--shortly after. The other, an old trapper
+named Hudson, was indifferent to the whole matter--he was just passing
+through and was at Folger's house for dinner the night Ross came. He is
+still living in these mountains, and he might be of value to us yet.
+
+"Of course the clan did not feel at all secure. They suspected the
+secret agreement had been mailed to some one to take care of, and they
+were afraid that it would be brought to light when the time was ripe.
+They knew perfectly that their forged deed would never stand the test,
+so one of the things to do was to prevent their claim ever being
+contested. That meant to keep Folger's son in ignorance of the whole
+matter.
+
+"I hope I can make that clear. The deed from my father to Folger was on
+record, Folger was dead, and Folger's son would have every right and
+opportunity to contest the clan's claim to the land. If he could get the
+matter into court, he would surely win.
+
+"The second thing to do was to win me over. I was just a child, and it
+looked the easiest course of all. That's why I was stolen from the
+orphanage by one of Simon's brothers. The idea was simply that when the
+time came I would marry one of the clan and establish their claim to the
+land forever.
+
+"Up to a few weeks ago it seemed to me that sooner or later I would win
+out. Bruce, you can't dream what it meant! I thought that some time I
+could drive them out and make them pay, a little, for all they have
+done. But they've tricked me, after all. I thought that I would get word
+to Folger's son, who by inheritance would have a clear title to the
+land, and he, with the aid of the courts, could drive these usurpers
+out. But just recently I've found out that even this chance is all but
+gone.
+
+"Within a few more weeks, they will have been in possession of the land
+for a full twenty years. Through some legal twist I don't understand, if
+a man pays taxes and has undisputed possession of land for that length
+of time, his title is secure. They failed to win me over, but it looks
+as if they had won, anyway. The only way that they can be defeated now
+is for that secret agreement--between my father and Folger--to reappear.
+And I've long ago given up all hope of that.
+
+"There is no court session between now and October thirtieth--when their
+twenty years of undisputed possession is culminated. There seems to be
+no chance to contest them--to make them bring that forged deed into the
+light before that time. We've lost, after all. And only one thing
+remains."
+
+He looked up to find her eyes full upon him. He had never seen such
+eyes. They seemed to have sunk so deep into the flesh about them that
+only lurid slits remained. It was not that her lids were partly down.
+Rather it was because the flesh-sacks beneath them had become charged
+with her pounding blood. The fire's glow was in them and cast a strange
+glamour upon her face. It only added to the strangeness of the picture
+that she sat almost limp, rather than leaning forward in appeal. Bruce
+looked at her in growing awe.
+
+But as the second passed he seemed no longer able to see her plainly.
+His eyes were misted and blurred, but they were empty of tears as
+Linda's own. Rather the focal points of his brain had become seared by a
+mounting flame within himself. The glow of the fire had seemingly spread
+until it encompassed the whole wilderness world.
+
+"What is the one thing that remains?" he asked her, whispering.
+
+She answered with a strange, terrible coldness of tone. "The blood
+atonement," she said between back-drawn lips.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+When the minute hand of the watch in his pocket had made one more
+circuit, both Bruce and Linda found themselves upon their feet. The
+tension had broken at last. Her emotion had been curbed too long. It
+broke from her in a flood.
+
+She seized his hands, and he started at their touch. "Don't you
+understand?" she cried. "You--you--you are Folger's son. You are the boy
+that crept out--under this very tree--to find him dead. All my life
+Elmira and I have prayed for you to come. And what are you going to do?"
+
+Her face was drawn in the white light of the moon. For an instant he
+seemed dazed.
+
+"Do?" he repeated. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
+
+"You don't!" she cried, in infinite scorn. "Are you just clay? Aren't
+you a man? Haven't you got arms to strike with and eyes to see along a
+rifle barrel? Are you a coward--and a weakling; one of your mother's
+blood to run away? Haven't you anything to avenge? I thought you were a
+mountain man--that all your years in cities couldn't take that quality
+away from you! Haven't you any answer?"
+
+He looked up, a strange light growing on his face. "You mean--killing?"
+
+"What else? To kill--never to stop killing--one after another until they
+are gone! Till Simon Turner and the whole Turner clan have paid the
+debts they owe."
+
+Bruce recoiled as if from a blow. "Turner? Did you say Turner?" he asked
+hoarsely.
+
+"Yes. That's the clan's name. I thought you knew."
+
+There was an instant of strange truce. Both stood motionless. The scene
+no longer seemed part of the world that men have come to know in these
+latter years,--a land of cities and homes and peaceful twilights over
+quiet countrysides. The moon was still strange and white in the sky; the
+pines stood tall and dark and sad,--eternal emblems of the wilderness.
+The fire had burned down to a few lurid coals glowing in the gray ashes.
+No longer were these two children of civilization. Their passion had
+swept them back into the immeasurable past; they were simply human
+beings deep in the simplest of human passions. They trembled all over
+with it.
+
+Bruce understood now his unprovoked attack on the little boy when he had
+been taken from the orphanage on trial. The boy had been named Turner,
+and the name had been enough to recall a great and terrible hatred that
+he had learned in earliest babyhood. The name now recalled it again; the
+truth stood clear at last. It was the key to all the mystery of his
+life; it stirred him more than all of Linda's words. In an instant all
+the tragedy of his babyhood was recalled,--the hushed talk between his
+parents, the oaths, the flames in their eyes, and finally the body he
+had found lying so still beneath the pines. It was always the Turners,
+the dread name that had filled his baby days with horror. He hadn't
+understood then. It had been blind hatred,--hatred without understanding
+or self-analysis.
+
+As she watched, his mountain blood mounted to the ascendancy. A strange
+transformation came over him. The gentleness that he had acquired in his
+years of city life began to fall away from him. The mountains were
+claiming him again.
+
+It was not a mental change alone. It was a thing to be seen with the
+unaided eyes. His hand had swept through his hair, disturbing the part,
+and now the black locks dropped down on his forehead, almost to his
+eyes. The whole expression of his face seemed to change. His look of
+culture dropped from him; his eyes narrowed; he looked grotesquely out
+of place in his soft, well-tailored clothes.
+
+But he was quite cold now. His passion was submerged under a steel
+exterior. His voice was cold and hard when he spoke.
+
+"Then you and I are no relation whatever?"
+
+"None."
+
+"But we fight the same fight now."
+
+"Yes. Until we both win--or both die."
+
+Before he could speak again, a strange answer came out of the darkness.
+"Not two of you," a croaking old voice told them. It rose, shrill and
+cracked, from the shadows beyond the fire. They turned, and the
+moonlight showed a bent old figure hobbling toward them.
+
+It was old Elmira, her cane tapping along in front of her; and something
+that caught the moonlight lay in the hollow of her left arm. Her eyes
+still glowed under the grizzled brows.
+
+"Not two, but three," she corrected, in the hollow voice of uncounted
+years. In the magic of the moonlight it seemed quite fitting to both of
+them that she should have come. She was one of the triumvirate; they
+wondered why they had not missed her before. It was farther than she had
+walked in years, but her spirit had kept her up.
+
+She put the glittering object that she carried into Bruce's hands. It
+was a rifle--a repeating breechloader of a famous make and a model of
+thirty years before. It was such a rifle as lives in legend, with sights
+as fine as a razor edge and an accuracy as great as light itself. Loving
+hands had polished it and kept it in perfect condition.
+
+"Matthew Folger's rifle," the old woman explained, "for Matthew Folger's
+son."
+
+And that is how Bruce Folger returned to the land of his birth--as most
+men do, unless death cheats them first--and how he made a pact to pay
+old debts of death.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+THE BLOOD ATONEMENT
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"Men own the day, but the night is ours," is an old saying among the
+wild folk that inhabit the forests of Trail's End. And the saying has
+really deep significances that can't be discerned at one hearing.
+Perhaps human beings--their thoughts busy with other things--can never
+really get them at all. But the mountain lion--purring a sort of queer,
+singsong lullaby to her wicked-eyed little cubs in the lair--and the
+gray wolf, running along the ridges in the mystery of the moon--and
+those lesser hunters, starting with Tuft-ear the lynx and going all the
+way down to that terrible, white-toothed cutthroat, Little Death the
+mink--_they_ know exactly what the saying means, and they know that it
+is true. The only one of the larger forest creatures that doesn't know
+is old Ashur, the black bear (_Ashur_ means black in an ancient tongue,
+just as _Brunn_ means brown, and the common Oregon bear is usually
+decidedly black) and the fact that he doesn't is curious in itself. In
+most ways Ashur has more intelligence than all the others put together;
+but he is also the most indifferent. He is not a hunter; and he doesn't
+care who owns anything as long as there are plenty of bee trees to mop
+out with his clumsy paw, and plenty of grubs under the rotten logs.
+
+The saying originated long and long ago when the world was quite young.
+Before that time, likely enough, the beasts owned both the day and the
+night, and you can imagine them denying man's superiority just as long
+as possible. But they came to it in the end, and perhaps now they are
+beginning to be doubtful whether they still hold dominion over the night
+hours. You can fancy the forest people whispering the saying back and
+forth, using it as a password when they meet on the trails, and trying
+their best to believe it. "Man owns the day but the night is ours," the
+coyotes whisper between sobs. In a world where men have slowly, steadily
+conquered all the wild creatures, killed them and driven them away,
+their one consolation lies in the fact that when the dark comes down
+their old preëminence returns to them.
+
+Of course the saying is ridiculous if applied to cities or perhaps even
+to the level, cleared lands of the Middle West. The reason is simply
+that the wild life is practically gone from these places. Perhaps a
+lowly skunk steals along a hedge on the way to a chicken pen, but he
+quivers and skulks with fear, and all the arrogance of hunting is as
+dead in him as his last year's perfume. And perhaps even the little
+bobwhites, nestling tail to tail, know that it is wholly possible that
+the farmer's son has marked their roost and will come and pot them while
+they sleep. But a few places remain in America where the reign of the
+wild creatures, during the night hours at least, is still supreme. And
+Trail's End is one of them.
+
+It doesn't lie in the Middle West. It is just about as far west as one
+can conveniently go, unless he cares to trace the rivers down to their
+mouths. Neither was it cleared land, nor had its soil ever been turned
+by a plow. The few clearings that there were--such as the great five
+sections of the Rosses--were so far apart that a wolf could run all
+night (and the night-running of a wolf is something not to speak of
+lightly) without passing one. There is nothing but forest,--forest that
+stretches without boundaries, forest to which a great mountain is but a
+single flower in a meadow, forest to make the brain of a timber cruiser
+reel and stagger from sheer higher mathematics. Perhaps man owns these
+timber stretches in the daytime. He can go out and cut down the trees,
+and when they don't choose to fall over on top of him, return safely to
+his cabin at night. He can venture forth with his rifle and kill Ashur
+the black bear and Blacktail the deer, and even old Brother Bill, the
+grand and exalted ruler of the elk lodge. The sound of his feet disturbs
+the cathedral silence of the tree aisles, and his oaths--when the
+treacherous trail gives way beneath his feet--carry far through the
+coverts. But he behaves somewhat differently at night. He doesn't feel
+nearly so sure of himself. The sound of a puma screaming a few dozen
+feet away in the shadows is likely enough to cause an unpleasant
+twitching of the skin of his back. And he feels considerably better if
+there are four stout walls about him. At nighttime, the wild creatures
+come into their own.
+
+Bruce sensed these things as he waited for the day to break. For all the
+hard exertion of the previous day, he wakened early on the first morning
+of his return to his father's home. Through the open window he watched
+the dawn come out. And he fancied how a puma, still hungry, turned to
+snarl at the spreading light as he crept to his lair.
+
+All over the forest the hunting creatures left their trails and crept
+into the coverts. Their reign was done until darkness fell again. The
+night life of the forest was slowly stilled. The daylight
+creatures--such as the birds--began to waken. Probably they welcomed the
+sight of day as much as Bruce himself. The man dressed slowly. He
+wouldn't waken the two women that slept in the next room, he thought. He
+crept slowly out into the gray dawn.
+
+He made straight for the great pine that stood a short distance from the
+house. For reasons unknown to him, the pine had come often into his
+dreams. He had thought that its limbs rubbed together and made
+words,--but of the words themselves he had hardly caught the meaning.
+There was some high message in them, however; and the dream had left him
+with a vague curiosity, an unexplainable desire to see the forest
+monarch in the daylight.
+
+As he waited, the mist blew off of the land; the gray of twilight was
+whisked away to a twilightland that is hidden in the heart of the
+forest. He found to his delight that the tree was even more impressive
+in the vivid morning light than it had been at night. It was not that
+the light actually got into it. Its branches were too thick and heavy
+for that. It still retained its air of eternal secrecy, an impression
+that it knew great mysteries that a thousand philosophers would give
+their lives to learn. He was constantly awed by the size of it. He
+guessed its circumference as about twenty-five feet. The great lower
+limbs were themselves like massive tree trunks. Its top surpassed by
+fifty feet any pine in the vicinity.
+
+As he watched, the sun came up, gleaming first on its tall spire. It
+slowly overtook it. The dusk of its green lightened. Bruce was not a
+particularly imaginative man; but the impression grew that this towering
+tree had an answer for some great question in his own heart,--a question
+that he had never been able to shape into words. He felt that it knew
+the wholly profound secret of life.
+
+After all, it could not but have such knowledge. It was so incredibly
+old; it had seen so much. His mind flew back to some of the dramas of
+human life that had been enacted in its shade, and his imagination could
+picture many more. His own father had lain here dead, shot down by a
+murderer concealed in the distant thicket. It had beheld his own wonder
+when he had found the still form lying in the moonlight; it had seen his
+mother's grief and terror. Wilderness dramas uncounted had been enacted
+beneath it. Many times the mountain lion had crept into its dark
+branches. Many times the bear had grunted beneath it and reached up to
+write a challenge with his claws in its bark. The eyes of Tuft-ear the
+lynx had gleamed from its very top, and the old bull-elk had filed off
+his velvet on the sharp edges of the bark. It had seen savage battles
+between the denizens of the wood; the deer racing by with the wolf pack
+in pursuit. For uncounted years it had stood aloft, above all the
+madness and bloodshed and passion that are the eternal qualities of the
+wilderness, somber, stately, unutterably aloof.
+
+It had known the snows. When the leaves fell and the wind came out of
+the north, it would know them again. For the snow falls for a depth of
+ten feet or more over most of Trail's End. For innumerable winters its
+limbs had been heaped with the white load, the great branches bending
+beneath it. The wind made faint sounds through its branches now, but
+would be wholly silent when the winter snows weighted the limbs. He
+could picture the great, white giant, silent as death, still keeping its
+vigil over the snow-swept wilderness.
+
+Bruce felt a growing awe. The great tree seemed so wise, it gave him
+such a sense of power. The winds had buffeted it in vain. It had endured
+the terrible cold of winter. Generation after generation of the
+creatures who moved on the face of the earth had lived their lives
+beneath it; they had struggled and mated and fought their battles and
+felt their passions, and finally they had died; and still it
+endured,--silent, passionless, full of thoughts. Here was real
+greatness. Not stirring, not struggling, not striving; only standing
+firm and straight and impassive; not taking part, but only watching,
+knowing no passion but only strength,--ineffably patient and calm.
+
+But it was sad too. Such knowledge always brings sadness. It had seen
+too much to be otherwise. The pines are never cheerful trees, like the
+apple that blossoms in spring, or the elm whose leaves shimmer in the
+sunlight; and this great monarch of all the pines was sad as great
+music. In this quality, as well as in its strength, it was the symbol of
+the wilderness itself. But it was more than that. It was the Great
+Sentinel, and in its unutterable impassiveness it was the emblem and
+symbol of even mightier powers. Bruce's full wisdom had not yet come to
+him, so he couldn't name these powers. He only knew that they lived far
+and far above the world and, like the tree itself, held aloof from all
+the passion of Eve and the blood-lust of Cain. Like the pine itself,
+they were patient, impassive, and infinitely wise.
+
+He felt stilled and calmed himself. Such was its influence. And he
+turned with a start when he saw Linda in the doorway.
+
+Her face was calm too in the morning light. Her dark eyes were lighted.
+He felt a curious little glow of delight at the sight of her.
+
+"I've been talking to the pine--all the morning," he told her.
+
+"But it won't talk to you," she answered. "It talks only to the stars."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Bruce and Linda had a long talk while the sun climbed up over the great
+ridges to the east and old Elmira cooked their breakfast. There was no
+passion in their words this morning. They had got down to a basis of
+cold planning.
+
+"Let me refresh my memory about a few of those little things you told
+me," Bruce requested. "First--on what date does the twenty-year
+period--of Turners' possession of the land--expire?"
+
+"On the thirtieth of October, of this year."
+
+"Not very long, is it? Now you understand that on that date they will
+have had twenty years of undisputed possession of the land; they will
+have paid taxes on it that long; and unless their title is proven false
+between now and that date, we can't ever drive them out."
+
+"That's just right."
+
+"And the fall term of court doesn't begin until the fifth of the
+following month."
+
+"Yes, we're beaten. That's all there is to it. Simon told me so the last
+time he talked to me."
+
+"It would be to his interest to have you think so. But Linda--we mustn't
+give up yet. We must try as long as one day remains. The law is full of
+twists; we might find a way to checkmate them, especially if that secret
+agreement should show up. It isn't just enough--to have vengeance. That
+wouldn't put the estate back in your hands; they would have won, after
+all. It seems to me that the first thing to do is to find the trapper,
+Hudson--the one witness that is still alive. You say he witnessed that
+secret agreement between your father and mine."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"His testimony would be invaluable to us. He might be able to prove to
+the court that as my father never owned the land in reality, he couldn't
+possibly have deeded it to the Turners. Do you know where this Hudson
+is?"
+
+"I asked old Elmira last night. She thinks she knows. A man told her he
+had his trap line on the upper Umpqua, and his main headquarters--you
+know that trappers have a string of camps--was at the mouth of Little
+River, that flows into the Umpqua. But it is a long way from here."
+
+Bruce was still a moment. "How far?" he asked.
+
+"Two full days' tramp at the least--barring out accidents. But if you
+think it is best--you can start out to-day."
+
+Bruce was a man who made decisions quickly. He had learned the wisdom of
+it,--that after all the evidence is gathered on each side, a single
+second is all the time that is needed for any kind of decision. Beyond
+that point there is only vacillation. "Then I'll start--right away. Can
+you tell me how to find the trail?"
+
+"I can only tell you to go straight north. Use your watch as a compass
+in the daytime and the North Star at night."
+
+"I didn't suppose that it was wisdom to travel at night."
+
+She looked at him in sudden astonishment. "And where did you learn that
+fact, Bruce?"
+
+The man tried hard to remember. "I don't know. I suppose it was
+something I heard when I was a baby--in these mountains."
+
+"It is one of the first things a mountaineer has to know--to make camp
+at nightfall. You would want to, anyway, Bruce. You've got enough real
+knowledge of the wilderness in you--born in you--to want a camp and a
+fire at night. Besides, the trails are treacherous."
+
+"Then the thing to do is to get ready at once. And then try to bring
+Hudson back with me--down to the valley. After we get there we can see
+what can be done."
+
+Linda smiled rather sadly. "I'm not very hopeful. But he's our last
+chance--and we might as well make a try. There is no hope that the
+secret agreement will show up in these few weeks that remain. We'll get
+your things together at once."
+
+They breakfasted, and after the simple meal was finished, Bruce began to
+pack for the journey. He was very thankful for the months he had spent
+in an army camp. He took a few simple supplies of food: a piece of
+bacon, a little sack of dried venison--that delicious fare that has held
+so many men up on long journeys--and a compact little sack of prepared
+flour. There was no space for delicacies in the little pack. Besides, a
+man forgets about such things on the high trails. Butter, sugar, even
+that ancient friend coffee had to be left behind. He took one little
+utensil for cooking--a small skillet--and Linda furnished him with a
+camp ax and a long-bladed hunting knife. These things (with the
+exception of the knife and ax) he tied up in one heavy, all-wool
+blanket, making a compact pack for carrying on his back.
+
+In his pocket he carried cartridges for the rifle, pipe, tobacco, and
+matches. Linda took the hob-nails out of her own shoes and pounded them
+into his. For there are certain trails in Trail's End that to the
+unnailed shoe are quite like the treadmills of ancient days; the foot
+slips back after every step.
+
+One thing more was needed: tough leggings. The soft flannel trousers had
+not been tailored for wear in the brush coverts. And there is still
+another reason why the mountain men want their ankles covered. In
+portions of Trail's End there are certain rock ledges--gray, strange
+stone heaps blasted by the summer sun--and some of the paths that Bruce
+would take crossed over them. These ledges are the home of a certain
+breed of forest creatures that Bruce did not in the least desire to
+meet. Unlike many of the wild folk, they are not at all particular about
+getting out of the way, and they are more than likely to lash up at a
+traveler's instep. It isn't wise to try to jump out of the way. If a man
+were practiced at dodging lightning bolts he might do it, but not an
+ordinary mortal. For that lunging head is one of the swiftest things in
+the whole swift-moving animal world. And it isn't entirely safe to rely
+on a warning rattle. Sometimes the old king-snake forgets to give it.
+These are the poison people--the gray rattlesnakes that gather in
+mysterious, grim companies on the rocks--and the only safety from them
+is thick covering to the knees that the fangs cannot penetrate.
+
+But the old woman solved this problem with a deer hide that had been
+curing for some seasons on the wall behind the house. Her eyes were
+dimmed with age, her fingers were stiff, but in an astonishingly short
+period of time she improvised a pair of leathern puttees, fastening with
+a strap, that answered the purpose beautifully. The two women walked
+with him, out under the pine.
+
+Bruce shook old Elmira's scrawny hand; then she turned back at once into
+the house. The man felt singularly grateful. He began to credit the old
+woman with a great deal of intuition, or else memories from her own
+girlhood of long and long ago. He _did_ want a word alone with this
+strange girl of the pines. But when Elmira had gone in and the coast was
+clear, it wouldn't come to his lips.
+
+He felt curious conjecturings and wonderment arising within him. He
+couldn't have shaped them into words. It was just that the girl's face
+intrigued him, mystified him, and perhaps moved him a little too. It was
+a frank, clear, girlish face, wonderfully tender of feature, and at
+first her eyes held him most of all. They gave an impression of
+astounding depth. They were quite serious now; and they had a luster
+such as can be seen on cold spring water over dark moss,--and few other
+places on earth.
+
+"It seems strange," he said, "to come here only last night--and then to
+be leaving again."
+
+It seemed to his astonished gaze that her lips trembled ever so
+slightly. "We have been waiting for each other a long time, Bwovaboo,"
+she replied. She spoke rather low, not looking straight at him. "And I
+hate to have you go again so soon."
+
+"But I'll be back--in a few days."
+
+"You don't know. No one ever knows when they start out in these
+mountains. Promise me, Bruce--to keep watch every minute. Remember
+there's nothing--_nothing_--that Simon won't stoop to do. He's like a
+wolf. He has no rules of fighting. He'd just as soon strike from ambush.
+How do I know that you'll ever come back again?"
+
+"But I will." He smiled at her, and his eyes dropped from hers to her
+lips. His heart seemed to miss a beat. He hadn't noticed these lips in
+particular before. The mouth was tender and girlish, its sensitiveness
+scarcely seeming fitting in a child of these wild places. He reached out
+and took her hand.
+
+"Good-by, Linda," he said, smiling.
+
+She smiled in reply, and her old cheer seemed to return to her.
+"Good-by, Bwovaboo. Be careful."
+
+"I'll be careful. And this reminds me of something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That for all the time I've been away--and for all the time I'm going to
+be away now--I haven't done anything more--well, more intimate--than
+shake your hand."
+
+Her answer was to pout out her lips in the most natural way in the
+world. Bruce was usually deliberate in his motions; but all at once his
+deliberation fell away from him. There seemed to be no interlude of time
+between one position and another. His arms went about her, and he kissed
+her gently on the lips.
+
+But it was not at all as they expected. Both had gone into it
+lightly,--a boy-and-girl caress such as is usually not worth thinking
+about twice. He had supposed it would be just like the other kisses he
+had known in his growing-up days: a moment's soft pressure of the lips,
+a moment's delight, and nothing either to regret or rejoice in. But it
+was far more than this, after all. Perhaps because they had been too
+long in one another's thoughts; perhaps--living in a land of hated
+foes--because Linda had not known many kisses, this little caress
+beneath the pine went very straight home indeed to them both. They fell
+apart, both of them suddenly sobered. The girl's eyes were tender and
+lustrous, but startled too.
+
+"Good-by, Linda," he told her.
+
+"Good-by--Bwovaboo," she answered. He turned up the trail past the pine.
+
+He did not know that she stood watching him a long time, her hands
+clasped over her breast.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Miles farther than Linda's cabin, clear beyond the end of the trail that
+Duncan took, past even the highest ridge of Trail's End and in the
+region where the little rivers that run into the Umpqua have their
+starting place, is a certain land of Used to Be. Such a name as that
+doesn't make very good sense to a tenderfoot on the first hearing.
+Perhaps he can never see the real intelligence of it as long as he
+remains a tenderfoot. Such creatures cannot exist for long in the
+silences and the endless ridges and the unbeaten trails of this land;
+they either become woodsmen or have communication with the buzzards.
+
+It isn't a land of the Present Time at all. It is a place that has never
+grown old. When a man passes the last outpost of civilization, and the
+shadows of the unbroken woods drop over him, he is likely to forget that
+the year is nineteen hundred and twenty, and that the day before
+yesterday he had seen an aeroplane passing over his house. It is true
+that in this place he sees winged creatures in the air, seeming masters
+of the aërial tracts, but they are not aëroplanes. Instead they are the
+buzzards, and they are keeping even a closer watch on him than he is on
+them. They know that many things may happen whereby they can get
+acquainted before the morning breaks. The world seems to have kicked off
+its thousand-thousand years as a warm man at night kicks off covers; and
+all things are just as they used to be. It is the Young World,--a world
+of beasts rather than men, a world where the hand of man has not yet
+been felt.
+
+Of course it won't be that way forever. Sometime the forests will fall.
+What will become of the beasts that live in them there is no telling;
+there are not many places left for them to go. But at present it is just
+as savage, just as primitive and untamed as those ancient forests of the
+Young World that a man recalls sometimes in dreams.
+
+On this particular early-September day, the age-old drama of the
+wilderness was in progress. It was the same play that had been enacted
+day after day, year upon year, until the centuries had become too many
+to count, and as usual, there were no human observers. There were no
+hunters armed with rifles waiting on the deer trails to kill some of the
+players. There were no naturalists taking notes that no one will believe
+in the coverts. It was the usual matinée performance; the long, hot day
+was almost at a close. The play would get better later in the evening,
+and really would not be at its best until the moon rose; but it was not
+a comedy-drama even now. Rather it was a drama of untamed passions and
+bloodshed, strife and carnage and lust and rapine; and it didn't,
+unfortunately, have a particularly happy ending. Mother Nature herself,
+sometimes kind but usually cruel, was the producer; she furnished the
+theater, even the spotted costume by which the fawn remained invisible
+in the patches of light and shadow; and she had certain great purposes
+of her own that no man understands. As the play was usually complicated
+with many fatalities, the buzzards were about the only ones to benefit.
+They were the real heroes of the play after all. Everything always
+turned out all right for them. They always triumphed in the end.
+
+The greatest difference between this wilderness drama and the dramas
+that human beings see upon a stage is that one was reality and the other
+is pretense. The players were beasts, not men. The only human being
+anywhere in the near vicinity was the old trapper, Hudson, following
+down his trap line on the creek margin on the way to his camp. It is
+true that two other men, with a rather astounding similarity of purpose,
+were at present coming down two of the long trails that led to the
+region; but as yet the drama was hidden from their eyes. One of these
+two was Bruce, coming from Linda's cabin. One was Dave Turner,
+approaching from the direction of the Ross estates. Turner was much the
+nearer. Curiously, both had business with the trapper Hudson.
+
+The action of the play was calm at first. Mostly the forest creatures
+were still in their afternoon sleep. Brother Bill, the great stag elk,
+had a bed in the very center of a thick wall of buckbush, and human
+observers at first could not have explained how his great body, with his
+vast spread of antlers, had been able to push through. But in reality
+his antlers aided rather than hindered. Streaming almost straight back
+they act something like a snow-plow, parting the heavy coverts.
+
+The bull elk is in some ways the master of the forest, and one would
+wonder why he had gone to such an out-of-the-way place to sleep. Unless
+he is attacked from ambush, he has little to fear even from the Tawny
+One, the great cougar, and ordinarily the cougar waits until night to do
+his hunting. The lynx is just a source of scorn to the great bull, and
+even the timber wolf--except when he is combined with his relatives in
+winter--is scarcely to be feared. Yet he had been careful to surround
+himself with burglar alarms,--in other words, to go into the deep
+thicket that no beast of prey could penetrate without warning him--by
+the sound of breaking brush--of its approach. It would indicate that
+there was at least one living creature in this region--a place where men
+ordinarily did not come--that the bull elk feared.
+
+The does and their little spotted fawns were sleeping too; the blacktail
+deer had not yet sought the feeding grounds on the ridges. The cougar
+yawned in his lair, the wolf dozed in his covert, even the poison-people
+lay like long shadows on the hot rocks. But these latter couldn't be
+relied upon to sleep soundly. One of the many things they can do is to
+jump straight out of a dream like a flicking whiplash, coil and hit a
+mark that many a good pistol shot would miss.
+
+Yet there was no chance of the buzzards, at present spectators in the
+clouds and waiting for the final act, to become bored. Particularly the
+lesser animals of the forest--the Little People--were busy at their
+occupations. A little brown-coated pine marten--who is really nothing
+but an overgrown weasel famous for his particularly handsome coat--went
+stealing through the branches of a pine as if he had rather questionable
+business. Some one had told him, and he couldn't remember who, that a
+magpie had her nest in that same tree, and Red Eye was going to look and
+see. Of course he merely wanted to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps he
+would try to arrange to get a little sip of the mother's blood, just as
+it passed through the big vein of the throat,--but of course that was
+only incidental. He felt some curiosity about the magpie's eggs too, the
+last brood of the year. It might be that there were some little magpies
+all coiled up inside of them, that would be worth investigation by one
+of his scientific turn of mind. Perhaps even the male bird, coming
+frantically to look for his wife, might fly straight into the nest
+without noticing his brown body curled about the limb. It offered all
+kinds of pleasing prospects, this hunt through the branches.
+
+Of course it is doubtful if the buzzards could detect his serpent-like
+form; yet it is a brave man who will say what a buzzard can and cannot
+see. Anything that can remain in the air as they do, seemingly without
+the flutter of a wing, has powers not to speak of lightly. But if they
+could have seen him they would have been particularly interested. A
+marten isn't a glutton in his feeding, and often is content with just a
+sip of blood from the throat. That leaves something warm and still for
+the buzzard's beak.
+
+A long, spotted gopher snake slipped through the dead grass on the
+ground beneath. He didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular. He
+was just moseying--if there is such a word--along. Not a blade of grass
+rustled. Of course there was a chipmunk, sitting at the door of his
+house in the uplifted roots of a tree; but the snake--although he was
+approaching in his general direction--didn't seem at all interested in
+him. Were it not for two things, the serpent would have seemed to be
+utterly bored and indifferent to life in general. One of these things
+was its cold, glittering, reptile eyes. The other was its darting,
+forked tongue.
+
+It may be, after all, that this little tongue was of really great
+importance in the serpent's hunting. Many naturalists think that quite
+often the little, rattle-brained birds and rodents that it hunts are so
+interested in this darting tongue that they quite fail to see the slow
+approach of the mottled body of the snake behind it. At least it was
+perfectly evident that the chipmunk did not see Limber-spine at present.
+Otherwise he wouldn't have been enjoying the scenery with quite the same
+complacency. If all went well, there might be a considerable lump in the
+snake's throat yet this afternoon. But it would be a quite different
+kind of lump from the one the chipmunk's little mate, waiting in vain
+for her lord to come to supper, would have in _her_ throat.
+
+An old raccoon wakened from his place on a high limb, stretched himself,
+scratched at his fur, then began to steal down the limb. He had a long
+way to go before dark. Hunting was getting poor in this part of the
+woods. He believed he would wander down toward Hudson's camp and look
+for crayfish in the water. A coyote is usually listed among the larger
+forest creatures, but early though the hour was--early, that is, for
+hunters to be out--he was stalking a fawn in a covert. The coyote has
+not an especially high place among the forest creatures, and he has to
+do his hunting early and late and any time that offers. Most of the
+larger creatures pick on him, all the time detesting him for his
+cunning. The timber wolf, a rather close relation whom he cordially
+hates, is apt to take bites out of him if he meets him on the trail. The
+old bull elk would like nothing better than to cut his hide into rag
+patches with the sharp-edged front hoofs. Even the magpies in the tree
+tops made up ribald verses about him. But nevertheless the spotted fawn
+had cause to fear him. The coyote is an infamous coward; but even the
+little cotton tail rabbit does not have to fear a fawn.
+
+All these hunts were progressing famously when there came a curious
+interruption. It was just a sound at first. And strangely, not one of
+the forest creatures that heard it had ears sharp enough to tell exactly
+from what direction it had come. And that made it all the more
+unpleasant to listen to.
+
+It was a peculiar growl, quite low at first. It lasted a long time, then
+died away. There was no opposition to it. The forest creatures had
+paused in their tracks at its first note, and now they stood as if the
+winter had come down upon them suddenly and frozen them solid. All the
+other sounds of the forest--the little whispering noises of gliding
+bodies and fluttering feet, and perhaps a bird's call in a shrub--were
+suddenly stilled. There was a moment of breathless suspense. Then the
+sound commenced again.
+
+It was louder this time. It rose and gathered volume until it was almost
+a roar. It carried through the silences in great waves of sound. And in
+it was a sense of resistless power; no creature in the forest but what
+knew this fact.
+
+"The Gray King," one could imagine them saying among themselves. The
+effect was instantaneous. The little raccoon halted in his descent, then
+crept out to the end of a limb. Perhaps he knew that the gray monarch
+could not climb trees, but nevertheless he felt that he would be more
+secure clear at the swaying limb-tip. The marten forgot his curiosity in
+regard to the nest of the magpie. The gopher snake coiled, then slipped
+away silently through the grass.
+
+The coyote, an instant before crawling with body close to the earth,
+whipped about as if he had some strange kind of circular spring inside
+of him. His nerves were always rather ragged, and the sound had
+frightened out of him the rigid control of his muscles that was so
+necessary if he were to make a successful stalk upon the fawn. The
+spotted creature bleated in terror, then darted away; and the coyote
+snarled once in the general direction of the Gray King. Then he lowered
+his head and skulked off deeper into the coverts.
+
+The blacktail deer, the gray wolf, even the stately Tawny One, stretched
+in grace in his lair, wakened from sleep. The languor died quickly in
+the latter's eyes, leaving only fear. These were braver than the Little
+People. They waited until the thick brush, not far distant from where
+the bull elk slept, began to break down and part before an enormous,
+gray body.
+
+No longer would an observer think of the elk as the forest monarch. He
+was but a pretender, after all. The real king had just wakened from his
+afternoon nap and was starting forth to hunt.
+
+Even his little cousins, the black bears (who, after all is said and
+done, furnish most of the comedy of the deadly forest drama) did not
+wait to make conversation. They tumbled awkwardly down the hill to get
+out of his way. For the massive gray form--weighing over half a ton--was
+none other than that of the last of the grizzly bears, that terrible
+forest hunter and monarch, the Killer himself.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Long ago, when Oregon was a new land to white men, in the days of the
+clipper ships and the Old Oregon Trail, the breed to which the Killer
+belonged were really numerous through the little corner north of the
+Siskiyous and west of the Cascades. The land was far different then. The
+transcontinental lines had not yet been built; the only settlements were
+small trading posts and mining camps, and people did not travel over
+paved highways in automobiles. If they went at all it was in a
+prairie-schooner or on horseback. And the old grizzly bears must have
+found the region a veritable heaven.
+
+They were a worthy breed! It is doubtful if any other section of the
+United States offered an environment so favorable to them. Game was in
+abundance, they could venture down into the valleys at the approach of
+winter and thus miss the rigors of the snow, and at first there were no
+human enemies. Unfortunately, stories are likely to grow and become
+sadly addled after many tellings; but if the words of certain old men
+could be believed, the Southern Oregon grizzly occasionally, in the
+bountiful fall days, attained a weight of two thousand pounds. No doubt
+whatever remains that thousand-pound bears were fairly numerous. They
+trailed up and down the brown hillsides; they hunted and honey-grubbed
+and mated in the fall; they had their young and fought their battles and
+died, and once in a long while the skeleton of a frontiersman would be
+found with his skull battered perfectly flat where one of the great
+beasts had taken a short-arm pat at him.
+
+But unlike the little black bears, the grizzlies developed displeasing
+habits. They were much more carnivorous in character than the blacks,
+and their great bodily strength and power enabled them to master all of
+the myriad forms of game in the Oregon woods. By the same token, they
+could take a full-grown steer and carry it off as a woman carries her
+baby.
+
+It couldn't be endured. The cattlemen had begun to settle the valleys,
+and it was either a case of killing the grizzlies or yielding the
+valleys to them. In the relentless war that followed, the breed had been
+practically wiped out. A few of them, perhaps, fled farther and farther
+up the Cascades, finding refuges in the Canadian mountains. Others
+traveled east, locating at last in the Rocky Mountains, and countless
+numbers of them died. At last, as far as the frontiersmen knew, only one
+great specimen remained. This was a famous bear that men called
+Slewfoot,--a magnificent animal that ranged far and hunted relentlessly,
+and no one ever knew just when they were going to run across him. It
+made traveling in the mountains a rather ticklish business. He was apt
+suddenly to loom up, like a gray cliff, at any turn in the trail, and
+his disposition grew querulous with age. In fact, instead of fleeing as
+most wild creatures have learned to do, he was rather likely to make
+sudden and unexpected charges.
+
+He was killed at last; and seemingly the Southern Oregon grizzlies were
+wiped out. But it is rather easy to believe that in some of his
+wanderings he encountered--lost and far in the deepest heart of the land
+called Trail's End--a female of his own breed. There must have been cubs
+who, in their turn, mated and fought and died, and perhaps two
+generations after them. And out of the last brood had emerged a single
+great male, a worthy descendant of his famous ancestor. This was the
+Killer, who in a few months since he had left his fastnesses, was
+beginning to ruin the cattle business in Trail's End.
+
+As he came growling from his bed this September evening he was not a
+creature to speak of lightly. He was down on all fours, his vast head
+was lowered, his huge fangs gleamed in the dark red mouth. The eyes were
+small, and curious little red lights glowed in each of them. The Killer
+was cross; and he didn't care who knew it. He was hungry too; but hunger
+is an emotion for the beasts of prey to keep carefully to themselves. He
+walked slowly across the little glen, carelessly at first, for he was
+too cross and out of temper to have the patience to stalk. He stopped,
+turning his head this way and that, marking the flight of the wild
+creatures. He saw a pair of blacktail bucks spring up from a covert and
+dash away; but he only made one short, angry lunge toward them. He knew
+that it would only cost him his dignity to try to chase them. A grizzly
+bear can move astonishingly fast considering his weight--for a short
+distance he can keep pace with a running horse--but a deer is light
+itself. He uttered one short, low growl, then headed over toward a great
+wall of buckbush at the base of the hill.
+
+But now his hunting cunning had begun to return to him. The sun was
+setting, the pines were growing dusky, and he began to feel the first
+excitement and fever that the fall of night always brings to the beasts
+of prey. It is a feeling that his insignificant cousins, the black
+bears, could not possibly have,--for the sole reason that they are
+berry-eaters, not hunters. But the cougar, stealing down a deer trail on
+the ridge above, and a lean old male wolf--stalking a herd of deer on
+the other side of the thicket--understood it very well. His blood began
+to roll faster through his great veins. The sullen glare grew in his
+eyes.
+
+It was the beginning of the hunting hour of the larger creatures. All
+the forest world knew it. The air seemed to throb and tingle, the
+shadowing thickets began to pulse and stir with life. The Fear--the
+age-old heritage of all the hunted creatures--returned to the deer.
+
+The Killer moved quite softly now. One would have marveled how silently
+his great feet fell upon the dry earth and with what slight sound his
+heavy form moved through the thickets. Once he halted, gazing with
+reddening eyes. But the coyote--the gray figure that had broken a twig
+on the trail beside him--slipped quickly away.
+
+He skirted the thicket, knowing that no successful stalk could be made
+where he had to force his way through dry brush. He moved slowly,
+cautiously--all the time mounting farther up the little hill that rose
+from the banks of the stream. He came to an opening in the thicket, a
+little brown pathway that vanished quickly into the shadows of the
+coverts.
+
+The Killer slipped softly into the heavy brush just at its mouth. It was
+his ambush. Soon, he knew, some of the creatures that had bowers in the
+heart of the thicket would be coming along that trail toward the feeding
+grounds on the ridge. He only had to wait.
+
+As the shadows grew and the twilight deepened, the undercurrent of
+savagery that is the eternal quality of the wilderness grew ever more
+pronounced. A thrill and fever came in the air, mystery in the deepening
+shadows, and brighter lights into the eyes of the hunting folk. The dusk
+deepened between the trees; the distant trunks dimmed and faded quite
+away. The stars emerged. The nightwind, rising somewhere in the region
+of the snow banks on the highest mountains, blew down into the Killer's
+face and brought messages that no human being may ever receive. Then his
+sharp ears heard the sound of brush cracked softly as some one of the
+larger forest creatures came up the trail toward him.
+
+The steps drew nearer and the Killer recognized them. They were plainly
+the soft footfall of some member of the deer tribe, yet they were too
+pronounced to be the step of any of the lesser deer. The bull elk had
+left his bed. The red eyes of the grizzly seemed to glow as he waited.
+Great though the stag was, only one little blow of the massive forearm
+would be needed. The huge fangs would have to close down but once. The
+long, many-tined antlers, the sharp front hoofs would not avail him in a
+surprise attack such as this would be. Best of all, he was not
+suspecting danger. He was walking down wind, so that the pungent odor of
+the bear was blown away from him.
+
+The bear did not move a single telltale muscle. He scarcely breathed.
+And the one movement that there was was such that not even the keen ears
+of an elk could discern, just a curious erection of the gray hairs on
+his vast neck.
+
+The bull was almost within striking range now. The wicked red eyes could
+already discern the dimmest shadow of his outline through the thickets.
+But all at once he stopped, head lifting.
+
+Perhaps a grizzly bear does not have mental processes as human
+beings know them. Perhaps all impulse is the result of instinct
+alone,--instinct tuned and trained to a degree that human beings find
+hard to imagine. But if the bear couldn't understand the sudden halt
+just at the eve of his triumph, at least he felt growing anger. He knew
+perfectly that the elk had neither detected his odor nor heard him, and
+he had made no movements that the sharp eyes could detect. Just a
+glimpse of gray in the heavy brush would not have been enough in itself
+to arouse the stag's suspicions. For the lower creatures are rarely able
+to interpret outline alone; there must be movement too.
+
+Yet the bull was evidently alarmed. He stood immobile, one foot lifted,
+nostrils open, head raised. Then, the wind blowing true, the grizzly
+understood.
+
+A pungent smell reached him from below,--evidently the smell of a living
+creature that followed the trail along the stream that flowed through
+the glen. He recognized it in an instant. He had detected it many times,
+particularly when he went into the cleared lands to kill cattle. It was
+man, an odor almost unknown in this lonely glen. Dave Turner, brother of
+Simon, was walking down the stream toward Hudson's camp.
+
+The elk was widely traveled too, and he also realized the proximity of
+man. But his reaction was entirely different. To the grizzly it was an
+annoying interruption to his hunt; and a great flood of rage swept over
+him. It seemed to him that these tall creatures were always crossing his
+path, spoiling his hunting, even questioning his rule of the forests.
+They did not seem to realize that he was the wilderness king, and that
+he could break their slight forms in two with one blow of his paw. It
+was true that their eyes had strange powers to disquiet him; but his
+isolation in the fastnesses of Trail's End had kept him from any full
+recognition of their real strength, and he was unfortunately lacking in
+the awe with which most of the forest creatures regard them. But to the
+elk this smell was Fear itself. He knew the ways of men only too well.
+Too many times he had seen members of his herd fall stricken at a word
+from the glittering sticks they carried in their hands. He uttered a
+far-ringing snort.
+
+It was a distinctive sound, beginning rather high on the scale as a loud
+whistle and descending into a deep bass bawl. And the Killer knew
+perfectly what that sound meant. It was a simple way of saying that the
+elk would progress no further down _that_ trail. The bear leaped in wild
+fury.
+
+A growl that was more near a puma-like snarl came from between the bared
+teeth, and the great body lunged out with incredible speed. Although the
+distance was far, the charge was almost a success. If one second had
+intervened before the elk saw the movement, if his muscles had not been
+fitted out with invisible wings, he would have fought no more battles
+with his herd brethren in the fall. The bull seemed to leap straight up.
+His muscles had been set at his first alarm from Turner's smell on the
+wind, and they drove forth the powerful limbs as if by a powder
+explosion. He was full in the air when the forepaws battered down where
+he had been. Then he darted away into the coverts.
+
+The grizzly knew better than to try to overtake him. Almost rabid with
+wrath he turned back to his ambush.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Simon Turner had given Dave very definite instructions concerning his
+embassy to Hudson. They were given in the great house that Simon
+occupied, in the same room, lighted by the fire's glow, from which
+instructions had gone out to the clan so many times before. "The first
+thing this Bruce will do," Simon had said, "is to hunt up Hudson--the
+one living man that witnessed that agreement between Ross and old
+Folger. One reason is that he'll want to verify Linda's story. The next
+is to persuade the old man to go down to the courts with him as his
+witness. And what you have to do is line him up on our side first."
+
+Dave had felt Simon's eyes upon him, so he didn't look straight up. "And
+that's what the hundred is for?" he asked.
+
+"Of course. Get the old man's word that he'll tell Bruce he never
+witnessed any such agreement. Maybe fifty dollars will do it; the old
+trapper is pretty hard up, I reckon. He'd make us a lot of trouble if
+Bruce got him as a witness."
+
+"You think--" Dave's eyes wandered about the room, "you think that's the
+best way?"
+
+"I wouldn't be tellin' you to do it if I didn't think so." Simon
+laughed,--a sudden, grim syllable. "Dave, you're a blood-thirsty devil.
+I see what you're thinking of--of a safer way to keep him from telling.
+But you know the word I sent out. 'Go easy!' That's the wisest course to
+follow at present. The valley people pay more attention to such things
+than they used to; the fewer the killings, the wiser we will be. If
+he'll keep quiet for the hundred let him have it in peace."
+
+Dave hadn't forgotten. But his features were sharper and more ratlike
+than ever when he came in sight of Hudson's camp, just after the fall of
+darkness of the second day out. The trapper was cooking his simple
+meal,--a blue grouse frying in his skillet, coffee boiling, and flapjack
+batter ready for the moment the grouse was done. He was kneeling close
+to the coals; the firelight cast a red glow over him, and the picture
+started a train of rather pleasing conjectures in Dave's mind.
+
+He halted in the shadows and stood a moment watching. After all he
+wasn't greatly different from the wolf that watched by the deer trail or
+the Killer in his ambush, less than a mile distant in the glen. The same
+strange, dark passion that was over them both was over him also. One
+could see it in the almost imperceptible drawing back of his dark lips
+over his teeth. There was just a hint of it in the lurid eyes.
+
+Dave's thought returned to the hundred dollars in his pocket,--a good
+sum in the hills. A brass rifle cartridge, such as he could fire in the
+thirty-thirty that he carried in the hollow of his arm, cost only about
+six cents. The net gain would be--the figures flew quickly through his
+mind--ninety-nine dollars and ninety-four cents; quite a good piece of
+business for Dave. But the trouble was that Simon might find out.
+
+It was not, he remembered, that Simon was adverse to this sort of
+operation when necessary. Perhaps the straight-out sport of the thing
+meant more to him than to Dave; he was a braver man and more primitive
+in impulse. There were certain memory pictures in Dave's mind of this
+younger, more powerful brother of his; and he smiled grimly when he
+recalled them. They had been wild, strange scenes of long ago, usually
+in the pale light of the moon, and he could recall Simon's face with
+singular clearness. There had always been the same drawing back of the
+lips, the same gusty breathing, the same strange little flakes of fire
+in the savage eyes. He had always trembled all over too, but not from
+fear; and Dave remembered especially well the little drama outside
+Matthew Folger's cabin in the darkness. He was no stranger to the blood
+madness, this brother of his, and the clan had high hopes for him even
+in his growing days. And he had fulfilled those hopes. Never could the
+fact be doubted! He could still make a fresh notch in his rifle stock
+with the same rapture. But the word had gone out, for the present at
+least, to "go easy." Such little games as occurred to Dave now--as he
+watched the trapper in the firelight with one hundred dollars of the
+clan's money in his own pocket--had been prohibited until further
+notice.
+
+The thing looked so simple that Dave squirmed all over with annoyance.
+It hurt him to think that the hundred dollars that he carried was to be
+passed over, without a wink of an eye, to this bearded trapper; and the
+only return for it was to be a promise that Hudson would not testify in
+Bruce's behalf. And a hundred dollars was real money! It was to be
+thought of twice. On the other hand, it would be wholly impossible for
+one that lies face half-buried in the pine needles beside a dead fire to
+make any kind of testimony whatsoever. It would come to the same thing,
+and the hundred dollars would still be in his pocket. Just a little
+matter of a single glance down his rifle barrel at the figure in the
+silhouette of the fire glow--and a half-ounce of pressure on the hair
+trigger. Half jesting with himself, he dropped on one knee and raised
+the weapon. The trapper did not guess his presence. The blood leaped in
+Dave's veins.
+
+It would be so easy; the drawing back of the hammer would be only the
+work of a second; and an instant's peering through the sights was all
+that would be needed further. His body trembled as if with passion, as
+he started to draw back the hammer.
+
+But he caught himself with a wrench. He had a single second of vivid
+introspection; and what he saw filled his cunning eyes with wonder.
+There would have been no holding back, once the rifle was cocked and he
+saw the man through the sights. The blood madness would have been too
+strong to resist. He felt as might one who, taking a few injections of
+morphine on prescription, finds himself inadvertently with a loaded
+needle in his hands. He knew a moment of remorse--so overwhelming that
+it was almost terror--that the shedding of blood had become so easy to
+him. He hadn't known how easy it had been to learn. He didn't know that
+a vice is nothing but a lust that has been given free play so many times
+that the will can no longer restrain it.
+
+But the sight of Hudson's form, sitting down now to his meal, dispelled
+his remorse quickly. After all, his own course would have been the
+simplest way to handle the matter. There would be no danger that Hudson
+would double-cross them then. But he realized that Simon had spoken true
+when he said that the old days were gone, that the arm of the law
+reached farther than formerly, and it might even stretch to this far
+place. He remembered Simon's instructions. "The quieter we can do these
+things, the better," the clan leader had said. "If we can get through to
+October thirtieth with no killings, the safer it is for us. We don't
+know how the tenderfeet in the valley are going to act--there isn't the
+same feeling about blood-feuds that there used to be. Go easy, Dave.
+Sound this Hudson out. If he'll keep still for a hundred, let him have
+it in peace."
+
+Dave slipped his rifle into the hollow of his arm and continued on down
+the trail. He didn't try to stalk. In a moment Hudson heard his step and
+looked up. They met in a circle of firelight.
+
+It is not the mountain way to fraternize quickly, nor are the mountain
+men quick to show astonishment. Hudson had not seen another human being
+since his last visit to the settlements. Yet his voice indicated no
+surprise at this visitation.
+
+"Howdy," he grunted.
+
+"Howdy," Dave replied. "How about grub?"
+
+"Help yourself. Supper just ready."
+
+Dave helped himself to the food of the man that, a moment before, he
+would have slain; and in the light of the high fire that followed the
+meal, he got down to the real business of the visit.
+
+Dave knew that a fairly straight course was best. It was general
+knowledge through the hills that the Turners had gouged the Rosses of
+their lands and it was absurd to think that Hudson did not realize the
+true state of affairs. "I suppose you've forgotten that little deed you
+witnessed between old Mat Folger and Ross--twenty years ago," Dave began
+easily, his pipe between his teeth.
+
+Hudson turned with a cunning glitter in his eyes. Dave saw it and grew
+bolder. "Who wants me to forget it?" Hudson demanded.
+
+"I ain't said that anybody wants you to," Dave responded. "I asked if
+you had."
+
+Hudson was still a moment, stroking absently his beard. "If you want to
+know," he said, "I ain't forgotten. But there wasn't just a deed. There
+was an agreement too."
+
+Dave nodded. Hudson's eyes traveled to his rifle,--for the simple reason
+that he wanted to know just how many jumps he would be obliged to make
+to reach it in case of emergencies. Such things are good to know in
+meetings like this.
+
+"I know all about that agreement," Dave confessed.
+
+"You do, eh? So do I. I ain't likely to forget."
+
+Dave studied him closely. "What good is it going to do you to remember?"
+he demanded.
+
+"I ain't saying that it's going to do me any good. At present I ain't
+got nothing against the Turners. They've always been all right to me.
+What's between them and the Rosses is past and done--although I know
+just in what way Folger held that land and no transfer from him to you
+was legal. But that's all part of the past. As long as the Turners
+continue to be my friends I don't see why anything should be said about
+it."
+
+Dave did not misunderstand him. He didn't in the least assume that these
+friendly words meant that he could go back to the ranches with the
+hundred dollars still in his pocket. It meant merely that Hudson was
+open to reason and it wouldn't have to be a shooting affair.
+
+Dave speculated. It was wholly plain that the old man had not yet heard
+of Bruce's return. There was no need to mention him. "We're glad you are
+our friend," Dave went on. "But we don't expect no one to stay friends
+with us unless they benefit to some small extent by it. How many furs do
+you hope to take this year?"
+
+"Not enough to pay to pack out. Maybe two hundred dollars in bounties
+before New Year--coyotes and wolves. Maybe a little better in the three
+months following in furs."
+
+"Then maybe fifty or seventy-five dollars, without bothering to set the
+traps, wouldn't come in so bad."
+
+"It wouldn't come in bad, but it doesn't buy much these days. A hundred
+would do better."
+
+"A hundred it is," Dave told him with finality.
+
+The eyes above the dark beard shone in the firelight. "I'd forget I had
+a mother for a hundred dollars," he said. He watched, greedily, as
+Dave's gaunt hand went into his pocket. "I'm gettin' old, Dave. Every
+dollar is harder for me to get. The wolves are gettin' wiser, the mink
+are fewer. There ain't much that I wouldn't do for a hundred dollars
+now. You know how it is."
+
+Yes, Dave knew. The money changed hands. The fire burned down. They sat
+a long time, deep in their own thoughts.
+
+"All we ask," Dave said, "is that you don't take sides against us."
+
+"I'll remember. Of course you want me, in case I'm ever subpoenaed, to
+recall signing the deed itself."
+
+"Yes, we'd want you to testify to that."
+
+"Of course. If there hadn't been any kind of a deed, Folger couldn't
+have deeded the property to you. But how would it be, if any one asks me
+about it, to swear that there _never was_ no secret agreement, but a
+clear transfer; and to make it sound reasonable for me to say--to say
+that Ross was forced to deed the land to Folger because he'd had
+goings-on with Folger's wife, and Folger was about to kill him?"
+
+The only response, at first, was the slightest, almost imperceptible
+narrowing of Dave's eyes. He had considerable native cunning, but such
+an idea as this had never occurred to him. But he was crafty enough to
+see its tremendous possibilities at once. All that either Simon or
+himself had hoped for was that the old man would not testify in Bruce's
+behalf. But he saw that such a story, coming from the apparently honest
+old trapper, might have a profound effect upon Bruce. Dave understood
+human nature well enough to know that he would probably lose faith in
+the entire enterprise. To Bruce it had been nothing but an old woman's
+story, after all; it was wholly possible that he would relinquish all
+effort to return the lands to Linda Ross. Men always can believe
+stranger things of sex than any other thing; Bruce would in all
+probability find Hudson's story much more logical than the one Linda had
+told him under the pine. It was worth one hundred dollars, after all.
+
+"I'll bet you could make him swallow it, hook, bait, and sinker," Dave
+responded at last, flattering. They chuckled together in the darkness.
+Then they turned to the blankets.
+
+"I'll show you another trail out to-morrow," Hudson told him. "It comes
+into the glen that you passed to-night--the canyon that the Killer has
+been using lately for a hunting ground."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The Killer had had an unsuccessful night. He had waited the long hours
+through at the mouth of the trail, but only the Little People--such as
+the rabbits and similar folk that hardly constituted a single bite in
+his great jaws--had come his way. Now it was morning and it looked as if
+he would have to go hungry.
+
+The thought didn't improve his already doubtful mood. He wanted to
+growl. The only thing that kept him from it was the realization that it
+would frighten away any living creature that might be approaching toward
+him up the trail. He started to stretch his great muscles, intending to
+leave his ambush. But all at once he froze again into a lifeless gray
+patch in the thickets.
+
+There were light steps on the trail. Again they were the steps of
+deer,--but not of the great, wary elk this time. Instead it was just a
+fawn, or a yearling doe at least, such a creature as had not yet learned
+to suspect every turn in the trail. The morning light was steadily
+growing, the stars were all dimmed or else entirely faded in the sky,
+and it would have been highly improbable that a full-grown buck in his
+wisdom would draw within leaping range without detecting him. But he
+hadn't the slightest doubt about the fawn. They were innocent
+people,--and their flesh was very tender. The forest gods had been good
+to him, after all.
+
+He peered through the thickets, and in a moment more he had a glimpse of
+the spotted skin. It was almost too easy. The fawn was stealing toward
+him with mincing steps--as graceful a creature as dwelt in all this
+wilderness world of grace--and its eyes were soft and tender as a
+girl's. It was evidently giving no thought to danger, only rejoicing
+that the fearful hours of night were done. The mountain lion had already
+sought its lair. The fawn didn't know that a worse terror still lingered
+at the mouth of the trail.
+
+But even as the Killer watched, the prize was simply taken out of his
+mouth. A gray wolf--a savage old male that also had just finished an
+unsuccessful hunt--had been stealing through the thickets in search of a
+lair, and he came out on the trail not fifty feet distant, halfway
+between the bear and the fawn. The one was almost as surprised as the
+other. The fawn turned with a frightened bleat and darted away; the wolf
+swung into pursuit.
+
+The bear lunged forward with a howl of rage. He leaped into the trail
+mouth, then ran as fast as he could in pursuit of the running wolf. He
+was too enraged to stop to think that a grizzly bear has never yet been
+able to overtake a wolf, once the trim legs got well into action. At
+first he couldn't think about anything; he had been cheated too many
+times. His first impulse was one of tremendous and overpowering
+wrath,--a fury that meant death to the first living creature that he
+met.
+
+But in a single second he realized that this wild chase was fairly good
+tactics, after all. The chances for a meal were still rather good. The
+fawn and the wolf were in the open now, and it was wholly evident that
+the gray hunter would overtake the quarry in another moment. It was true
+that the Killer would miss the pleasure of slaying his own game,--the
+ecstatic blow to the shoulder and the bite to the throat that followed
+it. In this case, the wolf would do that part of the work for him. It
+was just a simple matter of driving the creature away from his dead.
+
+The fawn reached the stream bank, then went bounding down the margin.
+The distance shortened between them. It was leaping wildly, already
+almost exhausted; the wolf raced easily, body close to the ground, in
+long, tireless strides. The grizzly bear sped behind him.
+
+But at that instant fate took a hand in this merry little chase. To the
+fawn, it was nothing but a sharp clang of metal behind him and an
+answering shriek of pain,--sounds that in its terror it heard but dimly.
+But it was an unlooked-for and tragic reality to the wolf. His leap was
+suddenly arrested in mid-air, and he was hurled to the ground with
+stunning force. Cruel metal teeth had seized his leg, and a strong chain
+held him when he tried to escape. He fought it with desperate savagery.
+The fawn leaped on to safety.
+
+But there was no need of the grizzly continuing its pursuit. Everything
+had turned out quite well for him, after all. A wolf is ever so much
+more filling than any kind of seasonal fawn; and the old gray pack
+leader was imprisoned and helpless in one of Hudson's traps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the first gray of morning, Dave Turner started back toward his home.
+"I'll go with you to the forks in the trail," Hudson told him. "I want
+to take a look at some of my traps, anyhow."
+
+Turner had completed his business none too soon. At the same hour--as
+soon as it was light enough to see--Bruce was finishing his breakfast in
+preparation for the last lap of his journey. He had passed the night by
+a spring on a long ridge, almost in eye range of Hudson's camp. Now he
+was preparing to dip down into the Killer's glen.
+
+Turner and Hudson followed up the little creek, walking almost in
+silence. It is a habit all mountain men fall into, sooner or later,--not
+to waste words. The great silences of the wild places seem to forbid it.
+Hudson walked ahead, Turner possibly a dozen feet behind him. And
+because of the carpet of pine needles, the forest creatures could hardly
+hear them come.
+
+Occasionally they caught glimpses of the wild life that teemed about
+them, but they experienced none of the delight that had made the two-day
+tramp such a pleasure to Bruce. Hudson thought in terms of pelts only;
+no creature that did not wear a marketable hide was worth a glance.
+Turner did not feel even this interest.
+
+The first of Hudson's sets proved empty. The second was about a turn in
+the creek, and a wall of brush made it impossible for him to tell at a
+distance whether or not he had made a catch. But when still a quarter of
+a mile distant, Hudson heard a sound that he thought he recognized. It
+was a high, sharp, agonized bark that dimmed into a low whine. "I
+believe I've got a coyote or a wolf up there," he said. They hastened
+their steps.
+
+"And you use that little pea-gun for wolves?" Dave Turner asked. He
+pointed to the short-barreled, twenty-two caliber rifle that was slung
+on the trapper's back. "It doesn't look like it would kill a mosquito."
+
+"A killer gun," Hudson explained. "For polishin' 'em off when they are
+alive in the traps. Of course, it wouldn't be no good more'n ten feet
+away, and then you have to aim at a vital spot. But I've heard tell of
+animals I wouldn't want to meet with that thirty-thirty of yours."
+
+This was true enough. Dave had heard of them also. A thirty-thirty is a
+powerful weapon, but it isn't an elephant gun. They hurried on, Dave
+very anxious to watch the execution that would shortly ensue if whatever
+animal had cried from the trap was still alive. Such things were only
+the day's work to Hudson, but Dave felt a little tingle of anticipation.
+And the thought damned him beyond redemption.
+
+But instead of the joy of killing a cowering, terror-stricken animal,
+helpless in the trap, the wilderness had made other plans for Hudson and
+Dave. They hastened about the impenetrable wall of brush, and in one
+glance they knew that more urgent business awaited them.
+
+The whole picture loomed suddenly before their eyes. There was no wolf
+in the trap. The steel had sprung, certainly, but only a hideous
+fragment of a foot remained between the jaws. The bone had been broken
+sharply off, as a man might break a match in his fingers. There was no
+living wolf for Hudson to execute with his killer gun. Life had gone out
+of the gray body many minutes before. The two men saw all these things
+as a background only,--dim details about the central figure. But the
+thing that froze them in their tracks with terror was the great, gray
+form of the Killer, not twenty feet distant, beside the mangled body of
+the wolf.
+
+The events that followed thereafter came in such quick succession as to
+seem simultaneous. For one fraction of an instant all three figures
+stood motionless, the two men staring, the grizzly half-leaning over his
+prey, his head turned, his little red eyes full of hatred. Too many
+times this night he had missed his game. It was the same intrusion that
+had angered him before,--slight figures to break to pieces with one
+blow. Perhaps--for no man may trace fully the mental processes of
+animals--his fury fully transcended the fear that he must have
+instinctively felt; at least, he did not even attempt to flee. He
+uttered one hoarse, savage note, a sound in which all his hatred and his
+fury and his savage power were made manifest, whirled with incredible
+speed, and charged.
+
+The lunge seemed only a swift passing of gray light. No eye could
+believe that the vast form could move with such swiftness. There was
+little impression of an actual leap. Rather it was just a blow; the
+great form, huddled over the dead wolf, had simply reached the full
+distance to Hudson.
+
+The man did not even have time to turn. There was no defense; his
+killer-gun was strapped on his back, and even if it had been in his
+hands, its little bullet would not have mattered the sting of a bee in
+honey-robbing. The only possible chance of breaking that deadly charge
+lay in the thirty-thirty deer rifle in Dave's arms; but the craven who
+held it did not even fire. He was standing just below the outstretched
+limb of a tree, and the weapon fell from his hands as he swung up into
+the limb. The fact that Hudson stood weaponless, ten feet away in the
+clearing, did not deter him in the least.
+
+No human flesh could stand against that charge. The vast paw fell with
+resistless force; and no need arose for a second blow. The trapper's
+body was struck down as if felled by a meteor, and the power of the
+impact forced it deep into the carpet of pine needles. The savage
+creature turned, the white fangs caught the light in the open mouth. The
+head lunged toward the man's shoulder.
+
+No man may say what agony Hudson would have endured in the last few
+seconds of his life if the Killer had been given time and opportunity.
+His usual way was to linger long, sharp fangs closing again and again,
+until all living likeness was destroyed. The blood-lust was upon him;
+there would have been no mercy to the dying creature in the pine
+needles. Yet it transpired that Hudson's flesh was not to know those
+rending fangs a second time. Although it is an unfamiliar thing in the
+wilderness, the end of Hudson's trail was peaceful, after all.
+
+On the hillside above, a stranger to this land had dropped to his knee
+in the shrubbery, his rifle lifted to the level of his eyes. It was
+Bruce, who had come in time to see the charge through a rift in the
+trees.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+There were deep significances in the fact that Bruce kept his head in
+this moment of crisis. It meant nothing less than an iron self-control
+such as only the strongest men possess, and it meant nerves steady as
+steel bars.
+
+The bear was on Hudson, and the man had gone down, before Bruce even
+interpreted him. Then it was just a gray patch, a full three hundred
+yards away. His instinct was to throw the gun to his shoulder and fire
+without aiming; yet he conquered it with an iron will. But he did move
+quickly. He dropped to his knee the single second that the gun leaped to
+his shoulder. He seemed to know that from a lower position the target
+would be more clearly revealed. The finger pressed back against the
+trigger.
+
+The distance was far; Bruce was not a practiced rifle shot, and it
+bordered on the miraculous that his lead went anywhere near the bear's
+body. And it was true that the bullet did not reach a vital place. It
+stung like a wasp at the Killer's flank, however, cutting a shallow
+flesh wound. But it was enough to take his dreadful attention from the
+mortally wounded trapper in the pine needles.
+
+He whirled about, growling furiously and biting at the wound. Then he
+stood still, turning his gaze first to the pale face of Dave Turner
+thirty feet above him in the pine. The eyes glowed in fury and hatred.
+He had found men out at last; they died even more easily than the fawn.
+He started to turn back to the fallen, and the rifle spoke again.
+
+It was a complete miss, this time; yet the bear leaped in fear when the
+bullet thwacked into the dust beside him. He did not wait for a third.
+His caution suddenly returning to him, and perhaps his anger somewhat
+satiated by the blow he had dealt Hudson, he crashed into the security
+of the thicket.
+
+Bruce waited a single instant, hoping for another glimpse of the
+creature; then ran down to aid Hudson. But in driving the bear from the
+trapper's helpless body he had already given all the aid that he could.
+Understanding came quickly. He had arrived only in time for the
+Departure,--just a glimpse of a light as it faded. The blow had been
+more than any human being could survive; even now Hudson was entering
+upon that strange calm which often, so mercifully, immediately precedes
+death.
+
+He opened his eyes and looked with some wonder into Bruce's face. The
+light in them was dimming, fading like a twilight, yet there was
+indication of neither confusion nor delirium. Hudson, in that last
+moment of his life, was quite himself.
+
+There was, however, some indication of perplexity at the peculiar turn
+affairs had taken. "You're not Dave Turner," he said wonderingly.
+
+Dim though the voice was, there was considerable emphasis in the tone.
+Hudson seemed quite sure of this point, whether or not he knew anything
+concerning the dark gates he was about to enter. He wouldn't have spoken
+greatly different if he had been sitting in perfect health before his
+own camp fire and the shadow was now already so deep his eyes could
+scarcely penetrate it.
+
+"No," Bruce answered. "Dave Turner is up a tree. He didn't even wait to
+shoot."
+
+"Of course he wouldn't." Hudson spoke with assurance. The words dimmed
+at the end, and he half-closed his eyes as if he were too sleepy to stay
+awake longer. Then Bruce saw a strange thing. He saw, unmistakable as
+the sun in the sky, the signs of a curious struggle in the man's face.
+There was a singular deepening of the lines, a twitching of the muscles,
+a queer set to the lips and jaws. They were as much signs of battle as
+the sound of firing a general hears from far away.
+
+The trapper--a moment before sinking into the calm of death--was
+fighting desperately for a few moments of respite. There could be no
+other explanation. And he won it at last,--an interlude of half a dozen
+breaths. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+Bruce bowed his head until his ear was close to the lips. "Bruce
+Folger," he answered,--for the first time in his knowledge speaking his
+full name. "Son of Matthew Folger who lived at Trail's End long ago."
+
+The man still struggled. "I knew it," he said. "I saw it--in your face.
+I see--everything now. Listen--can you hear me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I just did a wrong--there's a hundred dollars in my pocket that I just
+got for doing it. I made a promise--to lie to you. Take the money--it
+ought to be yours, anyway--and hers; and use it toward fighting the
+wrong. It will go a little way."
+
+"Yes," Bruce looked him full in the eyes. "No matter about the money.
+What did you promise Turner?"
+
+"That I'd lie to you. Grip my arms with your hands--till it hurts. I've
+only got one breath more. Your father held those lands only in
+trust--the Turners' deed is forged. And the secret agreement that I
+witnessed is hidden--"
+
+The breath seemed to go out of the man. Bruce shook him by the
+shoulders. Dave, still in the tree, strained to hear the rest.
+"Yes--where?"
+
+"It's hidden--just--out--" The words were no longer audible to Dave, and
+what followed Bruce also strained to hear in vain. The lips ceased
+moving. The shadow grew in the eyes, and the lids flickered down over
+them. A traveler had gone.
+
+Bruce got up, a strange, cold light in his eyes. He glanced up. Dave
+Turner was climbing slowly down the tree. Bruce made six strides and
+seized his rifle.
+
+The effect on Dave was ludicrous. He clung fast to the tree limbs, as if
+he thought a bullet--like a grizzly's claws--could not reach him there.
+Bruce laid the gun behind him, then stood waiting with his own weapon
+resting in his arms.
+
+"Come down, Dave," he commanded. "The bear is gone."
+
+Dave crept down the trunk and halted at its base. He studied the cold
+face before him. "Better not try nothing," he advised hoarsely.
+
+"Why not?" Bruce asked. "Do you think I'm afraid of a coward?" The man
+started at the words; his head bobbed backward as if Bruce had struck
+him beneath the jaw with his fist.
+
+"People don't call the Turners cowards and walk off with it," the man
+told him.
+
+"Oh, the lowest coward!" Bruce said between set teeth. "The yellowest,
+mongrel coward! Your own confederate--and you had to drop your gun and
+run up a tree. You might have stopped the bear's charge."
+
+Dave's face twisted in a scowl. "You're brave enough now. Wait to see
+what happens later. Give me my gun. I'm going to go."
+
+"You can go, but you don't get your gun. I'll fill you full of lead if
+you try to touch it."
+
+Dave looked up with some care. He wanted to know for certain if this
+tenderfoot meant what he said. The man was blind in some things, his
+vision was twisted and dark, but he made no mistake about the look on
+the cold, set face before him. Bruce's finger was curled about the
+trigger, and it looked to Dave as if it itched to exert further
+pressure.
+
+"I don't see why I spare you, anyway," Bruce went on. His tone was
+self-reproachful. "God knows I hadn't ought to--remembering who and what
+you are. If you'd only give me one little bit of provocation--"
+
+Dave saw lurid lights growing in the man's eyes; and all at once a
+conclusion came to him. He decided he'd make no further effort to regain
+the gun. His life was rather precious to him, strangely, and it was
+wholly plain that a dread and terrible passion was slowly creeping over
+his enemy. He could see it in the darkening face, the tight grip of the
+hands on the rifle stock. His own sharp features grew more cunning. "You
+ought to be glad I didn't stop the bear with my rifle," he said
+hurriedly. "I had Hudson bribed--you wouldn't have found out something
+that you did find out if he hadn't lain here dying. You wouldn't have
+learned--"
+
+But the sentence died in the middle. Bruce made answer to it. For once
+in his life Dave's cunning had not availed him; he had said the last
+thing in the world that he should have said, the one thing that was
+needed to cause an explosion. He hadn't known that some men have
+standards other than self gain. And some small measure of realization
+came to him when he felt the dust his full length under him.
+
+Bruce's answer had been a straight-out blow with his fist, with all his
+strength behind it, in the very center of his enemy's face.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+In his years of residence at Trail's End, Dave Turner had acquired a
+thorough knowledge of all its paths. That knowledge stood him in good
+stead now. He wished to cross the ridges to Simon's house at least an
+hour before Bruce could return to Linda.
+
+He traveled hard and late, and he reached Simon's door just before
+sundown of the second day. Bruce was still a full two hours distant. But
+Dave did not stay to knock. It was chore-time, and he thought he would
+find Simon in his barn, supervising the feeding and care of the
+livestock. He had guessed right, and the two men had a moment's talk in
+the dusky passage behind the stalls.
+
+"I've brought news," Dave said.
+
+Simon made no answer at first. The saddle pony in the stall immediately
+in front of them, frightened at Dave's unfamiliar figure, had crowded,
+trembling, against his manger. Simon's red eyes watched him; then he
+uttered a short oath. He took two strides into the stall and seized the
+halter rope in his huge, muscular hand. Three times he jerked it with a
+peculiar, quartering pull, a curbing that might have been ineffective by
+a man of ordinary strength, but with the incomprehensible might of the
+great forearm behind it was really terrible punishment. Dave thought for
+a moment his brother would break the animal's neck; the whites began to
+show about the soft, dark pupils of its eyes. The strap over the head
+broke with the fourth pull; then the horse recoiled, plunging and
+terrified, into the opposite corner of the stall.
+
+Simon leaped with shattering power at the creature's shoulders, his huge
+arms encircled its neck, his shoulders heaved, and he half-threw it to
+the floor. Then, as it staggered to rise, his heavy fist flailed against
+its neck. Again and again he struck, and in the half-darkness of the
+stable it was a dreadful thing to behold. The man's fury, always quickly
+aroused, was upon him; his brawny form moved with the agility of a
+panther. Even Dave, whose shallow eyes were usually wont to feast on
+cruelty, viewed the scene with some alarm. It wasn't that he was moved
+by the agony of the horse. But he did remember that horses cost money,
+and Simon seemed determined to kill the animal before his passion was
+spent.
+
+The horse cowered, and in a moment more it was hard to remember he was a
+member of a noble, high-spirited breed,--a swift runner, brainy as a
+dog, a servant faithful and worthy. It was no longer easy to think of
+him as a creature of beauty,--and there is no other word than beauty for
+these long-maned, long-tailed, trim-lined animals. He stood quiet at
+last, his head hanging low, knees bent, eyes curiously sorrowful and
+dark. Simon fastened the broken strap about his neck, gave it one more
+jerk that almost knocked the animal off his feet, then turned back to
+Dave. Except for a higher color in his cheeks, darker lights in his
+eyes, and an almost imperceptible quickening of his breathing, it did
+not seem as if he had moved.
+
+"You're always bringing news," he said.
+
+Dave opened his eyes. He had forgotten his own words in the tumult of
+the fight he had just watched, but plainly Simon hadn't forgotten. He
+opened his mouth to speak.
+
+"Well, what is it? Out with it," his brother urged. "If it's as
+important as some of the other news you've brought don't take my time."
+
+"All right," the other replied sullenly. "You don't have to hear it. But
+I'm telling you it's of real importance this time--and sometime you'll
+find out." He scowled into the dark face. "But suit yourself."
+
+He turned as if to go. He rather thought that Simon would call him back.
+It would be, in a measure, a victory. But Simon went back to his
+inspection of the stalls.
+
+Dave walked clear to the door, then turned. "Don't be a fool, Simon," he
+urged. "Listen to what I have to tell you. Bruce Folger knows where that
+secret agreement is."
+
+For once in his life Dave got a response of sufficient emphasis to
+satisfy him. His brother whirled, his whole expression undergoing an
+immediate and startling change. If there was one emotion that Dave had
+never seen on Simon's face it was fear,--and he didn't know for certain
+that he saw it now. But there was alarm--unmistakable--and surprise
+too.
+
+"What do you mean?" he demanded.
+
+Dave exulted inwardly. His brother's response had almost made up for the
+evil news that he brought. For Dave's fortunes, as well as Simon's,
+depended on the vast fertile tract being kept in the clan's possession.
+His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. For the first time in his life, as
+far as Dave could remember, Simon had encountered a situation that he
+had not immediately mastered. Perhaps it was the beginning of Simon's
+downfall, which meant--by no great stretch of the imagination--the
+advancement of Dave. But in another second of clear thinking Dave knew
+that in his brother's strength lay his own; if this mighty force at the
+head of the clan was weakening, no hope remained for any of them. His
+own face grew anxious.
+
+"Out with it," Simon stormed. His tone was really urgent now, not
+insolent as usual. "Good Lord, man, don't you know that if Bruce gets
+that down to the settlements before the thirtieth of next month we're
+lost--and nothing in this world can save us? We can't drive _him_ off,
+like we drove the Rosses. There's too much law down in the valleys. If
+he's got that paper, there's only one thing to do. Help me saddle a
+horse."
+
+"Wait a minute. I didn't say he had it. I only said he knew where it
+was. He's still an hour or two walk from here, toward Little River, and
+if we have to wait for him on the trail, we've got plenty of time. And
+of course I ain't quite sure he _does_ know where it is."
+
+Simon smiled mirthlessly. "The news is beginning to sound like the rest
+of yours."
+
+"Old Hudson is dead," Dave went on. "And don't look at me--I didn't do
+it. I wish I had, though, first off. For once my judgment was better
+than yours. The Killer got him."
+
+"Yes. Go on."
+
+"I was with him when it happened. My gun got jammed so I couldn't
+shoot."
+
+"Where is it now?"
+
+Dave scrambled in vain for a story to explain the loss of his weapon to
+Bruce, and the one that came out at last didn't do him particular
+credit. "I--I threw the damn thing away. Wish I hadn't now, but it made
+me so mad by jamming--it was a fool trick. Maybe I can go back after it
+and find it."
+
+Simon smiled again. "Very good so far," he commented.
+
+Dave flushed. "Bruce was there too--fact is, creased the bear--and the
+last minute before he died Hudson told him where the agreement was
+hidden. I couldn't hear all he said--I was too far away--but I heard
+enough to think that he told Bruce the hiding, place. It was natural
+Hudson would know it, and we were fools for not asking him about it long
+ago."
+
+"And why didn't you get that information away from Bruce with your gun?"
+
+"Didn't I tell you the thing was jammed? If it hadn't of been for that,
+I'd done something more than find out where it is. I'd stopped this
+nonsense once and for all, and let a hole through that tenderfoot big
+enough to see through. _Then_ there'd never be any more trouble. It's
+the thing to do now."
+
+Simon looked at his brother's face with some wonder. More crafty and
+cunning, Dave was like the coyote in that he didn't yield so quickly to
+fury as that gray wolf, his brother. But when it did come, it seared
+him. It had come now. Simon couldn't mistake the fact; he saw it plain
+in the glowing eyes, the clenched hands, the drawn lips. Dave was
+remembering the pain of the blow Bruce had given him, and the smart of
+the words that had preceded it.
+
+"You and he must have had a little session down there by the creek,"
+Simon suggested slowly, "when your gun was jammed. Of course, he took
+the gun. What's the use of trying to lie to me?"
+
+"He did. What could I do?"
+
+"And now you want him potted--from ambush."
+
+"What's the use of waiting? Who'd know?" The two men stood face to face
+in the quiet and deepening dusk of the barn; and there was growing
+determination on each face. "Every day our chance is less and less,"
+Dave went on. "We've been thinking we're safe, but if he knows where
+that agreement is, we're not safe at all. How would you like to get
+booted off these three thousand acres now, just after we've all got
+attached to them? To start making our living as day laborers--and maybe
+face a hangin' for some things of long ago? With this land behind him,
+he'd be in a position to pay old debts, I'm telling you. We're not
+secure, and you know it. The law doesn't forget, and it doesn't forgive.
+We've been fooling away our time ever since we knew he was coming. We
+should have met him on the trail and let the buzzards talk to him."
+
+"Yes," Simon echoed in a strange half-whisper. "Let the buzzards talk to
+him."
+
+Dave took fresh heart at the sound of that voice. "No one would have
+ever knowed it," he went on. "No one would ever know it now. They'd find
+his bones, some time maybe, but there'd be no one to point to. They'd
+never get any thing against us. Everybody except the mountain people
+have forgotten about this affair. Those in the mountains are too
+scattered and few to take any part in it. I tell you--it's all the way,
+or no way at all. Tell me to wait for him on the trail."
+
+"Wait. Wait a minute. How long before he will come?"
+
+"Any time now. And don't postpone this matter any more. We're men, not
+babies. He's not a fool or not a coward, either. He's got his old man's
+blood in him--not his mother's to run away. As long as he ain't croaked,
+all we've done so far is apt to come to nothing. And there's one thing
+more. He's going to take the blood-feud up again."
+
+"Lots of good it would do him. One against a dozen."
+
+"But he's a shot--I saw that plain enough--and how'd you like to have
+him shoot through _your_ windows some time? Old Elmira and Linda have
+set him on, and he's hot for it."
+
+"I wish you'd got that old heifer when you got her son," Simon said. He
+still spoke calmly; but it was plain enough that Dave's words were
+having the desired effect. Dave could discern this fact by certain
+lights and expressions about the pupils of his brother's eyes, signs
+learned and remembered long ago. "So he's taken up the blood-feud, has
+he? I thought I gave his father some lessons in that a long time since.
+Well, I suppose we must let him have his way!"
+
+"And remember too," Dave urged, "what you told him when you met him in
+the store. You said you wouldn't warn him twice."
+
+"I remember." The two men were silent, but Dave stood no longer
+motionless. The motions that he made, however, were not discernible in
+the growing gloom of the barn. He was shivering all over with malice and
+fury.
+
+"Then you've given the word?" he asked.
+
+"I've given the word, but I'll do it my own way. Listen, Dave." Simon
+stood, head bent, deep in thought. "Could you arrange to have Linda and
+the old hag out of the house when Bruce gets back?"
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"We've got to work this thing right. We can't operate in the open like
+we used to. This man has taken up the blood-feud--but the thing to
+do--is to let him come to us."
+
+"But he won't do it. He'll go to the courts first."
+
+Simon's face grew stern. "I don't want any more interruptions, Dave. I
+mean we will want to give the impression that he attacked us first--on
+his own free will. What if he comes into our house-a man unknown in
+these parts--and something happens to him there--in the dead of night?
+It wouldn't look so bad then, would it? Besides--if we got him
+here--before the clan, we might be able to find out where that document
+is. At least we'll have him here where everything will be in our favor.
+First, how can you tell when he's going to come?"
+
+"He ought to be here very soon. The moon's bright and I can get up on
+the ridge and see his shadow through your field glasses when he crosses
+the big south pasture. That will give me a full half-hour before he
+comes."
+
+"It's enough. I'm ready to give you your orders now. They are--just to
+use your head, and on some pretext get those two women out of the house
+so that Bruce can't find them when he returns. Don't let them come back
+for an hour, if you can help it. If it works--all right. If it doesn't,
+we'll use more direct measures. I'll tend to the rest."
+
+He strode to the wall and took down a saddle from the hook. Quickly he
+threw it over the back of one of the cow ponies, the animal that he had
+punished. He put the bridle in Dave's hand. "Stop at the house for the
+glasses, then ride to the ridge at once," he ordered. "Then keep
+watch."
+
+Without words Dave led the horse through the door and swung on to its
+back. In an instant the wild folk, in the fringe of forest beyond,
+paused in their night occupations to listen to the sound of hoof beats
+on the turf. Then Simon slowly saddled his own horse.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The day was quite dead when Dave Turner reached his post on top of the
+ridge. The gray of twilight had passed, the forest was lost in darkness,
+the stars were all out. The only vestige of daylight that remained was a
+pale, red glow over the Western mountains,--and this was more like red
+flowers that had been placed on its grave in remembrance.
+
+Fortunately, the moon rose early. Otherwise Dave's watch would have been
+in vain. The soft light wrought strange miracles in the forest: bathing
+the tree tops in silver, laying wonderful cobweb tapestries between the
+trunks, upsetting the whole perspective as to distance and contour. Dave
+didn't have long to wait. At the end of a half-hour he saw, through the
+field glasses, the wavering of a strange black shadow on the distant
+meadow. Only the vivid quality of the full moon enabled him to see it at
+all.
+
+He tried to get a better focus. It might be just the shadow of deer,
+come to browse on the parched grass. Dave felt a little tremor of
+excitement at the thought that if it were not Bruce, it was more likely
+the last of the grizzlies, the Killer. The previous night the gray
+forest king had made an excursion into Simon's pastures and had killed a
+yearling calf; in all probability he would return to-night to finish his
+feast. In fact, this night would in all probability see the end of the
+Killer. Some one of the Turners would wait for him, with a loaded rifle,
+in a safe ambush.
+
+But it wasn't the Killer, after all. It was before his time; besides,
+the shadow was too slender to be that of the huge bear. Dave Turner
+watched a moment longer, so that there could be no possibility of a
+mistake. Bruce was returning; he was little more than a half-hour's walk
+from Linda's home.
+
+Turner swung on his horse, then lashed the animal into a gallop. Less
+than five minutes later he drew up to a halt beneath the Sentinel Pine,
+almost a mile distant. For the first time, Dave began to move
+cautiously.
+
+It would complicate matters if the two women had already gone to bed.
+The hour was early--not yet nine--but the fall of darkness is often the
+going-to-bed time of the mountain people. It is warmer there and safer;
+and the expense of candles is lessened. Incidentally, it is the natural
+course for the human breed,--to bed at nightfall and up at dawn; and
+only distortion of nature can change the habit. It is doubtful if even
+the earliest men--those curious, long-armed, stiff-thumbed, heavy-jowled
+forefathers far remote--were ever night hunters. Like the hawks and most
+of the other birds of prey they were content to leave the game trails to
+the beasts at night. As life in the mountains gets down to a primitive
+basis, most of the hill people soon fall into this natural course. But
+to-night Linda and old Elmira were sitting up, waiting for Bruce's
+return.
+
+A candle flame flickered at the window. Dave went up to the door and
+knocked.
+
+"Who's there?" Elmira called. It was a habit learned in the dreadful
+days of twenty years ago, not to open a door without at least some
+knowledge of who stood without. A lighted doorway sets off a target
+almost as well as a field of white sets off a black bull's-eye.
+
+Dave knew that truth was the proper course. "Dave Turner," he replied.
+
+A long second of heavy, strange silence ensued. Then the woman spoke
+again. There was a new note in her voice, a curious hoarseness, but at
+the same time a sense of exultation and excitement. But Dave didn't
+notice it. Perhaps the oaken door that the voice came through stripped
+away all the overtones; possibly his own perceptions were too blunt to
+receive it. He might, however, have been interested in the singular look
+of wonder that flashed over Linda's face as she stared at her aged aunt.
+Linda was not thinking of Dave. She had forgotten that he stood outside.
+His visit was the last thing that either of them expected--except,
+perhaps, on some such deadly business as the clan had come years
+before--yet she found no space in her thought for him. Her whole
+attention was seized and held by the unfamiliar note in her aunt's
+voice, and a strange drawing of the woman's features that the closed
+door prevented Dave from seeing. It was a look almost of rapture, hardly
+to be expected in the presence of an enemy. The dim eyes seemed to glow
+in the shadows. It was the look of one who had wandered steep and
+unknown trails for uncounted years and sees the distant lights of his
+home at last.
+
+She got up from her chair and moved over to the little pack she had
+carried on her back when she had walked up from her cabin. Linda still
+gazed at her in growing wonder. The long years seemed to have fallen
+away from her; she slipped across the uncarpeted floor with the agility
+and silence of a tiger. She always had given the impression of latent
+power, but never so much as now. She took some little object from the
+bag and slipped it next to her withered and scrawny breast.
+
+"What do you want?" she called out into the gloom.
+
+Dave had been getting a little restless in the silence; but the voice
+reassured him. "I'll tell you when you open the door. It's something
+about Bruce."
+
+Linda remembered him then. She leaped to the door and flung it wide. She
+saw the stars without, the dark fringe of pines against the sky line
+behind. She felt the wind and the cool breath of the darkness. But most
+of all she saw the cunning, sharp-featured face of Dave Turner, with the
+candlelight upon him. The yellow beams were in his eyes too. They seemed
+full of guttering lights.
+
+The few times that Linda had talked to Dave she had always felt uneasy
+beneath his speculative gaze. The same sensation swept over her now. She
+knew perfectly what she would have had to expect, long since, from this
+man, were it not that he had lived in fear of his brother Simon. The
+mighty leader of the clan had set a barrier around her as far as
+personal attentions went,--and his reasons were obvious. The mountain
+girls do not usually attain her perfection of form and face; his desire
+for her was as jealous as it was intense and real. This dark-hearted man
+of great and terrible emotions did not only know how to hate. In his own
+savage way he could love too. Linda hated and feared him, but the
+emotion was wholly different from the dread and abhorrence with which
+she regarded Dave. "What about Bruce?" she demanded.
+
+Dave leered. "Do you want to see him? He's lying--up here on the hill."
+
+The tone was knowing, edged with cruelty; and it had the desired effect.
+The color swept from the girl's face. In a single fraction of an instant
+it showed stark white in the candlelight.
+
+There was an instant's sensation of terrible cold. But her voice was
+hard and lifeless when she spoke.
+
+"You mean you've killed him?" she asked simply.
+
+"We ain't killed him. We've just been teaching him a lesson," Dave
+explained. "Simon warned him not to come up--and we've had to talk to
+him a little--with fists and heels."
+
+Linda cried out then, one agonized syllable. She knew what fists and
+heels could do in the fights between the mountain men. They are as much
+weapons of torture as the claws and fangs of the Killer. She had an
+instant's dread picture of this strong man of hers lying maimed and
+broken, a battered, whimpering, ineffective thing in the moonlight of
+some distant hillside. The vision brought knowledge to her. Even more
+clearly than in the second of their kiss, before he had gone to see
+Hudson, she realized what an immutable part of her he was. She gazed
+with growing horror at Dave's leering face. "Where is he?" she asked.
+She remembered, with singular steadfastness, the pistol she had
+concealed in her own room.
+
+"I'll show you. If you want to get him in you'd better bring the old hag
+with you. It'll take two of you to carry him."
+
+"I'll come," the old woman said from across the shadowed room. She spoke
+with a curious breathlessness. "I'll go at once."
+
+The door closed behind the three of them, and they went out into the
+moonlit forest. Dave walked first. There was an unlooked-for eagerness
+in his motions, but Linda thought that she understood it. It was wholly
+characteristic of him that he should find a degenerate rapture in
+showing these two women the terrible handiwork of the Turners. He
+rejoiced in just this sort of cruelty. She had no suspicion that this
+excursion was only a pretext to get the two women away from the house,
+and that his eagerness arose from deeper causes. It was true that Dave
+exulted in the work, and strangely the fact that it was part of the plot
+against Bruce had been almost forgotten in the face of a greater
+emotion. He was alone in the darkness with Linda--except of course for a
+helpless old woman--and the command of Simon in regard to his attitude
+toward her seemed suddenly dim and far away. He led them over a hill,
+into the deeper forest.
+
+He walked swiftly, eagerly; the two women could hardly keep pace with
+him. He left the dim trail and skirted about the thickets. No cry for
+help could carry from this lonely place. No watchman on a hill could see
+what transpired in the heavy coverts.
+
+So intent was he that he quite failed to observe a singular little
+signal between old Elmira and Linda. The woman half turned about, giving
+the girl an instant's glimpse of something that she transferred from her
+breast to her sleeve. It was slender and of steel, and it caught the
+moonlight on its shining surface.
+
+The girl's eyes glittered when she beheld it. She nodded, scarcely
+perceptibly, and the strange file plunged deeper into the shadows.
+
+Fifteen minutes later Dave drew up to a halt in a little patch of
+moonlight, surrounded by a wall of low trees and brush.
+
+"There's more than one way to make a date for a walk with a pretty
+girl," he said.
+
+The girl stared coldly into his eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked.
+
+The man laughed harshly. "I mean that Bruce ain't got back yet--he's
+still on the other side of Little River, for all I know--"
+
+"Then why did you bring us here?"
+
+"Just to be sociable," Dave returned. "I'll tell you, Linda. I wanted to
+talk to you. I ain't been in favor of a lot of things Simon's been
+doing--to you and your people. I thought maybe you and I would like to
+be--friends."
+
+No one could mistake the emotion behind the strained tone, the peculiar
+languor in the furtive eyes. The girl drew back, shuddering. "I'm going
+back," she told him.
+
+"Wait. I'll take you back soon. Let's have a kiss and make friends. The
+old lady won't look--"
+
+He laughed again, a hoarse sound that rang far through the silences. He
+moved toward her, hands reaching. She backed away. Then she half-tripped
+over an outstretched root.
+
+The next instant she was in his arms, struggling against their steel.
+She didn't waste words in pleading. A sob caught at her throat, and she
+fought with all her strength against the drawn, nearing face. She had
+forgotten Elmira; in this dreadful moment of terror and danger the old
+woman's broken strength seemed too little to be of aid. And Dave thought
+her as helpless to oppose him as the tall pines that watched from above
+them.
+
+His wild laughter obscured the single sound that she made, a strange cry
+that seemed lacking in all human quality. Rather it was such a sound as
+a puma utters as it leaps upon its prey. It was the articulation of a
+whole life of hatred that had come to a crisis at last,--of deadly and
+terrible triumph after a whole decade of waiting. If Dave had discerned
+that cry in time he would have hurled Linda from his arms to leap into a
+position of defense. The desire for women in men goes down to the roots
+of the world, but self-preservation is a deeper instinct still.
+
+But he didn't hear it in time. Elmira had not struck with her knife. The
+distance was too far for that. But she swung her cane with all her
+force. The blow caught the man at the temple, his arms fell away from
+the girl's body, he staggered grotesquely in the carpet of pine needles.
+Then he fell face downward.
+
+"His belt, quick!" the woman cried. No longer was her voice that of
+decrepit age. The girl struggled with herself, wrenched back her
+self-control, and leaped to obey her aunt. They snatched the man's belt
+from about his waist, and the women locked it swiftly about his ankles.
+With strong, hard hands they drew his wrists back of him and tied them
+tight with the long bandana handkerchief he wore about his neck. They
+worked almost in silence, with incredible rapidity and deftness.
+
+The man was waking now, stirring in his unconsciousness, and swiftly the
+old woman cut the buckskin thongs from his tall logging boots. These
+also she twisted about the wrists, knotting them again and again, and
+pulling them so tight they were almost buried in the lean flesh. Then
+they turned him face upward to the moon.
+
+The two women stood an instant, breathing hard. "What now?" Linda asked.
+And a shiver of awe went over her at the sight of the woman's face.
+
+"Nothing more, Linda," she answered, in a distant voice. "Leave Dave
+Turner to me."
+
+It was a strange picture. Womanhood--the softness and tenderness which
+men have learned to associate with the name--seemed fallen away from
+Linda and Elmira. They were only avengers,--like the she-bear that
+fights for her cubs or the she-wolf that guards the lair. There was no
+more mercy in them than in the females of the lower species. The moon
+flooded the place with silver, the pines were dark and impassive as ever
+above them.
+
+Dave wakened. They saw him stir. They watched him try to draw his arms
+from behind him. It was just a faint, little-understanding pull at
+first. Then he wrenched and tugged with all his strength, flopping
+strangely in the dirt. The effort increased until it was some way
+suggestive of an animal in the death struggle,--a fur bearer dying in
+the trap.
+
+Terror was upon him. It was in his wild eyes and his moonlit face; it
+was in the desperation and frenzy of his struggles. And the two women
+saw it and smiled into each other's eyes.
+
+Slowly his efforts ceased. He lay still in the pine needles. He turned
+his head, first toward Linda, then to the inscrutable, dark face of the
+old woman. As understanding came to him, the cold drops emerged upon his
+swarthy skin.
+
+"Good God!" he asked. "What are you going to do?"
+
+"I'm going back," Linda answered. "You had some other purpose in
+bringing me out here--or you wouldn't have brought Elmira, too. I'm
+going back to wait for Bruce."
+
+"And you and I will linger here," Elmira told him. "We have many things
+to say to each other. We have many things to do. About my Abner--there
+are many things you'll want to hear of him."
+
+The last vestige of the man's spirit broke beneath the words. Abner had
+been old Elmira's son,--a youth who had laughed often, and the one hope
+of the old woman's declining years. And he had fallen before Dave's
+ambush in a half-forgotten fight of long years before.
+
+The man shivered in his bonds. Linda turned to go. The silence of the
+wilderness deepened about them. "Oh, Linda, Linda," the man called.
+"Don't leave me. Don't leave me here with her!" he pleaded.
+"Please--please don't leave me in this devil's power. Make her let me
+go."
+
+But Linda didn't seem to hear. The brush crackled and rustled; and the
+two--this dark-hearted man and the avenger--were left together.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The homeward journey over the ridges had meant only pleasure to Bruce.
+Every hour of it had brought a deeper and more intimate knowledge of the
+wilderness. The days had been full of little, nerve-tingling adventures,
+and the nights full of peace. And beyond all these, there was the hope
+of seeing Linda again at the end of the trail.
+
+Thoughts of her hardly ever left him throughout the long tramp. She had
+more than fulfilled every expectation. It was true that he had found no
+one of his own kin, as he had hoped; but the fact opened up new
+possibilities that would have been otherwise forbidden.
+
+It was strange how he remembered her kiss. He had known other kisses in
+his days--being a purely rational and healthy young man--but there had
+been nothing of immortality about them. Their warmth had died quickly,
+and they had been forgotten. They were just delights of moonlight nights
+and nothing more. But he would wake up from his dreams at night to feel
+Linda's kiss still upon his lips. To recall it brought a strange
+tenderness,--a softening of all the hard outlines of his picture of
+life. It changed his viewpoint; it brought him a knowledge of a joy and
+a gentleness that could exist even in this stern world of wilderness and
+pines. With her face lingering before his eyes, the ridges themselves
+seemed less stern and forbidding; there were softer messages in the
+wind's breath; the drama of the wild that went on about him seemed less
+remorseless and cruel.
+
+He remembered the touch of her hands. They had been so cool, so gentle.
+He remembered the changing lights in her dark eyes. Life had opened up
+new vistas to him. Instead of a stern battleground, he began to realize
+that it had a softer, gentler, kinder side,--a place where there could
+be love as well as hatred, peace as well as battle, cheery homes and
+firesides and pleasant ways and laughter instead of cold ways and lonely
+trails and empty hearts and grim thoughts. Perhaps, if all went well,
+tranquillity might come to him after all. Perhaps he might even know the
+tranquil spirit of the pines.
+
+These were mating days. It was true that the rutting season had not, in
+reality, commenced. The wolf pack had not yet gathered, and would not
+until after the heavy frosts. But the bucks had begun to rub the velvet
+from their horns so that they would be hard and sharp for the fights to
+come. And these would be savage battles--with death at the end of many
+of them. But perhaps the joys that would follow--the roving, mating days
+with the does--would more than make up for their pain. The trim females
+were seen less often with their fawns; and they seemed strangely
+restless and tremulous, perhaps wondering what fortune the fall would
+have for them in the way of a mate.
+
+The thought gave Bruce pleasure. He could picture the deer herd in the
+fall,--the proud buck in the lead, ready to fight all contenders, his
+harem of does, and what fawns and young bucks he permitted to follow
+him. They would make stealing journeys down to the foothills to avoid
+the snow, and all manner of pleasures would be theirs in the gentler
+temperatures of the lowlands. They would know crisp dawns and breathless
+nights, long runnings into the valleys, and to the does the realization
+of motherhood when the spring broke.
+
+But aside from his contemplations of Linda, the long tramp had many
+delights for him. He rejoiced in every manifestation of the wild life
+about him, whether it was a bushy-tailed old gray squirrel, watching him
+from a tree limb, a magpie trying its best to insult him, or the
+fleeting glimpse of a deer in the coverts. Once he saw the black form of
+Ashur the bear, mumbling and grunting as he searched under rotten logs
+for grubs. But he didn't see the Killer again. He didn't particularly
+care to do so.
+
+He kept his rifle ready during the day for game, but he shot only what
+he needed. He did not attempt to kill the deer. He knew that he would
+have no opportunity to care for the meat. But he did, occasionally,
+shoot the head off a cock-grouse at close range, and no chef of Paris
+could offer a more tempting dish than its flesh, rolled in flour and
+served up, fried brown, in bacon grease. It was mostly white meat,
+exceedingly tender, yet with the zest of wild game. But he dined on
+bacon exclusively one night because, after many misses at grouse, he
+declined to take the life of a gray squirrel that had perched in an oak
+tree above the trail. Someway, it seemed to be getting too much pleasure
+out of life for him to blast it with a rifle shot. A squirrel has only a
+few ounces of flesh, and the woods without them would be dull and inane
+indeed. Besides, they were bright-eyed, companionable people--dwellers
+of the wilderness even as Bruce--and their personality had already
+endeared itself to him.
+
+Once he startled a fawn almost out of its wits when he came upon it
+suddenly in a bend in the trail, and he shouted with delight as it
+bounded awkwardly away. Once a porcupine rattled its quills at him and
+tried to seem very ferocious. But it was all the most palpable of
+bluffs, for Urson, while particularly adept at defense, has no powers of
+offense whatever. He cannot move quickly. He can't shoot his spines, as
+the story-books say. He can only sit on the ground and erect them into a
+sort of suit of armor to repel attack. But Bruce knew enough not to
+attempt to stroke the creature. If he had done so, he would have spent
+the remainder of the season pulling out spines from the soft flesh of
+his hand.
+
+Urson was a patient, stupid, guileless creature, and he and Bruce had a
+strange communion together as they stood face to face on the trail.
+"You've got the right idea," Bruce told him. "To erect a wall around you
+and let 'em yell outside without giving them a thought. To stand firm,
+not to take part. You're a true son of the pines, Urson. Now let me
+past."
+
+But the idea was furthest from Urson's mind. He sat firm on the trail,
+hunched into a spiny ball. Instead of killing him with his rifle butt,
+as Dave would have done, Bruce laughed good-naturedly and went around
+him.
+
+Both days of the journey home he wakened sharply at dawn. The cool,
+morning hours were the best for travel. He would follow down the narrow,
+brown trail,--now through a heavy covert that rustled as the wild
+creatures sped from his path, now up a long ridge, now down into a
+still, dark glen, and sometimes into a strange, bleak place where the
+forest fire had swept. Every foot was a delight to him.
+
+He was of naturally strong physique, and although the days fatigued him
+unmercifully, he always wakened refreshed in the dawn. At noon he would
+stop to lunch, eating a few pieces of jerkey and frying a single
+flapjack in his skillet. He learned how to effect it quickly, first
+letting his fire burn down to coals. And usually, during the noon rest,
+he would practice with his rifle.
+
+He knew that if he were to fight the Turners, skill with a rifle was an
+absolute necessity; such skill as would have felled the grizzly with one
+shot instead of administering merely a flesh wound, accuracy to take off
+the head of a grouse at fifty yards; and at the same time, an ability to
+swing and aim the weapon in the shortest possible space of time. The
+only thing that retarded him was the realization that he must not waste
+too many cartridges. Elmira had brought him only a small supply.
+
+He would walk all afternoon--going somewhat easier and resting more
+often than in the morning; and these were the times that he appreciated
+a fragment of jerked venison. He would halt just before nightfall and
+make his camp.
+
+The first work was usually to strip a young fir tree of its young,
+slender branches. These, according to Linda's instructions, were laid on
+the ground, their stalks overlapping, and in a remarkably few minutes he
+could construct a bed as comfortable as a hair mattress. It was true
+that the work always came at an hour when most of all he wanted food and
+rest, but he knew that a restless night means quick fatigue the next
+day. Then he would clean his game and build his fire and cook his
+evening meal. Simple food had never tasted so good to him before. Bacon
+grease was his only flavor, but it had a zest that all the sauces and
+dressings of France could not approach. The jerkey was crisp and nutty;
+his flapjacks went directly to the spot where he desired them to go.
+
+But the best hour of all was after his meal, as he sat in the growing
+shadows with his pipe. It was always an hour of calm. The little,
+breathless noises of the wild people in the thickets; the gophers, to
+whose half blind eyes--used to the darkness of their underground
+passages--the firelight was almost blinding; the chipmunks, and even the
+larger creatures came clearest to him then and told him more. But they
+didn't frighten him. Ordinarily, he knew, the forest creatures of the
+Southern Oregon mountains mean and do no harm to lonely campers.
+Nevertheless, he kept fairly accurate track of his rifle. He had enough
+memory of the charge of the Killer to wish to do that. And he thought
+with some pleasure that he had a reserve arsenal,--Dave's thirty-thirty
+with five shells in its magazine.
+
+At this hour he felt the spirit of the pines as never before. He knew
+their great, brooding sorrow, their infinite wisdom, their inexpressible
+aloofness with which they kept watch over the wilderness. The smoke
+would drift about him in soothing clouds; the glow of the coals was red
+and warm over him. He could think then. Life revealed some of its lesser
+mysteries to him. And he began to glimpse the distant gleam of even
+greater truths, and sometimes it seemed to him that he could almost
+catch and hold them. Always it was some message that the pines were
+trying to tell him,--partly in words they made when their limbs rubbed
+together, partly in the nature of a great allegory of which their dark,
+impassive forms were the symbols. If he could only see clearly! But it
+seemed to him that passion blinded his eyes.
+
+"They talk only to the stars," Linda had said once of the pines. But he
+had no illusions about this talk of theirs. It was greater, more fraught
+with wisdom, than anything men might say together below them. He could
+imagine them telling high secrets that he himself could discern but
+dimly and could hardly understand. More and more he realized that the
+pines, like the stars, were living symbols of great powers who lived
+above the world, powers that would speak to men if they would but listen
+long and patiently enough, and in whose creed lay happiness.
+
+When the pipe was out he would go to his fragrant bed. The night hours
+would pass in a breath. And he would rise and go on in the crisp dawns.
+
+The last afternoon he traveled hard. He wanted to reach Linda's house
+before nightfall. But the trail was too long for that. The twilight
+fell, to find him still a weary two miles distant. And the way was quite
+dark when he plunged into the south pasture of the Ross estates.
+
+Half an hour later he was beneath the Sentinel Pine. He wondered why
+Linda was not waiting beneath it; in his fancy, he thought of it as
+being the ordained place for her. But perhaps she had merely failed to
+hear his footsteps. He called into the open door.
+
+"Linda," he said. "I've come back."
+
+No answer reached him. The words rang through the silent rooms and
+echoed back to him. He walked over the threshold.
+
+A chair in the front room was turned over. His heart leaped at the sight
+of it. "Linda," he called in alarm, "where are you? It's Bruce."
+
+He stood an instant listening, a great fear creeping over him. He called
+once more, first to Linda and then to the old woman. Then he leaped
+through the doorway.
+
+The kitchen was similarly deserted. From there he went to Linda's room.
+Her coat and hat lay on the bed, but there was no Linda to stretch her
+arms to him. He started to go out the way he had come, but went instead
+to his own room. A sheet of note-paper lay on the bed.
+
+It had been scrawled hurriedly; but although he had never received a
+written word from Linda he did not doubt but that it was her hand:
+
+     The Turners are coming--I caught a glimpse of them on the
+     ridge. There is no use of my trying to resist, so I'll wait for
+     them in the front room and maybe they won't find this note.
+     They will take me to Simon's house, and I know from its
+     structure that they will lock me in an interior room in the
+     East wing. Use the window on that side nearest the North
+     corner. My one hope is that you will come at once to save me.
+
+Bruce's eyes leaped over the page; then thrust it into his pocket. He
+slipped through the rear door of the house, into the shadows.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+As Bruce hurried up the hill toward the Ross estates, he made a swift
+calculation of the rifle shells in his pocket. The gun held six. He had
+perhaps fifteen others in his pockets, and he hadn't stopped to
+replenish them from the supply Elmira had brought. He hadn't brought
+Dave's rifle with him, but had left it with the remainder of his pack.
+He knew that the lighter he traveled the greater would be his chance of
+success.
+
+The note had explained the situation perfectly. Obviously the girl had
+written when the clan was closing about the house, and finding her in
+the front room, there had been no occasion to search the other rooms and
+thus discover it. The girl had kept her head even in that moment of
+crisis. A wave of admiration for her passed over him.
+
+And the little action had set an example for him. He knew that only
+rigid self-control and cool-headed strategy could achieve the thing he
+had set out to do. There must be no false motions, no missteps. He must
+put out of his mind all thought of what dreadful fate might have already
+come upon the girl; such fancies would cost him his grip upon his own
+faculties and lose him the power of clear thinking. His impulse was to
+storm the door, to pour his lead through the lighted windows; but such
+things could never take Linda out of Simon's hands. Only stealth and
+caution, not blind courage and frenzy, could serve her now. Such blind
+killing as his heart prompted had to wait for another time.
+
+Nevertheless, the stock of his rifle felt good in his hands. Perhaps
+there would be a running fight after he got the girl out of the house,
+and then his cartridges would be needed. There might even be a moment of
+close work with what guards the Turners had set over her. But the heavy
+stock, used like a club, would be most use to him then.
+
+He knew only the general direction of the Ross house where Simon lived.
+Linda had told him it rested upon the crest of a small hill, beyond a
+ridge of timber. The moonlight showed him a well-beaten trail, and he
+strode swiftly along it. For once, he gave no heed to the stirring
+forest life about him. When a dead log had fallen across his path, he
+swung over it and hastened on.
+
+He had a vague sense of familiarity with this winding trail. Perhaps he
+had toddled down it as a baby, perhaps his mother had carried him along
+it on a neighborly visit to the Rosses. He went over the hill and pushed
+his way to the edge of the timber. All at once the moon showed him the
+house.
+
+He couldn't mistake it, even at this distance. And to Bruce it had a
+singular effect of unreality. The mountain men did not ordinarily build
+homes of such dimensions. They were usually merely log cabins of two or
+three lower rooms and a garret to be reached with a ladder; or else, on
+the rough mountain highways, crude dwellings of unpainted frame. The
+ancestral home of the Rosses, however, had fully a dozen rooms, and it
+loomed to an incredible size in the mystery of the moonlight. He saw
+quaint gabled roofs and far-spreading wings. And it seemed more like a
+house of enchantment, a structure raised by the rubbing of a magic lamp,
+than the work of carpenters and masons.
+
+Probably its wild surroundings had a great deal to do with this effect.
+There were no roads leading to Trail's End. Material could not be
+carried over its winding trails except on pack animals. He had a
+realization of tremendous difficulties that had been conquered by
+tireless effort, of long months of unending toil, of exhaustless
+patience, and at the end,--a dream come true. All of its lumber had to
+be hewed from the forests about. Its stone had been quarried from the
+rock cliffs and hauled with infinite labor over the steep trails.
+
+He understood now why the Turners had coveted it. It seemed the acme of
+luxury to them. And more clearly than ever he understood why the Rosses
+had died, sooner than relinquish it, and why its usurpation by the
+Turners had left such a debt of hatred to Linda. It was such a house as
+men dream about, a place to bequeath to their children and to perpetuate
+their names. Built like a rock, it would stand through the decades, to
+pass from one generation to another,--an enduring monument to the strong
+thews of the men who had builded it. All men know that the love of home
+is one of the few great impulses that has made toward civilization, but
+by the same token it has been the cause of many wars. It was never an
+instinct of a nomadic people, and possibly in these latter days--days
+of apartments and flats and hotels--its hold is less. Perhaps the day is
+coming when this love will die in the land, but with it will die the
+strength to repel the heathen from our walls, and the land will not be
+worth living in, anyway. But it was not dead to the mountain people. No
+really primitive emotion ever is.
+
+Perhaps, after all, it is a question of the age-old longing for
+immortality, and therefore it must have its seat in a place higher than
+this world of death. Men know that when they walk no longer under the
+sun and the moon it is good to have certain monuments to keep their name
+alive, whether it be blocks of granite at the grave-head, or sons living
+in an ancestral home. The Rosses had known this instinct very well. As
+all men who are strong-thewed and of real natural virtue, they had known
+pride of race and name, and it had been a task worth while to build this
+stately house on their far-lying acres. They had given their fiber to it
+freely; no man who beheld the structure could doubt that fact. They had
+simply consecrated their lives to it; their one Work by which they could
+show to all who came after that by their own hands they had earned their
+right to live.
+
+They had been workers, these men; and there is no higher degree. But
+their achievements had been stolen from their hands. Bruce felt the real
+significance of his undertaking as never before.
+
+He saw the broad lands lying under the moon. There were hundreds of
+acres in alfalfa and clover to furnish hay for the winter feeding.
+There were wide, green pastures, ensilvered by the moon; and fields of
+corn laid out in even rows. The old appeal of the soil, an instinct that
+no person of Anglo-Saxon descent can ever completely escape, swept
+through him. They were worth fighting for, these fertile acres. The wind
+brought up the sweet breath of ripening hay.
+
+Not for nothing have a hundred generations of Anglo-Saxon people been
+tillers of the soil. They had left a love of it to Bruce. In a single
+flash of thought, even as he hastened toward the house where he supposed
+Linda was held prisoner, the ancient joy returned to him. He knew what
+it would be like to feel the earth's pulse through the handles of a
+plow, to behold the first start of green things in the spring and the
+golden ripening in fall; to watch the flocks through the breathless
+nights and the herds feeding on the distant hills.
+
+Bruce looked over the ground. He knew enough not to continue the trail
+farther. The space in front was bathed in moonlight, and he would make
+the best kind of target to any rifle-man watching from the windows of
+the house. He turned through the coverts, seeking the shadow of the
+forests at one side.
+
+By going in a quartering direction he was able to approach within two
+hundred yards of the house without emerging into the moonlight. At that
+point the real difficulty of the stalk began. He hovered in the shadows,
+then slipped one hundred feet farther to the trunk of a great oak tree.
+
+He could see the house much more plainly now. True, it had suffered
+neglect in the past twenty years; it needed painting and many of its
+windows were broken, but it was a magnificent old mansion even yet. It
+stood lost in its dreams in the moonlight; and if, as old stories say,
+houses have memories, this old structure was remembering certain tragic
+dramas that had waged within and about it in a long-ago day. Bruce
+rejoiced to see that there were no lights in the east wing of the house;
+the window that Linda had indicated in the note was just a black square
+on the moonlit wall.
+
+There was a neglected garden close to this wing of the house. Bruce
+could make out rose bushes, grown to brambles, tall, rank weeds, and
+heavy clumps of vines. If he could reach this spot in safety he could
+approach within a few feet of the house and still remain in cover. He
+went flat; then slowly crawled toward it.
+
+Once a light sprang up in a window near the front, and he pressed close
+to the earth. But in a moment it went away. He crept on. He didn't know
+when a watchman in one of the dark windows would discern his creeping
+figure. But he did know perfectly just what manner of greeting he might
+expect in this event. There would be a single little spurt of fire in
+the darkness, so small that probably his eyes would quite fail to catch
+it. If they did discern it, there would be no time for a message to be
+recorded in his brain. It would mean a swift and certain end of all
+messages. The Turners would lose no time in emptying their rifles at
+him, and there wouldn't be the slightest doubt about their hitting the
+mark. All the clan were expert shots and the range was close.
+
+The house was deeply silent. He felt a growing sense of awe. In a moment
+more, he slipped into the shadows of the neglected rose gardens.
+
+He lay quiet an instant, resting. He didn't wish to risk the success of
+his expedition by fatiguing himself now. He wanted his full strength and
+breath for any crisis that he should meet in the room where Linda was
+confined.
+
+Many times, he knew, skulking figures had been concealed in this garden.
+Probably the Turners, in the days of the blood-feud, had often waited in
+its shadows for a sight of some one of their enemies in a lighted
+window. Old ghosts dwelt in it; he could see their shadows waver out of
+the corner of his eyes. Or perhaps it was only the shadow of the
+brambles, blown by the wind.
+
+Once his heart leaped into his throat at a sharp crack of brush beside
+him; and he could scarcely restrain a muscular jerk that might have
+revealed his position. But when he turned his head he could see nothing
+but the coverts and the moon above them. A garden snake, or perhaps a
+blind mole, had made the sound.
+
+Four minutes later he was within one dozen feet of the designated
+window. There was a stretch of moonlight between, but he passed it
+quickly. And now he stood in bold relief against the moonlit house-wall.
+
+He was in perfectly plain sight of any one on the hill behind. Possibly
+his distant form might have been discerned from the window of one of the
+lesser houses occupied by Simon's kin. But he was too close to the wall
+to be visible from the windows of Simon's house, except by a deliberate
+scrutiny. And the window slipped up noiselessly in his hands.
+
+He was considerably surprised. He had expected this window to be locked.
+Some way, he felt less hopeful of success. He recalled in his mind the
+directions that Linda had left, wondering if he had come to the wrong
+window. But there was no chance of a mistake in this regard; it was the
+northernmost window in the east wing. However, she had said that she
+would be confined in an interior room, and possibly the Turners had seen
+no need of barriers other than its locked door. Probably they had not
+even anticipated that Bruce would attempt a rescue.
+
+He leaped lightly upward and slipped silently into the room. Except for
+the moonlit square on the floor it was quite in darkness. It seemed to
+him that even in the night hours over a camp fire he had never known
+such silence as this that pressed about him now.
+
+He stood a moment, hardly breathing. But he decided it was not best to
+strike a match. There were no enemies here, or they certainly would have
+accosted him when he raised the window; and a match might reveal his
+presence to some one in an adjoining room. He rested his hand against
+the wall, then moved slowly around the room. He knew that by this
+course he would soon encounter the door that led into the interior
+rooms.
+
+In a moment he found it. He stood waiting. He turned the knob gently;
+then softly pulled. But the door was locked.
+
+There was no sound now but the loud beating of his own heart. He could
+no longer hear the voices of the wind outside the open window. He
+wondered whether, should he hurl all his magnificent strength against
+the panels, he could break the lock; and if he did so, whether he could
+escape with the girl before he was shot down. But his hand, wandering
+over the lock, encountered the key.
+
+It was easy, after all. He turned the key. The door opened beneath his
+hand.
+
+If there had been a single ray of light under the door or through the
+keyhole, his course would have been quite different. He would have
+opened the door suddenly in that case, hoping to take by surprise
+whosoever of the clan were guarding Linda. To open a door slowly into a
+room full of enemies is only to give them plenty of time to cock their
+rifles. But in this case the room was in darkness, and all that he need
+fear was making a sudden sound. The opening slowly widened. Then he
+slipped through and stood ten breathless seconds in silence.
+
+"Linda," he whispered. He waited a long time for an answer. Then he
+stole farther into the room.
+
+"Linda," he said again. "It's Bruce. Are you here?"
+
+And in that unfathomable silence he heard a sound--a sound so dim and
+small that it only reached the frontier of hearing. It was a strange,
+whispering, eerie sound, and it filled the room like the faintest,
+almost imperceptible gust of wind. But there was no doubting its
+reality. And after one more instant in which his heart stood still, he
+knew what it was: the sound of suppressed breathing. A living creature
+occupied this place of darkness with him, and was either half-gagged by
+a handkerchief over the face or was trying to conceal its presence by
+muffling its breathing. "Linda," he said again.
+
+There was a strange response to the calling of that name. He heard no
+whispered answer. Instead, the door he had just passed through shut
+softly behind him.
+
+For a fleeting instant he hoped that the wind had blown it shut. For it
+is always the way of youth to hope,--as long as any hope is left. His
+heart leaped and he whirled to face it. Then he heard the unmistakable
+sound of a bolt being slid into place.
+
+Some little space of time followed in silence. He struggled with growing
+horror, and time seemed limitless. Then a strong man laughed grimly in
+the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+As Bruce waited, his eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. He
+began to see the dim outlines of his fellow occupants of the
+room,--fully seven brawny men seated in chairs about the walls. "Let's
+hear you drop your rifle," one of them said.
+
+Bruce recognized the grim voice as Simon's,--heard on one occasion
+before. He let his rifle fall from his hands. He knew that only death
+would be the answer to any resistance to these men. Then Simon scratched
+a match, and without looking at him, bent to touch it to the wick of the
+lamp.
+
+The tiny flame sputtered and flickered, filling the room with dancing
+shadows. Bruce looked about him. It was the same long, white-walled room
+that Dave and Simon had conversed in, after Elmira had first dispatched
+her message by Barney Wegan. Bruce knew that he faced the Turner clan at
+last.
+
+Simon sat beside the fireplace, the lamp at his elbow. As the wick
+caught, the light brightened and steadied, and Bruce could see plainly.
+On each side of him, in chairs about the walls, sat Simon's brothers and
+his blood relations that shared the estate with him. They were huge,
+gaunt men, most of them dark-bearded and sallow-skinned, and all of
+them regarded him with the same gaze of speculative interest.
+
+Bruce did not flinch before their gaze. He stood erect as he could,
+instinctively defiant.
+
+"Our guest is rather early," Simon began. "Dave hasn't come yet, and
+Dave is the principal witness."
+
+A bearded man across the room answered him. "But I guess we ain't goin'
+to let the prisoner go for lack of evidence."
+
+The circle laughed then,--a harsh sound that was not greatly different
+from the laughter of the coyotes on the sagebrush hills. But they
+sobered when they saw that Simon hadn't laughed. His dark eyes were
+glowing.
+
+"You, by no chance, met him on the way home, did you?" he asked.
+
+"I wish I had," Bruce replied. "But I didn't."
+
+"I don't understand your eagerness. You didn't seem overly eager to meet
+us."
+
+Bruce smiled wanly. These wilderness men regarded him with fresh
+interest. Somehow, they hadn't counted on his smiling. It was almost as
+if he were of the wilderness breed himself, instead of the son of
+cities. "I'm here, am I not?" he said. "It isn't as if you came to my
+house first."
+
+He regarded the clansmen again. He _had_ missed Dave's crafty face in
+the circle.
+
+"Yes, you're here," Simon confirmed. "And I'm wondering if you remember
+what I told you just as you left Martin's store that day--that I gave no
+man two warnings."
+
+"I remember that," Bruce replied. "I saw no reason for listening to you.
+I don't see any reason now, and I wouldn't if it wasn't for that row of
+guns."
+
+Simon studied his pale face. "Perhaps you'll be sorry you didn't listen,
+before this night is over. And there are many hours yet in it.
+Bruce--you came up here to these mountains to open old wounds."
+
+"Simon, I came up here to right wrongs--and you know it. If old wounds
+are opened, I can't help it."
+
+"And to-night," Simon went on as if he had not been answered, "you have
+come unbidden into our house. It would be all the evidence the courts
+would need, Bruce--that you crept into our house in the dead of night.
+If anything happened to you here, no word could be raised against us.
+You were a brave man, Bruce."
+
+"So I can suppose you left the note?"
+
+The circle laughed again, but Simon silenced them with a gesture.
+"You're very keen," he said.
+
+"Then where is Linda?" Bruce's eyes hardened. "I am more interested in
+her whereabouts than in this talk with you."
+
+"The last seen of her, she was going up a hill with Dave. When Dave
+returns you can ask him."
+
+The bearded man opposite from Simon uttered a short syllable of a laugh.
+"And it don't look like he's going to return," he said. The knowing
+look on his face was deeply abhorrent to Bruce. Curiously, Simon's face
+flushed, and he whirled in his chair.
+
+"Do you mean anything in particular, Old Bill?" he demanded.
+
+"It looks to me like maybe Dave's forgot a lot of things you told him,
+and he and Linda are havin' a little sparkin' time together out in the
+brush."
+
+The idea seemed to please the clan. But Simon's eyes glowed, and Bruce
+himself felt the beginnings of a blind rage that might, unless he held
+hard upon it, hurl him against their remorseless weapons. "I don't want
+any more such talk out of you, Old Bill," Simon reproved him, "and we've
+talked enough, anyway." His keen eyes studied Bruce's flushed face. "One
+of you give our guest a chair and fix him up in it with a thong. We
+don't want him flying off the coop and getting shot until we're done
+talking to him."
+
+One of the clansmen pushed a chair forward with sudden force, striking
+Bruce in the knees and almost knocking him over. The circle leered, and
+he sat down in it with as much ease as possible. Then one of the men
+looped his arms to the arms of the chair with thongs of buckskin.
+Another thong was tied about his ankles. Then the clansmen went back to
+their chairs.
+
+"I really don't see the use of all these dramatics," Bruce said coldly.
+"And I don't particularly like veiled threats. At present I seem to be
+in your hands."
+
+"You don't seem to be," Simon answered with reddening eyes. "You are."
+
+"I have no intention of saying I'm sorry I didn't heed the threats you
+gave me before--and as to those I've heard to-night--they're not going
+to do you any good, either. It is true that you found me in the house
+you occupy in the dead of night--but it isn't your house to start with.
+What a man seizes by murder isn't his."
+
+"What a man holds with a hard fist and his rifle--in these
+mountains--_is_ his," Simon contradicted him.
+
+"Besides, you got me here with a trick," Bruce went on without heeding
+him. "So don't pretend that any wickedness you do to-night was justified
+by my coming. You'll have to answer for it just the same."
+
+Simon leaned forward in his chair. His dark eyes glowed in the
+lamplight. "I've heard such talk as that before," he said. "I expect
+your own father talked like that a few times himself."
+
+The words seemed to strike straight home to the gathered Turners. The
+moment was breathless, weighted with suspense. All of them seemed
+straining in their chairs.
+
+Bruce's head bowed, but the veins stood out beneath the short hair on
+his temples, and his lips trembled when he answered. "That was a greater
+wickedness than anything--_anything_ you can do to-night. And you'll
+have to answer for it all the more."
+
+He spoke the last sentence with a calm assurance. Though spoken softly,
+the words rang clear. But the answer of the evil-hearted man before him
+was only a laugh.
+
+"And there's one thing more I want to make clear," Bruce went on in the
+strong voice of a man who had conquered his terror. And it was not
+because he did not realize his danger. He was in the hands of the
+Turners, and he knew that Simon had spoken certain words that, if for no
+other reason than his reputation with his followers, he would have to
+make good. Bruce knew that no moment of his life was ever fraught with
+greater peril. But the fact itself that there were no doors of escape
+open to him, and he was face to face with his destiny, steadied him all
+the more.
+
+The boy that had been wakened in his bed at home by the ring of the
+'phone bell had wholly vanished now. A man of the wild places had come
+instead, stern and courageous and unflinching.
+
+"Everything is tolerable clear to us already," Simon said, "except your
+sentence."
+
+"I want you to know that I refuse to be impressed with this judicial
+attitude of you and your blackguard followers," Bruce went on. "This
+gathering of the group of you doesn't make any evil that you do any less
+wrong, or the payment you'll have to make any less sure. It lies wholly
+in your power to kill me while I'm sitting here, and I haven't much hope
+but that you'll do it. But let me tell you this. A reign of bloodshed
+and crime can go on only so long. You've been kings up here, and you
+think the law can't reach you. But it will--believe me, it will."
+
+"And this was the man who was going to begin the blood-feud--already
+hollering about the law," Simon said to his followers. He turned to
+Bruce. "It's plain that Dave isn't going to come. I'll have to be the
+chief witness myself, after all. However, Dave told me all that I needed
+to know. The first question I have to ask of you, Folger, is the
+whereabouts of that agreement between your late lamented father and the
+late lamented Matthew Ross, according to what the trapper Hudson told
+you a few days ago."
+
+Bruce was strong enough to laugh in his bonds. "Up to this time I have
+given you and your murderous crowd credit for at least natural
+intelligence," he replied, "but I see I was mistaken--or you wouldn't
+expect an answer to that question."
+
+"Do you mean you don't know its whereabouts?"
+
+"I won't give you the satisfaction of knowing whether I know or not. I
+just refuse to answer."
+
+"I trust the ropes are tight enough about your wrists."
+
+"Plenty tight, thank you. They are cutting the flesh so it bleeds."
+
+"How would you like them some tighter?"
+
+"Pull them till they cut my arms off, and you won't get a civil answer
+out of me. In fact--" and the man's eyes blazed--"I'm tired of talking
+to this outlaw crowd. And the sooner you do what you're going to do, the
+better it will suit me."
+
+"We'll come to that shortly enough. Disregarding that for a moment--we
+understand that you want to open up the blood-feud again. Is that true?"
+
+Bruce made no answer, only gazed without flinching into his questioner's
+face.
+
+"That was what my brother Dave led me to understand," Simon went on, "so
+we've decided to let you have your way. It's open--it's been open since
+you came here. You disregarded the warning I gave--and men don't
+disregard my warnings twice. You threatened Dave with your rifle. This
+is a different land than you're used to, Bruce, and we do things our own
+way. You've hunted for trouble and now you've found it. Your father
+before you thought he could stand against us--but he's been lying still
+a long time. The Rosses thought so too. And it is part of our code never
+to take back a threat--but always to make it good."
+
+Bruce still sat with lowered head, seemingly not listening. The clansmen
+gazed at him, and a new, more deadly spirit was in the room. None of
+them smiled now; the whole circle of faces was dark and intent, their
+eyes glittered through narrowed lids, their lips set. The air was
+charged with suspense. The moment of crisis was near.
+
+Sometimes the men glanced at their leader's face, and what they saw
+there filled them with a grim and terrible eagerness. Simon was
+beginning to run true to form. His dark passions were slowly mastering
+him. For a moment they all sat as if entranced in a communion of
+cruelty, and to Bruce they seemed like a colony of spotted rattlesnakes
+such as sometimes hold their communions of hatred on the sun-blasted
+cliffs.
+
+All at once Simon laughed,--a sharp, hoarse sound that had, in its
+overtones, a note of madness. Every man in the room started. They seemed
+to have forgotten Bruce. They looked at their leader with a curious
+expectancy. They seemed to know that that wild laugh betokened but one
+thing--the impact of some terrible sort of inspiration.
+
+As they watched, they saw the idea take hold of him. The huge face
+darkened. His eyes seemed to smolder as he studied his huge hands. They
+understood, these wilderness men. They had seen their leader in such
+sessions before. A strange and grim idea had come to him; already he was
+feasting on its possibilities. It seemed to heat his blood and blur his
+vision.
+
+"We've decided to be merciful, after all," he said slowly. But neither
+Bruce nor the clansmen misunderstood him or were deceived. They only
+knew that these words were simply part of a deadly jest that in a moment
+all would understand. "Instead of filling you full of thirty-thirty
+bullets, as better men than you have been filled and what we _ought_ to
+do--we're just going to let you lay out all night--in the pasture--with
+your feet tied and your hands behind your back."
+
+No one relaxed. They listened, staring, for what would follow.
+
+"You may get a bit cold before morning," Simon went on, "but you're
+warmly dressed, and a little frost won't hurt you. And I've got the
+place all picked out for you. And we're even going to move something
+that's laying there so it will be more pleasant."
+
+Again he paused. Bruce looked up.
+
+"The thing that's lying there is a dead yearling calf, half ate up. It
+was killed last night by the Killer--the old grizzly that maybe you've
+heard of before. Some of the boys were going to wait in trees to-night
+by the carcass and shoot the Killer when he comes back after another
+meal--something that likely won't happen until about midnight if he runs
+true to form. But it won't be necessary now. We're going to haul the
+carcass away--down wind where he won't smell it. And we're going to
+leave you there in its place to explain to him what became of it."
+
+Bruce felt their glowing eyes upon him. Exultation was creeping over the
+clan; once more their leader had done himself proud. It was such
+suggestions as this that kept them in awe of him.
+
+And they thought they understood. They supposed that the night would be
+of the utter depths of terror to the tenderfoot from the cities, that
+the bear would sniff and wander about him, and perchance the man's hair
+would be turned quite white by morning. But being mountain men, they
+thought that the actual danger of attack was not great. They supposed
+that the inborn fear of men that all animals possess would keep him at a
+distance. And, if by any unlikely chance the theft of the beef-carcass
+should throw him into such a rage that he would charge Bruce, no harm
+in particular would be done. The man was a Folger, an enemy of the clan,
+and after once the telltale ropes were removed, no one would ask
+questions about the mutilated, broken thing that would be found next
+morning in the pasture. The story would carry down to the settlements
+merely as a fresh atrocity of the Killer, the last and greatest of the
+grizzlies.
+
+But they had no realization of the full dreadfulness of the plan. They
+hadn't heard the more recent history of the Killer,--the facts that
+Simon had just learned from Dave. Strange and dark conjecturing occupied
+Simon's mind, and he knew--in a moment's thought--that something more
+than terror and indignity might be Bruce's fate. But his passion was
+ripe for what might come. The few significant facts that they did not
+know were merely that the Killer had already found men out, that he had
+learned in an instant's meeting with Hudson beside Little River that men
+were no longer to be feared, and worse, that he was raving and deadly
+from the pain of the wound that Bruce's bullet had inflicted.
+
+The circle of faces faded out for both of them as the eyes of Bruce and
+Simon met and clashed and battled in the silent room.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+"If Simon Turner isn't a coward," Bruce said slowly to the clan, "he
+will give me a chance to fight him now."
+
+The room was wholly silent, and the clan turned expectant eyes to their
+leader. Simon scowled, but he knew he had to make answer. His eyes crept
+over Bruce's powerful body. "There is no obligation on my part to answer
+any challenges by you," he said. "You are a prisoner. But if you think
+you can sleep better in the pasture because of it, I'll let you have
+your chance. Take off his ropes."
+
+A knife slashed at his bonds. Simon stood up, and Bruce sprang from his
+chair like a wild cat, aiming his hardened knuckles straight for the
+leering lips. He made the attack with astonishing swiftness and power,
+and his intention was to deliver at least one terrific blow before Simon
+could get his arms up to defend himself. He had given the huge clan
+leader credit for tremendous physical strength, but he didn't think that
+the heavy body could move with real agility. But the great muscles
+seemed to snap into tension, the head ducked to one side, and his own
+huge fists struck out.
+
+If Bruce's blow had gone straight home where it had been aimed, Simon
+would have had nothing more to say for a few moments at least. When man
+was built of clay, Nature saw fit to leave him with certain
+imperfections lest he should think himself a god, and a weak spot in the
+region of the chin is one of them. The jaw bones carry the impact of a
+hard blow to certain nerve centers near the temples, and restful sleep
+comes quickly. There are never any ill effects, unless further damage is
+inflicted while unconsciousness is upon him. In spite of the fact that
+Simon got quickly into a position of defense, that first blow still had
+a fair chance of bringing the fight to an abrupt end. But still another
+consideration remained.
+
+Bruce's muscles had refused to respond. The leap had been powerful and
+swift yet wholly inaccurate. And the reason was just that his wrists and
+ankles had been numbed by the tight thongs by which they had been
+confined. Simon met the leap with a short, powerful blow into Bruce's
+face; and he reeled backward. The arms of the clansmen alone kept him
+from falling.
+
+The blow seemed to daze Bruce; and at first his only realization was
+that the room suddenly rang with harsh and grating laughter. Then
+Simon's words broke through it. "Put back the thongs," he ordered, "and
+go get your horses."
+
+Bruce was dimly aware of the falling of a silence, and then the arms of
+strong men half carrying him to the door. But he couldn't see plainly at
+first. The group stood in the shadow of the building; the moon was
+behind. He knew that the clan had brought their horses and were waiting
+for Simon's command. They loosened the ropes from about his ankles, and
+two of the clansmen swung him on to the back of a horse. Then they
+passed a rope under the horse's belly and tied his ankles anew.
+
+Simon gave a command, and the strange file started. The night air
+dispelled the mists in Bruce's brain, and full realization of all things
+came to him again. One of the men--he recognized him as Young Bill--led
+the horse on which he rode. Two of the clansmen rode in front, grim,
+silent, incredibly tall figures in the moonlight. The remainder rode
+immediately behind. Simon himself, bowed in his saddle, kept a little to
+one side. Their shadows were long and grotesque on the soft grass of the
+meadows, and the only sound was the soft footfall of their mounts.
+
+A full mile distant across the lush fields the cavalcade halted about a
+grotesque shadow in the grass. Bruce didn't have to look at it twice to
+know what it was: the half-devoured body of the yearling calf that had
+been the Killer's prey the night before. From thence on, their
+operations became as outlandish occurrences in a dream. They seemed to
+know just what to do. They took him from the saddle and bound his feet
+again; then laid him in the fragrant grass. They searched his pockets,
+taking the forged note that had led to his downfall. "It saves me a
+trip," Simon commented. He saw two of them lift the torn body of the
+animal on to the back of one of the horses, and he watched dully as the
+horse plunged and wheeled under the unfamiliar weight. He thought for an
+instant that it would step upon his own prone body, but he didn't
+flinch. Simon spoke in the silence, but his words seemed to come from
+far away.
+
+"Quiet that horse or kill him," he said softly. "You can't drag the
+carcass with your rope--the Killer would trace it if you did and maybe
+spoil the evening for Bruce."
+
+Strong arms sawed at the bits, and the horse quieted, trembling. For a
+moment Bruce saw their white moonlit faces as they stared down at him.
+
+"What about a gag?" one of them asked.
+
+"No. Let him shout if he likes. There is no one to hear him here."
+
+Then the tall men swung on their horses and headed back across the
+fields. Bruce watched them dully. Their forms grew constantly more dim,
+the sense of utter isolation increased. Then he saw the file pause, and
+it seemed to him that words, too faint for him to understand, reached
+him across the moonlit spaces. Then one of the party turned off toward
+the ridge.
+
+He guessed that it was Simon. He thought the man was riding toward
+Linda's home.
+
+He watched until the shadows had hidden them all. Then, straining
+upward, he tested his bonds. He tugged with the full strength of his
+arms, but there was not the play of an inch between his wrists. The
+Turners had done their work well. Not the slightest chance of escape lay
+in this quarter.
+
+He wrenched himself to one side, then looked about him. The fields
+stretched even and distant on one side, but he saw that the dark forest
+was but fifty yards away on the other. He listened; and the little
+night sounds reached him clearly. They had been sounds to rejoice in
+before,--impulses to delightful fancies of a fawn stealing through the
+thickets, or some of the Little People in their scurried, tremulous
+business of the night hours. But lying helpless at the edge of the
+forest, they were nothing to rejoice in now. He tried to shut his ears
+to them.
+
+He rolled again to his back and tried to find peace for his spirit in
+the stars. There were millions of them. They were larger and more bright
+than any time he had ever seen them. They stood in their high places,
+wholly indifferent and impassive to all the strife and confusion of the
+world below them; and Bruce wished that he could partake of their spirit
+enough so that he could rise above the fear and bitterness that had
+begun to oppress him. But only the pines could talk to them. Only the
+tall trees, stretching upward toward them, could reach into their
+mysterious calm.
+
+His eyes discerned a thin filament of cloud that had swept up from
+behind the ridges, and the sight recalled him to his own position with
+added force. The moonlight, soft as it was, had been a tremendous relief
+to him. At least, it would have enabled him to keep watch, and now he
+dreaded the fall of utter darkness more than he had ever dreaded
+anything in his life. It was an ancient instinct, coming straight from
+the young days of the world when nightfall brought the hunting creatures
+to the mouth of the cave, but he had never really experienced it before.
+If the clouds spread, the moon that was his last remaining solace would
+be obscured.
+
+He watched with growing horror the slow extension of the clouds. One by
+one the stars slipped beneath them. They drew slowly up to the moon and
+for a long minute seemed to hover. They were not heavy clouds, however,
+and in their thinner patches the stars looked dimly through. Finally the
+moon swept under them.
+
+The shadow fell around Bruce. For the first time he knew the age-old
+terror of the darkness. Dreadful memories arose within him,--vague
+things that had their font in the labyrinthal depths of the germ-plasm.
+It is a knowledge that no man, with the weapons of the twentieth century
+in his hands and in the glow of that great symbol of domain, the camp
+fire, can really possess; but here, bound hand and foot in the darkness,
+full understanding came to Bruce. He no longer knew himself as one of a
+dominant breed, master of all the wild things in the world. He was
+simply a living creature in a grim and unconquered world, alone and
+helpless in the terror of the darkness.
+
+The moonlight alternately grew and died as the moon passed in and out of
+the heavier cloud patches. Winds must have been blowing in the high
+lanes of the air, but there was no breath of them where Bruce lay. The
+forests were silent, and the little rustlings and stirrings that reached
+him from time to time only seemed to accentuate the quiet.
+
+He speculated on how many hours had passed. He wondered if he could dare
+to hope that midnight had already gone by and, through some divergence
+from wilderness customs, the grizzly had failed to return to his feast.
+It seemed endless hours since he had reëntered the empty rooms of
+Linda's home. A wave of hope crept through the whole hydraulic system of
+his veins. And then, as a sudden sound reached him from the forests at
+one side, that bright wave of hope turned black, receded, and left only
+despair.
+
+He heard the sound but dimly. In fact, except for his straining with
+every nerve alert, he might not have heard it at all. Nevertheless,
+distance alone had dimmed it; it had been a large sound to start with.
+So far had it come that only a scratch on the eardrums was left of it;
+but there was no chance to misunderstand it. It cracked out to him
+through the unfathomable silence, and all the elements by which he might
+recognize it were distinct. It was the noise of a heavy thicket being
+broken down and parted before an enormous body.
+
+He waited, scarcely breathing, trying to tell himself he had been
+mistaken. But a wiser, calmer self deep within him would not accept the
+lie. He listened, straining. Then he heard the sound again.
+
+Whoever came toward him had passed the heavy brush by now. The sounds
+that reached him were just faint and intermittent whispers,--first of a
+twig cracking beneath a heavy foot, then the rattle of two pebbles
+knocked together. Long moments of utter silence would ensue between, in
+which he could hear the steady drum of his heart in his breast and the
+long roll of his blood in his veins. The shadows grew and deepened and
+faded and grew again, as the moon passed from cloud to cloud.
+
+The limbs of a young fir tree rustled and whispered as something brushed
+against them. Leaves flicked together, and once a heavy limb popped like
+a distant small-calibered rifle as a great weight broke it in two. Then,
+as if the gods of the wilderness were using all their ingenuity to
+torture him, the silence closed down deeper than ever before.
+
+It lasted so long that he began to hope again. Perhaps the sounds had
+been made by a deer stealing on its way to feed in the pastures. Yet he
+knew the step had been too heavy for anything but the largest deer, and
+their way was to encircle a thicket rather than crash through it. The
+deer make it their business always to go with silence in these hours
+when the beasts of prey are abroad, and usually a beetle in the leaves
+makes more noise than they. It might have been the step of one of the
+small, black bears--a harmless and friendly wilderness dweller. Yet the
+impression lingered and strengthened that only some great hunter, a
+beast who feared neither other beasts nor men, had been steadily coming
+toward him through the forest. In the long silence that ensued Bruce
+began to hope that the animal had turned off.
+
+At that instant the moon slipped under a particularly heavy fragment of
+cloud, and deep darkness settled over him. Even his white face was no
+longer discernible in the dusk. He lay scarcely breathing, trying to
+fight down his growing terror.
+
+This silence could mean but one of two things. One of them was that the
+creature who had made the sounds had turned off on one of the many
+intersecting game trails that wind through the forest. This was his
+hope. The alternative was one of despair. It was simply that the
+creature had detected his presence and was stalking him in silence
+through the shadows.
+
+He thought that the light would never come. He strained again at his
+ropes. The dark cloud swept on; and the moonlight, silver and bright,
+broke over the scene.
+
+The forest stood once more in sharp silhouette against the sky. The moon
+stood high above the tapering tops of the pines. He studied with
+straining eyes the dark fringe of shadows one hundred feet distant. And
+at first he could see only the irregularities cast by the young trees,
+the firs between which lay the brush coverts.
+
+Then he detected a strange variation in the dark border of shadows. It
+held his gaze, and its outlines slowly strengthened. So still it stood,
+so seemingly a natural shadow that some irregularly shaped tree had
+cast, that his eyes refused to recognize it. But in an instant more he
+knew the truth.
+
+The shadow was that of a great beast that had stalked him clear to the
+border of the moonlight. The Killer had come for his dead.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+When Linda returned home the events of the night partook even of a
+greater mystery. The front door was open, and she found plenty of
+evidence that Bruce had returned from his journey. In the center of the
+room lay his pack, a rifle slanting across it.
+
+At first she did not notice the gun in particular. She supposed it was
+Bruce's weapon and that he had come in, dropped his luggage, and was at
+present somewhere in the house. It was true that one chair was upset,
+but except for an instant's start she gave no thought to it. She thought
+that he would probably go to the kitchen first for a bite to eat. He was
+not in this room, however, nor had the lamp been lighted.
+
+Her next idea was that Bruce, tired out, had gone to bed. She went back
+softly to the front room, intending not to disturb him. Once more she
+noticed the upset chair. The longer she regarded it, the more of a
+puzzle it became. She moved over toward the pack and looked casually at
+the rifle. In an instant more it was in her hands.
+
+She saw at once that it was not Bruce's gun. The action, make, and
+caliber were different. She was not a rifle-woman, and the little
+shooting she had done had been with a pistol; but even a layman could
+tell this much. Besides, it had certain peculiar notches on the stock
+that the gun Elmira had furnished Bruce did not have.
+
+She stood a moment in thought. The problem offered no ray of light. She
+considered what Bruce's first action would have been, on returning to
+the house to find her absent. Possibly he had gone in search of her. She
+turned and went to the door of his bedroom.
+
+She knocked on it softly. "Are you there, Bruce?" she called.
+
+No answer returned to her. The rooms, in fact, were deeply silent. She
+tried the door and found it unlocked. The room had not been occupied.
+
+Thoroughly alarmed, she went back into the front room and tried to
+decipher the mystery of the strange weapon. She couldn't conceive of any
+possibility whereby Bruce would exchange his father's trusted gun for
+this. Possibly it was an extra weapon that he had procured on his
+journey. And since no possible gain would come of her going out into the
+forests to seek him, she sat down to wait for his return. She knew that
+if she did start out he might easily return in her absence and be
+further alarmed.
+
+The moments dragged by and her apprehension grew. She took the rifle in
+her hands and, slipping the lever part way back, looked to see if there
+were a cartridge in the barrel. She saw a glitter of brass, and it gave
+her a measure of assurance. She had a pistol in her own room--a weapon
+that Elmira had procured, years before, from a passing sportsman--and
+for a moment she considered getting it also. She understood its action
+better and would probably be more efficient with it if the need arose,
+but for certain never-to-be-forgotten reasons she wished to keep this
+weapon until the moment of utmost need.
+
+Her whole stock of pistol cartridges consisted of six--completely
+filling the magazine of the pistol. Closely watched by the Turners, she
+had been unable to procure more. Many a dreadful night these six little
+cylinders of brass had been a tremendous consolation to her. They had
+been her sole defense, and she knew that in the final emergency she
+could use them to deadly effect.
+
+Linda was a girl who had always looked her situations in the face. She
+was not one to flinch from the truth and with false optimism disbelieve
+it. She had the courage of many generations of frontiersmen and
+woodsmen, and she had their vision too. She knew these mountain realms;
+better still she understood the dark passions of Simon and his
+followers, and this little half-pound of steel and wood with its brass
+shells might mean, in the dreadful last moment of despair, deliverance
+from them. It might mean escape for herself when all other ways were cut
+off. In this wild land, far from the reaches of law and without allies
+except for a decrepit old woman, the pistol and its deadly loads had
+been her greatest solace.
+
+But she relied on the rifle now. And sitting in the shadow, she kept
+watch over the moonlit ridge.
+
+The hours passed, and the clouds were starting up from the horizon when
+she thought she saw Bruce returning. A tall form came swinging toward
+her, over the little trail that led between the tree trunks. She peered
+intently. And in one instant more she knew that the approaching figure
+was not Bruce, but the man she most feared of anyone on earth, Simon
+Turner.
+
+She knew him by his great form, his swinging stride. Her thoughts came
+clear and true. It was obvious that his was no mission of stealth. He
+was coming boldly, freely, not furtively; and he must have known that he
+presented a perfect rifle target from the windows. Nevertheless, it is
+well to be prepared for emergencies. If life in the mountains teaches
+anything, it teaches that. She took the rifle and laid it behind a
+little desk, out of sight. Then she went to the door.
+
+"I want to come in, Linda," Simon told her.
+
+"I told you long ago you couldn't come to this house," Linda answered
+through the panels. "I want you to go away."
+
+Simon laughed softly. "You'd better let me in. I've brought word of the
+child you took to raise. You know who I mean."
+
+Yes, Linda knew. "Do you mean Bruce?" she asked. "I let Dave in to-night
+on the same pretext. Don't expect me to be caught twice by the same
+lie."
+
+"Dave? Where is Dave?" The fact was that the whereabouts of his brother
+had suddenly become considerable of a mystery to Simon. All the way
+from the pasture where he had left his clan he had been having black
+pictures of Dave. He had thought about him and Linda out in the darkness
+together, and his heart had seemed to smolder and burn with jealousy in
+his breast. It had been a great relief to him to find her in the house.
+
+"I wonder--where he is by now," Linda answered in a strange voice. "No
+one in this world can answer that question, Simon. Tell me what you
+want."
+
+She opened the door. She couldn't bear to show fear of this man. And she
+knew that an appearance of courage, at least, was the wisest course.
+
+"No matter about him now. I want to talk to you on business. If I had
+meant rough measures, I wouldn't have come alone."
+
+"No," Linda scorned. "You would have brought your whole murdering band
+with you. The Turners believe in overwhelming numbers."
+
+The words stung him but he smiled grimly into her face. "I've come in
+peace, Linda," he said, more gently. "I've come to give you a last
+chance to make friends."
+
+He walked past her into the room. He straightened the chair that had
+been upset, smiling strangely the while, and sat down in it.
+
+"Then tell me what you have to tell me," she said. "I'm in a hurry to go
+to bed--and this really isn't the hour for calls."
+
+He looked a long time into her face. She found it hard to hold her own
+gaze. Many things could be doubted about this man, but his power and
+his courage were not among them. The smile died from his lips, the
+lines deepened on his face. She realized as never before the tempestuous
+passions and unfathomable intensity of his nature.
+
+"We've never been good friends," Simon went on slowly.
+
+"We never could be," the girl answered. "We've stood for different
+things."
+
+"At first my efforts to make friends were just--to win you over to our
+side. It didn't work--all it did was to waken other desires in
+me--desires that perhaps have come to mean more than the possession of
+the lands. You know what they are. You've always known--that any time
+you wished--you could come and rule my house."
+
+She nodded. She knew that she had won, against her will, the strange,
+somber love of this mighty man. She had known it for months.
+
+"As my wife--don't make any mistake about that. Linda, I'm a stern, hard
+man. I've never known how to woo. I don't know that I want to know how,
+the way it is done by weaker men. It has never been my way to ask for
+what I wanted. But sometimes it seems to me that if I'd been a little
+more gentle--not so masterful and so relentless--that I'd won you long
+ago."
+
+Linda looked up bravely into his face. "No, Simon. You could have
+never--never won me! Oh, can't you see--even in this awful place a woman
+wants something more than just brute strength and determination. Every
+woman prays to find strength in the man she loves--but it isn't the
+kind that you have, the kind that makes your men grovel before you, and
+makes me tremble when I'm talking to you. It's a big, calm
+strength--and I can't tell you what it is. It's something the pines
+have, maybe--strength not to yield to the passions, but to restrain, not
+to be afraid of, but to cling to--to stand upright and honorable and
+manly, and make a woman strong just to see it in the man she loves."
+
+He listened gravely. Her cheeks blazed. It was a strange scene--the
+silent room, the implacable foes, the breathless suspense, the prophecy
+and inspiration in her tones.
+
+"Perhaps I should have been more gentle," he admitted. "I might have
+forgotten--for a little while--this surging, irresistible impulse in my
+muscles--and tried just to woo you, gently and humbly. But it's too late
+now. I'm not a fool. I can't expect you to begin at the beginning. I can
+only go on in my own way--my hard, remorseless, ruthless way.
+
+"It isn't every man who is brave enough to see what he wants and knock
+away all obstacles to get it," he went on. "Put that bravery to my
+credit. To pay no attention to methods, only to look forward to the
+result. That has been my creed. It is my creed now. Many less brave men
+would fear your hatred--but I don't fear it as long as I possess what I
+go after and a hope that I can get you over it. Many of my own brothers
+hate me, but yet I don't care as long as they do my will. No matter how
+much you scorn it, this bravery has always got me what I wanted, and it
+will get me what I want now."
+
+The high color died in her face. She wondered if the final emergency had
+come at last.
+
+"I've come to make a bargain. You can take it or you can refuse. On one
+side is the end of all this conflict, to be my wife, to have what you
+want--bought by the rich return from my thousands of acres. And I love
+you, Linda. You know that."
+
+The man spoke the truth. His terrible, dark love was all over him--in
+his glowing eyes, in his drawn, deeply-lined face.
+
+"In time, when you come around to my way of thinking, you'll love me. If
+you refuse--this last time--I've got to take other ways. On that side is
+defeat for you--as sure as day. The time is almost up when the title to
+those lands is secure. Bruce is in our hands--"
+
+She got up, white-faced. "Bruce--?"
+
+He arose too. "Yes! Did you think he could stand against us? I'll show
+him to you in the morning. To-night he's paying the price for ever
+daring to oppose my will."
+
+She turned imploring eyes. He saw them, and perhaps--far distant--he saw
+the light of triumph too. A grim smile came to his lips.
+
+"Simon," she cried. "Have mercy."
+
+The word surprised him. It was the first time she had ever asked this
+man for mercy. "Then you surrender--?"
+
+"Simon, listen to me," she begged. "Let him go--and I won't even try to
+fight you any more. I'll let you keep those lands and never try any more
+to make you give them up. You and your brothers can keep them forever,
+and we won't try to get revenge on you either. He and I will go away."
+
+He gazed at her in deepening wonderment. For the moment, his mind
+refused to accept the truth. He only knew that since he had faced her
+before, some new, great strength had come to her,--that a power was in
+her life that would make her forego all the long dream of her days.
+
+He had known perfectly the call of the blood in her. He had understood
+her hatred of the Turners, he could hate in the same way himself. He
+realized her love for her father's home and how she had dreamed of
+expelling its usurpers. Yet she was willing to renounce it all. The
+power that had come to her was one that he, a man whose code of life was
+no less cruel and remorseless than that of the Killer himself, could not
+understand.
+
+"But why?" he demanded. "Why are you willing to do all this for him?"
+
+"Why?" she echoed. Once more the luster was in her dark eyes. "I suppose
+it is because--I love him."
+
+He looked at her with slowly darkening face. Passion welled within him.
+An oath dropped from his lips, blasphemous, more savage than any
+wilderness voice. Then he raised his arm and struck her tender flesh.
+
+He struck her breast. The brutality of the man stood forth at last. No
+picture that all the dreadful dramas of the wild could portray was more
+terrible than this. The girl cried out, reeled and fell fainting from
+the pain, and with smoldering eyes he gazed at her unmoved. Then he
+turned out of the door.
+
+But the curtain of this drama in the mountain home had not yet rung
+down. Half-unconscious, she listened to his steps. He was out in the
+moonlight, vanishing among the trees. Strange fancies swept her, all in
+the smallest fraction of an instant, and a voice spoke clearly. With all
+the strength of her will she dispelled the mists of dawning
+unconsciousness that the pain had wrought and crept swiftly to the
+little desk placed against the wall. Her hand fumbled in the shadow
+behind it and brought out a glittering rifle. Then she crept to the open
+doorway.
+
+Lying on the floor, she raised the weapon to her shoulder. Her thumb
+pressed back, strong and unfaltering, against the hammer; and she heard
+it click as it sprung into place. Then she looked along the barrel until
+she saw the swinging form of Simon through the sights.
+
+There was no remorse in that cold gaze of hers. The wings of death
+hovered over the man, ready to swoop down. Her fingers curled tighter
+about the trigger. One ounce more pressure, and Simon's trail of
+wickedness and bloodshed would have come to an end at last. But at that
+instant her eyes widened with the dawn of an idea.
+
+She knew this man. She knew the hatred that was upon him. And she
+realized, as if by an inspiration from on High, that before he went to
+his house and to sleep he would go once more into the presence of Bruce,
+confined somewhere among these ridges and suffering the punishment of
+having opposed his will. Simon would want one look to see how his plan
+was getting on; perhaps he would want to utter one taunting word. And
+Linda saw her chance.
+
+She started to creep out of the door. Then she turned back, crawled
+until she was no longer revealed in the silhouette of the lighted
+doorway, and got swiftly to her feet. She dropped the rifle and darted
+into her own room. There she procured a weapon that she trusted more,
+her little pistol, loaded with six cartridges.
+
+If she had understood the real nature of the danger that Bruce faced she
+would have retained the rifle. It shot with many times the smashing
+power of the little gun, and at long range was many times as accurate,
+but even it would have seemed an ineffective defense against such an
+enemy as was even now creeping toward Bruce's body. But she knew that in
+a crisis, against such of the Turners as she thought she might have to
+face, it would serve her much better than the more awkward, heavier
+weapon. Besides, she knew how to wield it, and all her life she had kept
+it for just such an emergency.
+
+The pain of the blow was quite gone now, except for a strange sickness
+that had encompassed her. But she was never colder of nerve and surer
+of muscle. Cunningly she lay down again before she crept through the
+door, so that if Simon chanced to look about he would fail to see that
+she followed him. She crept to the thickets, then stood up. Three
+hundred yards down the slope she could see Simon's dimming figure in the
+moonlight, and swiftly she sped after him.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+The shadow that Bruce saw at the edge of the forest could not be
+mistaken as to identity. The hopes that he had held before--that this
+stalking figure might be that of a deer or an elk--could no longer be
+entertained. Men as a rule do not love the wild and wailing sobs of a
+coyote, as he looks down upon a camp fire from the ridge above. Sleep
+does not come easily when a gaunt wolf walks in a slow, inquisitive
+circle about the pallet, scarcely a leaf rustling beneath his feet. And
+a few times, in the history of the frontier, men have had queer
+tinglings and creepings in the scalp when they have happened to glance
+over their shoulders and see the eyes of a great, tawny puma, glowing an
+odd blue in the firelight. Yet Bruce would have had any one of these, or
+all three together, in preference to the Killer.
+
+The reason was extremely simple. No words have ever been capable of
+expressing the depths of cowardice of which a coyote is capable. He will
+whine and weep about a camp, like a soul lost between two worlds, but if
+he is in his right mind he would have each one of his gray hairs plucked
+out, one by one, rather than attack a man. The cunning breed to which he
+belongs has found out that it doesn't pay. The wolf is sometimes
+disquietingly brave when he is fortified by his pack brethren in the
+winter, but in such a season as this he is particularly careful to keep
+out of the sight of man. And the Tawny One himself, white-fanged and
+long-clawed and powerful as he is, never gets farther than certain
+dreadful, speculative dreams.
+
+But none of these things was true of the Killer. He had already shown
+his scorn of men. His very stride showed that he feared no living
+creature that shared the forest with him. In fact, he considered himself
+the forest master. The bear is never a particularly timid animal, and
+whatever timidity the Killer possessed was as utterly gone as
+yesterday's daylight.
+
+Bruce watched him with unwinking eyes. The shadow wavered ever so
+slightly, as the Killer turned his head this way and that. But except to
+follow it with his eyes, Bruce made no motion. The inner guardians of a
+man's life--voices that are more to be relied upon than the promptings
+of any conscious knowledge--had already told him what to do. These
+monitors had the wisdom of the pines themselves, and they had revealed
+to him his one hope. It was just to lie still, without a twitch of a
+muscle. It might be that the Killer would fail to discern his outline.
+Bruce had no conscious knowledge, as yet, that it is movement rather
+than form to which the eyes of the wild creatures are most receptive.
+But he acted upon that fact now as if by instinct. He was not lying in
+quite the exact spot where the Killer had left his dead the preceding
+night, and possibly his outline was not enough like it to attract the
+grizzly's attention. Besides, in the intermittent light, it was wholly
+possible that the grizzly would try to find the remains of his feast by
+smell alone; and if this were lacking, and Bruce made no movements to
+attract his attention, he might wander away in search of other game.
+
+For the first time in his life, Bruce knew Fear as it really was. It is
+a knowledge that few dwellers in cities can possibly have; and so few
+times has it really been experienced in these days of civilization that
+men have mostly forgotten what it is like. If they experience it at all,
+it is usually only in a dream that arises from the germ-plasm,--a
+nightmare to paralyze the muscles and chill the heart and freeze a man
+in his bed. The moon was strange and white as it slipped in and out of
+the clouds, and the forest, mysterious as Death itself, lightened and
+darkened alternately with a strange effect of unreality; but for all
+that, Bruce could not make himself believe that this was just a dream.
+The dreadful reality remained that the Killer, whose name and works he
+knew, was even now investigating him from the shadows one hundred feet
+away.
+
+The fear that came to him was that of the young world,--fear without
+recompense, direct and primitive fear that grew on him like a sickness.
+It was the fear that the deer knew as they crept down their dusky trails
+at night; it was the fear of darkness and silence and pain and heaven
+knows what cruelty that would be visited upon him by those terrible,
+rending fangs and claws. It was the fear that can be heard in the pack
+song in the dreadful winter season, and that can be felt in strange
+overtones, in the sobbing wail of despair that the coyote utters in the
+half-darkness. He had been afraid for his life every moment he was in
+the hands of the Turners. He knew that if he survived this night, he
+would have to face death again. He had no hopes of deliverance
+altogether. But the Turners were men, and they worked with knife blade
+and bullet, not rending fang and claw. He could face men bravely; but it
+was hard to keep a strong heart in the face of this ancient fear of
+beasts.
+
+The Killer seemed disturbed and moved slowly along the edge of the
+moonlight. Bruce could trace his movements by the irregularity in the
+line of shadows. He seemed to be moving more cautiously than ever, now.
+Bruce could not hear the slightest sound.
+
+For an instant Bruce had an exultant hope that the bear would continue
+on down the edge of the forest and leave him; and his heart stood still
+as the great beast paused, sniffing. But some smell in the air seemed to
+reach him, and he came stealing back.
+
+In reality, the Killer was puzzled. He had come to this place straight
+through the forest with the expectation that food--flesh to tear with
+his fangs--would be waiting for him. Perhaps he had no actual memory of
+killing the calf the night before. Possibly it was only instinct, not
+conscious intelligence, that brought him back to what was left of his
+feast the preceding night. And now, as he waited at the border of the
+darkness, he knew that a strange change had taken place. And the Killer
+did not like strangeness.
+
+The smell that he had expected had dimmed to such an extent that it
+promoted no muscular impulse. Perhaps it was only obliterated by a
+stranger smell,--one that was vaguely familiar and wakened a slow,
+brooding anger in his great beast's heart.
+
+He was not timid; yet he retained some of his natural caution and
+remained in the gloom while he made his investigations. Probably it was
+a hunting instinct alone. He crept slowly up and down the border of
+moonlight, and his anger seemed to grow and deepen within him. He felt
+dimly that he had been cheated out of his meal. And once before he had
+been similarly cheated; but there had been singular triumph at the end
+of that experience.
+
+All at once a movement, far across the pasture, caught his attention.
+Remote as it was, he identified the tall form at once; it was just such
+a creature as he had blasted with one blow a day or two before. But it
+dimmed quickly in the darkness. It seemed only that some one had come,
+taken one glance at the drama at the edge of the forest, and had
+departed. Bruce himself had not seen the figure; and perhaps it was the
+mercy of Fate--not usually merciful--that he did not. He might have been
+caused to hope again, only to know a deeper despair when the man left
+him without giving aid. For the tall form had been that of Simon coming,
+as Linda had anticipated, for a moment's inspection of his handiwork.
+And seeing that it was good, he had departed again.
+
+The grizzly watched him go, then turned back to his questioning regard
+of the strange, dark figure that lay so prone in the grass in front. The
+darkness dropped over him as the moon went behind a heavy patch of
+cloud.
+
+And in that moment of darkness, the Killer understood. He remembered
+now. Possibly the upright form of Simon had suggested it to him;
+possibly the wind had only blown straighter and thus permitted him to
+identify the troubling smells. All at once a memory flashed over
+him,--of a scene in a distant glen, and similar tall figures that tried
+to drive him from his food. He had charged then, struck once, and one of
+the forms had lain very still. He remembered the pungent, maddening odor
+that had reached him after his blow had gone home. Most clearly of all,
+he remembered how his fangs had struck and sunk.
+
+He knew this strange shadow now. It was just another of that tall breed
+he had learned to hate, and it was simply lying prone as his foe had
+done after the charge beside Little River. In fact, the still-lying form
+recalled the other occasion with particular vividness. The excitement
+that he had felt before returned to him now; he remembered his
+disappointment when the whistling bullets from the hillside above had
+driven him from his dead. But there were no whistling bullets now.
+Except for them, there would have been further rapture beside that
+stream; but he might have it now.
+
+His fangs had sunk home just once, before, and his blood leaped as he
+recalled the passion he had felt. The old hunting madness came back to
+him. It was the fair game, this that lay so still in the grass, just as
+the body of the calf had been and just as the warm body of Hudson in the
+distant glen.
+
+The wound at his side gave him a twinge of pain. It served to make his
+memories all the clearer. The lurid lights grew in his eyes. Rage swept
+over him.
+
+But he didn't charge blindly. He retained enough of his hunting caution
+to know that to stalk was the proper course. It was true that there was
+no shrubbery to hide him, yet in his time he had made successful stalks
+in the open, even upon deer. He moved farther out from the edge of the
+forest.
+
+At that instant the moon came out and revealed him, all too vividly, to
+Bruce. The Killer's great gray figure in the silver light was creeping
+toward him across the silvered grass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Linda left her house, her first realization was the need of
+caution. It would not do to let Simon see her. And she knew that only
+her long training in the hills, her practice in climbing the winding
+trails, would enable her to keep pace with the fast-walking man without
+being seen.
+
+In her concern for Bruce, she had completely forgotten the events of the
+earlier part of the evening. Wild and stirring though they were, they
+now seemed to her as incidents of remote years, nothing to be
+remembered in this hour of crisis. But she remembered them vividly when,
+two hundred yards from the house, she saw two strange figures coming
+toward her between the moonlit tree trunks.
+
+There was very little of reality about either. The foremost figure was
+bent and strange, but she knew that it could be no one but Elmira. The
+second, however--half-obscured behind her--offered no interpretation of
+outline at all at first. But at the turn of the trail she saw both
+figures in vivid profile. Elmira was coming homeward, bent over her
+cane, and she led a saddled horse by its bridle rein.
+
+Still keeping Simon in sight, Linda ran swiftly toward her. She didn't
+understand the deep awe that stole over her,--an emotion that even her
+fear for Bruce could not transcend. There was a quality in Elmira's face
+and posture that she had never seen before. It was as if she were
+walking in her sleep, she came with such a strange heaviness and
+languor, her cane creeping through the pine needles of the trail in
+front. She did not seem to be aware of Linda's approach until the girl
+was only ten feet distant. Then she looked up, and Linda saw the
+moonlight on her face.
+
+She saw something else too, but she didn't know what it was. Her own
+eyes widened. The thin lips were drooping, the eyes looked as if she
+were asleep. The face was a strange net of wrinkles in the soft light.
+Terrible emotions had but recently died and left their ashes upon it.
+But Linda knew that this was no time to stop and wonder and ask
+questions.
+
+"Give me the horse," she commanded. "I'm going to help Bruce."
+
+"You can have it," Elmira answered in an unfamiliar voice. "It's the
+horse that--that Dave Turner rode here--and he won't want him any more."
+
+Linda took the rein, passed it over the horse's head, and started to
+swing into the saddle. Then she turned with a gasp as the woman slipped
+something into her hand.
+
+Linda looked down and saw it was the hilt of the knife that Elmira had
+carried with her when the two women had gone with Dave into the woods.
+The blade glittered; but Linda was afraid to look at it closely. "You
+might need that, too," the old woman said. "It may be wet--I can't
+remember. But take it, anyway."
+
+Linda hardly heard. She thrust the blade into the leather of the saddle,
+then swung on her horse. Once more she sought Simon's figure. Far away
+she saw it, just as it vanished into the heavy timber on top of the
+hill.
+
+She rode swiftly until she began to fear that he might hear the hoof
+beat of her mount; then she drew up to a walk. And when she had crested
+the hill and had followed down its long slope into the glen, the moon
+went under the clouds for the first time.
+
+She lost sight of Simon at once. Seemingly her effort to save Bruce had
+come to nothing, after all.
+
+But she didn't turn back. There were light patches in the sky, and the
+moon might shine forth again.
+
+She followed down the trail toward the cleared lands that the Turners
+cultivated. She went to their very edge. It was a rather high point, so
+she waited here for the moon to emerge again. Never, it seemed to her,
+had it moved so slowly. But all at once its light flowed forth over the
+land.
+
+Her eyes searched the distant spaces, but she could catch no glimpse of
+Simon between the trees. Evidently he no longer walked in the direction
+of the house. Then she looked out over the tilled lands.
+
+Almost a quarter of a mile away she saw the flicker of a miniature
+shadow. Only the vivid quality of the moonlight, against which any
+shadow was clear-cut and sharp, enabled her to discern it at all. It was
+Simon, and evidently his business had taken him into the meadows.
+Feeling that she was on the right track at last, she urged her horse
+forward again, keeping to the shadow of the timber at first.
+
+Simon walked almost parallel to the dark fringe for nearly a mile; then
+turned off into the tilled lands. She rode opposite him and reined in
+the horse to watch.
+
+When the distance had almost obscured him, she saw him stop. He waited a
+long time, then turned back. The moon went in and out of the clouds.
+Then, trusting to the distance to conceal her, Linda rode slowly out
+into the clearing.
+
+Simon reëntered the timber, his inspection seemingly done, and Linda
+still rode in the general direction he had gone. The darkness fell
+again, and for the space of perhaps five minutes all the surroundings
+were obscured. A curious sense of impending events came over her as she
+headed on toward the distant wall of forest beyond.
+
+Then, the clouds slowly dimming under the moon, the light grew with
+almost imperceptible encroachments. At first it was only bright enough
+to show her own dim shadow on the grass. The utter gloom that was over
+the fields lessened and drew away like receding curtains; her vision
+reached ever farther, the shadows grew more clearly outlined and
+distinct. Then the moon rolled forth into a wholly open patch of sky--a
+white sphere with a sprinkling of vivid stars around it--and the silver
+radiance poured down.
+
+It was like the breaking of dawn. The fields stretched to incredible
+distances about her. The forest beyond emerged in distinct outline; she
+could see every irregularity in the plain. And in one instant's glance
+she knew that she had found Bruce.
+
+His situation went home to her in one sweep of the eyes. Bruce was not
+alone. Even now a great, towering figure was creeping toward him from
+the forest. Linda cried out, and with the long strap of her rein lashed
+her horse into the fastest pace it knew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruce did not hear her come. He lay in the soft grass, waiting for
+death. A great calm had come upon him; a strange, quiet strength that
+the pines themselves might have lent to him; and he made no cry. In this
+dreadful last moment of despair the worst of his terror had gone and
+left his thoughts singularly clear. And but one desire was left to him:
+that the Killer might be merciful and end his frail existence with one
+blow.
+
+It was not a great deal to ask for; but he knew perfectly that only by
+the mercy of the forest gods could it come to pass. They are usually not
+so kind to the dying; and it is not the wild-animal way to take pains to
+kill at the first blow. Yet his eyes held straight. The Killer crept
+slowly toward him; more and more of his vast body was revealed above the
+tall heads of the grass. And now all that Bruce knew was a great
+wonder,--a strange expectancy and awe of what the opening gates of
+darkness would reveal.
+
+The Killer moved with dreadful slowness and deliberation. He was no
+longer afraid. It was just as it had been before,--a warm figure lying
+still and helpless for his own terrible pleasure. A few more steps and
+he would be near enough to see plainly; then--after the grizzly
+habit--to fling into the charge. It was his own way of hunting,--to
+stalk within a few score of feet, then to make a furious, resistless
+rush. He paused, his muscles setting. And then the meadows suddenly rang
+with the undulations of his snarl.
+
+Almost unconscious, Bruce did not understand what had caused this
+utterance. But strangely, the bear had lifted his head and was staring
+straight over him. For the first time Bruce heard the wild beat of
+hoofs on the turf behind him.
+
+He didn't have time to turn and look. There was no opportunity even for
+a flood of renewed hope. Events followed upon one another with startling
+rapidity. The sharp, unmistakable crack of a pistol leaped through the
+dusk, and a bullet sung over his body. And then a wild-riding figure
+swept up to him.
+
+It was Linda, firing as she came. How she had been able to control her
+horse and ride him into that scene of peril no words may reveal.
+Perhaps, running wildly beneath the lash, his starting eyes did not
+discern or interpret the gray figure scarcely a score of yards distant
+from Bruce; and it is true the grizzly's pungent smell--a thing to
+terrify much more and to be interpreted more clearly than any kind of
+dim form in the moonlight--was blown in the opposite direction. Perhaps
+the lashing strap recalled the terrible punishment the horse had
+undergone earlier that evening at the hands of Simon and no room was
+left for any lesser terror. But most likely of all, just as in the case
+of brave soldiers riding their horses into battle, the girl's own
+strength and courage went into him. Always it has been the same; the
+steed partook of its rider's own spirit.
+
+The bear reared up, snarling with wrath, but for a moment it dared not
+charge. The sudden appearance of the girl and the horse held him
+momentarily at bay. The girl swung to the ground in one leap, fired
+again, thrust her arm through the loop of the bridle rein, then knelt
+at Bruce's side. The white blade that she carried in her left hand
+slashed at his bonds.
+
+The horse, plunging, seemed to jerk her body back and forth, and endless
+seconds seemed to go by before the last of the thongs was severed. In
+reality the whole rescue was unbelievably swift. The man helped her all
+he could. "Up--up into the saddle," she commanded. The grizzly growled
+again, advancing remorselessly toward them, and twice more she fired.
+Two of the bullets went home in his great body, but their weight and
+shocking power were too slight to affect him. He went down once more on
+all fours, preparing to charge.
+
+Bruce, in spite of the fact that his limbs had been nearly paralyzed by
+the tight bonds, managed to grasp the saddlehorn. In the strength of
+new-born hope he pulled himself half up on it, and he felt Linda's
+strong arms behind him pushing up. The horse plunged in deadly fear; and
+the Killer leaped toward them. Once more the pistol cracked. Then the
+horse broke and ran in a frenzy of terror.
+
+Bruce was full in the saddle by then, and even at the first leap his arm
+swept out to the girl on the ground beside him. He swung her towards
+him, and at the same time her hands caught at the arching back of the
+saddle. Never had her fine young strength been put to a greater test
+than when she tried to pull herself up on the speeding animal's back.
+For the first fifty feet she was half-dragged, but slowly--with Bruce's
+help--she pulled herself up to a position of security.
+
+The Killer's charge had come a few seconds too late. For a moment he
+raced behind them in insane fury, but only his savage growl leaped
+through the darkness fast enough to catch up with them. And the distance
+slowly widened.
+
+The Killer had been cheated again; and by the same token Simon's oath
+had been proved untrue. For once the remorseless strength of which he
+boasted had been worsted by a greater strength; and love, not hate, was
+the power that gave it. For once a girl's courage--a courage greater
+than that with which he obeyed the dictates of his cruel will--had cost
+him his victory. The war that he and his outlaw band had begun so long
+ago had not yet been won.
+
+Indeed, if Simon could have seen what the moon saw as it peered out from
+behind the clouds, he would have known that one of the debts of blood
+incurred so many years ago had even now been paid. Far away on a distant
+hillside there was one who gave no heed to the fast hoof beats of the
+speeding horse. It was Dave Turner, and his trail of lust and wickedness
+was ended at last. He lay with lifted face, and there were curious dark
+stains on the pine needles.
+
+It was the first blood since the reopening of the feud. And the pines,
+those tall, dark sentinels of the wilderness, seemed to look down upon
+him in passionless contemplation, as if they wondered at the stumbling
+ways of men. Their branches rubbed together and made words as the wind
+swept through them, but no man may say what those words were.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+THE COMING OF THE STRENGTH
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Fall was at hand at Trail's End. One night, and the summer was still a
+joyous spirit in the land, birds nested, skies were blue, soft winds
+wandered here and there through the forest. One morning, and a startling
+change had come upon the wilderness world. The spirit of autumn had come
+with golden wings.
+
+The wild creatures, up and about at their pursuits long before dawn,
+were the first to see the change. A buck deer--a noble creature with six
+points on his spreading horns--got the first inkling of it when he
+stopped at a spring to drink. It was true that an hour before he had
+noticed a curious crispness and a new stir in the air, but he had been
+so busy keeping out of the ambushes of the Tawny One that he had not
+noticed it. The air had been chill in his nostrils, but thanks to a
+heavy growth of hair that--with mysterious foresight--had begun to come
+upon his body, it gave him no discomfort. But it was a puzzling and
+significant thing that the water he bent to drink had been transformed
+to something hard and white and burning cold to the tip of his nose.
+
+It was the first real freeze. True, for the past few nights there had
+been a measure of tinkling, cobweb frost on the ground in wet places,
+but even the tender-skinned birds--always most watchful of signs of this
+kind--had disregarded it. But there was no disregarding this half-inch
+of blue ice that had covered the spring. The buck deer struck it angrily
+with his front hoofs, broke through and drank; then went snorting up the
+hill.
+
+His anger was in itself a significant thing. In the long, easy-going
+summer days, Blacktail had almost forgotten what anger was like. He had
+been content to roam over the ridges, cropping the leaves and grass,
+avoiding danger and growing fat. But all at once this kind of existence
+had palled on him. He felt that he wanted only one thing--not food or
+drink or safety--but a good, slashing, hooking, hoof-carving battle with
+another buck of his own species. An unwonted crossness had come upon
+him, and his soft eyes burned with a blue fire. He remembered the does,
+too--with a sudden leap of his blood--and wondered where they were
+keeping themselves. Being only a beast he did not know that this new
+belligerent spirit was just as much a sign of fall as the soft blush
+that was coming on the leaves. The simple fact was that fall means the
+beginning of the rut--the wild mating days when the bucks battle among
+themselves and choose their harems of does.
+
+He had rather liked his appearance as he saw himself in the water of the
+spring. The last of the velvet had been rubbed from his horns, and the
+twelve tines (six on each horn) were as hard and almost as sharp as so
+many bayonet points. As the morning dawned, the change in the face of
+nature became ever more manifest. The leaves of the shrubbery began to
+change in color. The wind out of the north had a keener, more biting
+quality, and the birds were having some sort of exciting debate in the
+tree tops.
+
+The birds are always a scurried, nervous, rather rattle-brained outfit,
+and seem wholly incapable of making a decision about anything without
+hours of argument and discussion. Their days are simply filled with one
+excitement after another, and they tell more scandal in an hour than the
+old ladies in a resort manage in the entire summer. This slow
+transformation in the color of the leaves, not to mention the chill of
+the frost through their scanty feathers, had created a sensation from
+one end of birdland to another. And there was only one thing to do about
+it. That was to wait until the darkness closed down again, then start
+away toward the path of the sun in search of their winter resorts in the
+south.
+
+The Little People in the forest of ferns beneath were not such gay
+birds, and they did not have such high-flown ideas as these feathered
+folk in the branches. They didn't talk such foolishness and small talk
+from dawn to dark. They didn't wear gay clothes that weren't a particle
+of good to them in cold weather. You can imagine them as being good,
+substantial, middle-class people, much more sober-minded, tending
+strictly to business and working hard, and among other things they saw
+no need of flitting down to southern resorts for the cold season. These
+people--being mostly ground squirrels and gophers and chipmunks and
+rabbits--had not been fitted by nature for wide travel and had made all
+arrangements for a pleasant winter at home. You could almost see a smile
+on the fat face of a plump old gopher when he came out and found the
+frost upon the ground; for he knew that for months past he had been
+putting away stores for just this season. In the snows that would follow
+he would simply retire into the farthest recesses of his burrow and let
+the winds whistle vainly above him.
+
+The larger creatures, however, were less complacent. The wolves--if
+animals have any powers of foresight whatever--knew that only hard days,
+not luscious nuts and roots, were in store for them. There would be many
+days of hunger once the snow came over the land. The black bear saw the
+signs and began a desperate effort to lay up as many extra pounds of fat
+as possible before the snows broke. Ashur's appetite was always as much
+with him as his bobbed-off excuse for a tail, and as he was more or less
+indifferent to a fair supply of dirt, he always managed to put away
+considerable food in a rather astonishingly short period of time; and
+now he tried to eat all the faster in view of the hungry days to come.
+He would have need of the extra flesh. The time was coming when all
+sources of food would be cut off by the snows, and he would have to seek
+the security of hibernation. He had already chosen an underground abode
+for himself and there he could doze away in the cold-trance through the
+winter months, subsisting on the supplies of fat that he had stored next
+to his furry hide.
+
+The greatest of all the bears, the Killer, knew that some such fate
+awaited him also. But he looked forward to it with wretched spirit. He
+was master of the forest, and perhaps he did not like to yield even to
+the spirit of winter. His savagery grew upon him every day, and his
+dislike for men had turned to a veritable hatred. But he had found them
+out. When he crossed their trails again, he would not wait to stalk.
+They were apt to slip away from him in this case and sting him
+unmercifully with bullets. The thing to do was charge quickly and strike
+with all his power.
+
+The three minor wounds he had received--two from pistol bullets and one
+from Bruce's rifle--had not lessened his strength at all. They did,
+however, serve to keep his blood-heat at the explosive stage most of the
+day and night.
+
+The flowers and the grasses were dying; the moths that paid calls on the
+flowers had laid their eggs and had perished, and winter lurked--ready
+to pounce forth--just beyond the distant mountains. There is nothing so
+thoroughly unreliable as the mountain autumn. It may linger in
+entrancing golds and browns month after month, until it is almost time
+for spring to come again; and again it may make one short bow and usher
+in the winter. To Bruce and Linda, in the old Folger home in Trail's
+End, these fall days offered the last hope of success in their war
+against the Turners.
+
+The adventure in the pasture with the Killer had handicapped them to an
+unlooked-for degree. Bruce's muscles had been severely strained by the
+bonds; several days had elapsed before he regained their full use. Linda
+was a mountain girl, hardy as a deer, yet her nerves had suffered a
+greater shock by the experience than either of them had guessed. The
+wild ride, the fear and the stress, and most of all the base blow that
+Simon had dealt her had been too much even for her strong constitution;
+and she had been obliged to go to bed for a few days of rest. Old Elmira
+worked about the house the same as ever, but strange, new lights were in
+her eyes. For reasons that went down to the roots of things, neither
+Bruce nor Linda questioned her as to her scene with Dave Turner in the
+coverts; and what thoughts dwelt in her aged mind neither of them could
+guess.
+
+The truth was that in these short weeks of trial and danger whatever
+dreadful events had come to pass in that meeting were worth neither
+thought nor words. Both Bruce and Linda were down to essentials. It is a
+descent that most human beings--some time in their lives--find they are
+able to make; and there was no room for sentimentality or hysteria in
+this grim household. The ideas, the softnesses, the laws of the valleys
+were far away from them; they were face to face with realities. Their
+code had become the basic code of life: to kill for self-protection
+without mercy or remorse.
+
+They did not know when the Turners would attack. It was the dark of the
+moon, and the men would be able to approach the house without presenting
+themselves as targets for Bruce's rifle. The danger was not a thing on
+which to conjecture and forget; it was an ever-present reality. Never
+they stepped out of the door, never they crossed a lighted window, never
+a pane rattled in the wind but that the wings of Death might have been
+hovering over them. The days were passing, the date when the chance for
+victory would utterly vanish was almost at hand, and they were haunted
+by the ghastly fact that their whole defense lay in a single
+thirty-thirty rifle and five cartridges. Bruce's own gun had been taken
+from him in Simon's house; Linda had emptied her pistol at the Killer.
+
+"We've got to get more shells," Bruce told Linda. "The Turners won't be
+such fools as to wait until we have the moon again to attack. I can't
+understand why they haven't already come. Of course, they don't know the
+condition of our ammunition supply, but it doesn't seem to me that that
+alone would have held them off. They are sure to come soon, and you know
+what we could do with five cartridges, don't you?"
+
+"I know." She looked up into his earnest face. "We could die--that's
+all."
+
+"Yes--like rabbits. Without hurting them at all. I wouldn't mind dying
+so much, if I did plenty of damage first. It's death for me, anyway, I
+suppose--and no one but a fool can see it otherwise. There are simply
+too many against us. But I do want to make some payment first."
+
+Her hand fumbled and groped for his. Her eyes pled to him,--more than
+any words. "And you mean you've given up hope?" she asked.
+
+He smiled down at her,--a grave, strange little smile that moved her in
+secret ways. "Not given up hope, Linda," he said gently. They were
+standing at the door and the sunlight--coming low from the South--was on
+his face. "I've never had any hope to give up--just realization of what
+lay ahead of us. I'm looking it all in the face now, just as I did at
+first."
+
+"And what you see--makes you afraid?"
+
+Yet she need not have asked that question. His face gave an unmistakable
+answer: that this man had conquered fear in the terrible night with the
+Killer. "Not afraid, Linda," he explained, "only seeing things as they
+really are. There are too many against us. If we had that great estate
+behind us, with all its wealth, we might have a chance; if we had an
+arsenal of rifles with thousands of cartridges, we might make a stand
+against them. But we are three--two women and one man--and one rifle
+between us all. Five little shells to be expended in five seconds. They
+are seven or eight, each man armed, each man a rifle-shot. They are
+certain to attack within a day or two--before we have the moon again. In
+less than two weeks we can no longer contest their title to the estate.
+A little month or two more and we will be snowed in--with no chance to
+get out at all."
+
+"Perhaps before that," she told him.
+
+"Yes. Perhaps before that."
+
+They found a confirmation of this prophecy in the signs of fall
+without--the coloring leaves, the dying flowers, the new, cold breath of
+the wind. Only the pines remained unchanged; they were the same grave
+sentinels they always were.
+
+"And you can forgive me?" Linda asked humbly.
+
+"Forgive you?" The man turned to her in surprise. "What have you done
+that needs to be forgiven?"
+
+"Oh, don't you see? To bring you here--out of your cities--to throw your
+life away. To enlist you in a fight that you can't hope to win. I've
+killed you, that's all I've done. Perhaps to-night--perhaps a few days
+later."
+
+He nodded gravely.
+
+"And I've already killed your smile," she went on, looking down. "You
+don't smile any more the way you used to. You're not the boy you were
+when you came. Oh, to think of it--that it's all been my work. To kill
+your youth, to lead you into this slaughter pen where nothing--nothing
+lives but death--and hatred--and unhappiness."
+
+The tears leaped to her eyes. He caught her hands and pressed them
+between his until pain came into her fingers. "Listen, Linda," he
+commanded. She looked straight up at him. "Are you sorry I came?"
+
+"More than I can tell you--for your sake."
+
+"But when people look for the truth in this world, Linda, they don't
+take any one's sake into consideration. They balance all things and give
+them their true worth. Would you rather that you and I had never
+met--that I had never received Elmira's message--that you should live
+your life up here without ever hearing of me?"
+
+She dropped her eyes. "It isn't fair--to ask me that--"
+
+"Tell me the truth. Hasn't it been worth while? Even if we lose and die
+before this night is done, hasn't it all been worth while? Are you sorry
+you have seen me change? Isn't the change for the better--a man grown
+instead of a boy? One who looks straight and sees clear?"
+
+He studied her face; and after a while he found his answer. It was not
+in the form of words at first. As a man might watch a miracle he watched
+a new light come into her dark eyes. All the gloom and sorrow of the
+wilderness without could not affect its quality. It was a light of joy,
+of exultation, of new-found strength.
+
+"You hadn't ought to ask me that, Bruce," she said with a rather
+strained distinctness. "It has been like being born again. There aren't
+any words to tell you what it has meant to me. And don't think I haven't
+seen the change in you, too--the birth of a new strength that every day
+is greater, higher--until it is--almost more than I can understand. The
+old smiles are gone, but something else has taken their place--something
+much more dear to me--but what it is I can hardly tell you. Maybe it's
+something that the pines have."
+
+But he hadn't wholly forgotten how to smile. His face lighted as
+remembrance came to him. "They are a different kind of smiles--that's
+all," he explained. "Perhaps there will be many of them in the days to
+come. Linda, I have no regrets. I've played the game. Whether it was
+Destiny that brought me here, or only chance, or perhaps--if we take
+just life and death into consideration--just misfortune, whatever it is
+I feel no resentment toward it. It has been the worthwhile adventure. In
+the first place, I love the woods. There's something else in them
+besides death and hatred and unhappiness. Besides, it seems to me that I
+can understand the whole world better than I used to. Maybe I can begin
+to see a big purpose and theme running through it all--but it's not yet
+clear enough to put into words. Certain things in this world are
+essentials, certain other ones are froth. And I see which things belong
+to one class and which to another so much more clearly than I did
+before. One of the things that matters is throwing one's whole life into
+whatever task he has set out to do--whether he fails or succeeds doesn't
+seem greatly to matter. The main thing, it appears to me, is that he has
+tried. To stand strong and kind of calm, and not be afraid--if I can
+always do it, Linda, it is all I ask for myself. Not to flinch now. Not
+to give up as long as I have the strength for another step. And to have
+you with me--all the way."
+
+"Then you and I--take fresh heart?"
+
+"We've never lost heart, Linda."
+
+"Not to give up, but only be glad we've tried?"
+
+"Yes. And keep on trying."
+
+"With no regrets?"
+
+"None--and maybe to borrow a little strength from the pines!"
+
+This was their new pact. To stand firm and strong and unflinching, and
+never to yield as long as an ounce of strength remained. As if to seal
+it, her arms crept about his neck and her soft lips pressed his.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Toward the end of the afternoon Linda saddled the horse and rode down
+the trail toward Martin's store. She had considerable business to attend
+to. Among other things, she was going to buy thirty-thirty
+cartridges,--all that Martin had in stock. She had some hope of securing
+an extra gun or two with shells to match. The additional space in her
+pack was to be filled with provisions.
+
+For she was faced with the unpleasant fact that her larder was nearly
+empty. The jerked venison was almost gone; only a little flour and a few
+canned things remained. She had space for only small supplies on the
+horse's back, and there would be no luxuries among them.--Their fare had
+been plain up to this time; but from now on it was to consist of only
+such things as were absolutely necessary to sustain life.
+
+She rode unarmed. Without informing him of the fact, the rifle had been
+left for Bruce. She did not expect for herself a rifle shot from
+ambush--for the simple reason that Simon had bidden otherwise--and Bruce
+might be attacked at any moment.
+
+She was dreaming dreams, that day. The talk with Bruce had given her
+fresh heart, and as she rode down the sunlit trail the future opened up
+entrancing vistas to her. Perhaps they yet could conquer, and that would
+mean reëstablishment on the far-flung lands of her father. Matthew
+Folger had possessed a fertile farm also, and its green pastures might
+still be utilized. It suddenly occurred to her that it would be of
+interest to turn off the main trail, take a little dim path up the ridge
+that she had discovered years before, and look over these lands. The
+hour was early; besides, Bruce would find her report of the greatest
+interest.
+
+She jogged slowly along in the Western fashion,--which means something
+quite different from army fashion or sportsman fashion. Western riders
+do not post. Riding is not exercise to them; it is rest. They hang limp
+in the saddle, and all jar is taken up, as if by a spring, somewhere in
+the region of the floating ribs that only a physician can correctly
+designate. They never sit firm, these Western riders, and as a rule
+their riding is not a particularly graceful thing to watch. But they do
+not care greatly about grace as long as they may encompass their fifty
+miles a day and still be fresh enough for a country dance at night.
+There are many other differences in Western and Eastern riding, one of
+them being the way in which the horse is mounted. Another difference is
+the riding habit. Linda had no trim riding trousers, with tall glossy
+boots, red coat, and stock. It was rather doubtful whether she knew such
+things existed. She did, however, wear a trim riding skirt of khaki and
+a middie blouse washed spotlessly clean by her own hands; and no one
+would have missed the other things. It is an indisputable fact that she
+made a rather alluring picture--eyes bright and hair dark and strong
+arms bare to the elbow--as she came riding down the pine-needle trail.
+
+She came to the opening of the dimmer trail and turned down it. She did
+not jog so easily now. The descent was more steep. She entered a still
+glen, and the color in her cheeks and the soft brown of her arms blended
+well with the new tints of the autumn leaves. Then she turned up a long
+ridge.
+
+The 'trail led through an old burn--a bleak, eerie place where the fire
+had swept down the forest, leaving only strange, black palings here and
+there--and she stopped in the middle of it to look down. The mountain
+world was laid out below her as clearly as in a relief map. Her eyes
+lighted as its beauty and its fearsomeness went home to her, and her
+keen eyes slowly swept over the surrounding hill tops. Then for a long
+moment she sat very still in the saddle.
+
+A thousand feet distant, on the same ridge on which she rode, she caught
+sight of another horse. It held her gaze, and in an instant she
+discerned the rather startling fact that it was saddled, bridled, and
+apparently tied to a tree. Momentarily she thought that its rider was
+probably one of the Turners who was at present at work on the old Folger
+farm; yet she knew at once the tilled lands were still too far distant
+for that. She studied closely the maze of light and shadow of the
+underbrush and in a moment more distinguished the figure of the
+horseman.
+
+It was one of the Turners,--but he was not working in the fields. He was
+standing near the animal's head, back to her, and his rifle lay in his
+arms. And then Linda understood.
+
+He was simply guarding the trail down to Martin's store. Except for the
+fact that she had turned off the main trail by no possibility could she
+have seen him and escaped whatever fate he had for her.
+
+She held hard on her faculties and tried to puzzle it out. She
+understood now why the Turners had not as yet made an attack upon them
+at their home. It wasn't the Turner way to wage open warfare. They were
+the wolves that struck from ambush, the rattlesnakes that lunged with
+poisoned fangs from beneath the rocks. There was some security for her
+in the Folger home, but none whatever here. There she had a strong man
+to fight for her, a loaded rifle, and under ordinary conditions the
+Turners could not hope to batter down the oaken door and overwhelm them
+without at least some loss of life. For all they knew, Bruce had a large
+stock of rifles and ammunition,--and the Turners did not look forward
+with pleasure to casualties in their ranks. The much simpler way was to
+watch the trail.
+
+They had known that sooner or later one of them would attempt to ride
+down after either supplies or aid. Linda was a mountain girl and she
+knew the mountain methods of procedure; and she knew quite well what she
+would have had to expect if she had not discovered the ambush in time.
+She didn't think that the sentry would actually fire on her; he would
+merely shoot the horse from beneath her. It would be a simple feat by
+the least of the Turners,--for these gaunt men were marksmen if nothing
+else. It wouldn't be in accord with Simon's plan or desire to leave her
+body lying still on the trail. But the horse killed, flight would be
+impossible, and what would transpire thereafter she did not dare to
+think. She had not forgotten Simon's threat in regard to any attempt to
+go down into the settlements. She knew that it still held good.
+
+Of course, if Bruce made the excursion, the sentry's target would be
+somewhat different. He would shoot him down as remorselessly as he would
+shatter a lynx from a tree top.
+
+The truth was that Linda had guessed just right. "It's the easiest way,"
+Simon had said. "They'll be trying to get out in a very few days. If the
+man--shoot straight and to kill! If Linda, plug the horse and bring her
+here behind the saddle."
+
+Linda turned softly, then started back. She did not even give a second's
+thought to the folly of trying to break through. She watched the
+sentinel over her shoulder and saw him turn about. Far distant though he
+was, she could tell by the movement he made that he had discovered her.
+
+She was almost four hundred yards away by then, and she lashed her horse
+into a gallop. The man cried to her to halt, a sound that came dim and
+strange through the burn, and then a bullet sent up a cloud of ashes a
+few feet to one side. But the range was too far even for the Turners,
+and she only urged her horse to a faster pace.
+
+She flew down the narrow trail, turned into the main trail, and galloped
+wildly toward home. But the sentry did not follow her. He valued his
+precious life too much for that. He had no intention of offering himself
+as a target to Bruce's rifle as he neared the house. He headed back to
+report to Simon.
+
+Young Bill--for such had been the identity of the sentry--found his
+chief in the large field not far distant from where Bruce had been
+confined. The man was supervising the harvest of the fall growth of
+alfalfa. The two men walked slowly away from the workers, toward the
+fringe of woods.
+
+"It looks as if we'll have to adopt rough measures, after all," Young
+Bill began.
+
+Simon turned with flushing face. "Do you mean you let him get past
+you--and missed him? Young Bill, if you've done that--"
+
+"Won't you wait till I've told you how it happened? It wasn't Bruce; it
+was Linda. For some reason I can't dope out, she went up in the big burn
+back of me and saw me--when I was too far off to shoot her horse. Then
+she rode back like a witch. They'll not take that trail again."
+
+"It means one of two things," Simon said after a pause. "One of them is
+to starve 'em out. It won't take long. Their supplies won't last
+forever. The other is to call the clan and attack--to-night."
+
+"And that means loss of life."
+
+"Not necessarily. I don't know how many guns they've got. If any of you
+were worth your salt, you'd find out those things. I wish Dave was
+here."
+
+And Simon spoke the truth for once in his life: he did miss Dave. And it
+was not that there had been any love lost between them. But the truth
+was--although Simon never would have admitted it--the weaker man's
+cunning had been of the greatest aid to his chief. Simon needed it
+sorely now.
+
+"And we can't wait till to-morrow night--because we've got the moon
+then," Young Bill added. "Just a new moon, but it will prevent a
+surprise attack. I suppose you still have hopes of Dave coming back?"
+
+"I don't see why not. I'll venture to say now he's off on some good
+piece of business--doing something none of the rest of you have thought
+of. He'll come riding back one of these days with something actually
+accomplished. I see no reason for thinking that he's dead. Bruce hasn't
+had any chance at him that I know of. But if I thought he was--there'd
+be no more waiting. We'd tear down that nest to-night."
+
+Simon spoke in his usual voice--with the same emphasis, the same
+undertones of passion. But the last words ended with a queer inflection.
+The truth was that he had slowly become aware that Young Bill was not
+giving him his full attention, but rather was gazing off--unfamiliar
+speculation in his eyes--toward the forests beyond.
+
+Simon's impulse was to follow the gaze; yet he would not yield to it.
+"Well?" he demanded. "I'm not talking to amuse myself."
+
+The younger man seemed to start. His eyes were half-closed; and there
+was a strange look of intentness about his facial lines when he turned
+back to Simon. "You haven't missed any stock?" he asked abruptly.
+
+Simon's eyes widened. "No. Why?"
+
+"Look there--over the forest." Young Bill pointed. Simon shielded his
+eyes from the sunset glare and studied the blue-green skyline above the
+fringe of pines. There were many grotesque, black birds wheeling on slow
+wings above the spot. Now and then they dropped down, out of sight
+behind the trees.
+
+"Buzzards!" Simon exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," Young Bill answered quietly. "You see, it isn't much over a mile
+from Folger's house--in the deep woods. There's something dead there,
+Simon. And I think we'd better look to see what it is."
+
+"You think--" Then Simon hesitated and looked again with reddening eyes
+toward the gliding buzzards.
+
+"I think--that maybe we're going to find Dave," Young Bill replied.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The darkness of this October night fell before its time. The twilight at
+Trail's End is never long in duration, due to the simple fact that the
+mountains cut off the flood of light from the west after the setting of
+the sun, but to-night there seemed none at all. The reason was merely
+that heavy banks of clouds swept up from the southeast just after
+sunset.
+
+They came with rather startling rapidity and almost immediately
+completely filled the sky. Young Bill had many things on his mind as he
+rode beneath them, yet he found time to gaze at them with some
+curiosity. They were of singular greenish hue, and they hung so low that
+the tops of near-by mountains were obscured.
+
+The fact that there would be no moon to-night was no longer important.
+The clouds would have cut off any telltale light that might illumine the
+activities of the Turners. There would not be even the dim mist of
+starlight.
+
+Young Bill rode from house to house through the estate,--the homes
+occupied by Simon's brothers and cousins and their respective families.
+He knocked on each door and he only gave one little message. "Simon
+wants you at the house," he said, "and come heeled."
+
+He would turn to go, but always a singular quiet and breathlessness
+remained in the homes after his departure. There would be a curious
+exchange of glances and certain significant sounds. One of them was the
+metallic click of cartridges being slipped into the magazine of a rifle.
+Another was the buckling on of spurs, and perhaps the rattle of a pistol
+in its holster. Before the night fell in reality, the clan came
+riding--strange, tall figures in the half-darkness--straight for Simon's
+house.
+
+His horse was saddled too, and he met them in front of his door. And in
+a very few words he made all things plain to them.
+
+"We've found Dave," he told them simply. "Most of you already know it.
+We've decided there isn't any use of waiting any more. We're going to
+the Folger house to-night."
+
+The men stood silent, breathing hard. The clouds seemed to lower,
+menacingly, toward them. Simon spoke very quietly, yet his voice carried
+far. In their growing excitement they did not observe the reason, that a
+puzzling, deep calm had come over the whole wilderness world. Even in
+the quietest night there is usually a faint background of winds in the
+mountain realms--troubled breaths that whisper in the thickets and
+rustle the dead leaves--but to-night the heavy air had no breath of
+life.
+
+"To-night Bruce Folger is going to pay the price, just as I said." He
+spoke rather boastingly; perhaps more to impress his followers than from
+impulse. Indeed, the passion that he felt left no room for his usual
+arrogance. "Fire on sight. Bill and I will come from the rear, and we
+will be ready to push through the back door the minute you break through
+the front. The rest of you surround the house on three sides. And
+remember--no man is to touch Linda."
+
+They nodded grimly; then the file of horsemen started toward the ridge.
+Far distant they heard a sound such as had reached them often in summer
+but was unfamiliar in fall. It was the faint rumble of distant thunder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruce and Linda sat in the front room of the Folger house, quiet and
+watchful and unafraid. It was not that they did not realize their
+danger. They had simply taken all possible measures of defense; and they
+were waiting for what the night would bring forth.
+
+"I know they'll come to-night," Linda had said. "To-morrow night there
+will be a moon, and though it won't give much light, it will hurt their
+chances of success. Besides--they've found that their other plot--to
+kill you from ambush--isn't going to work."
+
+Bruce nodded and got up to examine the shutters. He wanted no ray of
+light to steal out into the growing darkness and make a target. It was a
+significant fact that the rifle did not occupy its usual place behind
+the desk. Bruce kept it in his hands as he made the inspection. Linda
+had her empty pistol, knowing that it might--in the mayhap of
+circumstance--be of aid in frightening an assailant. Old Elmira sat
+beside the fire, her stiff fingers busy at a piece of sewing.
+
+"You know--" Bruce said to her, "that we are expecting an attack
+to-night?"
+
+The woman nodded, but didn't miss a stitch. No gleam of interest came
+into her eyes. Bruce's gaze fell to her work basket, and something
+glittered from its depth. Evidently Elmira had regained her knife.
+
+He went back to his chair beside Linda, and the two sat listening. They
+had never known a more quiet night. They listened in vain for the little
+night sounds that usually come stealing, so hushed and tremulous, from
+the forest. The noises that always, like feeble ghosts, dwell in a house
+at night--the little explosions of a scraping board or a banging shutter
+or perhaps a mouse, scratching in the walls--were all lacking too. And
+they both started, ever so slightly, when they heard a distant rumble of
+thunder.
+
+"It's going to storm," Linda told him.
+
+"Yes. A thunderstorm--rather unusual in the fall, isn't it?"
+
+"Almost unknown. It's growing cold too."
+
+They waited a breathless minute, then the thunder spoke again. It was
+immeasurably nearer. It was as if it had leaped toward them, through the
+darkness, with incredible speed in the minute that had intervened. The
+last echo of the sound was not dead when they heard it a third time.
+
+The storm swept toward them and increased in fury. On a distant hillside
+the strange file that was the Turners halted, then gathered around
+Simon. Already the lightning made vivid, white gashes in the sky and
+illumined--for a breathless instant--the long sweep of the ridge above
+them. "We'll make good targets in the lightning," Old Bill said.
+
+"Ride on," Simon ordered. "You know a man can't find a target in the
+hundredth of a second of a lightning flash. We're not going to turn back
+now."
+
+They rode on. Far away they heard the whine and roar of wind, and in a
+moment it was upon them. The forest was no longer silent. The peal of
+the thunder was almost continuous.
+
+The breaking of the storm seemed to rock the Folger house on its
+foundation. Both Linda and Bruce leaped to their feet; but they felt a
+little tingle of awe when they saw that old Elmira still sat sewing. It
+was as if the calm that dwelt in the Sentinel Pine outside had come down
+to abide in her. No force that the world possessed could ever take it
+from her.
+
+They heard the rumble and creak of the trees as the wind smote them, and
+the flame of the lamp danced wildly, filling the room with flickering
+shadows. Bruce straightened, the lines of his face setting deep. He
+glanced once more at the rifle in his hands.
+
+"Linda," he said, "put out that fire. If there's going to be an attack,
+we'd have a better chance if the room were in darkness. We can shoot
+through the door then."
+
+She obeyed at once, knocking the burning sticks apart and drenching them
+with water. They hissed, and steamed, but the noise of the storm almost
+effaced the sound. "Now the light?" Linda asked.
+
+"Yes. See where you are and have everything ready."
+
+She took off the glass shade of the lamp, and the little gusts of wind
+that crept in the cracks of the windows immediately extinguished the
+flame. The darkness dropped down. Then Bruce opened the door.
+
+The whole wilderness world struggled in the grasp of the storm. The
+scene was such that no mortal memory could possibly forget. They saw it
+in great, vivid glimpses in the intermittent flashes of the lightning,
+and the world seemed no longer that which they had come to know. Chaos
+was upon it. They saw young trees whipping in the wind, their slender
+branches flailing the air. They saw the distant ridges in black and
+startling contrast against the lighted sky. The tall tops of the trees
+wagged back and forth in frenzied signals; their branches smote and
+rubbed together. And just without their door the Sentinel Pine stood
+with top lifted to the fury of the storm.
+
+A strange awe swept over Bruce. A moment later he was to behold a sight
+that for the moment would make him completely forget the existence of
+the great tree; but for an instant he poised at the brink of a profound
+and far-reaching discovery. There was a great lesson for him in that
+dark, towering figure that the lightning revealed. Even in the fury of
+the storm it still stood infinitely calm, watchful, strong as the
+mountains themselves. Its great limbs moved and spoke; its top swayed
+back and forth, yet still it held its high place as Sentinel of the
+Forest, passionless, patient, talking through the murk of clouds to the
+stars that burned beyond.
+
+"See," Linda said. "The Turners are coming."
+
+It was true. Bruce dropped his eyes. Even now the clan had spread out in
+a great wing and was bearing down upon the house. The lightning showed
+them in strange, vivid flashes. Bruce nodded slowly.
+
+"I see," he answered. "I'm ready."
+
+"Then shoot them, quick--when the lightning shows them," she whispered
+in his ear. "They're in range now." Her hand seized his arm. "What are
+you waiting for?"
+
+He turned to her sternly. "Have you forgotten we only have five shells?"
+he asked. "Go back to Elmira."
+
+Her eyes met his, and she tried to smile into them. "Forgive me,
+Bruce--it's hard--to be calm."
+
+But at once she understood why he was waiting. The flashes of lightning
+offered no opportunity for an accurate shot. Bruce meant to conserve his
+little supply of shells until the moment of utmost need. The clan drew
+nearer. They were riding slowly, with ready rifles. And ever the storm
+increased in fury. The thunder was so close that it no longer gave the
+impression of being merely sound. It was a veritable explosion just
+above their heads. The flashes came so near together that for an
+instant Bruce began to hope they would reveal the attackers clearly
+enough to give him a chance for a well-aimed shot. The first drops of
+rain fell one by one on the roof.
+
+His eyes sought for Simon's figure. To Simon he owed the greatest debt,
+and to lay Simon low might mean to dishearten the whole clan. But
+although the attackers were in fair range now, scarcely two hundred
+yards away, he could not identify him. They drew closer. He raised his
+gun, waiting for a chance to fire. And at that instant a resistless
+force hurled him to the floor.
+
+There was the sense of vast catastrophe, a great rocking and shuddering
+that was lost in billowing waves of sound; and then a frantic effort to
+recall his wandering faculties. A blinding light cut the darkness in
+twain; it smote his eyeballs as if with a physical blow; and summoning
+all his powers of will he sprang to his feet.
+
+There was only darkness at first; and he did not understand. But it was
+of scarcely less duration than the flash of lightning. A red flame
+suddenly leaped into the air, roared and grew and spread as if scattered
+by the wind itself. And Bruce's breath caught in a sob of wonder.
+
+The Sentinel Pine, that ancient friend and counselor that stood not over
+one hundred feet from the house, had been struck by a lightning bolt,
+its trunk had been cleft open as if by a giant's ax, and the flame was
+already springing through its balsam-laden branches.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Bruce stood as if entranced, gazing with awed face at the flaming tree.
+There was little danger of the house itself catching fire. The wind blew
+the flame in the opposite direction; besides, the rains were beating on
+the roof. The fire in the great tree itself, however, was too well
+started to be extinguished at once by any kind of rainfall; but it did
+burn with less fierceness.
+
+Dimly he felt the girl's hand grasping at his arm. Her fingers pressed
+until he felt pain. His eyes lowered to hers. The sight of that
+passion-drawn face--recalling in an instant the scene beside the camp
+fire his first night at Trail's End--called him to himself. "Shoot, you
+fool!" she stormed at him. "The tree's lighted up the whole countryside,
+and you can't miss. Shoot them before they run away."
+
+He glanced quickly out. The clan that had drawn within sixty yards of
+the house at the time the lightning struck had been thrown into
+confusion. Their horses had been knocked down by the force of the bolt
+and were fleeing, riderless, away. The men followed them, shouting,
+plainly revealed in the light from the burning tree. The great torch
+beside the house had completely turned the tables. And Linda spoke true;
+they offered the best of targets.
+
+Again the girl's eyes were lurid slits between the lids. Her lips were
+drawn, and her breathing was strange. He looked at her calmly.
+
+"No, Linda. I can't--"
+
+"You can't," she cried. "You coward--you traitor! Kill--kill--kill them
+while there's time."
+
+She saw the resolve in his face, and she snatched the rifle from his
+hands. She hurled it to her shoulder and three times fired blindly
+toward the retreating Turners.
+
+At that instant Bruce seemed to come to life. His thoughts had been
+clear ever since the tree had been struck; his vision was straighter and
+more far-reaching than ever in his life before, but now his muscles
+wakened too. He sprang toward the girl and snatched the rifle from her
+hand. She fought for it, and he held her with a strong arm.
+
+"Wait--wait, Linda," he said gently. "You've wasted three cartridges
+now. There are only two left. And we may need them some other time."
+
+He held her from him with his arm; and it was as if his strength flowed
+into her. Her blazing eyes sought his, and for a long second their wills
+battled. And then a deep wonder seemed to come over her.
+
+"What is it?" she breathed. "What have you found out?"
+
+She spoke in a strange and distant voice. Slowly the fire died in her
+eyes, the drawn features relaxed, her hands fell at her side. He drew
+her away from he lighted doorway, out of the range of any of the
+Turners that should turn to answer the rifle fire. The wind roared over
+the house and swept by in clamoring fury, the electric storm dimmed and
+lessened as it journeyed on.
+
+These two knew that if death spared them in all the long passage of
+their years, they could never forget that moment. The girl watched him
+breathlessly, oblivious to all things else. He seemed wholly unaware of
+her now. There was something aloof, impassive, infinitely calm about
+him, and a great, far-reaching understanding was in his eyes. Her own
+eyes suddenly filled with tears.
+
+"Linda, there's something come to me--and I don't know that I can make
+you understand. I can only call it strength--a new strength and a
+greater strength than I ever had before. It's something that the
+pine--that great tree that we just saw split open--has been trying to
+tell me for a long time. Oh, can't you see, Linda? There it stood,
+hundreds of years--so great, so tall, so wise--in a moment broken like a
+reed. It takes away my arrogance, Linda. It makes me see myself as I
+really am. And that means--_power_."
+
+His eyes blazed, and he caught her hands in his.
+
+"It was a symbol, Linda, not only of the wilderness, but of powers
+higher and greater than the wilderness. Powers that can look down, and
+not be swept away by passion, and not try to tear to pieces those who in
+their folly harm them. There's no room for such things as vengeance in
+this new strength. There's no room for murder, and malice, and hatred,
+and bloodshed."
+
+Linda understood. She knew that this new-found strength did not mean
+renunciation of her cause. It did not mean that he would give over his
+attempt to reinstate her as the owner of her father's estates. It only
+meant that the impulse of personal vengeance was dead within him. He
+knew now--the same as ever--that the duty of the men that dwell upon the
+earth is to do their allotted tasks, and without hatred and without
+passion to overcome the difficulties that stand in the way. She realized
+that if one of the Turners should leap through the door and attack her,
+Bruce would kill him without mercy or regret. She knew that he would
+make every effort to bring the offenders to the law. But the ability to
+shoot a fleeing enemy in the back, because of wrongs done long ago, was
+past.
+
+Bruce's vision had come to him. He knew that if vengeance had been the
+creed of the powers that ruled the world, the sphere would have been
+destroyed with fire long since. To stand firm and straight and
+unflinching; not to judge, not to condemn, not to resent; this was true
+strength. He began to see the whole race of men as so many leaves,
+buffeted by the winds of chance and circumstance; and was it for the oak
+leaf that the wind carried swift and high to hold in scorn the shrub
+leaf that the storm had already hurled to the dust?
+
+"I know," the girl said, her thoughts wandering afar. "Perhaps the name
+for it all is--tolerance."
+
+"Perhaps," he nodded. "And possibly it is only--worship!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Turners had gone. The dimming lightning revealed the entire
+attacking party half a mile distant and out of rifle range on the ridge;
+and Bruce and Linda stole together out into the storm. The green foliage
+of the tree had already burned away, but some of the upper branches
+still glowed against the dark sky. A fallen branch smoldered on the
+ground, hissing in the rain, and it lighted their way.
+
+Awed and mystified, Bruce halted before the ruin of the great tree. He
+had almost forgotten the stress of the moment just passed. It did not
+even occur to him that some of his enemies, unseen before, might still
+be lurking in the shadow, watching for a chance to harm. They stood a
+moment in silence. Then Bruce uttered one little gasp and stretched his
+arm into the hollow that the cleft in the trunk had revealed.
+
+The light from the burning branch behind him had shown him a small, dark
+object that had evidently been inserted in the hollow tree trunk through
+some little aperture that had either since been closed up or they had
+never observed. It was a leathern wallet, and Bruce opened it under
+Linda's startled gaze. He drew out a single white paper.
+
+He held it in the light, and his glance swept down its lines of faded
+ink. Then he looked up with brightening eyes.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"The secret agreement between your father and mine," he told her simply.
+"And we've won."
+
+He watched her eyes brighten. It seemed to him that nothing life had
+ever offered had given him the same pleasure. It was a moment of
+triumph. But before half of its long seconds were gone, it became a
+moment of despair.
+
+A rifle spoke from the coverts beyond,--one sharp, angry note that rose
+distinct and penetrating above the noise of the distant thunder. A
+little tongue of fire darted, like a snake's head, in the darkness. And
+the triumph on Bruce's face changed to a singular look of wonder.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+To Simon, the night had seemingly ended in triumph after all. It had
+looked dark for a while. The bolt of lightning, setting fire to the
+pine, had deranged all of his plans. His men had been thrown from their
+horses, the blazing pine tree had left them exposed to fire from the
+house, and they had not yet caught their mounts and rallied. Young Bill
+and himself, however, had tied their horses before the lightning had
+struck and had lingered in the thickets in front of the house for just
+such a chance as had been given them.
+
+He hadn't understood why Bruce had not opened fire on the fleeing
+Turners. He wondered if his enemy were out of ammunition. The tragedy of
+the Sentinel Pine had had no meaning for him; and he had held his rifle
+cocked and ready for the instant that Bruce had shown himself.
+
+Young Bill had heard his little exultant gasp when Linda and Bruce had
+come out into the firelight. Plainly they had kept track of all the
+attacking party that had been visible, and supposed that all their
+enemies had gone. He felt the movement of Simon's strong arms as he
+raised the rifle. Those arms were never steadier. In the darkness the
+younger man could not see his face, but his own fancy pictured it with
+entire clearness. The eyes were narrowed and red, the lines cut deep
+about the bloodhound lips, and mercy was as far from him as from the
+Killer who hunted on the distant ridge.
+
+But Simon didn't fire at once. The two were coming steadily toward him,
+and the nearer they were the better his chance of success in the
+unsteady light. He sat as breathless, as wholly free from telltale
+motion as a puma who waits in ambush for an approaching deer. He meant
+to take careful aim. It was his big chance, and he intended to make the
+most of it.
+
+The two had halted beside the ruined pine, but for a moment he held his
+fire. They stood rather close together; he wanted to wait until Bruce
+offered a clear target. And at that instant Bruce had drawn the leather
+wallet from the tree.
+
+Curiosity alone stayed Simon's finger as Bruce had opened it. He saw the
+gleam of the white paper in the dim light; and then he understood.
+
+Simon was a man of rigid, unwavering self-control; and his usual way was
+to look a long time between the sights before he fired. Yet the sight of
+that document--the missing Folger-Ross agreement on which had hung
+victory or defeat--sent a violent impulse through all his nervous
+system. For the first time in his memory his reflexes got away from him.
+
+It had meant too much; and his finger pressed back involuntarily against
+the trigger. He hadn't taken his usual deliberate aim, although he had
+seen Brace's figure clearly between the sights the instant before he had
+fired. Simon was a rifle-man, bred in the bone, and he had no reason to
+think that the hasty aim meant a complete miss. He did realize, however,
+the difficulties of night shooting--a realization that all men who have
+lingered after dusk in the duck blind experience sooner or later--and he
+looked up over his sights to see the result of his shot. His
+self-control had completely returned to him; and he was perfectly cold
+about the whole matter.
+
+From the first second he knew he hadn't completely missed. He raised his
+rifle to shoot again.
+
+But Bruce's body was no longer revealed. Linda stood in the way. It
+looked as if she had deliberately thrown her own body as a shield
+between.
+
+Simon spoke then,--a single, terrible oath of hatred and jealousy. But
+in a second more he saw his triumph. Bruce swayed, reeled, and fell in
+Linda's arms, and he saw her half-drag him into the house.
+
+He stood shivering, but not from the cold that the storm had brought.
+"Come on," he ordered Young Bill. "I think we've downed him for good,
+but we've got to get that paper."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Simon did not see all things clearly. He had little real knowledge
+of the little drama that had followed his shot from ambush.
+
+Human nature is full of odd quirks and twists, and among other things,
+symptoms are misleading. There is an accepted way for men to act when
+they are struck with a rifle bullet. They are expected to reel, to
+throw their arms wide, and usually to cry out. The only trouble with
+these actions, as most men who have been in French battle-fields know
+very well, is that they do not usually happen in real life.
+
+Bruce, with Linda's eyes upon him, took one rather long, troubled
+breath. And he did look somewhat puzzled. Then he looked down at his
+shoulder.
+
+"I'm hit, Linda," he said in a quiet way. "I think just a scratch."
+
+The tremendous shock of any kind of wound from a thirty-forty caliber
+bullet had not seemingly affected him outwardly at all. Linda's response
+was rather curious. Some hours were to pass before he completely
+understood. The truth was that the shock of that rifle bullet,
+ordinarily striking a blow of a half-ton, had cost him for the moment an
+ability to make any logical interpretation of events. The girl moved
+swiftly, yet without giving an impression of leaping, and stood very
+close and in front of him. In one lightning movement she had made of her
+own body a shield for his, in case the assassin in the covert should
+shoot again.
+
+She was trained to mountain ways, and instantly she regained a perfect
+mastery of herself. Her arms went about and seized his shoulders.
+"Stagger," she whispered quickly. "Pretend to fall. It's the one chance
+to save you."
+
+He dispelled the mists in his own brain and obeyed her. He swayed, and
+her arms went about him. Then he fell forward.
+
+Her strong arms encircled his waist and with all her magnificent young
+strength she dragged him to the door. It was noticeable, however--to all
+eyes except Bruce's--that she kept her own body as much as she could
+between him and the ambush. In an instant they were in the darkened
+room. Bruce stood up, once more wholly master of himself.
+
+"You're not hurt bad?" she asked quickly.
+
+"No. Just a deep scratch in the arm muscle near the shoulder. Bullet
+just must have grazed me. But it's bleeding pretty bad."
+
+"Then there's no time to be lost." Her hands in her eagerness went again
+to his shoulder. "Don't you see--he'll be here in a minute. We'll steal
+out the back door and try to ride down to the courts before they can
+overtake us--"
+
+In one instant he had grasped the idea; and he laughed softly in the
+gloom. "I know. I'll snatch two blankets and the food. You get the
+horse."
+
+She sprang out the kitchen door and he hurried into the bedrooms. He
+snatched two of the warmest blankets from the beds and hurled them over
+his shoulder. He hooked the camp ax on his belt, then hastened into the
+little kitchen. He took up the little sack containing a few pounds of
+jerked venison, spilled out a few pieces for Elmira, and carried
+it--with a few pounds of flour--out to meet Linda. The horse still stood
+saddled, and with deft hands they tied on their supplies and fastened
+the blankets in a long roll in front of the saddle.
+
+"Get on," she whispered. "I'll get up behind you."
+
+She spoke in the utter darkness; he felt her breath against his cheek.
+Then the lightning came dimly and showed him her face.
+
+"No, Linda," he replied quietly. "You are going alone--"
+
+She cut him off with a despairing cry. "Oh, please, Bruce--I won't. I'll
+stay here then--"
+
+"Don't you see?" he demanded. "You can make it out without me. I'm
+wounded and bleeding, and can't tell how long I can keep up. We've only
+got one horse, and without me to weigh him down you can get down to the
+courts--"
+
+"And leave you here to be murdered? Oh, don't waste the precious seconds
+any more. I won't go without you. I mean it. If you stay here, I do too.
+Believe me if you ever believed anything."
+
+Once more the lightning revealed her face, and on it was the
+determination of a zealot. He knew that she spoke the truth. He climbed
+with some difficulty into the saddle. A moment more and she swung up
+behind him.
+
+The entire operation had taken an astonishingly short period of time.
+Bruce had worked like mad, wholly disregarding his injured arm. The rain
+had already changed to snow, and the wet flakes beat in his face, but he
+did not heed them. Just beyond, Simon with ready rifle was creeping
+toward the house.
+
+"Which way?" Bruce asked.
+
+"The out-trail--around the mountain," she whispered. "Simon will
+overtake us on the other--he's got a magnificent horse. On the mountain
+trail we'll have a better chance to keep out of his sight."
+
+She spoke hurriedly, yet conveyed her message with entire clearness.
+They knew what they had to face, these two. Simon and whoever of the
+clan was with him would lose no time in springing in pursuit. They each
+had a strong horse, they knew the trails, they carried long-range rifles
+and would open fire at the first glimpse of the fugitives. Bruce was
+wounded; slight as the injury was it would seriously handicap them in
+such a test as this. Their one chance was to keep to the remote trails,
+to lurk unseen in the thickets, and try to break through to safety. And
+they knew that only by the doubtful mercy of the forest gods could they
+ever succeed.
+
+She took the reins and pulled out of the trail, then encircled a heavy
+wall of brush. She didn't wish to take the risk of Simon seeing their
+forms in the dimming lightning and opening fire so soon. Then she turned
+back into the trail and headed into the storm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Simon had clear enough memory of the rifle fire that Linda had opened
+upon the clan to wish to approach the house with care. It would be
+wholly typical of the girl to lay her lover on his bed, then go back to
+the window to wait for a sight of his assassin. She could look straight
+along a rifle barrel! A few moments were lost as Young Bill and himself
+encircled the thickets, keeping out of the gleam of the smoldering tree.
+Its light was almost gone; it hissed and glowed in the wet snow.
+
+They crept up from the shadow, and holding their rifles ready, opened
+the door. They were somewhat surprised to find it unlocked. The truth
+was it had been left thus by design; Linda did not wish them to encircle
+the house to the rear door and discover Bruce and herself in the act of
+departure. The room was in darkness, and the two intruders rather
+expected to find Bruce's body on the threshold.
+
+These were mountain men; and they had been in rifle duels before. They
+had the sure instincts of the beasts of prey in the hills without, and
+among other things they knew it wasn't wise to stand long in an open
+doorway with the firelight of the ruined pine behind them. They slipped
+quickly into the darkness.
+
+Then they stopped and listened. The room was deeply silent. They
+couldn't hear the sound that both of them had so confidently
+expected,--the faint breathing of a dying man. Simon struck a match. The
+room was quite deserted.
+
+"What's up?" Bill demanded.
+
+Simon turned toward him with a scowl, and the match flickered and burned
+out in his fingers. "Keep your rifle ready. He may be hiding
+somewhere--still able to shoot."
+
+They stole to the door of Linda's room and listened. Then they threw it
+wide.
+
+One of their foes was in this room--an implacable foe whose eyes were
+glittering and strange in the matchlight. But it was neither Bruce nor
+Linda. It was old Elmira, cold and sinister as a rattler in its lair.
+Simon cursed her and hurried on.
+
+At that instant both men began to move swiftly. Holding his rifle like a
+club, Simon swung through into, Bruce's room, lighted another match,
+then darted into the kitchen. In the dim matchlight the truth went home
+to him.
+
+He turned, eyes glittering. "They've gone--on Dave's horse," he said.
+"Thank God they've only got one horse between 'em and can't go fast. You
+ride like hell up the trail toward the store--they might have gone that
+way. Keep close watch and shoot when you can make 'em out."
+
+"You mean--" Bill's eyes widened.
+
+"Mean! I mean do as I say. Shoot by sound, if you can't see them, and
+don't lose another second or I'll shoot you too. Aim for the man if a
+chance offers--but shoot, anyway. Don't stop hunting till you find
+them--they'll duck off in the brush sure. If they get through,
+everything is lost. I'll take the trail around the mountain."
+
+They raced to their horses, untied them, and mounted swiftly. The
+darkness swallowed them at once.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+In the depth of gloom even the wild folk--usually keeping so close a
+watch on those that move on the shadowed trails--did not see Linda and
+Bruce ride past. The darkness is usually their time of dominance, but
+to-night most of them had yielded to the storm and the snow. They
+hovered in their coverts. What movement there was among them was mostly
+toward the foothills; for the message had gone forth over the wilderness
+that the cold had come to stay. The little gnawing folk, emerging for
+another night's work at filling their larders with food, crept down into
+the scarcely less impenetrable darkness of their underground burrows.
+Even the bears, whose furry coats were impervious to any ordinary cold,
+felt the beginnings of the cold-trance creeping over them. They were
+remembering the security and warmth of their last winter's dens, and
+they began to long for them again.
+
+The horse walked slowly, head close to the ground. The girl made no
+effort to guide him. The lightning had all but ceased; and in an instant
+it had become apparent that only by trusting to the animal's instinct
+could the trail be kept at all; almost at once all sense of direction
+was lost to them. The snow and the darkness obscured the outline of the
+ridges against the sky; the trail was wholly invisible beneath them.
+
+After the first hundred yards, they had no way of knowing that the horse
+was actually on the trail. While animals in the light of day cannot see
+nearly so far or interpret nearly so clearly as human beings, they
+usually seem to make their way much better at night. Many a frontiersman
+has been saved from death by realization of this fact; and, bewildered
+by the ridges, has permitted his dog to lead him into camp. But nature
+has never devised a creature that can see in the utter darkness, and the
+gloom that enfolded them now seemed simply unfathomable. Bruce found it
+increasingly hard to believe that the horse's eyes could make out any
+kind of dim pathway in the pine needles. The feeling grew on him and on
+Linda as well that they were lost and aimlessly wandering in the storm.
+
+Of all the sensations that the wilderness can afford, there are few more
+dreadful to the spirit than this. It is never pleasant to lose one's
+bearings,--and in the night and the cold and miles from any friendly
+habitation it is particularly hard to bear. Bruce felt the age-old
+menace of the wilderness as never before. It always seemed to be
+crouching, waiting to take a man at a disadvantage; and like the gods
+that first make mad those whom they would destroy, it doesn't quite play
+fair. He understood now certain wilderness tragedies of which he had
+heard: how tenderfeet--lost among the ridges--had broken into a wild run
+that had ended nowhere except in exhaustion and death.
+
+Bruce himself felt a wild desire to lash his horse into a gallop, but
+he forced it back with all his powers of will. His calmer, saner self
+explained that folly with entire clearness. It would mean panic for the
+horse, and then a quick and certain death either at the foot of a
+precipice or from a blow from a low-hanging limb. The horse seemed to be
+feeling its way, rather than seeing.
+
+They were strange, lonely figures in the darkness; and for a long time
+they rode almost in silence. Then Bruce felt the girl's breath as she
+whispered.
+
+"Bruce," she said. "Let's be brave and look this matter in the face. Do
+you think we've got a chance?"
+
+He rode a long time before he answered. He groped desperately for a word
+that might bring her cheer, but it was hard to find. The cold seemed to
+deepen about them, the remorseless snow beat into his face.
+
+"Linda," he replied, "it is one of the mercies of this world for men
+always to think that they've got a chance. Maybe it's only a cruelty in
+our case."
+
+"I think I ought to tell you something else. I haven't the least way of
+knowing whether we are on the right trail."
+
+"I knew that long ago. Whether we are on any trail at all."
+
+"I've just been thinking. I don't know how many forks it has. We might
+have already got on a wrong one. Perhaps the horse is turned about and
+is heading back home--toward Simon's stables."
+
+She spoke dully, and he thrust his arm back to her. "Linda, try to be
+brave," he urged. "We can only take a chance."
+
+The horse plodded a few more steps. "Brave! To think that it is _you_
+that has to encourage _me_--instead of my trying to keep up your
+spirits. I will try to be brave, Bruce. And if we don't live through the
+night, my last remembrance will be of your bravery--how you, injured and
+weak from loss of blood, still remembered to give a cheery word to me."
+
+"I'm not badly injured," he told her gently. "And there are certain
+things that have come clear to me lately. One of them is that except for
+you--throwing your own precious body between--I wouldn't be here at
+all."
+
+The feeling that they had lost the trail grew upon them. More than once
+the stirrup struck the bark of a tree and often the thickets gave way
+beneath them. Once they halted to adjust the blankets on the saddle, and
+they listened for any sounds that might indicate that Simon was
+overtaking them. But all they heard was the soft rustle of the leaves
+under the wind-blown snow.
+
+"Linda," he asked suddenly. "Does it seem to you to be awfully cold?"
+
+She waited a long time before she spoke. This was not the hour to make
+quick answers. On any decision might rest their success or failure.
+
+"I believe I can stand it--awhile longer," she answered at last.
+
+"But I don't think we'd better try to. It's getting cold. Every hour
+it's colder, and I seem to be getting weaker. It isn't a real wound,
+Linda--but it seems to have knocked some of my vitality out of me, and
+I'm dreadfully in need of rest. I think we'd better try to make a camp."
+
+"And go on by morning light?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But Simon might overtake us then."
+
+"We must stay out of sight of the trail. But somehow--I can't help but
+hope he won't try to follow us on such a night as this."
+
+He drew up the horse, and they sat in the beat of the snow. "Don't make
+any mistake about that, Bruce," she told him. "Remember, that unless he
+overtakes us before we come into the protection of the courts, his whole
+fight is lost. It doesn't alone mean loss of the estate--for which he
+would risk his life just as he has a dozen times. It means defeat--a
+thing that would come hard to Simon. Besides, he's got a fire within him
+that will keep him warm."
+
+"You mean--hatred?"
+
+"Hatred. Nothing else."
+
+"But in spite of it we must make camp. We'll get off the trail--if we're
+still on it--and try to slip through to-morrow. You see what's going to
+happen if we keep on going this way?"
+
+"I know that I feel a queer dread--and hopelessness--"
+
+"And that dread and hopelessness are just as much danger signals as the
+sound of Simon's horse behind us. It means that the cold and the snow
+and the fear are getting the better of us. Linda, it's a race with
+death. Don't misunderstand me or disbelieve me. It isn't Simon alone
+now. It's the cold and the snow and the fear. The thing to do is to make
+camp, keep as warm as we can in our blankets, and push on in the
+morning. It's two full days' ride, going fast, the best we can go--and
+God knows what will happen before the end."
+
+"Then turn off the trail, Bruce," the girl told him.
+
+"I don't know that we're even on the trail."
+
+"Turn off, anyway. As long as we stay together--it doesn't matter."
+
+She spoke very quietly. Then he felt a strange thing. A warmth which
+even that growing, terrible cold could not transcend swept over him. For
+her arms had crept out under his arms and encircled his great breast,
+then pressed with all her gentle strength.
+
+No word of encouragement, no cheery expression of hope could have meant
+so much. Not defeat, not even the long darkness of death itself could
+appall him now. All that he had given and suffered and endured, all the
+mighty effort that he had made had in an instant been shown in its true
+light, a thing worth while, a sacrifice atoned for and redeemed.
+
+They headed off into the thickets, blindly, letting the horse choose the
+way. They felt him turn to avoid some object in his path--evidently a
+fallen tree--and they mounted a slight ridge or rise. Then they felt the
+wet touch of fir branches against their cheeks.
+
+Bruce stopped the horse and both dismounted. Both of them knew that
+under the drooping limbs of the tree they would find, at least until the
+snows deepened, comparative shelter from the storm. Here, rolled in
+their blankets, they might pass the remainder of the night hours.
+
+Bruce tied the horse, and the girl unrolled the blankets. But she did
+not lay them together to make a rude bed,--and the dictates of
+conventionality had nothing whatever to do with it. If one jot more
+warmth could have been achieved by it, these two would have lain side by
+side through the night hours between the same blankets. She knew,
+however, that more warmth could be achieved if each of them took a
+blanket and rolled up in it; thus they would get two thicknesses instead
+of one and no openings to admit the freezing air. When this was done
+they lay side by side, economizing the last atom of warmth.
+
+The night hours were dreary and long. The rain beat into the limbs above
+them, and sometimes it sifted through. At the first gray of dawn Bruce
+opened his eyes.
+
+His dreams had been troubled and strange, but the reality to which he
+wakened gave him no sense of relief. The first knowledge that he had was
+that the snow had continued to sift down throughout the night, that it
+had already laid a white mantle over the wilderness, and the whirling
+flakes still cut off all view of the familiar landmarks by which he
+might get his bearings.
+
+He had this knowledge before he was actually cognizant of the cold. And
+then its first realization came to him in a strange heaviness and
+dullness in his body, and an almost irresistible desire to sleep.
+
+He fought a little battle, lying there under the snow-covered limbs of
+the fir tree. Because it was one in which no blows were exchanged, no
+shots fired, and no muscles called into action, it was no less a battle,
+trying and stern. It was a fight waged in his own spirit, and it seemed
+to rend him in twain.
+
+The whole issue was clear in his mind at once. The cold had deepened in
+these hours of dawn, and he was slowly, steadily freezing to death. Even
+now the blood flowed less swiftly in his veins. Death itself, in the
+moment, had lost all horror for him; rather it was a thing of peace, of
+ease. All he had to do was to lie still. Just close his eyes,--and soft
+shadows would drop over him.
+
+They would drop over Linda too. She lay still beside him; perhaps they
+had already fallen. The war he had waged so long and so relentlessly
+would end in blissful calm. Outside there was only snow and cold and
+wracking limbs and pain, only further conflict with tireless enemies,
+only struggle to tear his agonized body to pieces; and the bitterness of
+defeat in the end. He saw his chances plain as he lay beneath that gray
+sky. Even now, perhaps, Simon was upon them. Only two little rifle
+shells remained with which to combat him, and he doubted that his
+wounded arm would hold the rifle steady. There were weary, innumerable
+miles between them and any shelter, and only the terrible, trackless
+forest lay between.
+
+Why not lie still and let the curtains fall? This was an easy, tranquil
+passing, and heaven alone knew what dreadful mode of egress would be his
+if he rose to battle further. All the argument seemed on one side.
+
+But high and bright above all this burned the indomitable flame of his
+spirit. Even as the thoughts came to him it mounted higher, it propelled
+its essence of strength through his veins, it brought new steel to his
+muscles. To rise, to fight, to struggle on! Never to yield until the
+Power above decreed! To stand firm, even as the pines themselves. The
+dominant greatness that Linda had found in this man rose in him, and he
+set his muscles like iron.
+
+He struggled to rise. He shook off the mists of the frost in his brain.
+He seemed to come to life. Quickly he knelt by Linda and shook her
+shoulders in his hands. She opened her eyes.
+
+"Get up, Linda," he said gently. "We have to go on."
+
+She started to object, but a message in his eyes kept her from it. His
+own spirit went into her. He helped her to her feet.
+
+"Help me roll the blankets," he commanded, "and take out enough food for
+breakfast. We can't stop to eat it here. I think we're in sight of the
+main trail; whether we can find it--in the snow--I don't know." She
+understood; usually the absence of vegetation on a well-worn trail makes
+a shallow covering of snow appear more level and smooth and thus
+possible to follow.
+
+"I'm afraid the snow's already too deep," he continued, "but we can go
+on in a general direction for a while at least--unless the snow gets
+worse so I can't even guess the position of the sun. We must get farther
+into the thickets before we stop to eat."
+
+They were strange figures in the snow flurries as they went to work to
+roll the blankets into a compact bundle. The food she had taken from
+their stores for breakfast he thrust into the pocket of his coat; the
+rest, with the blankets, she tied swiftly on the horse. They unfastened
+the animal and for a moment she stood holding the reins while Bruce
+crept back on the hillside to look for the trail.
+
+The snow swept round them, and they felt the lowering menace of the
+cold. And at that instant those dread spirits that rule the wilderness,
+jealous then and jealous still of the intrusion of man, dealt them a
+final, deadly blow.
+
+Its weapon was just a sound--a loud crash in a distant thicket--and a
+pungent message on the wind that their human senses were too blunt to
+receive. Bruce saw the full dreadfulness of the blow and was powerless
+to save. The horse suddenly snorted loudly, then reared up. He saw as in
+a tragic, dream the girl struggle to hold him; he saw her pulled down
+into the snow and the rein jerked from her hand. Then the animal
+plunged, wheeled, and raced at top speed away into the snow flurries.
+Some Terror that as yet they could not name had broken their control of
+him and in an instant taken from them this one last hope of safety.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Bruce walked over to Linda, waiting in the snow on her knees. It was not
+an intentional posture. She had been jerked down by the plunging horse,
+and she had not yet completely risen. But the sight of her slight
+figure, her raised white face, her clasped hands, and the remorseless
+snow of the wilderness about her moved Bruce to his depths. He saw her
+but dimly in the snow flurries, and she looked as if she were in an
+attitude of prayer.
+
+He came rather slowly, and he even smiled a little. And she gave him a
+wan, strange, little smile in return.
+
+"We're down to cases at last," he said, with a rather startling
+quietness of tone. "You see what it means?"
+
+She nodded, then got to her feet.
+
+"We can walk out, if we are let alone and given time; it isn't that we
+are obliged to have the horse. But our blankets are on its back, and
+this storm is steadily becoming a blizzard. And you see--_time_ is one
+thing that we don't have. No human being can stand this cold for long
+unprotected."
+
+"And we can't keep going--keep warm by walking?"
+
+His answer was to take out his knife and put the point of the steel to
+his thumb nail. His eyes strained, then looked up. "A little way," he
+answered, "but we can't keep our main directions. The sun doesn't even
+cast a shadow on my nail to show us which is west. We could keep up a
+while, perhaps, but there is no end to this wilderness and at noon or
+to-night--the result would be the same."
+
+"And it means--the end?"
+
+"If I can't catch the horse. I'm going now. If we can regain the
+blankets--by getting in rifle range of the horse--we might make some
+sort of shelter in the snow and last out until we can see our way and
+get our bearings. You don't know of any shelter--any cave or cabin where
+we might build a fire?"
+
+"No. There are some in the hills, but we can't see our way to find
+them."
+
+"I know. I should have thought of that. And you see, we can't build a
+fire here--everything is wet, and the snow is beginning to whirl so we
+couldn't keep it going. If we should stagger on all day in this storm
+and this snow, we couldn't endure the night." He smiled again. "And I
+want you to climb a tree--and stay there--until I come back."
+
+She looked at him dully. "What's the use, Bruce? You won't come back.
+You'll chase the thing until you die--I know you. You don't know when to
+give up. And if you want to come back--you couldn't find the way. I'm
+going with you."
+
+"No." Once more she started to disobey, but the grave displeasure in
+his eyes restrained her. "It's going to take all my strength to fight
+through that snow--I must go fast--and maybe life and death will have to
+depend on your strength at the end of the trail. You must save it--the
+little you have left. I can find my way back to you by following my own
+tracks--the snow won't fill them up so soon. And since I must take the
+rifle--to shoot the horse if I can't catch him--you must climb a tree.
+You know why."
+
+"Partly to hide from Simon if he comes this way. And partly--"
+
+"Because there's some danger in that thicket beyond!" he interrupted
+her. "The horse's terror was real--besides, you heard the sound. It
+might be only a puma. But it might be--the Killer. Swing your arms and
+struggle all you can to keep the blood flowing. I won't be gone long."
+
+He started to go, and she ran after him with outstretched arms. "Oh,
+Bruce," she cried, "come back soon--soon. Don't leave me to die alone.
+I'm not strong enough for that--"
+
+He whirled, took two paces back, and his arms went about her. He had
+forgotten his injury long since. He kissed her cool lips and smiled into
+her eyes. Then at once the flurries hid him.
+
+The girl climbed up into the branches of a fir tree. In the thicket
+beyond a great gray form tacked back and forth, trying to locate a scent
+that a second before he had caught but dimly and had lost. It was the
+Killer, and his temper was lost long ago in the whirling snow. His anger
+was upon him, partly from the discomfort of the storm, partly from the
+constant, gnawing pain of three bullet wounds in his powerful body.
+Besides, he realized the presence of his old and greatest enemy,--those
+tall, slight forms that had crossed him so many times, that had stung
+him with their bullets, and whose weakness he had learned.
+
+The wind was variable, and all at once he caught the scent plain. He
+lurched forward, crashed again through the brush, and walked out into
+the snow-swept open. Linda saw his vague outline, and at first she hung
+perfectly motionless, hoping to escape his gaze. She had been told many
+times that grizzlies cannot climb, yet she had no desire to see him
+raging below her, reaching, possibly trying to shake her from the limbs.
+Her muscles were stiff and inactive from the cold, and she doubted her
+ability to hold on. Besides, in that dread moment she found it hard to
+believe that the Killer would not be able to swing into the lower limbs,
+high enough to strike her down.
+
+He didn't seem to see her. His eyes were lowered; besides, it was never
+the grizzly way to search the branches of a tree. The wind blew the
+message that he might have read clearly in the opposite direction. She
+saw him walk slowly across the snow, head lowered, a huge gray ghost in
+the snow flurries not one hundred feet distant. Then she saw him pause,
+with lowered head.
+
+In the little second before the truth came to her, the bear had already
+turned. Bruce's tracks were somewhat dimmed by the snow, but the Killer
+interpreted them truly. She saw too late that he had crossed them, read
+their message, and now had turned into the clouds of snow to trace them
+down.
+
+For an instant she gazed at him in speechless horror; and already the
+flurries had almost obscured his gray figure. Desperately she tried to
+call his attention from the tracks. She called, then she rustled the
+branches as loudly as she could. But the noise of the wind obscured what
+sound she made, and the bear was already too absorbed in the hunt to
+turn and see her. As always, in the nearing presence of a foe, his rage
+grew upon him.
+
+Sobbing, Linda swung down from the tree. She had no conscious plan of
+aid to her lover. She only had a blind instinct to seek him, to try to
+warn him of his danger, and at least to be with him at the death. The
+great tracks of the Killer, seemingly almost as long as her own arm,
+made a plain trail for her to follow. She too struck off into the
+storm-swept canyon.
+
+And the forest gods who dwell somewhere in the region where the pine
+tops taper into the sky, and who pull the strings that drop and raise
+the curtain and work the puppets that are the players of the wilderness
+dramas, saw a chance for a great and tragic jest in this strange chase
+over the snow. The destinies of Bruce, Linda, and the Killer were
+already converging on this trail that all three followed,--the path that
+the runaway horse made in the snow. Only one of the great forces of the
+war that had been waged at Trail's End was lacking, and now he came
+also.
+
+Simon Turner had ridden late into the night and from before dawn; with
+remorseless fury he had goaded on his exhausted horse, he had driven him
+with unpitying strength through coverts, over great rocks, down into
+rocky canyons in search of Bruce and Linda, and now, as the dawn broke,
+he thought that he had found them. He had suddenly come upon the tracks
+of Bruce's horse in the snow.
+
+If he had encountered them farther back, when the animal had been
+running wildly, he might have guessed the truth and rejoiced. No man
+would attempt to ride a horse at a gallop through that trailless
+stretch. But at the point he found the tracks most of the horse's terror
+had been spent, and it was walking leisurely, sometimes lowering its
+head to crop the shrubbery. The trail was comparatively fresh too; or
+else the fast-falling snow would have already obscured it. He thought
+that his hour of triumph was near.
+
+But it had come none too soon. And Simon--out of passion-filled
+eyes--looked and saw that it would likely bring death with it.
+
+He realized his position fully. The storm was steadily developing into
+one of those terrible mountain blizzards in which, without shelter, no
+human being might live. He was far from his home, he had no blankets,
+and he could not find his way. Yet he would not have turned back if he
+could.
+
+In all the manifold mysteries of the wilderness there was no stranger
+thing than this: that in the face of his passion Simon had forgotten and
+ignored even that deepest instinct, self-preservation. Nothing mattered
+any more except his hatred. No desire was left except its expression.
+
+The securing of the document by which Bruce could take the great estates
+from him was only a trifle now. He believed wholly within his own soul
+that the wilderness--without his aid--would do his work of hatred for
+him; and that by no conceivable circumstances could Bruce and Linda find
+shelter from the blizzard and live through the day. He could find their
+bodies in the spring if he by any chance escaped himself, and take the
+Ross-Folger agreement from them. But it was not enough. He wanted also
+to do the work of destruction.
+
+Even his own death--if it were only delayed until his vengeance was
+wreaked--could not matter now. In all the ancient strife and fury and
+ceaseless war of the wild through which he had come, there was no
+passion to equal this. The Killer was content to let the wolf kill the
+fawn for him. The cougar will turn from its warm, newly slain prey, in
+which its white fangs have already dipped, at the sight of some great
+danger in the thickets. But Simon could not turn. Death lowered its
+wings upon him as well as upon his enemy, yet the fire in his heart and
+the fury in his brain shut out all thought of it.
+
+He sprang off his horse better to examine the tracks, and then stood,
+half bent over, in the snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruce Folger headed swiftly up the trail that his runaway horse had
+made. It was, he thought, his last effort, and he gave his full strength
+to it. Weakened as he was by the cold and the wound, he could not have
+made headway at all except for the fact that the wind was behind him.
+
+The snow ever fell faster, in larger flakes, and the track dimmed before
+his eyes. It was a losing game. Terrified not only by the beast that had
+stirred in the thicket but by the ever-increasing wind as well, the
+animal would not linger to be overtaken. Bruce had not ridden it enough
+to have tamed it, and his plan was to attempt to shoot the creature on
+sight, rather than try to catch it. They could not go forward, anyway,
+as long as the blizzard lasted. Which way was east and which was west he
+could no longer guess. And with the blankets they might make some sort
+of shelter and keep life in their bodies until the snow ceased and they
+could find their way.
+
+The cold was deepening, the storm was increasing in fury. Bruce's bones
+ached, his wounded arm felt numb and strange, the frost was getting into
+his lungs. The wind's breath was ever keener, its whistle was louder in
+the pines. There was no hope of the storm decreasing, rather it was
+steadily growing worse. And Bruce had some pre-knowledge--an
+inheritance, perhaps, from frontier ancestors--of the real nature of the
+mountain blizzard such as was descending on him now. It was a losing
+fight. All the optimism of youth and the spirit of the angels could not
+deny this fact.
+
+The tracks grew more dim, and he began to be afraid that the falling
+flakes would obscure his own footprints so that he could not find his
+way back to Linda. And he knew, beyond all other knowledge, that he
+wanted her with him when the shadows dropped down for good and all. He
+couldn't face them bravely alone. He wanted her arms about him; the
+flight would be easier then.
+
+"Oh, what's the use?" he suddenly said to the wind. "Why not give up and
+go back?"
+
+He halted in the trail and started to turn. But at that instant a banner
+of wind swept down into his face, and the eddy of snow in front of him
+was brushed from his gaze. Just for the space of a breath the canyon for
+a hundred feet distant was partially cleared of the blinding streamers
+of snow. And he uttered a long gasp when he saw, thirty yards distant
+and at the farthest reaches of his sight, the figure of a saddled horse.
+
+His gun leaped to his shoulder, yet his eagerness did not cost him his
+self-control. He gazed quietly along the sights until he saw the
+animal's shoulder between them. His finger pressed back against the
+trigger.
+
+The horse rocked down, seemingly instantly killed, and the snow swept in
+between. Bruce cried out in triumph. Then he broke into a run and sped
+through the flurries toward his dead.
+
+But it came about that there was other business for Bruce than the
+recovery of his blankets that he had supposed would be tied to the
+saddle. The snow was thick between, and he was within twenty feet of the
+animal's body before he glimpsed it clearly again. And he felt the first
+wave of wonder, the first promptings of the thought that the horse he
+had shot down was not his, but one that he had never seen before.
+
+But there was no time for the thought to go fully home. Some one cried
+out--a strange, half-snarl of hatred and triumph that was almost lacking
+in all human quality--and a man's body leaped toward him from the
+thicket before which the horse had fallen. It was Simon, and Bruce had
+mistaken his horse for the one he had ridden.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Even in that instant crisis Bruce did not forget that he had as yet
+neglected to expel the empty cartridge from the barrel of his rifle and
+to throw in the other from the magazine. He tried to get the gun to his
+shoulder, working the lever at the same time. But Simon's leap was too
+fast for him. His strong hand seized the barrel of the gun and snatched
+it from his hands. Then the assailant threw it back, over his shoulder,
+and it fell softly in the snow. He waited, crouched.
+
+The two men stood face to face at last. All things else were forgotten.
+The world they had known before--a world of sorrow and pleasures, of
+mountains and woods and homes--faded out and left no realities except
+each other's presence. All about them were the snow flurries that their
+eyes could not penetrate, and it was as if they were two lone
+contestants on an otherwise uninhabited sphere who had come to grips at
+last. The falling snow gave the whole picture a curious tone of
+unreality and dimness.
+
+Bruce straightened, and his face was of iron. "Well, Simon," he said.
+"You've come."
+
+The man's eyes burned red through the snow. "Of course I would. Did you
+think you could escape me?"
+
+"It didn't much matter whether I escaped you or not," Bruce answered
+rather quietly. "Neither one of us is going to escape the storm and the
+cold. I suppose you know that."
+
+"I know that _one_ of us is. Because one of us is going out--a more
+direct way--first. Which one that is doesn't much matter." His great
+hands clasped. "Bruce, when I snatched your gun right now I could have
+done more. I could have sprung a few feet farther and had you around the
+waist--taken by surprise. The fight would have been already over. I
+think I could have done more than that even--with my own rifle as you
+came up. It's laying there, just beside the horse."
+
+But Bruce didn't turn his eyes to look at it. He was waiting for the
+attack.
+
+"I could have snatched your life just as well, but I wanted to wait,"
+Simon went on. "I wanted to say a few words first, and wanted to master
+you--not by surprise--but by superior strength alone."
+
+It came into Brace's mind that he could tell Simon of the wound near his
+shoulder, how because of it no fight between them would be a fair test
+of superiority, yet the words didn't come to his lips. He could not ask
+mercy of this man, either directly or indirectly, any more than the
+pines asked mercy of the snows that covered them.
+
+"You were right when you said there is no escaping from this storm,"
+Simon went on. "But it doesn't much matter. It's the end of a long war,
+and what happens to the victor is neither here nor there. It seems all
+the more fitting that we should meet just as we have--at the very brink
+of death--and Death should be waiting at the end for the one of us who
+survives. It's so like this damned, terrible wilderness in which we
+live."
+
+Bruce gazed in amazement. The dark and dreadful poetry of this man's
+nature was coming to the fore. The wind made a strange echo to his
+words,--a long, wild shriek as it swept over the heads of the pines.
+
+"Then why are you waiting?" Bruce asked.
+
+"So you can understand everything. But I guess that time is here. There
+is to be no mercy at the end of this fight, Bruce; I ask none and will
+give none. You have waged a war against me, you have escaped me many
+times, you have won the love of the woman I love--and this is to be my
+answer." His voice dropped a note and he spoke more quietly. "I'm going
+to kill you, Bruce."
+
+"Then try it," Bruce answered steadily. "I'm in a hurry to go back to
+Linda."
+
+Simon's smoldering wrath blazed up at the words. Both men seemed to
+spring at the same time. Their arms flailed, then interlocked; and they
+rocked a long time--back and forth in the snow.
+
+They fought in silence. The flurries dropped over them, and the wind
+swept by in its frantic wandering. Bruce called upon his last ounce of
+reserve strength,--that mysterious force that always sweeps to a man's
+aid in a moment of crisis.
+
+For the first time he had full realization of Simon's mighty strength.
+With all the power of his body he tried to wrench him off his feet, but
+it was like trying to tear a tree from the ground.
+
+But surprise at the other's power was not confined to Bruce alone. Simon
+knew that he had an opponent worthy of the iron of his own muscles, and
+he put all his terrible might into the battle. He tried to reach Bruce's
+throat, but the man's strong shoulder held the arm against his side.
+Simon's great hand reached to pin Bruce's arm, and for the first time he
+discovered the location of his weakness.
+
+He saw the color sweep from Bruce's face and water drops that were not
+melted snow come upon it. It was all the advantage needed between such
+evenly matched contestants. And Simon forgot his spoken word that he
+wished this fight to be a test of superiority alone. His fury swept over
+him like a flood and effaced all things else; and he centered his whole
+attack upon Bruce's wound.
+
+In a moment he had him down, and he struck once into Bruce's white face
+with his terrible knuckles. The blow sent a strange sickness through the
+younger man's frame; and he tried vainly to struggle to his feet.
+"Fight! Fight on!" was the message his mind dispatched along his nerves
+to his tortured muscles, but for an instant they wholly refused to
+respond. They had endured too much. Total unconsciousness hovered above
+him, ready to descend.
+
+Strangely, he seemed to know that Simon had crept from his body and was
+even now reaching some dreadful weapon that lay beside the dead form of
+the horse. In an instant he had it, and Bruce's eyes opened in time to
+see him swinging it aloft. It was his rifle, and Simon was aiming a
+murderous blow at him with its stock.
+
+There was no chance to ward it off. No human skull could withstand its
+shattering impact. Bruce saw the man's dark face with the murder madness
+upon it, the blazing eyes, the lips drawn back. The muscles contracted
+to deal the blow.
+
+But that war of life and death in the far reaches of Trail's End was not
+to end so soon. At that instant there was an amazing intervention.
+
+A great gray form came lunging out of the snow flurries. Their vision
+was limited to a few feet, and so fast the creature came, with such
+incredible, smashing power, that he was upon them in a breath. It was
+the Killer in the full glory of the charge; and he had caught up with
+them at last.
+
+Bruce saw only his great figure looming just over him. Simon, with
+amazing agility, leaped to one side just in time, then battered down the
+rifle stock with all his strength. But the blow was not meant for Bruce.
+It struck where aimed,--the great gray shoulder of the grizzly.
+
+Then, dimmed and half-obscured by the snow flurries, there began as
+strange a battle as the great pines above them had ever beheld. The
+Killer's rage was upon him, and the blow at the shoulder had arrested
+his charge for a moment only. Then he wheeled, a snarling, fighting
+monster with death for any living creature in the blow of his forearm,
+and lunged toward Simon again.
+
+It was the Killer at his grandest. The little eyes blazed, the neck hair
+bristled, he struck with forearms and jaws--lashing, lunging,
+recoiling--all the terrible might and fury of the wilderness centered
+and personified in his mighty form. Simon had no chance to shoot his
+rifle. In the instant that he would raise it those great claws and fangs
+would be upon him. He swung it as a club, striking again and again,
+dodging the sledge-hammer blows and springing aside in the second of the
+Killer's lunges. He was fighting for his life, and no eye could bemean
+that effort.
+
+Simon himself seemed exalted, and for once it appeared that the grizzly
+had found an opponent worthy of his might. It was all so fitting: that
+these two mighty powers, typifying all that is remorseless and terrible
+in the wild, should clash at last in the gathering fury of the storm.
+They were of one kind, and they seemed to understand each other. The
+lust and passion and fury of battle were upon them both.
+
+The scene harked back to the young days of the world, when man and beast
+battled for dominance. Nothing had changed. The forest stood grave and
+silent, just the same. The elements warred against them from the
+clouds,--that ancient persecution of which the wolf pack sings on the
+ridge at night, that endless strife that has made of existence a travail
+and a scourge. Man and beast and storm--those three great foes were
+arrayed the same as ever. Time swung backward a thousand-thousand
+years.
+
+The storm gathered in force. The full strength of the blizzard was upon
+them. The snow seemed to come from all directions in great clouds and
+flurries and streamers, and time after time it wholly hid the
+contestants from Bruce's eyes. At such times he could tell how the fight
+was going by sound alone,--the snarls of the Killer, the wild oaths of
+Simon, the impact of the descending rifle-butt. Bruce gave no thought to
+taking part. Both were enemies; his own strength seemed gone. The cold
+deepened; Bruce could feel it creeping into his blood, halting its flow,
+threatening the spark of life within him. The full light of day had come
+out upon the land.
+
+Bruce knew the wilderness now. All its primitive passions were in play,
+all its mighty forces at grips. The storm seemed to be trying to
+extinguish these mortal lives; jealous of their intrusion, longing for
+the world it knew before living things came to dwell upon it, when its
+winds swept endlessly over an uninhabited earth, and its winter snows
+lay trackless and its rule was supreme. And beneath it, blind to the
+knowledge that in union alone lay strength to oppose its might--to
+oppose all those cruel forces that make a battleground of life--man and
+beast fought their battle to the death.
+
+It seemed to go on forever. Linda came stealing out of the
+snow--following the grizzly's trail--and crept beside Bruce. She
+crouched beside him, and his arm went about her as if to shield her.
+She had heard the sounds of the battle from afar; she had thought that
+Bruce was the contestant, and her terror had left a deep pallor upon her
+face; yet now she gazed upon that frightful conflict with a strange and
+enduring calm. Both she and Bruce knew that there was but one sure
+conqueror, and that was Death. If the Killer survived the fight and
+through the mercy of the forest gods spared their lives, there remained
+the blizzard. They could conceive of no circumstances whereby further
+effort would be of the least avail. The horse on which was tied their
+scanty blankets was miles away by now; its tracks were obscured in the
+snow, and they could not find their way to any shelter that might be
+concealed among the ridges.
+
+The scene grew in fury. The last burst of strength was upon Simon; in
+another moment he would be exhausted. The bear had suffered terrible
+punishment from the blows of the rifle stock. He recoiled once more,
+then lunged with unbelievable speed. His huge paw, with all his might
+behind it, struck the weapon from Simon's hand.
+
+It shot through the air seemingly almost as fast as the bullets it had
+often propelled from its muzzle and struck the trunk of a tree. So hard
+it came that the lock was shattered; they heard the ring of metal. The
+bear rocked forward once more and struck again. And then all the sound
+that was left was the eerie complaint of the wind.
+
+Simon lay still. The brave fight was over. His trial had ended
+fittingly,--in the grip of such powers as were typical of himself. But
+the bear did not leap upon him to tear his flesh. For an instant he
+stood like a statue in gray stone, head lowered, as if in a strange
+attitude of thought. The snow swept over him.
+
+Linda and Bruce gazed at him in silent awe. Some way, they felt no fear.
+No room in their hearts was left for it after the tumult of that battle.
+The great grizzly uttered one deep note and half-turned about. His eyes
+rested upon the twain, but he did not seem to see them.
+
+The fury was dead within him; this much was plain. The hair began to lie
+down at his shoulders. The terrible eyes lost their fire. Then he turned
+again and headed off slowly, deliberately, directly into the face of the
+storm.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The flurries almost immediately obscured the Killer's form, and Bruce
+turned his attention back to Linda. "It's the end," he said quietly.
+"Why not here--as well as anywhere else?"
+
+But before the question was finished, a strange note had come into his
+voice. It was as if his attention had been called from his words by
+something much more momentous. The truth was that it had been caught and
+held by a curious expression on the girl's face.
+
+Some great idea, partaking of the nature of inspiration, had come to
+her. He saw it in the growing light in her eyes, the deepening of the
+soft lines of her face. All at once she sprang to her feet.
+
+"Bruce!" she cried. "Perhaps there's a way yet. A long, long chance, but
+maybe a way yet. Get your rifle--Simon's is broken--and come with me."
+
+Without waiting for him to rise she struck off into the storm, following
+the huge footprints of the bear. The man struggled with himself,
+summoned all that was left of his reserve supply of strength, and leaped
+up. He snatched his rifle from the ground where Simon had thrown it, and
+in an instant was beside her. Her cheeks were blazing.
+
+"Maybe it just means further torture," she confessed to him, "but don't
+you want to make every effort we can to save ourselves? Don't you want
+to fight till the last breath?"
+
+She glanced up and saw her answer in the growing strength of his face.
+Then his words spoke too. "As long as the slightest chance remains," he
+replied.
+
+"And you'll forgive me if it comes to nothing?"
+
+He smiled, dimly. She took fresh heart when she saw he still had
+strength enough to smile. "You don't have to ask me that."
+
+"A moment ago an idea came to me--it came so straight and sure it was as
+if a voice told me," she explained hurriedly. She didn't look at him
+again. She kept her eyes intent upon the great footprints in the snow.
+To miss them for a second meant, in that world of whirling snow, to lose
+them forever. "It was after the bear had killed Simon and had gone away.
+He acted exactly as if he thought of something and went out to do
+it--exactly as if he had a destination in view. Didn't you see--his
+anger seemed to die in him and he started off in the _face of the
+storm_. I've watched the ways of animals too long not to know that he
+had something in view. It wasn't food; he would have attacked the body
+of the horse, or even Simon's body. If he had just been running away or
+wandering, he would have gone with the wind, not against it. He was
+weakened from the fight, perhaps dying--and I think--"
+
+He finished the sentence for her, breathlessly. "That he's going toward
+shelter."
+
+"Yes. You know, Bruce--the bears hibernate every year. They always seem
+to have places all chosen--usually caverns in the hillsides or under
+uprooted trees--and when the winter cuts off their supplies of food they
+go straight toward them. That's my one hope now--that the Killer has
+gone to some cave he knows about to hibernate until this storm is over.
+I think from the way he started off, so sure and so straight, that it's
+near. It would be dry and out of the storm, and if we could take it away
+from him we could make a fire that the snow wouldn't put out. It would
+mean life--and we could go on when the storm is over."
+
+"You remember--we have only one cartridge."
+
+"Yes, I know--I heard you fire. And it's only a thirty-thirty at that.
+It's a risk--as terrible a risk as we've yet run. But it's a chance."
+
+They talked no more. Instead, they walked as fast as they could into the
+face of the storm. It was a moment of respite. This new hope returned
+some measure of their strength to them. They walked much more swiftly
+than the bear, and they could tell by the appearance of the tracks that
+they were but a few yards behind him.
+
+"He won't smell us, the wind blowing as it does," Linda encouraged. "And
+he won't hear us either."
+
+Now the tracks were practically unspotted with the flakes. They strained
+into the flurries. Now they walked almost in silence, their footfall
+muffled in the snow.
+
+They soon became aware that they were mounting a low ridge. They left
+the underbrush and emerged into the open timber. And all at once Bruce,
+who now walked in front, paused with lifted hand, and pointed. Dim
+through the flurries they made out the outline of the bear. And Linda's
+inspiration had come true.
+
+There was a ledge of rocks just in front--a place such as the
+rattlesnakes had loved in the blasting sun of summer--and a black hole
+yawned in its side. The aperture had been almost covered with the snow,
+and they saw that the great creature was scooping away the remainder of
+the white drift with his paw. As they waited, the opening grew steadily
+wider, revealing the mouth of a little cavern in the face of the rock.
+
+"Shoot!" Linda whispered. "If he gets inside we won't be able to get him
+out."
+
+But Bruce shook his head, then stole nearer. She understood; he had only
+one cartridge, and he must not take the risk of wounding the animal. The
+fire had to be centered on a vital place.
+
+He walked steadily nearer until it seemed to Linda he would advance
+straight into reach of the terrible claws. He held the rifle firmly; his
+jaw was set, his face white, his eyes straight and strong with the
+strength of the pines themselves. He went as softly as he could--nearer,
+ever nearer--the rifle cocked and ready in his hands.
+
+The Killer turned his head and saw Bruce. Rage flamed again in his eyes.
+He half-turned about; then poised to charge.
+
+The gun moved swiftly, easily, to the man's shoulder, his chin dropped
+down, his straight eyes gazed along the barrel. In spite of his wound
+never had human arms held more steady than his did then. And he marked
+the little space of gray squarely between the two reddening eyes.
+
+The finger pressed back steadily against the trigger. The rifle cracked
+in the silence. And then there was a curious effect of tableau, a long
+second in which all three figures seemed to stand deathly still.
+
+The bear leaped forward, and it seemed wholly impossible to Linda that
+Bruce could swerve aside in time to avoid the blow. She cried out in
+horror as the great paws whipped down in the place where Bruce had
+stood. But the man had been prepared for this very recoil, and he had
+sprung aside just as the claws raked past.
+
+And the Killer would hunt no more in Trail's End. At the end of that
+leap he fell, his great body quivering strangely in the snow. The lead
+had gone straight home where it had been aimed, and the charge itself
+had been mostly muscular reflex. He lay still at last, a gray, mammoth
+figure that was majestic even in death.
+
+No more would the deer shudder with terror at the sound of his heavy
+step in the thicket. No more would the herds fly into stampede at the
+sight of his great shadow on the moonlit grass. The last of the Oregon
+grizzlies had gone the way of all his breed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Bruce and Linda, standing breathless and awed in the snow-flurries,
+his death imaged the passing of an old order--the last stand that the
+forces of the wild had made against conquering man. But there was pathos
+in it too. There was the symbol of mighty breeds humbled and destroyed.
+
+But the pines were left. Those eternal symbols of the wilderness--and of
+powers beyond the wilderness--still stood straight and grand and
+impassive above them. While these two lived, at least, they would still
+keep their watch over the wilderness, they would still stand erect and
+brave to the buffeting of the storm and snow, and in their shade dwelt
+strength and peace.
+
+The cavern that was revealed to them had a rock floor and had been
+hollowed out by running water in ages past. Bruce built a fire at its
+mouth of some of the long tree roots that extended down into it, and the
+life-giving warmth was a benediction. Already the drifting snow had
+begun to cover the aperture.
+
+"We can wait here until the blizzard is done," Bruce told Linda, as she
+sat beside him in the soft glow of the fire. "We have a little food, and
+we can cut more from the body of the grizzly when we need it. There's
+dead wood under the snow. And when the storm is over, we can get our
+bearings and walk out."
+
+She sat a long time without answering. "And after that?" she asked.
+
+He smiled. "No one knows. It's ten days before the thirtieth--the
+blizzards up here never last over three or four days. We've got plenty
+of time to get the document down to the courts. The law will deal with
+the rest of the Turners. We've won, Linda."
+
+His hands groped for hers, and he laid it against his lips. With her
+other hand she stroked his snow-wet hair. Her eyes were lustrous in the
+firelight.
+
+"And after that--after all that is settled? You will come back to the
+mountains?"
+
+"Could I ever leave them!" he exclaimed. "Of course, Linda. But I don't
+know what I can do up here--except maybe to establish my claim to my
+father's old farm. There's a hundred or so acres. I believe I'd like to
+feel the handles of a plow in my palms."
+
+"It was what you were made for, Bruce," she told him. "It's born in you.
+There's a hundred acres there--and three thousand--somewhere else.
+You've got new strength, Bruce. You could take hold and make them yield
+up their hay--and their crops--and fill all these hills with the herds."
+She stretched out her arms. Then all at once she dropped them almost as
+if in supplication. But her voice had regained the old merry tone he had
+learned to love when she spoke again. "Bruce, have I got to do all the
+asking?"
+
+His answer was to stretch his great arms and draw her into them. His
+laugh rang in the cavern.
+
+"Oh, my dearest!" he cried. The eyes lighted in his bronzed face. "I ask
+for everything--everything--bold that I am! And what I want worst--this
+minute--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"--Is just--a kiss."
+
+She gave it to him with all the tenderness of her soft lips. The snow
+sifted down outside. Again the pines spoke to one another, but the
+sadness seemed mostly gone from their soft voices.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+By EDISON MARSHALL
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE PACK
+
+With frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton
+
+_Love story, adventure story, nature story--all three qualities combine
+in this tale of modern man and woman arrayed against the forces of
+age-old savagery._
+
+"'The Voice of the Pack' is clean, fine, raw, bold, primitive; and has a
+wonderfully haunting quality in the repeated wolf-note"--_Zane Grey._
+
+"Taken all around 'The Voice of the Pack' is the best of the stories
+about wild life that has come out in many, many moons."--_The Chicago
+Daily News._
+
+"As a story that mingles Adventure, Nature Study and Romance, 'The Voice
+of the Pack' is undeniably of the front rank. Mr. Marshall knows the
+wild places and the ways of the wild creatures that range them--and he
+knows how to write. The study of Dan Failing's development against a
+background of the wild life of the mountains, is an exceedingly clever
+piece of literary work."--_The Boston Herald._
+
+"An unusually good tale of the West, evidently written by a man who
+knows about the habits of the wolf-packs and cougars."--_The New York
+Times._
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 35378-8.txt or 35378-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/3/7/35378
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/35378-8.zip b/35378-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1722626
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378-8.zip
diff --git a/35378-h.zip b/35378-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a4940f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378-h.zip
diff --git a/35378-h/35378-h.htm b/35378-h/35378-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..480e791
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378-h/35378-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8811 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Strength of the Pines, by Edison Marshall</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: .75em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .75em;
+}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+table {
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+}
+
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    left: 92%;
+    font-size: smaller;
+    text-align: right;
+} /* page numbers */
+
+.linenum {
+    position: absolute;
+    top: auto;
+    left: 4%;
+} /* poetry number */
+
+.blockquot {
+    margin-left: 5%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+.sidenote {
+    width: 20%;
+    padding-bottom: .5em;
+    padding-top: .5em;
+    padding-left: .5em;
+    padding-right: .5em;
+    margin-left: 1em;
+    float: right;
+    clear: right;
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    font-size: smaller;
+    color: black;
+    background: #eeeeee;
+    border: dashed 1px;
+}
+
+.bb       {border-bottom: solid 2px;}
+
+.bl       {border-left: solid 2px;}
+
+.bt       {border-top: solid 2px;}
+
+.br       {border-right: solid 2px;}
+
+.bbox     {border: solid 2px;}
+
+.center   {text-align: center;}
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+.caption  {font-weight: bold;}
+
+/* Images */
+.figcenter   {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+.figleft {
+    float: left;
+    clear: left;
+    margin-left: 0;
+    margin-bottom: 1em;
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    margin-right: 1em;
+    padding: 0;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+.figright {
+    float: right;
+    clear: right;
+    margin-left: 1em;
+    margin-bottom:
+    1em;
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    margin-right: 0;
+    padding: 0;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+/* Footnotes */
+.footnotes        {border: dashed 1px;}
+
+.footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+
+.footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
+
+.fnanchor {
+    vertical-align: super;
+    font-size: .8em;
+    text-decoration:
+    none;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+.poem {
+    margin-left:10%;
+    margin-right:10%;
+    text-align: left;
+}
+
+.poem br {display: none;}
+
+.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+
+.poem span.i0 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 0em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i2 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 2em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i4 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 4em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+    hr.full { width: 100%;
+              margin-top: 3em;
+              margin-bottom: 0em;
+              margin-left: auto;
+              margin-right: auto;
+              height: 4px;
+              border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */
+              border-style: solid;
+              border-color: #000000;
+              clear: both; }
+    pre      {font-size: 85%;}
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Strength of the Pines, by Edison
+Marshall, Illustrated by W. Herbert Dunton</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Strength of the Pines</p>
+<p>Author: Edison Marshall</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 23, 2011  [eBook #35378]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Michael, Mary Meehan,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h1>THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES</h1>
+
+<h2>BY EDISON MARSHALL</h2>
+
+
+<h3>WITH FRONTISPIECE BY<br />
+W. HERBERT DUNTON</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BOSTON<br />
+LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY<br />
+1921</h3>
+
+<h3><i>Copyright, 1921</i>,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By Little, Brown, and Company</span>.</h3>
+
+<h3><i>All rights reserved</i></h3>
+
+<h3>Published February, 1921</h3>
+
+<h3>THE COLONIAL PRESS<br />
+C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>TO<br />
+LILLE BARTOO MARSHALL<br />
+DEAR COMRADE AND GUIDE<br />
+WHO GAVE ME LIFE</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/front.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>He marked the little space of gray squarely between the
+two reddening eyes.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#BOOK_ONE">BOOK ONE <span class="smcap">The Call of the Blood</span> </a><br /><br />
+<a href="#I">I</a><br />
+<a href="#II">II</a><br />
+<a href="#III">III</a><br />
+<a href="#IV">IV</a><br />
+<a href="#V">V</a><br />
+<a href="#VI">VI</a><br />
+<a href="#VII">VII</a><br />
+<a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br />
+<a href="#IX">IX</a><br />
+<a href="#X">X</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_TWO">BOOK TWO <span class="smcap">The Blood Atonement</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#XI">XI</a><br />
+<a href="#XII">XII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIII">XIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIV">XIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XV">XV</a><br />
+<a href="#XVI">XVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XVII">XVII</a><br />
+<a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIX">XIX</a><br />
+<a href="#XX">XX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXI">XXI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXII">XXII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXV">XXV</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_THREE">BOOK THREE <span class="smcap">The Coming of the Strength</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIX">XXIX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXX">XXX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXI">XXXI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXII">XXXII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#By_EDISON_MARSHALL">By EDISON MARSHALL</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_ONE" id="BOOK_ONE"></a>BOOK ONE</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CALL OF THE BLOOD</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>Bruce was wakened by the sharp ring of his telephone bell. He heard its
+first note; and its jingle seemed to continue endlessly. There was no
+period of drowsiness between sleep and wakefulness; instantly he was
+fully aroused, in complete control of all his faculties. And this is not
+especially common to men bred in the security of civilization. Rather it
+is a trait of the wild creatures; a little matter that is quite
+necessary if they care at all about living. A deer, for instance, that
+cannot leap out of a mid-afternoon nap, soar a fair ten feet in the air,
+and come down with legs in the right position for running comes to a sad
+end, rather soon, in a puma's claws. Frontiersmen learn the trait too;
+but as Bruce was a dweller of cities it seemed somewhat strange in him.
+The trim, hard muscles were all cocked and primed for anything they
+should be told to do.</p>
+
+<p>Then he grunted rebelliously and glanced at his watch beneath the
+pillow. He had gone to bed early; it was just before midnight now. "I
+wish they'd leave me alone at night, anyway," he muttered, as he slipped
+on his dressing gown.</p>
+
+<p>He had no doubts whatever concerning the nature of this call. There had
+been one hundred like it during the previous month. His foster father
+had recently died, his estate was being settled up, and Bruce had been
+having a somewhat strenuous time with his creditors. He understood the
+man's real financial situation at last; at his death the whole business
+structure collapsed like the eggshell it was. Bruce had supposed that
+most of the debts had been paid by now; he wondered, as he fumbled into
+his bedroom slippers, whether the thousand or so dollars that were left
+would cover the claim of the man who was now calling him to the
+telephone. The fact that he was, at last, the penniless "beggar" that
+Duncan had called him at their first meeting didn't matter one way or
+another. For some years he had not hoped for help from his foster
+parent. The collapse of the latter's business had put Bruce out of work,
+but that was just a detail too. All he wanted now was to get things
+straightened up and go away&mdash;where, he did not know or care.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mr. Duncan," he said coldly into the transmitter.</p>
+
+<p>When he heard a voice come scratching over the wires, he felt sure that
+he had guessed right. Quite often his foster father's creditors talked
+in that same excited, hurried way. It was rather necessary to be hurried
+and excited if a claim were to be met before the dwindling financial
+resources were exhausted. But the words themselves, however&mdash;as soon as
+they gave their interpretation in his brain&mdash;threw a different light on
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Mr. Duncan," the voice answered. "Pardon me if I got you
+up. I want to talk to your son, Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce emitted a little gasp of amazement. Whoever talked at the end of
+the line obviously didn't know that the elder Duncan was dead. Bruce had
+a moment of grim humor in which he mused that this voice would have done
+rather well if it could arouse his foster father to answer it. "The
+elder Mr. Duncan died last month," he answered simply. There was not the
+slightest trace of emotion in his tone. No wayfarer on the street could
+have been, as far as facts went, more of a stranger to him; there was no
+sense of loss at his death and no cause for pretense now. "This is Bruce
+speaking."</p>
+
+<p>He heard the other gasp. "Old man, I'm sorry," his contrite voice came.
+"I didn't know of your loss. This is Barney&mdash;Barney Wegan&mdash;and I just
+got in from the West. Haven't had a bit of news for months. Accept my
+earnest sympathies&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Barney! Of course." The delight grew on Bruce's face; for Barney Wegan,
+a man whom he had met and learned to know on the gym floor of his club,
+was quite near to being a real friend. "And what's up, Barney?"</p>
+
+<p>The man's voice changed at once&mdash;went back to its same urgent, but
+rather embarrassed tone. "You won't believe me if I tell you, so I won't
+try to tell you over the 'phone. But I must come up&mdash;right away. May I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll jump in my car and be there in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce hung up, slowly descended to his library, and flashed on the
+lights.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time he was revealed plainly. His was a familiar type; but
+at the same time the best type too. He had the face and the body of an
+athlete, a man who keeps himself fit; and there was nothing mawkish or
+effeminate about him. His dark hair was clipped close about his temples,
+and even two hours in bed had not disarranged its careful part. It is
+true that men did look twice at Bruce's eyes, set in a brown, clean-cut
+face, never knowing exactly why they did so. They had startling
+potentialities. They were quite clear now, wide-awake and cool, yet they
+had a strange depth of expression and shadow that might mean, somewhere
+beneath the bland and cool exterior, a capacity for great emotions and
+passions.</p>
+
+<p>He had only a few minutes to wait; then Barney Wegan tapped at his door.
+This man was bronzed by the sun, never more fit, never straighter and
+taller and more lithe. He had just come from the far places. The
+embarrassment that Bruce had detected in his voice was in his face and
+manner too.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll think I'm crazy, for routing you out at this time of night,
+Bruce," he began. "And I'm going to get this matter off my chest as
+soon as possible and let you go to bed. It's all batty, anyway. But I
+was cautioned by all the devils of the deep to see you&mdash;the moment I
+came here."</p>
+
+<p>"Cigarettes on the smoking-stand," Bruce said steadily. "And tell away."</p>
+
+<p>"But tell me something first. Was Duncan your real father? If he was,
+I'll know I'm up a wrong tree. I don't mean to be personal&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He wasn't. I thought you knew it. My real father is something like
+you&mdash;something of a mystery."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't be a mystery long. He's not, eh&mdash;that's what the old hag said.
+Excuse me, old man, for saying 'hag.' But she was one, if there is any
+such. Lord knows who she is, or whether or not she's a relation of
+yours. But I'll begin at the beginning. You know I was way back on the
+Oregon frontier&mdash;back in the Cascades?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know," Bruce replied. "I knew you were somewhere in the wilds.
+You always are. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I was back there fishing for steelhead in a river they call the Rogue.
+My boy, a steelhead is&mdash;but you don't want to hear that. You want to get
+the story. But a steelhead, you ought to know, is a trout&mdash;a fish&mdash;and
+the noblest fish that ever was! Oh, Heavens above! how they can strike!
+But while way up on the upper waters I heard of a place called Trail's
+End&mdash;a place where wise men do not go."</p>
+
+<p>"And of course you went."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. The name sounds silly now, but it won't if you ever go
+there. There are only a few families, Bruce, miles and miles apart, in
+the whole region. And it's enormous&mdash;no one knows how big. Just ridge on
+ridge. And I went back to kill a bear."</p>
+
+<p>"But stop!" Bruce commanded. He lighted a cigarette. "I thought you were
+against killing bears&mdash;any except the big boys up North."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it. I am against killing the little black fellows&mdash;they are
+the only folk with any brains in the woods. But this, Bruce, was a real
+bear,&mdash;a left-over from fifty years ago. There used to be grizzlies
+through that country, you see, but everybody supposed that the last of
+them had been shot. But evidently there was one family that still
+remained&mdash;in the farthest recesses of Trail's End&mdash;and all at once the
+biggest, meanest grizzly ever remembered showed up on the cattle ranges
+of the plateau. With some others, I went to get him. 'The Killer', they
+call him&mdash;and he certainly is death on live stock. I didn't get the
+bear, but one day my guide stopped at a broken-down old cabin on the
+hillside for a drink of water. I was four miles away in camp. The guide
+came back and asked me if I was from this very city.</p>
+
+<p>"I told him yes, and asked him why he wanted to know. He said that this
+old woman sent word, secretly, to every stranger that ever came to fish
+or hunt in the region of Trail's End, wanting to know if they came from
+here. I was the first one that answered 'yes.' And the guide said that
+she wanted me to come to her cabin and see her.</p>
+
+<p>"I went&mdash;and I won't describe to you how she looked. I'll let you see
+for yourself, if you care to follow out her instructions. And now the
+strange part comes in. The old witch raised her arm, pointed her cane at
+me, and asked me if I knew Newton Duncan.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her there might be several Newton Duncans in a city this size.
+You should have seen the pain grow on her face. 'After so long, after so
+long!' she cried, in the queerest, sobbing way. She seemed to have
+waited years to find some one from here, and when I came I didn't know
+what she wanted. Then she took heart and began again.</p>
+
+<p>"'This Newton Duncan had a son&mdash;a foster-son&mdash;named Bruce,' she told me.
+And then I said I knew you.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't imagine the change that came over her. I thought she'd die of
+heart failure. The whole thing, Bruce&mdash;if you must know&mdash;gave me the
+creeps. 'Tell him to come here,' she begged me. 'Don't lose a moment. As
+soon as you get home, tell him to come here.'</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I asked other questions, but I couldn't get much out of her.
+One of 'em was why she hadn't written to Duncan. The answer was simple
+enough&mdash;that she didn't know how to write. Those in the mountains that
+could write wouldn't, or couldn't&mdash;she was a trifle vague on that
+point&mdash;dispatch a letter. Something is up."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>Before the gray of dawn came over the land Bruce Duncan had started
+westward. He had no self-amazement at the lightning decision. He was
+only strangely and deeply exultant.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons why went too deep within him to be easily seen. In the first
+place, it was adventure&mdash;and Bruce's life had not been very adventurous
+heretofore. It was true that he had known triumphs on the athletic
+fields, and his first days at a great University had been novel and
+entertaining. But now he was going to the West, to a land he had dreamed
+about, the land of wide spaces and great opportunities. It was not his
+first western journey. Often he had gone there as a child&mdash;had engaged
+in furious battles with outlaws and Indians; but those had been
+adventures of imagination only. This was reality at last. The clicking
+rails beneath the speeding train left no chance for doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a sense of immeasurable relief at his sudden and
+unexpected freedom from the financial problems his father had left. He
+would have no more consultations with impatient creditors, no more would
+he strive to gather together the ruins of the business, and attempt to
+salvage the small remaining fragments of his father's fortune. He was
+free of it all, at last. He had never known a darker hour&mdash;and none of
+them that this quiet, lonely-spirited man had known had been very
+bright&mdash;than the one he had spent just before going to bed earlier that
+evening. He had no plans, he didn't know which way to turn. All at once,
+through the message that Barney had brought him, he had seen a clear
+trail ahead. It was something to do, something at last that mattered.</p>
+
+<p>Finally there remained the eminent fact that this was an answer to his
+dream. He was going toward Linda, at last. The girl had been the one
+living creature in his memory that he had cared for and who cared for
+him&mdash;the one person whose interest in him was real. Men are a gregarious
+species. The trails are bewildering and steep to one who travels them
+alone. Linda, the little "spitfire" of his boyhood, had suddenly become
+the one reality in his world, and as he thought of her, his memory
+reviewed the few impressions he had retained of his childhood.</p>
+
+<p>First was the Square House&mdash;the orphanage&mdash;where the Woman had turned
+him over to the nurse in charge. Sometimes, when tobacco smoke was heavy
+upon him, Bruce could catch very dim and fleeting glimpses of the
+Woman's face. He would bend his mind to it, he would probe and probe,
+with little, reaching filaments of thought, into the dead years&mdash;and
+then, all at once, the filaments would rush together, catch hold of a
+fragment of her picture, and like a chain-gang of ants carrying a straw,
+come lugging it up for him to see. It was only a fleeting glimpse, only
+the faintest blur in half-tone, and then quite gone. Yet he never gave
+up trying. He never quit longing for just one second of vivid
+remembrance. It was one of the few and really great desires that Bruce
+had in life.</p>
+
+<p>The few times that her memory-picture did come to him, it brought a
+number of things with it. One of them was a great and overwhelming
+realization of some terrible tragedy and terror the nature of which he
+could not even guess. There had been terrible and tragic events&mdash;where
+and how he could not guess&mdash;lost in those forgotten days of his
+babyhood.</p>
+
+<p>"She's been through fire," the nurse told the doctor when he came in and
+the door had closed behind the Woman. Bruce <i>did</i> remember these words,
+because many years elapsed before he completely puzzled them out. The
+nurse hadn't meant such fires as swept through the far-spread evergreen
+forests of the Northwest. It was some other, dread fire that seared the
+spirit and burned the bloom out of the face and all the gentle lights
+out of the eyes. It did, however, leave certain lights, but they were
+such that their remembrance brought no pleasure to Bruce. They were just
+a wild glare, a fixed, strange brightness as of great fear or insanity.</p>
+
+<p>The Woman had kissed him and gone quickly; and he had been too young to
+remember if she had carried any sort of bundle close to her breast. Yet,
+the man considered, there must have been such a bundle&mdash;otherwise he
+couldn't possibly account for Linda. And there were no doubts about
+her, at all. Her picture was always on the first page of the photograph
+album of his memory; he had only to turn over one little sheet of years
+to find her.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he had no memories of her that first day, nor for the first
+years. But all later memories of the Square House always included her.
+She must have been nearly four years younger than himself; thus when he
+was taken to the house she was only an infant. But thereafter, the
+nurses put them together often; and when Linda was able to talk, she
+called him something that sounded like Bwovaboo. She called him that so
+often that for a long time he couldn't be sure that wasn't his real
+name. Now, in manhood, he interpreted.</p>
+
+<p>"Brother Bruce, of course. Linda was of course a sister."</p>
+
+<p>Linda had been homely; even a small boy could notice that. Besides,
+Linda was nearly six when Bruce had left for good; and he was then at an
+age in which impressions begin to be lasting. Her hair was quite blond
+then, and her features rather irregular. But there had been a light in
+her eyes! By his word, there had been!</p>
+
+<p>She had been angry at him times in plenty&mdash;over some childish game&mdash;and
+he remembered how that light had grown and brightened. She had flung at
+him too, like a lynx springing from a tree. Bruce paused in his
+reflections to wonder at himself over the simile&mdash;for lynx were no
+especial acquaintances of his. He knew them only through books, as he
+knew many other things that stirred his imagination. But he laughed at
+the memory of her sudden, explosive ferocity,&mdash;the way her hands had
+smacked against his cheeks, and her sharp little nails had scratched
+him. Curiously, he had never fought back as is the usual thing between
+small boys and small girls. And it wasn't exactly chivalry either,
+rather just an inability to feel resentment. Besides, there were always
+tears and repentance afterward, and certain pettings that he openly
+scorned and secretly loved.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have been a strange kid!" Bruce thought.</p>
+
+<p>It was true he had; and nothing was stranger than this attitude toward
+Baby Sister. He was always so gentle with her, but at the same time he
+contemplated her with a sort of amused tolerance that is to be expected
+in strong men rather than solemn little boys. "Little Spitfire" he
+sometimes called her; but no one else could call her anything but Linda.
+For Bruce had been an able little fighter, even in those days.</p>
+
+<p>There was other evidence of strangeness. He was fond of drawing
+pictures. This was nothing in itself; many little boys are fond of
+drawing pictures. Nor were his unusually good. Their strangeness lay in
+his subjects. He liked to draw animals in particular,&mdash;the animals he
+read about in school and in such books as were brought to him. And
+sometimes he drew Indians and cowboys. And one day&mdash;when he wasn't half
+watching what he was doing&mdash;he drew something quite different.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he wouldn't have looked at it twice, if the teacher hadn't
+stepped up behind him and taken it out of his hands. It was "geography"
+then, not "drawing", and he should have been "paying attention." And he
+had every reason to think that the teacher would crumple up his picture
+and send him to the cloak-room for punishment.</p>
+
+<p>But she did no such thing. It was true that she seized the paper, and
+her fingers were all set to crumple it. But when her eyes glanced down,
+her fingers slowly straightened. Then she looked again&mdash;carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this, Bruce?" she asked. "What have you been drawing?"</p>
+
+<p>Curiously, she had quite forgotten to scold him for not paying
+attention. And Bruce, who had drawn the picture with his thoughts far
+away from his pencil, had to look and see himself. Then he couldn't be
+sure.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't know," the child answered. But the picture was even better
+than his more conscious drawings, and it did look like something. He
+looked again, and for an instant let his thoughts go wandering here and
+there. "Those are trees," he said. A word caught at his throat and he
+blurted it out. "Pines! Pine trees, growing on a mountain."</p>
+
+<p>Once translated, the picture could hardly be mistaken. There was a range
+of mountains in the background, and a distinct sky line plumed with
+pines,&mdash;those tall, dark trees that symbolize, above all other trees,
+the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>"Not bad for a six-year-old boy," the teacher commented. "But where,
+Bruce, have you ever seen or heard of such pines?" But Bruce did not
+know.</p>
+
+<p>Another puzzling adventure that stuck in Bruce's memory had happened
+only a few months after his arrival at the Square House when a man had
+taken him home on trial with the idea of adoption. Adoption, little
+Bruce had gathered, was something like heaven,&mdash;a glorious and happy end
+of all trouble and unpleasantness. Such was the idea he got from the
+talk of the other Orphans, and even from the grown-ups who conducted the
+establishment.</p>
+
+<p>All the incidents and details of the excursion with this prospective
+parent were extremely dim and vague. He did not know to what city he
+went, nor had he any recollection whatever of the people he met there.
+But he did remember, with remarkable clearness, the perplexing talk that
+the man and the superintendent of the Square House had together on his
+return.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't do," the stranger had said. "I tried him out and he won't fill
+in in my family. And I've fetched him back."</p>
+
+<p>The superintendent must have looked at the little curly-haired boy with
+considerable wonder; but he didn't ask questions. There was no
+particular need of them. The man was quite ready to talk, and the fact
+that a round-eyed child was listening to him with both ears open, did
+not deter him a particle.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe in being frank," the man said, "and I tell you there's
+something vicious in that boy's nature. It came out the very first
+moment he was in the house, when the Missus was introducing him to my
+eight-year-old son. 'This is little Turner,' she said&mdash;and this boy
+sprang right at him. I'd never let little Turner learn to fight, and
+this boy was on top of him and was pounding him with his fists before we
+could pull him off. Just like a wildcat&mdash;screaming and sobbing and
+trying to get at him again. I didn't understand it at all."</p>
+
+<p>Nor did the superintendent understand; nor&mdash;in these later years&mdash;Bruce
+either.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite a big boy, nearly ten, when he finally left the Square
+House. And there was nothing flickering or dim about the memory of this
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>A tall, exceedingly slender man sat beside the window,&mdash;a man well
+dressed but with hard lines about his mouth and hard eyes. Yet the
+superintendent seemed particularly anxious to please him. "You will like
+this sturdy fellow," he said, as Bruce was ushered in.</p>
+
+<p>The man's eyes traveled slowly from the child's curly head to his
+rapidly growing feet; but no gleam of interest came into the thin face.
+"I suppose he'll do&mdash;as good as any. It was the wife's idea, anyway, you
+know. What about parentage? Anything decent at all?"</p>
+
+<p>The superintendent seemed to wait a long time before answering. Little
+Bruce, already full of secret conjectures as to his own parentage,
+thought that some key might be given him at last. "There is nothing that
+we can tell you, Mr. Duncan," he said at last. "A woman brought him
+here&mdash;with an infant girl&mdash;when he was about four. I suppose she was
+his mother&mdash;and she didn't wait to talk to me. The nurse said that she
+wore outlandish clothes and had plainly had a hard time."</p>
+
+<p>"But she didn't wait&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"She dropped her children and fled."</p>
+
+<p>A cold little smile flickered at the man's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks rather damnable," he said significantly. "But I'll take the
+little beggar&mdash;anyway."</p>
+
+<p>And thus Bruce went to the cold fireside of the Duncans&mdash;a house in a
+great and distant city where, in the years that had passed, many things
+scarcely worth remembering had transpired. It was a gentleman's
+house&mdash;as far as the meaning of the word usually goes&mdash;and Bruce had
+been afforded a gentleman's education. There was also, for a while, a
+certain amount of rather doubtful prosperity, a woman who died after a
+few months of casual interest in him, and many, many hours of almost
+overwhelming loneliness. Also there were many thoughts such as are not
+especially good for the spirits of growing boys.</p>
+
+<p>There is a certain code in all worlds that most men, sooner or later,
+find it wisest to adopt. It is simply the code of forgetfulness. The
+Square House from whence Bruce had come had been a good place to learn
+this code; and Bruce&mdash;child though he was&mdash;had carried it with him to
+the Duncans'. But there were two things he had been unable to forget.
+One was the words his foster father had spoken on accepting him,&mdash;words
+that at last he had come to understand.</p>
+
+<p>A normal child, adopted into a good home, would not have likely given a
+second thought to a dim and problematical disgrace in his unknown and
+departed family. He would have found his pride in the achievements and
+standing of his foster parents. But the trouble was that little Bruce
+had not been adopted into any sort of home, good or bad. The place where
+the Duncans lived was a house, but under no liberal interpretation of
+the word could it be called a home. There was nothing homelike in it to
+little Bruce. It wasn't that there was actual cruelty to contend with.
+Bruce had never known that. But there was utter indifference which
+perhaps is worse. And as always, the child filled up the empty space
+with dreams. He gave all the love and worship that was in him to his own
+family that he had pictured in imagination. Thus any disgrace that had
+come upon them went home to him very straight indeed.</p>
+
+<p>The other lasting memory was of Linda. She represented the one living
+creature in all his assemblage of phantoms&mdash;the one person with whom he
+could claim real kinship. Never a wind blew, never the sun shone but
+that he missed her, with a terrible, aching longing for which no one has
+ever been able to find words. He had done a bold thing, after his first
+few years with the Duncans. He planned it long and carried it out with
+infinite care as to details. He wrote to Linda, in care of the
+superintendent of the orphanage.</p>
+
+<p>The answer only deepened the mystery. Linda was missing. Whether she had
+run away, or whether some one had come by in a closed car and carried
+her off as she played on the lawns, the superintendent could not tell.
+They had never been able to trace her. He had been fifteen then, a tall
+boy with rather unusual muscular development, and the girl was eleven.
+And in the year nineteen hundred and twenty, ten years after the reply
+to his letter, Bruce had heard no word from her. A man grown, and his
+boyish dreams pushed back into the furthest deep recesses of his mind,
+where they could no longer turn his eyes away from facts, he had given
+up all hope of ever hearing from her again. "My little sister," he said
+softly to a memory. Then bitterness&mdash;a whole black flood of it&mdash;would
+come upon him. "Good Lord, I don't even know that she <i>was</i> my sister."
+But now he was going to find her and his heart was full of joy and eager
+anticipation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>There had not been time to make inquiry as to the land Bruce was going
+to. He only knew one thing,&mdash;that it was the wilderness. Whether it was
+a wilderness of desert or of great forest, he did not know. Nor had he
+the least idea what manner of adventure would be his after he reached
+the old woman's cabin; and he didn't care. The fact that he had no
+business plans for the future and no financial resources except a few
+hundred dollars that he carried in his pocket did not matter one way or
+another. He was willing to spend all the money he had; after it was
+gone, he would take up some work in life anew.</p>
+
+<p>He had a moment's wonder at the effect his departure would have upon the
+financial problem that had been his father's sole legacy to him. He
+laughed a little as he thought of it. Perhaps a stronger man could have
+taken hold, could have erected some sort of a structure upon the ruins,
+and remained to conquer after all. But Bruce had never been particularly
+adept at business. His temperament did not seem suited to it. But the
+idea that others also&mdash;having no business relations with his
+father&mdash;might be interested in this western journey of his did not even
+occur to him. He would not be missed at his athletic club. He had
+scarcely any real friends, and none of his acquaintances kept
+particularly close track of him.</p>
+
+<p>But the paths men take, seemingly with wholly different aims, crisscross
+and become intertwined much more than Bruce knew. Even as he lay in his
+berth, the first sweet drifting of sleep upon him, he was the subject of
+a discussion in a far-distant mountain home; and sleep would not have
+fallen so easily and sweetly if he had heard it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It might have been a different world. Only a glimpse of it, illumined by
+the moon, could be seen through the soiled and besmirched window pane;
+but that was enough to tell the story. There were no tall buildings,
+lighted by a thousand electric lights, such as Bruce could see through
+the windows of his bedroom at night. The lights that could be discerned
+in this strange, dark sky were largely unfamiliar to Bruce, because of
+the smoke-clouds that had always hung above the city where he lived.
+There were just stars, but there were so many of them that the mind was
+unable to comprehend their number.</p>
+
+<p>There is a perplexing variation in the appearance of these twinkling
+spheres. No man who has traveled widely can escape this fact. Likely
+enough they are the same stars, but they put on different faces. They
+seem almost insignificant at times,&mdash;dull and dim and unreal. It is not
+this way with the stars that peer down through these high forests. Men
+cannot walk beneath them and be unaware of them. They are incredibly
+large and bright and near, and the eyes naturally lift to them. There
+are nights in plenty, in the wild places, where they seem much more real
+than the dim, moonlit ridge or even the spark of a trapper's campfire,
+far away. They grow to be companions, too, in time. Perhaps after many,
+many years in the wild a man even attains some understanding of them,
+learning their infinite beneficence, and finding in them rare comrades
+in loneliness, and beacons on the dim and intertwining trails.</p>
+
+<p>There was also a moon that cast a little square of light, like a fairy
+tapestry, on the floor. It was not such a moon as leers down red and
+strange through the smoke of cities. It was vivid and quite white,&mdash;the
+wilderness moon that times the hunting hours of the forest creatures.
+But the patch that it cast on the floor was obscured in a moment because
+the man who had been musing in the big chair beside the empty fireplace
+had risen and lighted a kerosene lamp.</p>
+
+<p>The light prevented any further scrutiny of the moon and stars. And what
+remained to look at was not nearly so pleasing to the spirit. It was a
+great, white-walled room that would have been beautiful had it not been
+for certain unfortunate attempts to beautify it. The walls, that should
+have been sweeping and clean, were adorned with gaudily framed pictures
+which in themselves were dim and drab from many summers' accumulation of
+dust. There was a stone fireplace, and certain massive, dust-covered
+chairs grouped about it. But the eyes never would have got to these.
+They would have been held and fascinated by the face and the form of
+the man who had just lighted the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>No one could look twice at that massive physique and question its might.
+He seemed almost gigantic in the yellow lamplight. In reality he stood
+six feet and almost three inches, and his frame was perfectly in
+proportion. He moved slowly, lazily, and the thought flashed to some
+great monster of the forest that could uproot a tree with a blow. The
+huge muscles rippled and moved under the flannel shirt. The vast hand
+looked as if it could seize the glass bowl of the lamp and crush it like
+an eggshell.</p>
+
+<p>The face was huge, big and gaunt of bone; and particularly one would
+notice the mouth. It would be noticed even before the dark, deep-sunken
+eyes. It was a bloodhound mouth, the mouth of a man of great and
+terrible passions, and there was an unmistakable measure of cruelty and
+savagely about it. But there was strength, too. No eye could doubt that.
+The jaw muscles looked as powerful as those of a beast of prey. But it
+was not an ugly face, for all the brutality of the features. It was even
+handsome in the hard, mountain way. One would notice straight, black
+hair&mdash;the man's age was about thirty-nine&mdash;long over rather dark ears,
+and a great, gnarled throat. The words when he spoke seemed to come from
+deep within it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Dave," he said.</p>
+
+<p>In this little remark lay something of the man's power. The visitor had
+come unannounced. His visit had been unexpected. His host had not yet
+seen his face. Yet the man knew, before the door was opened, who it was
+that had come.</p>
+
+<p>The reason went back to a certain quickening of the senses that is the
+peculiar right and property of most men who are really residents of the
+wilderness. And resident, in this case, does not mean merely one who
+builds his cabin on the slopes and lives there until he dies. It means a
+true relationship with the wild, an actual understanding. This man was
+the son of the wild as much as the wolves that ran in the packs. The
+wilderness is a fecund parent, producing an astounding variety of types.
+Some are beautiful, many stronger than iron, but her parentage was never
+more evident than in the case of this bronze-skinned giant that called
+out through the open doorway. Among certain other things he had acquired
+an ability to name and interpret quickly the little sounds of the
+wilderness night. Soft though it was, he had heard the sound of
+approaching feet in the pine needles. As surely as he would have
+recognized the dark face of the man in the doorway, he recognized the
+sound as Dave's step.</p>
+
+<p>The man came in, and at once an observer would have detected an air of
+deference in his attitude. Very plainly he had come to see his chief. He
+was a year or two older than his host, less powerful of physique, and
+his eyes did not hold quite so straight. There was less savagery but
+more cunning in his sharp features.</p>
+
+<p>He blurted out his news at once. "Old Elmira has got word down to the
+settlements at last," he said.</p>
+
+<p>There was no muscular response in the larger man. Dave was plainly
+disappointed. He wanted his news to cause a stir. It was true, however,
+that his host slowly raised his eyes. Dave glanced away.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" the man demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Mean&mdash;I mean just what I said. We should have watched closer.
+Bill&mdash;Young Bill, I mean&mdash;saw a city chap just in the act of going in to
+see her. He had come on to the plateaus with his guide&mdash;Wegan was the
+man's name&mdash;and Bill said he stayed a lot longer than he would have if
+he hadn't taken a message from her. Then Young Bill made some
+inquiries&mdash;innocent as you please&mdash;and he found out for sure that this
+Wegan was from&mdash;just the place we don't want him to be from. And he'll
+carry word sure."</p>
+
+<p>"How long ago was this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Week ago Tuesday."</p>
+
+<p>"And why have you been so long in telling me?"</p>
+
+<p>When Dave's chief asked questions in this tone, answers always came
+quickly. They rolled so fast from the mouth that they blurred and ran
+together. "Why, Simon&mdash;you ain't been where I could see you. Anyway,
+there was nothin' we could have done."</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't, eh? I don't suppose you ever thought that there's yet two
+months before we can clinch this thing for good, and young Folger
+might&mdash;I say might&mdash;have kicking about somewhere in his belongings the
+very document we've all of us been worrying about for twenty years."
+Simon cursed&mdash;a single, fiery oath. "I don't suppose you could have
+arranged for this Wegan to have had a hunting accident, could you? Who
+in the devil would have thought that yelping old hen could have ever
+done it&mdash;would have ever kept at it long enough to reach anybody to
+carry her message! But as usual, we are yelling before we're hurt. It
+isn't worth a cussword. Like as not, this Wegan will never take the
+trouble to hunt him up. And if he does&mdash;well, it's nothing to worry
+about, either. There is one back door that has been opened many times to
+let his people go through, and it may easily be opened again."</p>
+
+<p>Dave's eyes filled with admiration. Then he turned and gazed out through
+the window. Against the eastern sky, already wan and pale from the
+encroaching dawn, the long ridge of a mountain stood in vivid and
+startling silhouette. The edge of it was curiously jagged with many
+little upright points.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one person who would have been greatly amazed by that
+outline of the ridge; and the years and distance had obscured her long
+ago. This was a teacher at an orphanage in a distant city, who once had
+taken a crude drawing from the hands of a child. Here was the original
+at last. It was the same ridge, covered with pines, that little Bruce
+had drawn.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The train came to a sliding halt at Deer Creek, paused an infinitesimal
+fraction of a second, and roared on in its ceaseless journey. That
+infinitesimal fraction was long enough for Bruce, poised on the bottom
+step of a sleeping car, to swing down on to the gravel right-of-way. His
+bag, hurled by a sleepy porter, followed him.</p>
+
+<p>He turned first to watch the vanishing tail light, speeding so swiftly
+into the darkness; and curiously all at once it blinked out. But it was
+not that the switchmen were neglectful of their duties. In this certain
+portion of the Cascades the railroad track is constructed something
+after the manner of a giant screw, coiling like a great serpent up the
+ridges, and the train had simply vanished around a curve.</p>
+
+<p>Duncan's next impression was one of infinite solitude. He hadn't read
+any guidebooks about Deer Creek, and he had expected some sort of town.
+A western mining camp, perhaps, where the windows of a dance hall would
+gleam through the darkness; or one of those curious little
+mushroom-growth cities that are to be found all over the West. But at
+Deer Creek there was one little wooden structure with only three
+sides,&mdash;the opening facing the track. It was evidently the waiting room
+used by the mountain men as they waited for their local trains.</p>
+
+<p>There were no porters to carry his bag. There were no shouting
+officials. His only companions were the stars and the moon and, farther
+up the slope, certain tall trees that tapered to incredible points
+almost in the region where the stars began. The noise of the train died
+quickly. It vanished almost as soon as the dot of red that had been its
+tail light. It was true that he heard a faint pulsing far below him, a
+sound that was probably the chug of the steam, but it only made an
+effective background for the silence. It was scarcely more to be heard
+than the pulse of his own blood; and as he waited even this faded and
+died away.</p>
+
+<p>The moon cast his shadow on the yellow grass beside the crude station,
+and a curious flood of sensations&mdash;scarcely more tangible than its
+silver light&mdash;came over him. The moment had a quality of enchantment;
+and why he did not know. His throat suddenly filled, a curious weight
+and pain came to his eyelids, a quiver stole over his nerves. He stood
+silent with lifted face,&mdash;a strange figure in that mystery of moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>The whole scene, for causes deeper than any words may ever seek and
+reveal, moved him past any experience in his life. It was wholly new.
+When he had gone to sleep in his berth, earlier that same night, the
+train had been passing through a level, fertile valley that might have
+been one of the river bottoms beyond the Mississippi. When darkness had
+come down he had been in a great city in the northern part of the
+State,&mdash;a noisy, busy place that was not greatly different from the city
+whence he had come. But now he seemed in a different world.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly, in the long journey to the West, he had passed through forest
+before. But some way their appeal had not got to him. He was behind
+closed windows, his thoughts had been busy with reading and other
+occupations of travel. There had been no shading off, no gradations; he
+had come straight from a great seat of civilization to the heart of the
+wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>He turned about until the wind was in his face. It was full of
+fragrances,&mdash;strange, indescribable smells that seemed to call up a
+forgotten world. They carried a message to him, but as yet he hadn't
+made out its meaning. He only knew it was something mysterious and
+profound: great truths that flickered, like dim lights, in his
+consciousness, but whose outline he could not quite discern. They went
+straight home to him, those night smells from the forest. One of them
+was a balsam: a fragrance that once experienced lingers ever in the
+memory and calls men back to it in the end. Those who die in its
+fragrance, just as those who go to sleep, feel sure of having pleasant
+dreams. There were other smells too&mdash;delicate perfumes from mountain
+flowers that were deep-hidden in the grass&mdash;and many others, the nature
+of which he could not even guess.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps there were sounds, but they only seemed part of the silence. The
+faintest rustle in the world reached him from the forests above of many
+little winds playing a running game between the trunks, and the stir of
+the Little People, moving in their midnight occupations. Each of these
+sounds had its message for Bruce. They all seemed to be trying to tell
+him something, to make clear some great truth that was dawning in his
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>He was not in the least afraid. He felt at peace as never before. He
+picked up his bag, and with stealing steps approached the long slope
+behind. The moon showed him a fallen log, and he found a comfortable
+seat on the ground beside it, his back against its bark. Then he waited
+for the dawn to come out.</p>
+
+<p>Not even Bruce knew or understood all the thoughts that came over him in
+that lonely wait. But he did have a peculiar sense of expectation, a
+realization that the coming of the dawn would bring him a message
+clearer than all these messages of fragrance and sound. The moon made
+wide silver patches between the distant trees; but as yet the forest had
+not opened its secrets to him. As yet it was but a mystery, a profundity
+of shadows and enchantment that he did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>The night hours passed. The sense of peace seemed to deepen on the man.
+He sat relaxed, his brown face grave, his eyes lifted. The stars began
+to dim and draw back farther into the recesses of the sky. The round
+outline of the moon seemed less pronounced. And a faint ribbon of light
+began to grow in the east.</p>
+
+<p>It widened. The light grew. The night wind played one more little game
+between the tree trunks and slipped away to the Home of Winds that lies
+somewhere above the mountains. The little night sounds were slowly
+stilled.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce closed his eyes, not knowing why. His blood was leaping in his
+veins. An unfamiliar excitement, almost an exultation, had come upon
+him. He lowered his head nearly to his hands that rested in his lap,
+then waited a full five minutes more.</p>
+
+<p>Then he opened his eyes. The light had grown around him. His hands were
+quite plain. Slowly, as a man raises his eyes to a miracle, he lifted
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>The forest was no longer obscured in darkness. The great trees had
+emerged, and only the dusk as of twilight was left between. He saw them
+plainly,&mdash;their symmetrical forms, their declining limbs, their tall
+tops piercing the sky. He saw them as they were,&mdash;those ancient, eternal
+symbols and watchmen of the wilderness. And he knew them at last,
+acquaintances long forgotten but remembered now.</p>
+
+<p>"The pines!" he cried. He leaped to his feet with flashing eyes. "I have
+come back to the pines!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>The dawn revealed a narrow road along the bank of Deer Creek,&mdash;a brown
+little wanderer which, winding here and there, did not seem to know
+exactly where it wished to go. It seemed to follow the general direction
+of the creek bed; it seemed to be a prying, restless little highway,
+curious about things in general as the wild creatures that sometimes
+made tracks in its dust, thrusting now into a heavy thicket, now
+crossing the creek to examine a green and grassy bank on the opposite
+side, now taking an adventurous tramp about the shoulder of a hill,
+circling back for a drink in the creek and hurrying on again. It made
+singular loops; it darted off at a right and left oblique; it made
+sudden spurts and turns seemingly without reason or sense, and at last
+it dimmed away into the fading mists of early morning. Bruce didn't know
+which direction to take, whether up or down the creek.</p>
+
+<p>He gave the problem a moment's thought. "Take the road up the Divide,"
+Barney Wegan had said; and at once Bruce knew that the course lay up the
+creek, rather than down. A divide means simply the high places between
+one water-shed and another, and of course Trail's End lay somewhere
+beyond the source of the stream. The creek itself was apparently a
+sub-tributary of the Rogue, the great river to the south.</p>
+
+<p>There was something pleasing to his spirit in the sight of the little
+stream, tumbling and rippling down its rocky bed. He had no vivid
+memories of seeing many waterways. The river that flowed through the
+city whence he had come had not been like this at all. It had been a
+great, slow-moving sheet of water, the banks of which were lined with
+factories and warehouses. The only lining of the banks of this little
+stream were white-barked trees, lovely groves with leaves of glossy
+green. It was a cheery, eager little waterway, and more than once&mdash;as he
+went around a curve in the road&mdash;it afforded him glimpses of really
+striking beauty. Sometimes it was just a shimmer of its waters beneath
+low-hanging bushes, sometimes a distant cataract, and once or twice a
+long, still place on which the shadows were still deep.</p>
+
+<p>These sloughs were obviously the result of dams, and at first he could
+not understand what had been the purpose of dam-building in this lonely
+region. There seemed to be no factories needing water power, no
+slow-moving mill wheels. He left the road to investigate. And he
+chuckled with delight when he knew the truth.</p>
+
+<p>These dams had not been the work of men at all. Rather they were
+structures laid down by those curious little civil engineers, the
+beavers. The cottonwood trees had been felled so that the thick branches
+had lain across the waters, and in their own secret ways the limbs had
+been matted and caked until no water could pass through. True, the
+beavers themselves did not emerge for him to converse with. Perhaps
+they were busy at their under-water occupations, and possibly the
+trappers who sooner or later penetrate every wilderness had taken them
+all away. He looked along the bank for further evidence of the beavers'
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful as the dams were, he found plenty of evidence that the beavers
+had not always used to advantage the crafty little brains that nature
+has given them. They had made plenty of mistakes. But these very
+blunders gave Bruce enough delight almost to pay for the extra work they
+had occasioned. After all, he considered, human beings in their works
+are often just as short-sighted. For instance, he found tall trees lying
+rotting and out of reach, many feet back from the stream. The beavers
+had evidently felled them in high water, forgetting that the stream
+dwindled in summer and the trees would be of no use to them. They had
+been an industrious colony! He found short poles of cottonwood sharpened
+at the end, as if the little fur bearers had intended them for braces,
+but which&mdash;through some wilderness tragedy&mdash;had never been utilized.</p>
+
+<p>But Bruce was in a mood to be delighted, these early morning hours. He
+was on the way to Linda; a dream was about to come true. The whole
+adventure was of the most thrilling and joyous anticipations. He did not
+feel the load of his heavy suitcase. It was nothing to his magnificent
+young strength. And all at once he beheld an amazing change in the
+appearance of the stream.</p>
+
+<p>It had abruptly changed to a stream of melted, shimmering silver. The
+waters broke on the rocks with opalescent spray; the whole coloring was
+suggestive of the vivid tints of a Turner landscape. The waters gleamed;
+they danced and sparkled as they sped about the boulders of the river
+bed; the leaves shimmered above them. And it was all because the sun had
+risen at last above the mountain range and was shining down.</p>
+
+<p>At first Bruce could hardly believe that just sunlight could effect such
+a transformation. For no other reason than that he couldn't resist doing
+so, he left his bag on the road and crept down to the water's edge.</p>
+
+<p>He stood very still. It seemed to him that some one had told him, far
+away and long ago, that if he wished to see miracles he had only to
+stand very still. Not to move a muscle, so that his vivid shadow would
+not even waver. It is a trait possessed by all men of the wilderness,
+but it takes time for city men to learn it. He waited a long time. And
+all at once the shining surface of a deep pool below him broke with a
+fountain of glittering spray.</p>
+
+<p>Something that was like light itself flung into the air and down again
+with a splash. Bruce shouted then. He simply couldn't help it. And all
+the time there was a strange straining and travail in his brain, as if
+it were trying to give birth to a memory from long ago. He knew now what
+had made that glittering arc. Such a common thing,&mdash;it was singular that
+it should yield him such delight. It was a trout, leaping for an insect
+that had fallen on the waters.</p>
+
+<p>It was strange that he had such a sense of familiarity with trout. True,
+he had heard Barney Wegan tell of them. He had listened to many tales of
+the way they seized a fly, how the reel would spin, and how they would
+fight to absolute exhaustion before they would yield to the landing net.
+"The King among fish," Barney had called them. Yet the tales seemingly
+had meant little to him then. His interest in them had been superficial
+only; and they had seemed as distant and remote as the marsupials of
+Australia. But it wasn't this way now. He had a sense of long and close
+acquaintance, of an interest such as men have in their own townsmen.</p>
+
+<p>He went on, and the forest world opened before him. Once a flock of
+grouse&mdash;a hen and a dozen half-grown chickens&mdash;scurried away through the
+underbrush at the sound of his step. One instant, and he had a clear
+view of the entire covey. The next, and they had vanished like so many
+puffs of smoke. He had a delicious game of hide-and-seek with them
+through the coverts, but he was out-classed in every particular. He knew
+that the birds were all within forty feet of him, each of them pressed
+flat to the brown earth, but in this maze of light and shadow he could
+not detect their outline. Nature has been kind to the grouse family in
+the way of protective coloration. He had to give up the search and
+continue up the creek for further adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Once a pair of mallards winged by on a straight course above his head.
+Their sudden appearance rather surprised him. These beautiful game
+birds are usually habitants of the lower lakes and marshes, not
+rippling mountain streams. He didn't know that a certain number of these
+winged people nested every year along the Rogue River, far below, and
+made rapturous excursions up and down its tributaries. Mallards do not
+have to have aëroplanes to cover distance quickly. They are the very
+masters of the aërial lanes, and in all probability this pair had come
+forty miles already that morning. Where they would be at dark no man
+could guess. Their wings whistled down to him, and it seemed to him that
+the drake stretched down his bright green head for a better look. Then
+he spurted ahead, faster than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Once, at a distance, Bruce caught a glimpse of a pair of peculiar,
+little, sawed-off, plump-breasted ducks that wagged their tails, as if
+in signals, in a still place above a dam. He made a wide circle,
+intending to wheel back to the creekside for a closer inspection of the
+singular flirtation of those bobbing, fan-like tails. He rather thought
+he could outwit these little people, at least. But when he turned back
+to the water's edge they were nowhere to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>If he had had more experience with the creatures of the wild he could
+have explained this mysterious disappearance. These little
+ducks&mdash;"ruddies" the sportsmen call them&mdash;have advantages other than an
+extra joint in their tails. One of them seems to be a total and
+unprincipled indifference to the available supply of oxygen. When they
+wish to go out of sight they simply duck beneath the water and stay
+apparently as long as they desire. Of course they have to come up some
+time&mdash;but usually it is just the tip of a bill&mdash;like the top of a
+river-bottom weed, thrust above the surface. Bruce gaped in amazement,
+but he chuckled again when he discovered his birds farther up the creek,
+just as far distant from him as ever.</p>
+
+<p>The sun rose higher, and he began to feel its power. But it was a kindly
+heat. The temperature was much higher than was commonly met in the
+summers of the city, but there was little moisture in the air to make it
+oppressive. The sweat came out on his bronze face, but he never felt
+better in his life. There was but one great need, and that was
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>A man of his physique feels hunger quickly. The sensation increased in
+intensity, and the suitcase grew correspondingly heavy. And all at once
+he stopped short in the road. The impulse along his nerves to his leg
+muscles was checked, like an electric current at the closing of a
+switch, and an instinct of unknown origin struggled for expression
+within him.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant he had it. He didn't know whence it came. It was nothing
+he had read or that any one had told him. It seemed to be rather the
+result of some experience in his own immediate life, an occurrence of so
+long ago that he had forgotten it. He suddenly knew where he could find
+his breakfast. There was no need of toiling farther on an empty stomach
+in this verdant season of the year. He set his suitcase down, and with
+the confidence of a man who hears the dinner call in his own home, he
+struck off into the thickets beside the creek bed. Instinct&mdash;and really,
+after all, instinct is nothing but memory&mdash;led his steps true.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced here and there, not even wondering at the singular fact that
+he did not know exactly what manner of food he was seeking. In a moment
+he came to a growth of thorn-covered bushes, a thicket that only the
+she-bear knew how to penetrate. But it was enough for Bruce just to
+stand at its edges. The bushes were bent down with a load of delicious
+berries.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn't in the least surprised. He had known that he would find them.
+Always, at this season of the year, the woods were rich with them; one
+only had to slip quickly through the back door&mdash;while the mother's eye
+was elsewhere&mdash;to find enough of them not only to pack the stomach full
+but to stain and discolor most of the face. It seemed a familiar thing
+to be plucking the juicy berries and cramming them into his mouth,
+impervious as the old she-bear to the remonstrance of the thorns. But it
+seemed to him that he reached them easier than he expected. Either the
+bushes were not so tall as he remembered them, or&mdash;since his first
+knowledge of them&mdash;his own stature had increased.</p>
+
+<p>When he had eaten the last berry he could possibly hold, he went to the
+creek to drink. He lay down beside a still pool, and the water was cold
+to his lips. Then he rose at the sound of an approaching motor car
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The driver&mdash;evidently a cattleman&mdash;stopped his car and looked at Bruce
+with some curiosity. He marked the perfectly fitting suit of dark
+flannel, the trim, expensive shoes that were already dust-stained, the
+silken shirt on which a juicy berry had been crushed. "Howdy," the man
+said after the western fashion. He was evidently simply feeling
+companionable and was looking for a moment's chat. It is a desire that
+often becomes very urgent and most real after enough lonely days in the
+wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do," Bruce replied. "How far to Martin's store?"</p>
+
+<p>The man filled his pipe with great care before he answered. "Jump in the
+car," he replied at last, "and I'll show you. I'm going up that way
+myself."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Martin's was a typical little mountain store, containing a small sample
+of almost everything under the sun and built at the forks in the road.
+The ranchman let Bruce off at the store; then turned up the right-hand
+road that led to certain bunch-grass lands to the east. Bruce entered
+slowly, and the little group of loungers gazed at him with frank
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Only one of them was of a type sufficiently distinguished so that
+Bruce's own curiosity was aroused. This was a huge, dark man who stood
+alone almost at the rear of the building,&mdash;a veritable giant with
+savage, bloodhound lips and deep-sunken eyes. There was a quality in his
+posture that attracted Bruce's attention at once. No one could look at
+him and doubt that he was a power in these mountain realms. He seemed
+perfectly secure in his great strength and wholly cognizant of the hate
+and fear, and at the same time, the strange sort of admiration with
+which the others regarded him.</p>
+
+<p>He was dressed much as the other mountain men who had assembled in the
+store. He wore a flannel shirt over his gorilla chest, and corduroy
+trousers stuffed into high, many-seamed riding boots. A dark felt hat
+was crushed on to his huge head. But there was an aloofness about the
+man; and Bruce realized at once he had taken no part in the friendly
+gossip that had been interrupted by his entrance.</p>
+
+<p>The dark eyes were full upon Bruce's face. He felt them&mdash;just as if they
+had the power of actual physical impact&mdash;the instant that he was inside
+the door. Nor was it the ordinary look of careless speculation or
+friendly interest. Mountain men have not been taught it is not good
+manners to stare, but no traveler who falls swiftly into the spirit of
+the forest ordinarily resents their open inspection. But this look was
+different. It was such that no man, to whom self-respect is dear, could
+possibly disregard. It spoke clearly as words.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce flushed, and his blood made a curious little leap. He slowly
+turned. His gaze moved until it rested full upon the man's eyes. It
+seemed to Bruce that the room grew instantly quiet. The merchant no
+longer tied up his bundles at the counter. The watching mountain men
+that he beheld out of the corners of his eyes all seemed to be standing
+in peculiar fixed attitudes, waiting for some sort of explosion. It took
+all of Bruce's strength to hold that gaze. The moment was charged with a
+mysterious suspense.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger's face changed too. He did not flush, however. His lips
+curled ever so slightly, revealing an instant's glimpse of strong,
+rather well-kept teeth. His eyes were narrowing too; and they seemed to
+come to life with singular sparkles and glowings between the lids.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he suddenly demanded. Every man in the room&mdash;except
+one&mdash;started. The one exception was Bruce himself. He was holding hard
+on his nerve control, and he only continued to stare coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the merchant?" Bruce asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I ain't," the other replied. "You usually look for the merchant
+behind the counter."</p>
+
+<p>There was no smile on the faces of the waiting mountain men, usually to
+be expected when one of their number achieves repartee on a tenderfoot.
+Nevertheless, the tension was broken. Bruce turned to the merchant.</p>
+
+<p>"I would like to have you tell me," he said quite clearly, "the way to
+Mrs. Ross's cabin."</p>
+
+<p>The merchant seemed to wait a long time before replying. His eye stole
+to the giant's face, found the lips curled in a smile; then he flushed.
+"Take the left-hand road," he said with a trace of defiance in his tone.
+"It soon becomes a trail, but keep right on going up it. At the fork in
+the trail you'll find her cabin."</p>
+
+<p>"How far is it, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two hours' walk; you can make it easy by four o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you." His eyes glanced over the stock of goods and he selected a
+few edibles to give him strength for the walk. "I'll leave my suitcase
+here if I may," he said, "and will call for it later." He turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait just a minute," a voice spoke behind him. It was a commanding
+tone&mdash;implying the expectation of obedience. Bruce half turned. "Simon
+wants to talk to you," the merchant explained.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll walk with you a way and show you the road," Simon continued. The
+room seemed deathly quiet as the two men went out together.</p>
+
+<p>They walked side by side until a turn of the road took them out of
+eye-range of the store. "This is the road," Simon said. "All you have to
+do is follow it. Cabins are not so many that you could mistake it. But
+the main thing is&mdash;whether or not you want to go."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce had no misunderstanding about the man's meaning. It was simply a
+threat, nothing more nor less.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come a long way to go to that cabin," he replied. "I'm not likely
+to turn off now."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing worth seeing when you get there. Just an old hag&mdash;a
+wrinkled old dame that looks like a witch."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce felt a deep and little understood resentment at the words. Yet
+since he had as yet established no relations with the woman, he had no
+grounds for silencing the man. "I'll have to decide that," he replied.
+"I'm going to see some one else, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Some one named&mdash;Linda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You seem quite interested."</p>
+
+<p>They were standing face to face in the trail. For once Bruce was glad of
+his unusual height. He did not have to raise his eyes greatly to look
+squarely into Simon's. Both faces were flushed, both set; and the eyes
+of the older man brightened slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am interested," Simon replied. "You're a tenderfoot. You're fresh
+from cities. You're going up there to learn things that won't be any
+pleasure to you. You're going into the real mountains&mdash;a man's land such
+as never was a place for tenderfeet. A good many things can happen up
+there. A good many things have happened up there. I warn you&mdash;go back!"</p>
+
+<p>Bruce smiled, just the faint flicker of a smile, but Simon's eyes
+narrowed when he saw it. The dark face lost a little of its insolence.
+He knew men, this huge son of the wilderness, and he knew that no coward
+could smile in such a moment as this. He was accustomed to implicit
+obedience and was not used to seeing men smile when he uttered a threat.
+"I've come too far to go back," Bruce told him. "Nothing can turn me."</p>
+
+<p>"Men have been turned before, on trails like this," Simon told him.
+"Don't misunderstand me. I advised you to go back before, and I usually
+don't take time or trouble to advise any one. Now I <i>tell</i> you to go
+back. This is a man's land, and we don't want any tenderfeet here."</p>
+
+<p>"The trail is open," Bruce returned. It was not his usual manner to
+speak in quite this way. He seemed at once to have fallen into the
+vernacular of the wilderness of which symbolic reference has such a
+part. Strange as the scene was to him, it was in some way familiar too.
+It was as if this meeting had been ordained long ago; that it was part
+of an inexorable destiny that the two should be talking together, face
+to face, on this winding mountain road. Memories&mdash;all vague, all
+unrecognized&mdash;thronged through him.</p>
+
+<p>Many times, during the past years, he had wakened from curious dreams
+that in the light of day he had tried in vain to interpret. He was never
+able to connect them with any remembered experience. Now it was as if
+one of these dreams were coming true. There was the same silence about
+him, the dark forests beyond, the ridges stretching ever. There was some
+great foe that might any instant overwhelm him.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you heard me," Simon said; "I told you to go back."</p>
+
+<p>"And I hope you heard me too. I'm going on. I haven't any more time to
+give you."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm not going to take any more, either. But let me make one thing
+plain. No man, told to go back by me, ever has a chance to be told
+again. This ain't your cities&mdash;up here. There ain't any policeman on
+every corner. The woods are big, and all kinds of things can happen in
+them&mdash;and be swallowed up&mdash;as I swallow these leaves in my hand."</p>
+
+<p>His great arm reached out with incredible power and seized a handful of
+leaves off a near-by shrub. It seemed to Bruce that they crushed like
+fruit and stained the dark skin.</p>
+
+<p>"What is done up here isn't put in the newspapers down below. We're
+mountain men; we've lived up here as long as men have lived in the West.
+We have our own way of doing things, and our own law. Think once more
+about going back."</p>
+
+<p>"I've already decided. I'm going on."</p>
+
+<p>Once more they stood, eyes meeting eyes on the trail, and Simon's face
+was darkening with passion. Bruce knew that his hands were clenching,
+and his own muscles bunched and made ready to resist any kind of attack.</p>
+
+<p>But Simon didn't strike. He laughed instead,&mdash;a single deep note of
+utter and depthless scorn. Then he drew back and let Bruce pass on up
+the road.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Bruce couldn't mistake the cabin. At the end of the trail he found
+it,&mdash;a little shack of unpainted boards with a single door and a single
+window.</p>
+
+<p>He stood a moment in the sunlight. His shadow was already long behind
+him, and the mountains had that curious deep blue of late afternoon. The
+pine needles were soft under his feet; the later-afternoon silence was
+over the land. He could not guess what was his destiny behind that rude
+door. It was a moment long waited; for one of the few times in his life
+he was trembling with excitement. He felt as if a key, long lost, was
+turning in the doorway of understanding.</p>
+
+<p>He walked nearer and tapped with his knuckles on the door.</p>
+
+<p>If the forests have one all-pervading quality it is silence. Of course
+the most silent time is at night, but just before sunset, when most of
+the forest creatures are in their mid-afternoon sleep, any noise is a
+rare thing. What sound there is carries far and seems rather out of
+place. Bruce could picture the whole of the little drama that followed
+his knock by just the faint sounds&mdash;inaudible in a less silent
+land&mdash;that reached him from behind the door. At first it was just a
+start; then a short exclamation in the hollow, half-whispering voice of
+old, old age. A moment more of silence&mdash;as if a slow-moving, aged brain
+were trying to conjecture who stood outside&mdash;then the creaking of a
+chair as some one rose. The last sounds were of a strange hobbling
+toward him,&mdash;a rustle of shoes half dragged on the floor and the
+intermittent tapping of a cane.</p>
+
+<p>The face that showed so dimly in the shadowed room looked just as Bruce
+had expected,&mdash;wrinkled past belief, lean and hawk-nosed from age. The
+hand that rested on the cane was like a bird's claw, the skin blue and
+hard and dry. There were a few strands of hair drawn back over her lean
+head, but all its color had faded out long ago. She stood bowed over her
+cane.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in that first instant Bruce had an inexplicable impression of being
+in the presence of a power. He did not have the wave of pity with which
+one usually greets the decrepit. And at first he didn't know why. But
+soon he grew accustomed to the shadows and he could see the woman's
+eyes. Then he understood.</p>
+
+<p>They were set deep behind grizzled brows, but they glowed like coals.
+There was no other word. They were not the eyes of one whom time is
+about to conquer. Her bodily strength was gone; any personal beauty that
+she might have had was ashes long and long ago, but some great fire
+burned in her yet. As far as bodily appearance went the grave should
+have claimed her long since; but a dauntless spirit had sustained her.
+For, as all men know, the power of the spirit has never yet been
+measured.</p>
+
+<p>She blinked in the light. "Who is it?" she croaked.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce did not answer. He had not prepared a reply for this question. But
+it was not needed. The woman leaned forward, and a vivid light began to
+dawn in her dark, furrowed face.</p>
+
+<p>Even to Bruce, already succumbed to this atmosphere of mystery into
+which his adventure had led him, that dawning light was the single most
+startling phenomenon he had ever beheld. It is very easy to imagine a
+radiance upon the face. But in reality, most all facial expression is
+simply a change in the contour of lines. But this was not a case of
+imagination now. The witchlike face seemed to gleam with a white flame.
+And Bruce knew that his coming was the answer to the prayer of a whole
+lifetime. It was a thought to sober him. No small passion, no weak
+desire, no prayer that time or despair could silence could effect such a
+light as this.</p>
+
+<p>"Bruce," he said simply. It did not even occur to him to use the surname
+of Duncan. It was a name of a time and sphere already forgotten. "I
+don't know what my real last name is."</p>
+
+<p>"Bruce&mdash;Bruce," the woman whispered. She stretched a palsied hand to him
+as if it would feel his flesh to reassure her of its reality. The wild
+light in her eyes pierced him, burning like chemical rays, and a great
+flood of feeling yet unknown and unrecognized swept over him. He saw her
+snags of teeth as her dry lips half-opened. He saw the exultation in her
+wrinkled, lifted face. "Oh, praises to His Everlasting Name!" she
+cried. "Oh, Glory&mdash;Glory to on High!"</p>
+
+<p>And this was not blasphemy. The words came from the heart. No matter how
+terrible the passion from which they sprang, whether it was such evil as
+would cast her to hell, such a cry as this could not go unheard. The
+strength seemed to go out of her as water flows. She rocked on her cane,
+and Bruce, thinking she was about to fall, seized her shoulders. "At
+last&mdash;at last," she cried. "You've come at last."</p>
+
+<p>She gripped herself, as if trying to find renewed strength. "Go at
+once," she said, "to the end of the Pine-needle Trail. It leads from
+behind the cabin."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to emerge from the dreamlike mists that had enveloped him. "How
+far is it?" he asked her steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"To the end of Pine-needle Trail," she rocked again, clutched for one of
+his brown hands, and pressed it between hers.</p>
+
+<p>Then she raised it to her dry lips. Bruce could not keep her from it.
+And after an instant more he did not attempt to draw it from her
+embrace. In the darkness of that mountain cabin, in the shadow of the
+eternal pines, he knew that some great drama of human life and love and
+hatred was behind the action; and he knew with a knowledge unimpeachable
+that it would be only insolence for him to try further to resist it. Its
+meaning went too deep for him to see; but it filled him with a great and
+wondering awe.</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned away, up the Pine-needle Trail. Clear until the deeper
+forest closed around him her voice still followed him,&mdash;a strange
+croaking in the afternoon silence. "At last," he heard her crying. "At
+last, at last."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In almost a moment, Duncan was out of the thickets and into the big
+timber, for really the first time. In his journey up the mountain road
+and on the trail that led to the old woman's cabin, he had been many
+times in the shade of the tall evergreens, but always there had been
+some little intrusion of civilization, some hint of the works of man
+that had kept him from the full sense of the majesty of the wild. At
+first it had been the gleaming railroad tracks, and then a road that had
+been built with blasting and shovels. To get the full effect of the
+forest one must be able to behold wide-stretching vistas, and that had
+been impossible heretofore because of the brush thickets. But this was
+the virgin forest. As far as he could see there was nothing but the
+great pines climbing up the long slope of the ridge. He caught glimpses
+of them in the vales at either side, and their dark tops made a curious
+background at the very extremity of his vision. They stood straight and
+aloof, and they were very old.</p>
+
+<p>He fell into their spirit at once. The half-understood emotions that had
+flooded him in the cabin below died within him. The great calm that is,
+after all, the all-pervading quality of the big pines came over him. It
+is always this way. A man knows solitude, his thoughts come clear,
+superficialities are left behind in the lands of men. Bruce was rather
+tremulous and exultant as he crept softly up the trail.</p>
+
+<p>It was the last lap of his journey. At the end of the trail he would
+find&mdash;Linda! And it seemed quite fitting that she would be waiting
+there, where the trail began, in the wildest heart of the pine woods. He
+was quite himself once more,&mdash;carefree, delighting in all the little
+manifestations of the wild life that began to stir about him.</p>
+
+<p>No experience of his existence had ever yielded the same pleasure as
+that long walk up the trail. Every curve about the shoulder of a hill,
+every still glen into which he dipped, every ridge that he surmounted
+wakened curious memories within him and stirred him in little secret
+ways under the skin. His delight grew upon him. It was a dream coming
+true. Always, it seemed to him, he had carried in his mind a picture of
+this very land, a sort of dream place that was a reality at last. He had
+known just how it would be. The wind made the same noise in the tree
+tops that he expected. Yet it was such a little sound that it could
+never be heard in a city at all. His senses had already been sharpened
+by the silence and the calm.</p>
+
+<p>He had always known how the pine shadows would fall across the carpet of
+needles. The trees themselves were the same grave companions that he had
+expected, but his delight was all the more because of his expectations.</p>
+
+<p>He began to catch glimpses of the smaller forest creatures,&mdash;the Little
+People that are such a delight to all real lovers of the wilderness.
+Sometimes it was a chipmunk, trusting to his striped skin&mdash;blending
+perfectly with the light and shadow&mdash;to keep him out of sight. These are
+quivering, restless, ever-frightened little folk, and heaven alone knows
+what damage they may do to the roots of a tree. But Bruce wasn't in the
+mood to think of forest conservation to-day. He had left a number of his
+notions in the city where he had acquired them,&mdash;and this little,
+bright-eyed rodent in the tree roots had almost the same right to the
+forests that he had himself. Before, he had a measure of the same
+arrogance with which most men&mdash;realizing the dominance of their
+breed&mdash;regard the lesser people of the wild; but something of a
+disastrous nature had happened to it. He spoke gayly to the chipmunk and
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>As the trail climbed higher, the sense of wilderness became more
+pronounced. Even the trees seemed larger and more majestic, and the
+glimpses of the wild people were more frequent. The birds stopped their
+rattle-brained conversation and stared at him with frank curiosity. The
+grouse let him get closer before they took to cover.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the bird life was not nearly so varied as in the pretty groves
+of the Middle West. Most birds are gentle people, requiring an easy and
+pleasant environment, and these stern, stark mountains were no place for
+them. Only the hardier creatures could flourish here. Their songs would
+have been out of place in the great silences and solemnity of the
+evergreen forest. This was no land for weaklings. Bruce knew that as
+well as he knew that his legs were under him. The few birds he saw were
+mostly of the hardier varieties,&mdash;hale-fellows-well-met and cheerful
+members of the lower strata in bird society. "Good old roughnecks," he
+said to them, with an intuitive understanding.</p>
+
+<p>That was just the name for them,&mdash;a word that is just beginning to
+appear in dictionaries. They were rough in manner and rough in speech,
+and they pretended to be rougher than they were. Yet Bruce liked them.
+He exulted in the easy freedom of their ways. Creatures have to be rough
+to exist in and love such wilderness as this. Life gets down to a matter
+of cold metal,&mdash;some brass but mostly iron! He rather imagined that they
+could be fairly capable thieves if occasion arose, making off with the
+edibles he had bought without a twitch of a feather. They squawked and
+scolded at him, after their curiosity was satisfied. They said the most
+shocking things they could think of and seemed to rejoice in it. He
+didn't know their breeds, yet he felt that they were old friends. They
+were rather large birds, mostly of the families of jays and magpies.</p>
+
+<p>The hours passed. The trail grew dimmer. Now it was just a brown serpent
+in the pine needles, coiling this way and that,&mdash;but he loved every foot
+of it. It dipped down to a little stream, of which the blasting sun of
+summer had made only a succession of shallow pools. Yet the water was
+cold to his lips. And he knew that little brook trout&mdash;waiting until
+the fall rains should make a torrent of their tiny stream and thus
+deliver them&mdash;were gazing at him while he drank.</p>
+
+<p>The trail followed the creek a distance, and at last he found the spring
+that was its source. It was only a small spring, lost in a bed of deep,
+green ferns. He sat down to rest and to eat part of his lunch. The
+little wind had died, leaving a profound silence.</p>
+
+<p>By a queer pounding of his blood Bruce knew that he was in the high
+altitudes. He had already come six miles from the cabin. The hour was
+about six-thirty; in two hours more it would be too dark to make his way
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>He examined the mud about the spring, and there was plenty of evidence
+that the forest creatures had passed that way. Here was a little
+triangle where a buck had stepped, and farther away he found two pairs
+of deer tracks,&mdash;evidently those of a doe with fawn. A wolf had stopped
+to cool his heated tongue in the waters, possibly in the middle of some
+terrible hunt in the twilight hours.</p>
+
+<p>There was a curious round track, as if of a giant cat, a little way
+distant in the brown earth. It told a story plainly. A cougar&mdash;one of
+those great felines that is perhaps better called puma&mdash;had had an
+ambush there a few nights before. Bruce wondered what wilderness tragedy
+had transpired when the deer came to drink. Then he found another huge
+abrasion in the mud that puzzled him still more.</p>
+
+<p>At first he couldn't believe that it was a track. The reason was simply
+that the size of the thing was incredible,&mdash;as if some one had laid a
+flour sack in the mud and taken it up again. He did not think of any of
+the modern-day forest creatures as being of such proportions. It was
+very stale and had been almost obliterated by many days of sun. Perhaps
+he had been mistaken in thinking it an imprint of a living creature. He
+went to his knees to examine it.</p>
+
+<p>But in one instant he knew that he had not been mistaken. It was a track
+not greatly different from that of an enormous human foot; and the
+separate toes were entirely distinct. It was a bear track, of course,
+but one of such size that the general run of little black bears that
+inhabited the hills could almost use it for a den of hibernation!</p>
+
+<p>His thought went back to his talk with Barney Wegan; and he remembered
+that the man had spoken of a great, last grizzly that the mountaineers
+had named "The Killer." No other animal but the great grizzly bear
+himself could have made such a track as this. Bruce wondered if the
+beast had yet been killed.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and went on,&mdash;farther toward Trail's End. He walked more
+swiftly now, for he hoped to reach the end of Pine-needle Trail before
+nightfall, but he had no intention of halting in case night came upon
+him before he reached it. He had waited too long already to find Linda.</p>
+
+<p>The land seemed ever more familiar. A high peak thrust a white head
+above a distant ridge, and it appealed to him almost like the face of an
+old friend. Sometime&mdash;long and long ago&mdash;he had gazed often at a white
+peak of a mountain thrust above a pine-covered ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Another hour ended the day's sunlight. The shadows fell quickly, but it
+was a long time yet until darkness. He yet might make the trail-end. He
+gave no thought to fatigue. In the first place, he had stood up
+remarkably well under the day's tramp for no other reason than that he
+had always made a point of keeping in the best of physical condition.
+Besides, there was something more potent than mere physical strength to
+sustain him now. It was the realization of the nearing end of the
+trail,&mdash;a knowledge of tremendous revelations that would come to him in
+a few hours more.</p>
+
+<p>Already great truths were taking shape in his brain; he only needed a
+single sentence of explanation to connect them all together. He began to
+feel a growing excitement and impatience.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time he began to notice a strange breathlessness in the
+air. He paused, just for an instant, his face lifted to the wind. He did
+not realize that all his senses were at razor edge, trying to interpret
+the messages that the wind brought. He felt that the forest was
+wakening. A new stir and impulse had come in the growing shadows. All at
+once he understood. It was the hunting hour.</p>
+
+<p>Yet even this seemed familiar. Always, it seemed to him, he had known
+this same strange thrill at the fall of darkness, the same sense of
+deepening mystery. The jays no longer gossiped in the shrubs. They had
+been silenced by the same awe that had come over Bruce. And now the man
+began to discern, here and there through the forest, queer rustlings of
+the foliage that meant the passing through of some of the great beasts
+of prey.</p>
+
+<p>Once two deer flashed by him,&mdash;just a streak that vanished quickly. The
+dusk deepened. The further trees were dimming. The sky turned green,
+then gray. The distant mountains were enfolded in gloom. Bruce headed
+on&mdash;faster, up the trail.</p>
+
+<p>The heaviness in his limbs had changed to an actual ache, but he gave no
+thought to it. He was enthralled by the change that was on the
+forest,&mdash;a whipping-back of a thousand-thousand years to a young and
+savage world. There was the sense of vast and tragic events all in
+keeping with the gathering gloom of the forest. He was awed and
+mystified as never before.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite dark now, and he could barely see the trail. For the first
+time he began to despair, feeling that another night of overpowering
+impatience must be spent before he could reach Trail's End. The stars
+began to push through the darkening sky. Then, fainter than the gleam of
+a firefly, he saw the faint light of a far distant camp fire.</p>
+
+<p>His heart bounded. He knew what was there. It was the end of the trail
+at last. And it guided him the rest of the way. When he reached the top
+of a little rise in the trail, the whole scene was laid out in mystery
+below him.</p>
+
+<p>The fire had been built at the door of a mountain house,&mdash;a log
+structure of perhaps four rooms. The firelight played in its open
+doorway. Something beside it caught his attention, and instinctively he
+followed it with his eyes until it ended in an incredible region of the
+stars. It was a great pine tree, the largest he had ever
+seen,&mdash;seemingly a great sentinel over all the land.</p>
+
+<p>But the sudden awe that came over him at the sight of it was cut short
+by the sight of a girl's figure in the firelight. He had an instant's
+sense that he had come to the wilderness's heart at last, that this tall
+tree was its symbol, that if he could understand the eternal watch that
+it kept over this mountain world, he would have an understanding of all
+things,&mdash;but all these thoughts were submerged in the realization that
+he had come back to Linda at last.</p>
+
+<p>He had known how the mountains would seem. All that he had beheld to-day
+was just the recurrence of things beheld long ago. Nothing had seemed
+different from what he had expected; rather he had a sense that a lost
+world had been returned to him, and it was almost as if he had never
+been away. But the girl in the firelight did not answer in the least
+degree the picture he had carried of Linda.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered her as a blond-headed little girl with irregular features
+and a rather unreasonable allowance of homeliness. All the way he had
+thought of her as a baby sister,&mdash;not as a woman in her flower. For a
+long second he gazed at her in speechless amazement.</p>
+
+<p>Her hair was no longer blond. Time, it had peculiar red lights when the
+firelight shone through it; but he knew that by the light of day it
+would be deep brown. He remembered her as an awkward little thing that
+was hardly able to keep her feet under her. This tall girl had the
+wilderness grace,&mdash;which is the grace of a deer and only blind eyes
+cannot see it. He dimly knew that she wore a khaki-colored skirt and a
+simple blouse of white tied with a blue scarf. Her arms were bare in the
+fire's gleam. And there was a dark beauty about her face that simply
+could not be denied.</p>
+
+<p>She came toward him, and her hands were open before her. And her lips
+trembled. Bruce could see them in the firelight.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange meeting. The firelight gave it a tone of unreality, and
+the whole forest world seemed to pause in its whispered business as if
+to watch. It was as if they had been brought face to face by the
+mandates of an inexorable destiny.</p>
+
+<p>"So you've come," the girl said. The words were spoken unusually soft,
+scarcely above a whisper; but they were inexpressibly vivid to Bruce. In
+his lifetime he had heard many words that were just so many lifeless
+selections from a dictionary,&mdash;flat utterances with no overtones to give
+them vitality. He had heard voices in plenty that were merely the
+mechanical result of the vibration of vocal cords. But these words&mdash;not
+for their meaning but because of the quality of the voice that had
+spoken them&mdash;really lived. They told first of a boundless relief and joy
+at his coming. But more than that, in these deep vibrant tones was the
+expression of an unquenchable life and spirit. Every fiber of her body
+lived in the fullest sense; he knew this fact the instant that she
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him, ever so quietly. "Bwovaboo," she said, recalling the
+name by which she called him in her babyhood, "you've come to Linda."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>As the fire burned down to coals and the stars wheeled through the sky,
+Linda told her story. The two of them were seated in the soft grass in
+front of the cabin, and the moonlight was on Linda's face as she talked.
+She talked very low at first. Indeed there was no need for loud tones.
+The whole wilderness world was heavy with silence, and a whisper carried
+far. Besides, Bruce was just beside her, watching her with narrowed
+eyes, forgetful of everything except her story.</p>
+
+<p>It was a perfect background for the savage tale that she had to tell.
+The long shadow of the giant pine tree fell over them. The fire made a
+little circle of red light, but the darkness ever encroached upon it.
+Just beyond the moonlight showed them silver-white patches between the
+trees, across which shadows sometimes wavered from the passing of the
+wild creatures.</p>
+
+<p>"I've waited a long time to tell you this," she told him. "Of course,
+when we were babies together in the orphanage, I didn't even know it. It
+has taken me a long time since to learn all the details; most of them I
+got from my aunt, old Elmira, whom you talked to on the way out. Part of
+it I knew by intuition, and a little of it is still doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to know first how hard I have tried to reach you. Of course,
+I didn't try openly except at first&mdash;the first years after I came here,
+and before I was old enough to understand." She spoke the last word with
+a curious depth of feeling and a perceptible hardness about her lips and
+eyes. "I remembered just two things. That the man who had adopted you
+was Newton Duncan; one of the nurses at the asylum told me that. And I
+remembered the name of the city where he had taken you.</p>
+
+<p>"You must understand the difficulties I worked under. There is no rural
+free delivery up here, you know, Bruce. Our mail is sent from and
+delivered to the little post-office at Martin's store&mdash;over fifteen
+miles from here. And some one member of a certain family that lives near
+here goes down every week to get the mail for the entire district.</p>
+
+<p>"At first&mdash;and that was before I really understood&mdash;I wrote you many
+letters and gave them to one of this family to mail for me. I was just a
+child then, you must know, and I lived in the same house with these
+people. And queer letters they must have been."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant a smile lingered at her lips, but it seemed to come hard.
+It was all too plain that she hadn't smiled many times in the past days.
+But for some unaccountable reason Bruce's heart leaped when he saw it.
+It had potentialities, that smile. It seemed to light her whole face. He
+was suddenly exultant at the thought that once he understood everything,
+he might bring about such changes that he could see it often.</p>
+
+<p>"They were just baby letters from&mdash;from Linda-Tinda to Bwovaboo&mdash;letters
+about the deer and the berries and the squirrels&mdash;and all the wild
+things that lived up here."</p>
+
+<p>"Berries!" Bruce cried. "I had some on the way up." His tone wavered,
+and he seemed to be speaking far away. "I had some once&mdash;long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You will understand, soon. I didn't understand why you didn't
+answer my letters. I understand now, though. You never got them."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I never got them. But there are several Duncans in my city. They
+might have gone astray."</p>
+
+<p>"They went astray&mdash;but it was before they ever reached the post-office.
+They were never mailed, Bruce. I was to know why, later. Even then it
+was part of the plan that I should never get in communication with you
+again&mdash;that you would be lost to me forever.</p>
+
+<p>"When I got older, I tried other tacks. I wrote to the asylum, enclosing
+a letter to you. But those letters were not mailed, either.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we can skip a long time. I grew up. I knew everything at last and
+no longer lived with the family I mentioned before. I came here, to this
+old house&mdash;and made it decent to live in. I cut my own wood for my fuel
+except when one of the men tried to please me by cutting it for me. I
+wouldn't use it at first. Oh, Bruce&mdash;I wouldn't touch it!"</p>
+
+<p>Her face was no longer lovely. It was drawn with terrible passions. But
+she quieted at once.</p>
+
+<p>"At last I saw plainly that I was a little fool&mdash;that all they would do
+for me, the better off I was. At first, I almost starved to death
+because I wouldn't use the food that they sent me. I tried to grub it
+out of the hills. But I came to it at last. But, Bruce, there were many
+things I didn't come to. Since I learned the truth, I have never given
+one of them a smile except in scorn, not a word that wasn't a word of
+hate.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a city man, Bruce. You are what I read about as a gentleman.
+You don't know what hate means. It doesn't live in the cities. But it
+lives up here. Believe me if you ever believed anything&mdash;that it lives
+up here. The most bitter and the blackest hate&mdash;from birth until death!
+It burns out the heart, Bruce. But I don't know that I can make you
+understand."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, and Bruce looked away into the pine forest. He believed the
+girl. He knew that this grim land was the home of direct and primitive
+emotions. Such things as mercy and remorse were out of place in the game
+trails where the wolf pack hunted the deer.</p>
+
+<p>"When they knew how I hated them," she went on, "they began to watch me.
+And once they knew that I fully understood the situation, I was no
+longer allowed to leave this little valley. There are only two trails,
+Bruce. One goes to Elmira's cabin on the way to the store. The other
+encircles the mountain. With all their numbers, it was easy to keep
+watch of those trails. And they told me what they would do if they found
+me trying to go past."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean&mdash;they threatened you?"</p>
+
+<p>She threw back her head and laughed, but the sound had no joy in it.
+"Threatened! If you think threats are common up here, you are a greener
+tenderfoot than I ever took you for. Bruce, the law up here is the law
+of force. The strongest wins. The weakest dies. Wait till you see Simon.
+You'll understand then&mdash;and you'll shake in your shoes."</p>
+
+<p>The words grated upon him, yet he didn't resent them. "I've seen Simon,"
+he told her.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced toward him quickly, and it was entirely plain that the quiet
+tone in his voice had surprised her. Perhaps the faintest flicker of
+admiration came into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He tried to stop you, did he? Of course he would. And you came anyway.
+May Heaven bless you for it, Bruce!" She leaned toward him, appealing.
+"And forgive me what I said."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce stared at her in amazement. He could hardly realize that this was
+the same voice that had been so torn with passion a moment before. In an
+instant all her hardness was gone, and the tenderness of a sweet and
+wholesome nature had taken its place. He felt a curious warmth stealing
+over him.</p>
+
+<p>"They meant what they said, Bruce. Believe me, if those men can do no
+other thing, they can keep their word. They didn't just threaten death
+to me. I could have run the risk of that. Badly as I wanted to make them
+pay before I died, I would have gladly run that risk.</p>
+
+<p>"You are amazed at the free way I speak of death. The girls you know, in
+the city, don't even know the word. They don't know what it means. They
+don't understand the sudden end of the light&mdash;the darkness&mdash;the
+cold&mdash;the awful fear that it is! It is no companion of theirs, down in
+the city. Perhaps they see it once in a while&mdash;but it isn't in their
+homes and in the air and on the trails, like it is here. It's a reality
+here, something to fight against every hour of every day. There are just
+three things to do in the mountains&mdash;to live and love and hate. There's
+no softness. There's no middle ground." She smiled grimly. "Let them
+live up here with me&mdash;those girls you know&mdash;and they'd understand what a
+reality Death is. They'd know it was something to think about and fight
+against. Self-preservation is an instinct that can be forgotten when you
+have a policeman at every corner. But it is ever present here.</p>
+
+<p>"I've lived with death, and I've heard of it, and I've seen it all my
+life. If there hadn't been any other way, I would have seen it in the
+dramas of the wild creatures that go on around me all the time. You'll
+get down to cases here, Bruce&mdash;or else you'll run away. These men said
+they'd do worse things to me than kill me&mdash;and I didn't dare take the
+risk.</p>
+
+<p>"But once or twice I was able to get word to old Elmira&mdash;the only ally I
+had left. She was of the true breed, Bruce. You'll call her a hag, but
+she's a woman to be reckoned with. She could hate too&mdash;worse than a
+she-rattlesnake hates the man that killed her mate&mdash;and hating is all
+that's kept her alive. You shrink when I say the word. Maybe you won't
+shrink when I'm done. Hating is a thing that gentlefolk don't do&mdash;but
+gentlefolk don't live up here. It isn't a land of gentleness. Up here
+there are just men and women, just male and female.</p>
+
+<p>"This old woman tried to get in communication with every stranger that
+visited the hills. You see, Bruce, she couldn't write herself. And the
+one time I managed to get a written message down to her, telling her to
+give it to the first stranger to mail&mdash;one of my enemies got it away
+from her. I expected to die that night. I wasn't going to be alive when
+the clan came. The only reason I didn't was because Simon&mdash;the greatest
+of them all and the one I hate the most&mdash;kept his clan from coming. He
+had his own reasons.</p>
+
+<p>"From then on she had to depend on word of mouth. Some of the men
+promised to send letters to Newton Duncan&mdash;but there was more than one
+Newton Duncan&mdash;as you say&mdash;and possibly if the letters were sent they
+went astray. But at last&mdash;just a few weeks ago&mdash;she found a man that
+knew you. And it is your story from now on."</p>
+
+<p>They were still a little while. Bruce arose and threw more wood on the
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only the beginning," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And you want me to tell you all?" she asked hesitantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Why did I come here?"</p>
+
+<p>"You won't believe me when I say that I'm almost sorry I sent for you."
+She spoke almost breathlessly. "I didn't know that it would be like
+this. That you would come with a smile on your face and a light in your
+eyes, looking for happiness. And instead of happiness&mdash;to find <i>all
+this</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>She stretched her arms to the forests. Bruce understood her perfectly.
+She did not mean the woods in the literal sense. She meant the primal
+emotions that were their spirit.</p>
+
+<p>She went on with lowered tones. "May Heaven forgive me if I have done
+wrong to bring you here," she told him. "To show you&mdash;all that I have to
+show&mdash;you who are a city man and a gentleman. But, Bruce, I couldn't
+fight alone any more. I had to have help.</p>
+
+<p>"To know the rest, you've got to go back a whole generation. Bruce, have
+you heard of the terrible blood-feuds that the mountain families
+sometimes have?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Many times."</p>
+
+<p>"These mountains of Trail's End have been the scene of as deadly a
+blood-feud as was ever known in the West. And for once, the wrong was
+all on one side.</p>
+
+<p>"A few miles from here there is a wonderful valley, where a stream
+flows. There is not much tillable land in these mountains, Bruce, but
+there, along that little stream, there are almost five sections&mdash;three
+thousand acres&mdash;of as rich land as was ever plowed. And Bruce&mdash;the home
+means something in the mountains. It isn't just a place to live in, a
+place to leave with relief. I've tried to tell you that emotions are
+simple and direct up here, and love of home is one of them. That tract
+of land was acquired long ago by a family named Ross, and they got it
+through some kind of grant. I can't be definite as to the legal aspects
+of all this story. They don't matter anyway&mdash;only the results remain.</p>
+
+<p>"These Ross men were frontiersmen of the first order. They were virtuous
+men too&mdash;trusting every one, and oh! what strength they had! With their
+own hands they cleared away the forest and put the land into rich
+pasture and hay and grain. They built a great house for the owner of the
+land, and lesser houses for his kinsfolk that helped him work it on
+shares. Then they raised cattle, letting them range on the hills and
+feeding them in winter. You see, the snow is heavy in winter, and unless
+the stock are fed many of them die. The Rosses raised great herds of
+cattle and had flocks of sheep too.</p>
+
+<p>"It was then that dark days began to come. Another family&mdash;headed by the
+father of the man I call Simon&mdash;migrated here from the mountain
+districts of Oklahoma. But they were not so ignorant as many mountain
+people, and they were <i>killers</i>. Perhaps that's a word you don't know.
+Perhaps you didn't know it existed. A killer is a man that has killed
+other men. It isn't a hard thing to do at all, Bruce, after you are used
+to it. These people were used to it. And because they wanted these great
+lands&mdash;my own father's home&mdash;they began to kill the Rosses.</p>
+
+<p>"At first they made no war on the Folgers. The Folgers, you must know,
+were good people too, honest to the last penny. They were connected, by
+marriage only, to the Ross family. They were on our side clear through.
+At the beginning of the feud the head of the Folger family was just a
+young man, newly married. And he had a son after a while.</p>
+
+<p>"The newcomers called it a feud. But it wasn't a feud&mdash;it was simply
+murder. Oh, yes, we killed some of them. Folger and my father and all
+his kin united against them, making a great clan&mdash;but they were nothing
+in strength compared to the usurpers. Simon himself was just a boy when
+it began. But he grew to be the greatest power, the leader of the enemy
+clan before he was twenty-one.</p>
+
+<p>"You must know, Bruce, that my own father held the land. But he was so
+generous that his brothers who helped him farm it hardly realized that
+possession was in his name. And father was a dead shot. It took a long
+time before they could kill him."</p>
+
+<p>The coldness that had come over her words did not in the least hide her
+depth of feeling. She gazed moodily into the darkness and spoke almost
+in a monotone.</p>
+
+<p>"But Simon&mdash;just a boy then&mdash;and Dave, his brother, and the others of
+them kept after us like so many wolves. There was no escape. The only
+thing we could do was to fight back&mdash;and that was the way we learned to
+hate. A man can hate, Bruce, when he is fighting for his home. He can
+learn it very well when he sees his brother fall dead, or his father&mdash;or
+a stray bullet hit his wife. A woman can learn it too, as old Elmira
+did, when she finds her son's body in the dead leaves. There was no law
+here to stop it. The little semblance of law that was in the valleys
+below regarded it as a blood-feud, and didn't bother itself about it.
+Besides&mdash;at first we were too proud to call for help. And after our
+numbers were few, the trails were watched&mdash;and those who tried to go
+down into the valleys&mdash;never got there.</p>
+
+<p>"One after another the Rosses were killed, and I needn't make it any
+worse for you than I can help&mdash;by telling of each killing. Enough to say
+that at last no one was left except a few old men whose eyes were too
+dim to shoot straight, and my own father. And I was a baby then&mdash;just
+born.</p>
+
+<p>"Then one night my father&mdash;seeing the fate that was coming down upon
+him&mdash;took the last course to defeat them. Matthew Folger&mdash;a connection
+by marriage&mdash;was still alive. Simon's clan hadn't attacked him yet. He
+had no share in the land, but instead lived in this house I live in now.
+He had a few cattle and some pasture land farther down the Divide. There
+had been no purpose in killing him. He hadn't been worth the extra
+bullet.</p>
+
+<p>"One night my father left me asleep and stole through the forests to
+talk to him. They made an agreement. I have pieced it out, a little at a
+time. My father deeded all his land to Folger.</p>
+
+<p>"I can understand now. The enemy clan pretended it was a blood-feud
+only&mdash;and that it was fair war to kill the Rosses. Although my father
+knew their real aim was to obtain the land, he didn't think they would
+dare kill Matthew Folger to get it. He knew that he himself would fall,
+sooner or later, but he thought that to kill Folger would show their
+cards&mdash;and that would be too much, even for Simon's people. But he
+didn't know. He hadn't foreseen to what lengths they would go."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce leaned forward. "So they killed&mdash;Matthew Folger?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't know that his face had gone suddenly stark white, and that a
+curious glitter had come to his eyes. He spoke breathlessly. For the
+name&mdash;Matthew Folger&mdash;called up vague memories that seemed to reveal
+great truths to him. The girl smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go on. My father deeded Folger the land. The deed was to go on
+record so that all the world would know that Folger owned it, and if the
+clan killed him it was plainly for the purposes of greed alone. But
+there was also a secret agreement&mdash;drawn up in black and white and to be
+kept hidden for twenty-one years. In this agreement, Folger promised to
+return to me&mdash;the only living heir of the Rosses&mdash;the lands acquired by
+the deed. In reality, he was only holding them in trust for me, and was
+to return them when I was twenty-one. In case of my father's death,
+Folger was to be my guardian until that time.</p>
+
+<p>"Folger knew the risk he ran, but he was a brave man and he did not
+care. Besides, he was my father's friend&mdash;and friendship goes far in the
+mountains. And my father was shot down before a week was past.</p>
+
+<p>"The clan had acted quick, you see. When Folger heard of it, before the
+dawn, he came to my father's house and carried me away. Before another
+night was done he was killed too."</p>
+
+<p>The perspiration leaped out on Bruce's forehead. The red glow of the
+fire was in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He fell almost where this fire is built, with a thirty-thirty bullet in
+his brain. Which one of the clan killed him I do not know&mdash;but in all
+probability it was Simon himself&mdash;at that time only eighteen years of
+age. And Folger's little boy&mdash;something past four years old&mdash;wandered
+out in the moonlight to find his father's body."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was speaking slowly now, evidently watching the effect of her
+words on her listener. He was bent forward, and his breath came in
+queer, whispering gusts. "Go on!" he ordered savagely. "Tell me the
+rest. Why do you keep me waiting?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl smiled again,&mdash;like a sorceress. "Folger's wife was from the
+plains' country," she told him slowly. "If she had been of the mountains
+she might have remained to do some killing on her own account. Like old
+Elmira herself remained to do&mdash;killing on her own account! But she was
+from cities, just as you are, but she&mdash;unlike you&mdash;had no mountain blood
+in her. She wasn't used to death, and perhaps she didn't know how to
+hate. She only knew how to be afraid.</p>
+
+<p>"They say that she went almost insane at the sight of that strong, brave
+man of hers lying still in the pine needles. She hadn't even known he
+was out of the house. He had gone out on some secret business&mdash;late at
+night. She had only one thing left&mdash;her baby boy and her little
+foster-daughter&mdash;little Linda Ross who is before you now. Her only
+thought was to get those children out of that dreadful land of bloodshed
+and to hide them so that they could never come back. And she didn't even
+want them to know their true parentage. She seemed to realize that if
+they had known, both of them would return some time&mdash;to collect their
+debts. Sooner or later, that boy with the Folger blood in him and that
+girl with the Ross blood would return, to attempt to regain their
+ancient holdings, and to make the clan pay!</p>
+
+<p>"All that was left were a few old women with hate in their hearts and a
+strange tradition to take the place of hope. They said that sometime, if
+death spared them, they would see Folger's son come back again, and
+assert his rights. They said that a new champion would arise and right
+their wrongs. But mostly death didn't spare them. Only old Elmira is
+left.</p>
+
+<p>"What became of the secret agreement I do not know. I haven't any hope
+that you do, either. The deed was carried down to the courts by Sharp,
+one of the witnesses who managed to get past the guard, and put on file
+soon after it was written. The rest is short. Simon and his clan took up
+the land, swearing that Matthew Folger had deeded it to them the day he
+had procured it. They had a deed to show for it&mdash;a forgery. And the one
+thing that they feared, the one weak chain, was that this secret
+agreement between Folger and my father would be found.</p>
+
+<p>"You see what that would mean. It would show that he had no right to
+deed away the land, as he was simply holding it in trust for me. Old
+Elmira explained the matter to me&mdash;if I get mixed up on the legal end
+of it, excuse it. If that document could be found, their forged deed
+would be obviously invalid. And it angered them that they could not find
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they never filed their forged deed&mdash;afraid that the forgery
+would be discovered&mdash;but they kept it to show to any one that was
+interested. But they wanted to make themselves still safer.</p>
+
+<p>"There had been two witnesses to the agreement. One of them, a man named
+Sharp, died&mdash;or was killed&mdash;shortly after. The other, an old trapper
+named Hudson, was indifferent to the whole matter&mdash;he was just passing
+through and was at Folger's house for dinner the night Ross came. He is
+still living in these mountains, and he might be of value to us yet.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course the clan did not feel at all secure. They suspected the
+secret agreement had been mailed to some one to take care of, and they
+were afraid that it would be brought to light when the time was ripe.
+They knew perfectly that their forged deed would never stand the test,
+so one of the things to do was to prevent their claim ever being
+contested. That meant to keep Folger's son in ignorance of the whole
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I can make that clear. The deed from my father to Folger was on
+record, Folger was dead, and Folger's son would have every right and
+opportunity to contest the clan's claim to the land. If he could get the
+matter into court, he would surely win.</p>
+
+<p>"The second thing to do was to win me over. I was just a child, and it
+looked the easiest course of all. That's why I was stolen from the
+orphanage by one of Simon's brothers. The idea was simply that when the
+time came I would marry one of the clan and establish their claim to the
+land forever.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to a few weeks ago it seemed to me that sooner or later I would win
+out. Bruce, you can't dream what it meant! I thought that some time I
+could drive them out and make them pay, a little, for all they have
+done. But they've tricked me, after all. I thought that I would get word
+to Folger's son, who by inheritance would have a clear title to the
+land, and he, with the aid of the courts, could drive these usurpers
+out. But just recently I've found out that even this chance is all but
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Within a few more weeks, they will have been in possession of the land
+for a full twenty years. Through some legal twist I don't understand, if
+a man pays taxes and has undisputed possession of land for that length
+of time, his title is secure. They failed to win me over, but it looks
+as if they had won, anyway. The only way that they can be defeated now
+is for that secret agreement&mdash;between my father and Folger&mdash;to reappear.
+And I've long ago given up all hope of that.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no court session between now and October thirtieth&mdash;when their
+twenty years of undisputed possession is culminated. There seems to be
+no chance to contest them&mdash;to make them bring that forged deed into the
+light before that time. We've lost, after all. And only one thing
+remains."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up to find her eyes full upon him. He had never seen such
+eyes. They seemed to have sunk so deep into the flesh about them that
+only lurid slits remained. It was not that her lids were partly down.
+Rather it was because the flesh-sacks beneath them had become charged
+with her pounding blood. The fire's glow was in them and cast a strange
+glamour upon her face. It only added to the strangeness of the picture
+that she sat almost limp, rather than leaning forward in appeal. Bruce
+looked at her in growing awe.</p>
+
+<p>But as the second passed he seemed no longer able to see her plainly.
+His eyes were misted and blurred, but they were empty of tears as
+Linda's own. Rather the focal points of his brain had become seared by a
+mounting flame within himself. The glow of the fire had seemingly spread
+until it encompassed the whole wilderness world.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the one thing that remains?" he asked her, whispering.</p>
+
+<p>She answered with a strange, terrible coldness of tone. "The blood
+atonement," she said between back-drawn lips.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<p>When the minute hand of the watch in his pocket had made one more
+circuit, both Bruce and Linda found themselves upon their feet. The
+tension had broken at last. Her emotion had been curbed too long. It
+broke from her in a flood.</p>
+
+<p>She seized his hands, and he started at their touch. "Don't you
+understand?" she cried. "You&mdash;you&mdash;you are Folger's son. You are the boy
+that crept out&mdash;under this very tree&mdash;to find him dead. All my life
+Elmira and I have prayed for you to come. And what are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Her face was drawn in the white light of the moon. For an instant he
+seemed dazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do?" he repeated. "I don't know what I'm going to do."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't!" she cried, in infinite scorn. "Are you just clay? Aren't
+you a man? Haven't you got arms to strike with and eyes to see along a
+rifle barrel? Are you a coward&mdash;and a weakling; one of your mother's
+blood to run away? Haven't you anything to avenge? I thought you were a
+mountain man&mdash;that all your years in cities couldn't take that quality
+away from you! Haven't you any answer?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up, a strange light growing on his face. "You mean&mdash;killing?"</p>
+
+<p>"What else? To kill&mdash;never to stop killing&mdash;one after another until they
+are gone! Till Simon Turner and the whole Turner clan have paid the
+debts they owe."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce recoiled as if from a blow. "Turner? Did you say Turner?" he asked
+hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That's the clan's name. I thought you knew."</p>
+
+<p>There was an instant of strange truce. Both stood motionless. The scene
+no longer seemed part of the world that men have come to know in these
+latter years,&mdash;a land of cities and homes and peaceful twilights over
+quiet countrysides. The moon was still strange and white in the sky; the
+pines stood tall and dark and sad,&mdash;eternal emblems of the wilderness.
+The fire had burned down to a few lurid coals glowing in the gray ashes.
+No longer were these two children of civilization. Their passion had
+swept them back into the immeasurable past; they were simply human
+beings deep in the simplest of human passions. They trembled all over
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce understood now his unprovoked attack on the little boy when he had
+been taken from the orphanage on trial. The boy had been named Turner,
+and the name had been enough to recall a great and terrible hatred that
+he had learned in earliest babyhood. The name now recalled it again; the
+truth stood clear at last. It was the key to all the mystery of his
+life; it stirred him more than all of Linda's words. In an instant all
+the tragedy of his babyhood was recalled,&mdash;the hushed talk between his
+parents, the oaths, the flames in their eyes, and finally the body he
+had found lying so still beneath the pines. It was always the Turners,
+the dread name that had filled his baby days with horror. He hadn't
+understood then. It had been blind hatred,&mdash;hatred without understanding
+or self-analysis.</p>
+
+<p>As she watched, his mountain blood mounted to the ascendancy. A strange
+transformation came over him. The gentleness that he had acquired in his
+years of city life began to fall away from him. The mountains were
+claiming him again.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a mental change alone. It was a thing to be seen with the
+unaided eyes. His hand had swept through his hair, disturbing the part,
+and now the black locks dropped down on his forehead, almost to his
+eyes. The whole expression of his face seemed to change. His look of
+culture dropped from him; his eyes narrowed; he looked grotesquely out
+of place in his soft, well-tailored clothes.</p>
+
+<p>But he was quite cold now. His passion was submerged under a steel
+exterior. His voice was cold and hard when he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you and I are no relation whatever?"</p>
+
+<p>"None."</p>
+
+<p>"But we fight the same fight now."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Until we both win&mdash;or both die."</p>
+
+<p>Before he could speak again, a strange answer came out of the darkness.
+"Not two of you," a croaking old voice told them. It rose, shrill and
+cracked, from the shadows beyond the fire. They turned, and the
+moonlight showed a bent old figure hobbling toward them.</p>
+
+<p>It was old Elmira, her cane tapping along in front of her; and something
+that caught the moonlight lay in the hollow of her left arm. Her eyes
+still glowed under the grizzled brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Not two, but three," she corrected, in the hollow voice of uncounted
+years. In the magic of the moonlight it seemed quite fitting to both of
+them that she should have come. She was one of the triumvirate; they
+wondered why they had not missed her before. It was farther than she had
+walked in years, but her spirit had kept her up.</p>
+
+<p>She put the glittering object that she carried into Bruce's hands. It
+was a rifle&mdash;a repeating breechloader of a famous make and a model of
+thirty years before. It was such a rifle as lives in legend, with sights
+as fine as a razor edge and an accuracy as great as light itself. Loving
+hands had polished it and kept it in perfect condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Matthew Folger's rifle," the old woman explained, "for Matthew Folger's
+son."</p>
+
+<p>And that is how Bruce Folger returned to the land of his birth&mdash;as most
+men do, unless death cheats them first&mdash;and how he made a pact to pay
+old debts of death.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_TWO" id="BOOK_TWO"></a>BOOK TWO</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BLOOD ATONEMENT</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Men own the day, but the night is ours," is an old saying among the
+wild folk that inhabit the forests of Trail's End. And the saying has
+really deep significances that can't be discerned at one hearing.
+Perhaps human beings&mdash;their thoughts busy with other things&mdash;can never
+really get them at all. But the mountain lion&mdash;purring a sort of queer,
+singsong lullaby to her wicked-eyed little cubs in the lair&mdash;and the
+gray wolf, running along the ridges in the mystery of the moon&mdash;and
+those lesser hunters, starting with Tuft-ear the lynx and going all the
+way down to that terrible, white-toothed cutthroat, Little Death the
+mink&mdash;<i>they</i> know exactly what the saying means, and they know that it
+is true. The only one of the larger forest creatures that doesn't know
+is old Ashur, the black bear (<i>Ashur</i> means black in an ancient tongue,
+just as <i>Brunn</i> means brown, and the common Oregon bear is usually
+decidedly black) and the fact that he doesn't is curious in itself. In
+most ways Ashur has more intelligence than all the others put together;
+but he is also the most indifferent. He is not a hunter; and he doesn't
+care who owns anything as long as there are plenty of bee trees to mop
+out with his clumsy paw, and plenty of grubs under the rotten logs.</p>
+
+<p>The saying originated long and long ago when the world was quite young.
+Before that time, likely enough, the beasts owned both the day and the
+night, and you can imagine them denying man's superiority just as long
+as possible. But they came to it in the end, and perhaps now they are
+beginning to be doubtful whether they still hold dominion over the night
+hours. You can fancy the forest people whispering the saying back and
+forth, using it as a password when they meet on the trails, and trying
+their best to believe it. "Man owns the day but the night is ours," the
+coyotes whisper between sobs. In a world where men have slowly, steadily
+conquered all the wild creatures, killed them and driven them away,
+their one consolation lies in the fact that when the dark comes down
+their old preëminence returns to them.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the saying is ridiculous if applied to cities or perhaps even
+to the level, cleared lands of the Middle West. The reason is simply
+that the wild life is practically gone from these places. Perhaps a
+lowly skunk steals along a hedge on the way to a chicken pen, but he
+quivers and skulks with fear, and all the arrogance of hunting is as
+dead in him as his last year's perfume. And perhaps even the little
+bobwhites, nestling tail to tail, know that it is wholly possible that
+the farmer's son has marked their roost and will come and pot them while
+they sleep. But a few places remain in America where the reign of the
+wild creatures, during the night hours at least, is still supreme. And
+Trail's End is one of them.</p>
+
+<p>It doesn't lie in the Middle West. It is just about as far west as one
+can conveniently go, unless he cares to trace the rivers down to their
+mouths. Neither was it cleared land, nor had its soil ever been turned
+by a plow. The few clearings that there were&mdash;such as the great five
+sections of the Rosses&mdash;were so far apart that a wolf could run all
+night (and the night-running of a wolf is something not to speak of
+lightly) without passing one. There is nothing but forest,&mdash;forest that
+stretches without boundaries, forest to which a great mountain is but a
+single flower in a meadow, forest to make the brain of a timber cruiser
+reel and stagger from sheer higher mathematics. Perhaps man owns these
+timber stretches in the daytime. He can go out and cut down the trees,
+and when they don't choose to fall over on top of him, return safely to
+his cabin at night. He can venture forth with his rifle and kill Ashur
+the black bear and Blacktail the deer, and even old Brother Bill, the
+grand and exalted ruler of the elk lodge. The sound of his feet disturbs
+the cathedral silence of the tree aisles, and his oaths&mdash;when the
+treacherous trail gives way beneath his feet&mdash;carry far through the
+coverts. But he behaves somewhat differently at night. He doesn't feel
+nearly so sure of himself. The sound of a puma screaming a few dozen
+feet away in the shadows is likely enough to cause an unpleasant
+twitching of the skin of his back. And he feels considerably better if
+there are four stout walls about him. At nighttime, the wild creatures
+come into their own.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce sensed these things as he waited for the day to break. For all the
+hard exertion of the previous day, he wakened early on the first morning
+of his return to his father's home. Through the open window he watched
+the dawn come out. And he fancied how a puma, still hungry, turned to
+snarl at the spreading light as he crept to his lair.</p>
+
+<p>All over the forest the hunting creatures left their trails and crept
+into the coverts. Their reign was done until darkness fell again. The
+night life of the forest was slowly stilled. The daylight
+creatures&mdash;such as the birds&mdash;began to waken. Probably they welcomed the
+sight of day as much as Bruce himself. The man dressed slowly. He
+wouldn't waken the two women that slept in the next room, he thought. He
+crept slowly out into the gray dawn.</p>
+
+<p>He made straight for the great pine that stood a short distance from the
+house. For reasons unknown to him, the pine had come often into his
+dreams. He had thought that its limbs rubbed together and made
+words,&mdash;but of the words themselves he had hardly caught the meaning.
+There was some high message in them, however; and the dream had left him
+with a vague curiosity, an unexplainable desire to see the forest
+monarch in the daylight.</p>
+
+<p>As he waited, the mist blew off of the land; the gray of twilight was
+whisked away to a twilightland that is hidden in the heart of the
+forest. He found to his delight that the tree was even more impressive
+in the vivid morning light than it had been at night. It was not that
+the light actually got into it. Its branches were too thick and heavy
+for that. It still retained its air of eternal secrecy, an impression
+that it knew great mysteries that a thousand philosophers would give
+their lives to learn. He was constantly awed by the size of it. He
+guessed its circumference as about twenty-five feet. The great lower
+limbs were themselves like massive tree trunks. Its top surpassed by
+fifty feet any pine in the vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>As he watched, the sun came up, gleaming first on its tall spire. It
+slowly overtook it. The dusk of its green lightened. Bruce was not a
+particularly imaginative man; but the impression grew that this towering
+tree had an answer for some great question in his own heart,&mdash;a question
+that he had never been able to shape into words. He felt that it knew
+the wholly profound secret of life.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it could not but have such knowledge. It was so incredibly
+old; it had seen so much. His mind flew back to some of the dramas of
+human life that had been enacted in its shade, and his imagination could
+picture many more. His own father had lain here dead, shot down by a
+murderer concealed in the distant thicket. It had beheld his own wonder
+when he had found the still form lying in the moonlight; it had seen his
+mother's grief and terror. Wilderness dramas uncounted had been enacted
+beneath it. Many times the mountain lion had crept into its dark
+branches. Many times the bear had grunted beneath it and reached up to
+write a challenge with his claws in its bark. The eyes of Tuft-ear the
+lynx had gleamed from its very top, and the old bull-elk had filed off
+his velvet on the sharp edges of the bark. It had seen savage battles
+between the denizens of the wood; the deer racing by with the wolf pack
+in pursuit. For uncounted years it had stood aloft, above all the
+madness and bloodshed and passion that are the eternal qualities of the
+wilderness, somber, stately, unutterably aloof.</p>
+
+<p>It had known the snows. When the leaves fell and the wind came out of
+the north, it would know them again. For the snow falls for a depth of
+ten feet or more over most of Trail's End. For innumerable winters its
+limbs had been heaped with the white load, the great branches bending
+beneath it. The wind made faint sounds through its branches now, but
+would be wholly silent when the winter snows weighted the limbs. He
+could picture the great, white giant, silent as death, still keeping its
+vigil over the snow-swept wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce felt a growing awe. The great tree seemed so wise, it gave him
+such a sense of power. The winds had buffeted it in vain. It had endured
+the terrible cold of winter. Generation after generation of the
+creatures who moved on the face of the earth had lived their lives
+beneath it; they had struggled and mated and fought their battles and
+felt their passions, and finally they had died; and still it
+endured,&mdash;silent, passionless, full of thoughts. Here was real
+greatness. Not stirring, not struggling, not striving; only standing
+firm and straight and impassive; not taking part, but only watching,
+knowing no passion but only strength,&mdash;ineffably patient and calm.</p>
+
+<p>But it was sad too. Such knowledge always brings sadness. It had seen
+too much to be otherwise. The pines are never cheerful trees, like the
+apple that blossoms in spring, or the elm whose leaves shimmer in the
+sunlight; and this great monarch of all the pines was sad as great
+music. In this quality, as well as in its strength, it was the symbol of
+the wilderness itself. But it was more than that. It was the Great
+Sentinel, and in its unutterable impassiveness it was the emblem and
+symbol of even mightier powers. Bruce's full wisdom had not yet come to
+him, so he couldn't name these powers. He only knew that they lived far
+and far above the world and, like the tree itself, held aloof from all
+the passion of Eve and the blood-lust of Cain. Like the pine itself,
+they were patient, impassive, and infinitely wise.</p>
+
+<p>He felt stilled and calmed himself. Such was its influence. And he
+turned with a start when he saw Linda in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was calm too in the morning light. Her dark eyes were lighted.
+He felt a curious little glow of delight at the sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been talking to the pine&mdash;all the morning," he told her.</p>
+
+<p>"But it won't talk to you," she answered. "It talks only to the stars."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Bruce and Linda had a long talk while the sun climbed up over the great
+ridges to the east and old Elmira cooked their breakfast. There was no
+passion in their words this morning. They had got down to a basis of
+cold planning.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me refresh my memory about a few of those little things you told
+me," Bruce requested. "First&mdash;on what date does the twenty-year
+period&mdash;of Turners' possession of the land&mdash;expire?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the thirtieth of October, of this year."</p>
+
+<p>"Not very long, is it? Now you understand that on that date they will
+have had twenty years of undisputed possession of the land; they will
+have paid taxes on it that long; and unless their title is proven false
+between now and that date, we can't ever drive them out."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just right."</p>
+
+<p>"And the fall term of court doesn't begin until the fifth of the
+following month."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we're beaten. That's all there is to it. Simon told me so the last
+time he talked to me."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be to his interest to have you think so. But Linda&mdash;we mustn't
+give up yet. We must try as long as one day remains. The law is full of
+twists; we might find a way to checkmate them, especially if that secret
+agreement should show up. It isn't just enough&mdash;to have vengeance. That
+wouldn't put the estate back in your hands; they would have won, after
+all. It seems to me that the first thing to do is to find the trapper,
+Hudson&mdash;the one witness that is still alive. You say he witnessed that
+secret agreement between your father and mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"His testimony would be invaluable to us. He might be able to prove to
+the court that as my father never owned the land in reality, he couldn't
+possibly have deeded it to the Turners. Do you know where this Hudson
+is?"</p>
+
+<p>"I asked old Elmira last night. She thinks she knows. A man told her he
+had his trap line on the upper Umpqua, and his main headquarters&mdash;you
+know that trappers have a string of camps&mdash;was at the mouth of Little
+River, that flows into the Umpqua. But it is a long way from here."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce was still a moment. "How far?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Two full days' tramp at the least&mdash;barring out accidents. But if you
+think it is best&mdash;you can start out to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce was a man who made decisions quickly. He had learned the wisdom of
+it,&mdash;that after all the evidence is gathered on each side, a single
+second is all the time that is needed for any kind of decision. Beyond
+that point there is only vacillation. "Then I'll start&mdash;right away. Can
+you tell me how to find the trail?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can only tell you to go straight north. Use your watch as a compass
+in the daytime and the North Star at night."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't suppose that it was wisdom to travel at night."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in sudden astonishment. "And where did you learn that
+fact, Bruce?"</p>
+
+<p>The man tried hard to remember. "I don't know. I suppose it was
+something I heard when I was a baby&mdash;in these mountains."</p>
+
+<p>"It is one of the first things a mountaineer has to know&mdash;to make camp
+at nightfall. You would want to, anyway, Bruce. You've got enough real
+knowledge of the wilderness in you&mdash;born in you&mdash;to want a camp and a
+fire at night. Besides, the trails are treacherous."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the thing to do is to get ready at once. And then try to bring
+Hudson back with me&mdash;down to the valley. After we get there we can see
+what can be done."</p>
+
+<p>Linda smiled rather sadly. "I'm not very hopeful. But he's our last
+chance&mdash;and we might as well make a try. There is no hope that the
+secret agreement will show up in these few weeks that remain. We'll get
+your things together at once."</p>
+
+<p>They breakfasted, and after the simple meal was finished, Bruce began to
+pack for the journey. He was very thankful for the months he had spent
+in an army camp. He took a few simple supplies of food: a piece of
+bacon, a little sack of dried venison&mdash;that delicious fare that has held
+so many men up on long journeys&mdash;and a compact little sack of prepared
+flour. There was no space for delicacies in the little pack. Besides, a
+man forgets about such things on the high trails. Butter, sugar, even
+that ancient friend coffee had to be left behind. He took one little
+utensil for cooking&mdash;a small skillet&mdash;and Linda furnished him with a
+camp ax and a long-bladed hunting knife. These things (with the
+exception of the knife and ax) he tied up in one heavy, all-wool
+blanket, making a compact pack for carrying on his back.</p>
+
+<p>In his pocket he carried cartridges for the rifle, pipe, tobacco, and
+matches. Linda took the hob-nails out of her own shoes and pounded them
+into his. For there are certain trails in Trail's End that to the
+unnailed shoe are quite like the treadmills of ancient days; the foot
+slips back after every step.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more was needed: tough leggings. The soft flannel trousers had
+not been tailored for wear in the brush coverts. And there is still
+another reason why the mountain men want their ankles covered. In
+portions of Trail's End there are certain rock ledges&mdash;gray, strange
+stone heaps blasted by the summer sun&mdash;and some of the paths that Bruce
+would take crossed over them. These ledges are the home of a certain
+breed of forest creatures that Bruce did not in the least desire to
+meet. Unlike many of the wild folk, they are not at all particular about
+getting out of the way, and they are more than likely to lash up at a
+traveler's instep. It isn't wise to try to jump out of the way. If a man
+were practiced at dodging lightning bolts he might do it, but not an
+ordinary mortal. For that lunging head is one of the swiftest things in
+the whole swift-moving animal world. And it isn't entirely safe to rely
+on a warning rattle. Sometimes the old king-snake forgets to give it.
+These are the poison people&mdash;the gray rattlesnakes that gather in
+mysterious, grim companies on the rocks&mdash;and the only safety from them
+is thick covering to the knees that the fangs cannot penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>But the old woman solved this problem with a deer hide that had been
+curing for some seasons on the wall behind the house. Her eyes were
+dimmed with age, her fingers were stiff, but in an astonishingly short
+period of time she improvised a pair of leathern puttees, fastening with
+a strap, that answered the purpose beautifully. The two women walked
+with him, out under the pine.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce shook old Elmira's scrawny hand; then she turned back at once into
+the house. The man felt singularly grateful. He began to credit the old
+woman with a great deal of intuition, or else memories from her own
+girlhood of long and long ago. He <i>did</i> want a word alone with this
+strange girl of the pines. But when Elmira had gone in and the coast was
+clear, it wouldn't come to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>He felt curious conjecturings and wonderment arising within him. He
+couldn't have shaped them into words. It was just that the girl's face
+intrigued him, mystified him, and perhaps moved him a little too. It was
+a frank, clear, girlish face, wonderfully tender of feature, and at
+first her eyes held him most of all. They gave an impression of
+astounding depth. They were quite serious now; and they had a luster
+such as can be seen on cold spring water over dark moss,&mdash;and few other
+places on earth.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems strange," he said, "to come here only last night&mdash;and then to
+be leaving again."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to his astonished gaze that her lips trembled ever so
+slightly. "We have been waiting for each other a long time, Bwovaboo,"
+she replied. She spoke rather low, not looking straight at him. "And I
+hate to have you go again so soon."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'll be back&mdash;in a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know. No one ever knows when they start out in these
+mountains. Promise me, Bruce&mdash;to keep watch every minute. Remember
+there's nothing&mdash;<i>nothing</i>&mdash;that Simon won't stoop to do. He's like a
+wolf. He has no rules of fighting. He'd just as soon strike from ambush.
+How do I know that you'll ever come back again?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I will." He smiled at her, and his eyes dropped from hers to her
+lips. His heart seemed to miss a beat. He hadn't noticed these lips in
+particular before. The mouth was tender and girlish, its sensitiveness
+scarcely seeming fitting in a child of these wild places. He reached out
+and took her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, Linda," he said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled in reply, and her old cheer seemed to return to her.
+"Good-by, Bwovaboo. Be careful."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be careful. And this reminds me of something."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"That for all the time I've been away&mdash;and for all the time I'm going to
+be away now&mdash;I haven't done anything more&mdash;well, more intimate&mdash;than
+shake your hand."</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was to pout out her lips in the most natural way in the
+world. Bruce was usually deliberate in his motions; but all at once his
+deliberation fell away from him. There seemed to be no interlude of time
+between one position and another. His arms went about her, and he kissed
+her gently on the lips.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not at all as they expected. Both had gone into it
+lightly,&mdash;a boy-and-girl caress such as is usually not worth thinking
+about twice. He had supposed it would be just like the other kisses he
+had known in his growing-up days: a moment's soft pressure of the lips,
+a moment's delight, and nothing either to regret or rejoice in. But it
+was far more than this, after all. Perhaps because they had been too
+long in one another's thoughts; perhaps&mdash;living in a land of hated
+foes&mdash;because Linda had not known many kisses, this little caress
+beneath the pine went very straight home indeed to them both. They fell
+apart, both of them suddenly sobered. The girl's eyes were tender and
+lustrous, but startled too.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, Linda," he told her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by&mdash;Bwovaboo," she answered. He turned up the trail past the pine.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know that she stood watching him a long time, her hands
+clasped over her breast.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Miles farther than Linda's cabin, clear beyond the end of the trail that
+Duncan took, past even the highest ridge of Trail's End and in the
+region where the little rivers that run into the Umpqua have their
+starting place, is a certain land of Used to Be. Such a name as that
+doesn't make very good sense to a tenderfoot on the first hearing.
+Perhaps he can never see the real intelligence of it as long as he
+remains a tenderfoot. Such creatures cannot exist for long in the
+silences and the endless ridges and the unbeaten trails of this land;
+they either become woodsmen or have communication with the buzzards.</p>
+
+<p>It isn't a land of the Present Time at all. It is a place that has never
+grown old. When a man passes the last outpost of civilization, and the
+shadows of the unbroken woods drop over him, he is likely to forget that
+the year is nineteen hundred and twenty, and that the day before
+yesterday he had seen an aeroplane passing over his house. It is true
+that in this place he sees winged creatures in the air, seeming masters
+of the aërial tracts, but they are not aëroplanes. Instead they are the
+buzzards, and they are keeping even a closer watch on him than he is on
+them. They know that many things may happen whereby they can get
+acquainted before the morning breaks. The world seems to have kicked off
+its thousand-thousand years as a warm man at night kicks off covers; and
+all things are just as they used to be. It is the Young World,&mdash;a world
+of beasts rather than men, a world where the hand of man has not yet
+been felt.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it won't be that way forever. Sometime the forests will fall.
+What will become of the beasts that live in them there is no telling;
+there are not many places left for them to go. But at present it is just
+as savage, just as primitive and untamed as those ancient forests of the
+Young World that a man recalls sometimes in dreams.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular early-September day, the age-old drama of the
+wilderness was in progress. It was the same play that had been enacted
+day after day, year upon year, until the centuries had become too many
+to count, and as usual, there were no human observers. There were no
+hunters armed with rifles waiting on the deer trails to kill some of the
+players. There were no naturalists taking notes that no one will believe
+in the coverts. It was the usual matinée performance; the long, hot day
+was almost at a close. The play would get better later in the evening,
+and really would not be at its best until the moon rose; but it was not
+a comedy-drama even now. Rather it was a drama of untamed passions and
+bloodshed, strife and carnage and lust and rapine; and it didn't,
+unfortunately, have a particularly happy ending. Mother Nature herself,
+sometimes kind but usually cruel, was the producer; she furnished the
+theater, even the spotted costume by which the fawn remained invisible
+in the patches of light and shadow; and she had certain great purposes
+of her own that no man understands. As the play was usually complicated
+with many fatalities, the buzzards were about the only ones to benefit.
+They were the real heroes of the play after all. Everything always
+turned out all right for them. They always triumphed in the end.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest difference between this wilderness drama and the dramas
+that human beings see upon a stage is that one was reality and the other
+is pretense. The players were beasts, not men. The only human being
+anywhere in the near vicinity was the old trapper, Hudson, following
+down his trap line on the creek margin on the way to his camp. It is
+true that two other men, with a rather astounding similarity of purpose,
+were at present coming down two of the long trails that led to the
+region; but as yet the drama was hidden from their eyes. One of these
+two was Bruce, coming from Linda's cabin. One was Dave Turner,
+approaching from the direction of the Ross estates. Turner was much the
+nearer. Curiously, both had business with the trapper Hudson.</p>
+
+<p>The action of the play was calm at first. Mostly the forest creatures
+were still in their afternoon sleep. Brother Bill, the great stag elk,
+had a bed in the very center of a thick wall of buckbush, and human
+observers at first could not have explained how his great body, with his
+vast spread of antlers, had been able to push through. But in reality
+his antlers aided rather than hindered. Streaming almost straight back
+they act something like a snow-plow, parting the heavy coverts.</p>
+
+<p>The bull elk is in some ways the master of the forest, and one would
+wonder why he had gone to such an out-of-the-way place to sleep. Unless
+he is attacked from ambush, he has little to fear even from the Tawny
+One, the great cougar, and ordinarily the cougar waits until night to do
+his hunting. The lynx is just a source of scorn to the great bull, and
+even the timber wolf&mdash;except when he is combined with his relatives in
+winter&mdash;is scarcely to be feared. Yet he had been careful to surround
+himself with burglar alarms,&mdash;in other words, to go into the deep
+thicket that no beast of prey could penetrate without warning him&mdash;by
+the sound of breaking brush&mdash;of its approach. It would indicate that
+there was at least one living creature in this region&mdash;a place where men
+ordinarily did not come&mdash;that the bull elk feared.</p>
+
+<p>The does and their little spotted fawns were sleeping too; the blacktail
+deer had not yet sought the feeding grounds on the ridges. The cougar
+yawned in his lair, the wolf dozed in his covert, even the poison-people
+lay like long shadows on the hot rocks. But these latter couldn't be
+relied upon to sleep soundly. One of the many things they can do is to
+jump straight out of a dream like a flicking whiplash, coil and hit a
+mark that many a good pistol shot would miss.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was no chance of the buzzards, at present spectators in the
+clouds and waiting for the final act, to become bored. Particularly the
+lesser animals of the forest&mdash;the Little People&mdash;were busy at their
+occupations. A little brown-coated pine marten&mdash;who is really nothing
+but an overgrown weasel famous for his particularly handsome coat&mdash;went
+stealing through the branches of a pine as if he had rather questionable
+business. Some one had told him, and he couldn't remember who, that a
+magpie had her nest in that same tree, and Red Eye was going to look and
+see. Of course he merely wanted to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps he
+would try to arrange to get a little sip of the mother's blood, just as
+it passed through the big vein of the throat,&mdash;but of course that was
+only incidental. He felt some curiosity about the magpie's eggs too, the
+last brood of the year. It might be that there were some little magpies
+all coiled up inside of them, that would be worth investigation by one
+of his scientific turn of mind. Perhaps even the male bird, coming
+frantically to look for his wife, might fly straight into the nest
+without noticing his brown body curled about the limb. It offered all
+kinds of pleasing prospects, this hunt through the branches.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it is doubtful if the buzzards could detect his serpent-like
+form; yet it is a brave man who will say what a buzzard can and cannot
+see. Anything that can remain in the air as they do, seemingly without
+the flutter of a wing, has powers not to speak of lightly. But if they
+could have seen him they would have been particularly interested. A
+marten isn't a glutton in his feeding, and often is content with just a
+sip of blood from the throat. That leaves something warm and still for
+the buzzard's beak.</p>
+
+<p>A long, spotted gopher snake slipped through the dead grass on the
+ground beneath. He didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular. He
+was just moseying&mdash;if there is such a word&mdash;along. Not a blade of grass
+rustled. Of course there was a chipmunk, sitting at the door of his
+house in the uplifted roots of a tree; but the snake&mdash;although he was
+approaching in his general direction&mdash;didn't seem at all interested in
+him. Were it not for two things, the serpent would have seemed to be
+utterly bored and indifferent to life in general. One of these things
+was its cold, glittering, reptile eyes. The other was its darting,
+forked tongue.</p>
+
+<p>It may be, after all, that this little tongue was of really great
+importance in the serpent's hunting. Many naturalists think that quite
+often the little, rattle-brained birds and rodents that it hunts are so
+interested in this darting tongue that they quite fail to see the slow
+approach of the mottled body of the snake behind it. At least it was
+perfectly evident that the chipmunk did not see Limber-spine at present.
+Otherwise he wouldn't have been enjoying the scenery with quite the same
+complacency. If all went well, there might be a considerable lump in the
+snake's throat yet this afternoon. But it would be a quite different
+kind of lump from the one the chipmunk's little mate, waiting in vain
+for her lord to come to supper, would have in <i>her</i> throat.</p>
+
+<p>An old raccoon wakened from his place on a high limb, stretched himself,
+scratched at his fur, then began to steal down the limb. He had a long
+way to go before dark. Hunting was getting poor in this part of the
+woods. He believed he would wander down toward Hudson's camp and look
+for crayfish in the water. A coyote is usually listed among the larger
+forest creatures, but early though the hour was&mdash;early, that is, for
+hunters to be out&mdash;he was stalking a fawn in a covert. The coyote has
+not an especially high place among the forest creatures, and he has to
+do his hunting early and late and any time that offers. Most of the
+larger creatures pick on him, all the time detesting him for his
+cunning. The timber wolf, a rather close relation whom he cordially
+hates, is apt to take bites out of him if he meets him on the trail. The
+old bull elk would like nothing better than to cut his hide into rag
+patches with the sharp-edged front hoofs. Even the magpies in the tree
+tops made up ribald verses about him. But nevertheless the spotted fawn
+had cause to fear him. The coyote is an infamous coward; but even the
+little cotton tail rabbit does not have to fear a fawn.</p>
+
+<p>All these hunts were progressing famously when there came a curious
+interruption. It was just a sound at first. And strangely, not one of
+the forest creatures that heard it had ears sharp enough to tell exactly
+from what direction it had come. And that made it all the more
+unpleasant to listen to.</p>
+
+<p>It was a peculiar growl, quite low at first. It lasted a long time, then
+died away. There was no opposition to it. The forest creatures had
+paused in their tracks at its first note, and now they stood as if the
+winter had come down upon them suddenly and frozen them solid. All the
+other sounds of the forest&mdash;the little whispering noises of gliding
+bodies and fluttering feet, and perhaps a bird's call in a shrub&mdash;were
+suddenly stilled. There was a moment of breathless suspense. Then the
+sound commenced again.</p>
+
+<p>It was louder this time. It rose and gathered volume until it was almost
+a roar. It carried through the silences in great waves of sound. And in
+it was a sense of resistless power; no creature in the forest but what
+knew this fact.</p>
+
+<p>"The Gray King," one could imagine them saying among themselves. The
+effect was instantaneous. The little raccoon halted in his descent, then
+crept out to the end of a limb. Perhaps he knew that the gray monarch
+could not climb trees, but nevertheless he felt that he would be more
+secure clear at the swaying limb-tip. The marten forgot his curiosity in
+regard to the nest of the magpie. The gopher snake coiled, then slipped
+away silently through the grass.</p>
+
+<p>The coyote, an instant before crawling with body close to the earth,
+whipped about as if he had some strange kind of circular spring inside
+of him. His nerves were always rather ragged, and the sound had
+frightened out of him the rigid control of his muscles that was so
+necessary if he were to make a successful stalk upon the fawn. The
+spotted creature bleated in terror, then darted away; and the coyote
+snarled once in the general direction of the Gray King. Then he lowered
+his head and skulked off deeper into the coverts.</p>
+
+<p>The blacktail deer, the gray wolf, even the stately Tawny One, stretched
+in grace in his lair, wakened from sleep. The languor died quickly in
+the latter's eyes, leaving only fear. These were braver than the Little
+People. They waited until the thick brush, not far distant from where
+the bull elk slept, began to break down and part before an enormous,
+gray body.</p>
+
+<p>No longer would an observer think of the elk as the forest monarch. He
+was but a pretender, after all. The real king had just wakened from his
+afternoon nap and was starting forth to hunt.</p>
+
+<p>Even his little cousins, the black bears (who, after all is said and
+done, furnish most of the comedy of the deadly forest drama) did not
+wait to make conversation. They tumbled awkwardly down the hill to get
+out of his way. For the massive gray form&mdash;weighing over half a ton&mdash;was
+none other than that of the last of the grizzly bears, that terrible
+forest hunter and monarch, the Killer himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Long ago, when Oregon was a new land to white men, in the days of the
+clipper ships and the Old Oregon Trail, the breed to which the Killer
+belonged were really numerous through the little corner north of the
+Siskiyous and west of the Cascades. The land was far different then. The
+transcontinental lines had not yet been built; the only settlements were
+small trading posts and mining camps, and people did not travel over
+paved highways in automobiles. If they went at all it was in a
+prairie-schooner or on horseback. And the old grizzly bears must have
+found the region a veritable heaven.</p>
+
+<p>They were a worthy breed! It is doubtful if any other section of the
+United States offered an environment so favorable to them. Game was in
+abundance, they could venture down into the valleys at the approach of
+winter and thus miss the rigors of the snow, and at first there were no
+human enemies. Unfortunately, stories are likely to grow and become
+sadly addled after many tellings; but if the words of certain old men
+could be believed, the Southern Oregon grizzly occasionally, in the
+bountiful fall days, attained a weight of two thousand pounds. No doubt
+whatever remains that thousand-pound bears were fairly numerous. They
+trailed up and down the brown hillsides; they hunted and honey-grubbed
+and mated in the fall; they had their young and fought their battles and
+died, and once in a long while the skeleton of a frontiersman would be
+found with his skull battered perfectly flat where one of the great
+beasts had taken a short-arm pat at him.</p>
+
+<p>But unlike the little black bears, the grizzlies developed displeasing
+habits. They were much more carnivorous in character than the blacks,
+and their great bodily strength and power enabled them to master all of
+the myriad forms of game in the Oregon woods. By the same token, they
+could take a full-grown steer and carry it off as a woman carries her
+baby.</p>
+
+<p>It couldn't be endured. The cattlemen had begun to settle the valleys,
+and it was either a case of killing the grizzlies or yielding the
+valleys to them. In the relentless war that followed, the breed had been
+practically wiped out. A few of them, perhaps, fled farther and farther
+up the Cascades, finding refuges in the Canadian mountains. Others
+traveled east, locating at last in the Rocky Mountains, and countless
+numbers of them died. At last, as far as the frontiersmen knew, only one
+great specimen remained. This was a famous bear that men called
+Slewfoot,&mdash;a magnificent animal that ranged far and hunted relentlessly,
+and no one ever knew just when they were going to run across him. It
+made traveling in the mountains a rather ticklish business. He was apt
+suddenly to loom up, like a gray cliff, at any turn in the trail, and
+his disposition grew querulous with age. In fact, instead of fleeing as
+most wild creatures have learned to do, he was rather likely to make
+sudden and unexpected charges.</p>
+
+<p>He was killed at last; and seemingly the Southern Oregon grizzlies were
+wiped out. But it is rather easy to believe that in some of his
+wanderings he encountered&mdash;lost and far in the deepest heart of the land
+called Trail's End&mdash;a female of his own breed. There must have been cubs
+who, in their turn, mated and fought and died, and perhaps two
+generations after them. And out of the last brood had emerged a single
+great male, a worthy descendant of his famous ancestor. This was the
+Killer, who in a few months since he had left his fastnesses, was
+beginning to ruin the cattle business in Trail's End.</p>
+
+<p>As he came growling from his bed this September evening he was not a
+creature to speak of lightly. He was down on all fours, his vast head
+was lowered, his huge fangs gleamed in the dark red mouth. The eyes were
+small, and curious little red lights glowed in each of them. The Killer
+was cross; and he didn't care who knew it. He was hungry too; but hunger
+is an emotion for the beasts of prey to keep carefully to themselves. He
+walked slowly across the little glen, carelessly at first, for he was
+too cross and out of temper to have the patience to stalk. He stopped,
+turning his head this way and that, marking the flight of the wild
+creatures. He saw a pair of blacktail bucks spring up from a covert and
+dash away; but he only made one short, angry lunge toward them. He knew
+that it would only cost him his dignity to try to chase them. A grizzly
+bear can move astonishingly fast considering his weight&mdash;for a short
+distance he can keep pace with a running horse&mdash;but a deer is light
+itself. He uttered one short, low growl, then headed over toward a great
+wall of buckbush at the base of the hill.</p>
+
+<p>But now his hunting cunning had begun to return to him. The sun was
+setting, the pines were growing dusky, and he began to feel the first
+excitement and fever that the fall of night always brings to the beasts
+of prey. It is a feeling that his insignificant cousins, the black
+bears, could not possibly have,&mdash;for the sole reason that they are
+berry-eaters, not hunters. But the cougar, stealing down a deer trail on
+the ridge above, and a lean old male wolf&mdash;stalking a herd of deer on
+the other side of the thicket&mdash;understood it very well. His blood began
+to roll faster through his great veins. The sullen glare grew in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It was the beginning of the hunting hour of the larger creatures. All
+the forest world knew it. The air seemed to throb and tingle, the
+shadowing thickets began to pulse and stir with life. The Fear&mdash;the
+age-old heritage of all the hunted creatures&mdash;returned to the deer.</p>
+
+<p>The Killer moved quite softly now. One would have marveled how silently
+his great feet fell upon the dry earth and with what slight sound his
+heavy form moved through the thickets. Once he halted, gazing with
+reddening eyes. But the coyote&mdash;the gray figure that had broken a twig
+on the trail beside him&mdash;slipped quickly away.</p>
+
+<p>He skirted the thicket, knowing that no successful stalk could be made
+where he had to force his way through dry brush. He moved slowly,
+cautiously&mdash;all the time mounting farther up the little hill that rose
+from the banks of the stream. He came to an opening in the thicket, a
+little brown pathway that vanished quickly into the shadows of the
+coverts.</p>
+
+<p>The Killer slipped softly into the heavy brush just at its mouth. It was
+his ambush. Soon, he knew, some of the creatures that had bowers in the
+heart of the thicket would be coming along that trail toward the feeding
+grounds on the ridge. He only had to wait.</p>
+
+<p>As the shadows grew and the twilight deepened, the undercurrent of
+savagery that is the eternal quality of the wilderness grew ever more
+pronounced. A thrill and fever came in the air, mystery in the deepening
+shadows, and brighter lights into the eyes of the hunting folk. The dusk
+deepened between the trees; the distant trunks dimmed and faded quite
+away. The stars emerged. The nightwind, rising somewhere in the region
+of the snow banks on the highest mountains, blew down into the Killer's
+face and brought messages that no human being may ever receive. Then his
+sharp ears heard the sound of brush cracked softly as some one of the
+larger forest creatures came up the trail toward him.</p>
+
+<p>The steps drew nearer and the Killer recognized them. They were plainly
+the soft footfall of some member of the deer tribe, yet they were too
+pronounced to be the step of any of the lesser deer. The bull elk had
+left his bed. The red eyes of the grizzly seemed to glow as he waited.
+Great though the stag was, only one little blow of the massive forearm
+would be needed. The huge fangs would have to close down but once. The
+long, many-tined antlers, the sharp front hoofs would not avail him in a
+surprise attack such as this would be. Best of all, he was not
+suspecting danger. He was walking down wind, so that the pungent odor of
+the bear was blown away from him.</p>
+
+<p>The bear did not move a single telltale muscle. He scarcely breathed.
+And the one movement that there was was such that not even the keen ears
+of an elk could discern, just a curious erection of the gray hairs on
+his vast neck.</p>
+
+<p>The bull was almost within striking range now. The wicked red eyes could
+already discern the dimmest shadow of his outline through the thickets.
+But all at once he stopped, head lifting.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps a grizzly bear does not have mental processes as human beings
+know them. Perhaps all impulse is the result of instinct
+alone,&mdash;instinct tuned and trained to a degree that human beings find
+hard to imagine. But if the bear couldn't understand the sudden halt
+just at the eve of his triumph, at least he felt growing anger. He knew
+perfectly that the elk had neither detected his odor nor heard him, and
+he had made no movements that the sharp eyes could detect. Just a
+glimpse of gray in the heavy brush would not have been enough in itself
+to arouse the stag's suspicions. For the lower creatures are rarely able
+to interpret outline alone; there must be movement too.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the bull was evidently alarmed. He stood immobile, one foot lifted,
+nostrils open, head raised. Then, the wind blowing true, the grizzly
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>A pungent smell reached him from below,&mdash;evidently the smell of a living
+creature that followed the trail along the stream that flowed through
+the glen. He recognized it in an instant. He had detected it many times,
+particularly when he went into the cleared lands to kill cattle. It was
+man, an odor almost unknown in this lonely glen. Dave Turner, brother of
+Simon, was walking down the stream toward Hudson's camp.</p>
+
+<p>The elk was widely traveled too, and he also realized the proximity of
+man. But his reaction was entirely different. To the grizzly it was an
+annoying interruption to his hunt; and a great flood of rage swept over
+him. It seemed to him that these tall creatures were always crossing his
+path, spoiling his hunting, even questioning his rule of the forests.
+They did not seem to realize that he was the wilderness king, and that
+he could break their slight forms in two with one blow of his paw. It
+was true that their eyes had strange powers to disquiet him; but his
+isolation in the fastnesses of Trail's End had kept him from any full
+recognition of their real strength, and he was unfortunately lacking in
+the awe with which most of the forest creatures regard them. But to the
+elk this smell was Fear itself. He knew the ways of men only too well.
+Too many times he had seen members of his herd fall stricken at a word
+from the glittering sticks they carried in their hands. He uttered a
+far-ringing snort.</p>
+
+<p>It was a distinctive sound, beginning rather high on the scale as a loud
+whistle and descending into a deep bass bawl. And the Killer knew
+perfectly what that sound meant. It was a simple way of saying that the
+elk would progress no further down <i>that</i> trail. The bear leaped in wild
+fury.</p>
+
+<p>A growl that was more near a puma-like snarl came from between the bared
+teeth, and the great body lunged out with incredible speed. Although the
+distance was far, the charge was almost a success. If one second had
+intervened before the elk saw the movement, if his muscles had not been
+fitted out with invisible wings, he would have fought no more battles
+with his herd brethren in the fall. The bull seemed to leap straight up.
+His muscles had been set at his first alarm from Turner's smell on the
+wind, and they drove forth the powerful limbs as if by a powder
+explosion. He was full in the air when the forepaws battered down where
+he had been. Then he darted away into the coverts.</p>
+
+<p>The grizzly knew better than to try to overtake him. Almost rabid with
+wrath he turned back to his ambush.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Simon Turner had given Dave very definite instructions concerning his
+embassy to Hudson. They were given in the great house that Simon
+occupied, in the same room, lighted by the fire's glow, from which
+instructions had gone out to the clan so many times before. "The first
+thing this Bruce will do," Simon had said, "is to hunt up Hudson&mdash;the
+one living man that witnessed that agreement between Ross and old
+Folger. One reason is that he'll want to verify Linda's story. The next
+is to persuade the old man to go down to the courts with him as his
+witness. And what you have to do is line him up on our side first."</p>
+
+<p>Dave had felt Simon's eyes upon him, so he didn't look straight up. "And
+that's what the hundred is for?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Get the old man's word that he'll tell Bruce he never
+witnessed any such agreement. Maybe fifty dollars will do it; the old
+trapper is pretty hard up, I reckon. He'd make us a lot of trouble if
+Bruce got him as a witness."</p>
+
+<p>"You think&mdash;" Dave's eyes wandered about the room, "you think that's the
+best way?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't be tellin' you to do it if I didn't think so." Simon
+laughed,&mdash;a sudden, grim syllable. "Dave, you're a blood-thirsty devil.
+I see what you're thinking of&mdash;of a safer way to keep him from telling.
+But you know the word I sent out. 'Go easy!' That's the wisest course to
+follow at present. The valley people pay more attention to such things
+than they used to; the fewer the killings, the wiser we will be. If
+he'll keep quiet for the hundred let him have it in peace."</p>
+
+<p>Dave hadn't forgotten. But his features were sharper and more ratlike
+than ever when he came in sight of Hudson's camp, just after the fall of
+darkness of the second day out. The trapper was cooking his simple
+meal,&mdash;a blue grouse frying in his skillet, coffee boiling, and flapjack
+batter ready for the moment the grouse was done. He was kneeling close
+to the coals; the firelight cast a red glow over him, and the picture
+started a train of rather pleasing conjectures in Dave's mind.</p>
+
+<p>He halted in the shadows and stood a moment watching. After all he
+wasn't greatly different from the wolf that watched by the deer trail or
+the Killer in his ambush, less than a mile distant in the glen. The same
+strange, dark passion that was over them both was over him also. One
+could see it in the almost imperceptible drawing back of his dark lips
+over his teeth. There was just a hint of it in the lurid eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Dave's thought returned to the hundred dollars in his pocket,&mdash;a good
+sum in the hills. A brass rifle cartridge, such as he could fire in the
+thirty-thirty that he carried in the hollow of his arm, cost only about
+six cents. The net gain would be&mdash;the figures flew quickly through his
+mind&mdash;ninety-nine dollars and ninety-four cents; quite a good piece of
+business for Dave. But the trouble was that Simon might find out.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, he remembered, that Simon was adverse to this sort of
+operation when necessary. Perhaps the straight-out sport of the thing
+meant more to him than to Dave; he was a braver man and more primitive
+in impulse. There were certain memory pictures in Dave's mind of this
+younger, more powerful brother of his; and he smiled grimly when he
+recalled them. They had been wild, strange scenes of long ago, usually
+in the pale light of the moon, and he could recall Simon's face with
+singular clearness. There had always been the same drawing back of the
+lips, the same gusty breathing, the same strange little flakes of fire
+in the savage eyes. He had always trembled all over too, but not from
+fear; and Dave remembered especially well the little drama outside
+Matthew Folger's cabin in the darkness. He was no stranger to the blood
+madness, this brother of his, and the clan had high hopes for him even
+in his growing days. And he had fulfilled those hopes. Never could the
+fact be doubted! He could still make a fresh notch in his rifle stock
+with the same rapture. But the word had gone out, for the present at
+least, to "go easy." Such little games as occurred to Dave now&mdash;as he
+watched the trapper in the firelight with one hundred dollars of the
+clan's money in his own pocket&mdash;had been prohibited until further
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>The thing looked so simple that Dave squirmed all over with annoyance.
+It hurt him to think that the hundred dollars that he carried was to be
+passed over, without a wink of an eye, to this bearded trapper; and the
+only return for it was to be a promise that Hudson would not testify in
+Bruce's behalf. And a hundred dollars was real money! It was to be
+thought of twice. On the other hand, it would be wholly impossible for
+one that lies face half-buried in the pine needles beside a dead fire to
+make any kind of testimony whatsoever. It would come to the same thing,
+and the hundred dollars would still be in his pocket. Just a little
+matter of a single glance down his rifle barrel at the figure in the
+silhouette of the fire glow&mdash;and a half-ounce of pressure on the hair
+trigger. Half jesting with himself, he dropped on one knee and raised
+the weapon. The trapper did not guess his presence. The blood leaped in
+Dave's veins.</p>
+
+<p>It would be so easy; the drawing back of the hammer would be only the
+work of a second; and an instant's peering through the sights was all
+that would be needed further. His body trembled as if with passion, as
+he started to draw back the hammer.</p>
+
+<p>But he caught himself with a wrench. He had a single second of vivid
+introspection; and what he saw filled his cunning eyes with wonder.
+There would have been no holding back, once the rifle was cocked and he
+saw the man through the sights. The blood madness would have been too
+strong to resist. He felt as might one who, taking a few injections of
+morphine on prescription, finds himself inadvertently with a loaded
+needle in his hands. He knew a moment of remorse&mdash;so overwhelming that
+it was almost terror&mdash;that the shedding of blood had become so easy to
+him. He hadn't known how easy it had been to learn. He didn't know that
+a vice is nothing but a lust that has been given free play so many times
+that the will can no longer restrain it.</p>
+
+<p>But the sight of Hudson's form, sitting down now to his meal, dispelled
+his remorse quickly. After all, his own course would have been the
+simplest way to handle the matter. There would be no danger that Hudson
+would double-cross them then. But he realized that Simon had spoken true
+when he said that the old days were gone, that the arm of the law
+reached farther than formerly, and it might even stretch to this far
+place. He remembered Simon's instructions. "The quieter we can do these
+things, the better," the clan leader had said. "If we can get through to
+October thirtieth with no killings, the safer it is for us. We don't
+know how the tenderfeet in the valley are going to act&mdash;there isn't the
+same feeling about blood-feuds that there used to be. Go easy, Dave.
+Sound this Hudson out. If he'll keep still for a hundred, let him have
+it in peace."</p>
+
+<p>Dave slipped his rifle into the hollow of his arm and continued on down
+the trail. He didn't try to stalk. In a moment Hudson heard his step and
+looked up. They met in a circle of firelight.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the mountain way to fraternize quickly, nor are the mountain
+men quick to show astonishment. Hudson had not seen another human being
+since his last visit to the settlements. Yet his voice indicated no
+surprise at this visitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy," he grunted.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy," Dave replied. "How about grub?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help yourself. Supper just ready."</p>
+
+<p>Dave helped himself to the food of the man that, a moment before, he
+would have slain; and in the light of the high fire that followed the
+meal, he got down to the real business of the visit.</p>
+
+<p>Dave knew that a fairly straight course was best. It was general
+knowledge through the hills that the Turners had gouged the Rosses of
+their lands and it was absurd to think that Hudson did not realize the
+true state of affairs. "I suppose you've forgotten that little deed you
+witnessed between old Mat Folger and Ross&mdash;twenty years ago," Dave began
+easily, his pipe between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Hudson turned with a cunning glitter in his eyes. Dave saw it and grew
+bolder. "Who wants me to forget it?" Hudson demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't said that anybody wants you to," Dave responded. "I asked if
+you had."</p>
+
+<p>Hudson was still a moment, stroking absently his beard. "If you want to
+know," he said, "I ain't forgotten. But there wasn't just a deed. There
+was an agreement too."</p>
+
+<p>Dave nodded. Hudson's eyes traveled to his rifle,&mdash;for the simple reason
+that he wanted to know just how many jumps he would be obliged to make
+to reach it in case of emergencies. Such things are good to know in
+meetings like this.</p>
+
+<p>"I know all about that agreement," Dave confessed.</p>
+
+<p>"You do, eh? So do I. I ain't likely to forget."</p>
+
+<p>Dave studied him closely. "What good is it going to do you to remember?"
+he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't saying that it's going to do me any good. At present I ain't
+got nothing against the Turners. They've always been all right to me.
+What's between them and the Rosses is past and done&mdash;although I know
+just in what way Folger held that land and no transfer from him to you
+was legal. But that's all part of the past. As long as the Turners
+continue to be my friends I don't see why anything should be said about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Dave did not misunderstand him. He didn't in the least assume that these
+friendly words meant that he could go back to the ranches with the
+hundred dollars still in his pocket. It meant merely that Hudson was
+open to reason and it wouldn't have to be a shooting affair.</p>
+
+<p>Dave speculated. It was wholly plain that the old man had not yet heard
+of Bruce's return. There was no need to mention him. "We're glad you are
+our friend," Dave went on. "But we don't expect no one to stay friends
+with us unless they benefit to some small extent by it. How many furs do
+you hope to take this year?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not enough to pay to pack out. Maybe two hundred dollars in bounties
+before New Year&mdash;coyotes and wolves. Maybe a little better in the three
+months following in furs."</p>
+
+<p>"Then maybe fifty or seventy-five dollars, without bothering to set the
+traps, wouldn't come in so bad."</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't come in bad, but it doesn't buy much these days. A hundred
+would do better."</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred it is," Dave told him with finality.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes above the dark beard shone in the firelight. "I'd forget I had
+a mother for a hundred dollars," he said. He watched, greedily, as
+Dave's gaunt hand went into his pocket. "I'm gettin' old, Dave. Every
+dollar is harder for me to get. The wolves are gettin' wiser, the mink
+are fewer. There ain't much that I wouldn't do for a hundred dollars
+now. You know how it is."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Dave knew. The money changed hands. The fire burned down. They sat
+a long time, deep in their own thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"All we ask," Dave said, "is that you don't take sides against us."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll remember. Of course you want me, in case I'm ever subpoenaed, to
+recall signing the deed itself."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we'd want you to testify to that."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. If there hadn't been any kind of a deed, Folger couldn't
+have deeded the property to you. But how would it be, if any one asks me
+about it, to swear that there <i>never was</i> no secret agreement, but a
+clear transfer; and to make it sound reasonable for me to say&mdash;to say
+that Ross was forced to deed the land to Folger because he'd had
+goings-on with Folger's wife, and Folger was about to kill him?"</p>
+
+<p>The only response, at first, was the slightest, almost imperceptible
+narrowing of Dave's eyes. He had considerable native cunning, but such
+an idea as this had never occurred to him. But he was crafty enough to
+see its tremendous possibilities at once. All that either Simon or
+himself had hoped for was that the old man would not testify in Bruce's
+behalf. But he saw that such a story, coming from the apparently honest
+old trapper, might have a profound effect upon Bruce. Dave understood
+human nature well enough to know that he would probably lose faith in
+the entire enterprise. To Bruce it had been nothing but an old woman's
+story, after all; it was wholly possible that he would relinquish all
+effort to return the lands to Linda Ross. Men always can believe
+stranger things of sex than any other thing; Bruce would in all
+probability find Hudson's story much more logical than the one Linda had
+told him under the pine. It was worth one hundred dollars, after all.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet you could make him swallow it, hook, bait, and sinker," Dave
+responded at last, flattering. They chuckled together in the darkness.
+Then they turned to the blankets.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show you another trail out to-morrow," Hudson told him. "It comes
+into the glen that you passed to-night&mdash;the canyon that the Killer has
+been using lately for a hunting ground."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Killer had had an unsuccessful night. He had waited the long hours
+through at the mouth of the trail, but only the Little People&mdash;such as
+the rabbits and similar folk that hardly constituted a single bite in
+his great jaws&mdash;had come his way. Now it was morning and it looked as if
+he would have to go hungry.</p>
+
+<p>The thought didn't improve his already doubtful mood. He wanted to
+growl. The only thing that kept him from it was the realization that it
+would frighten away any living creature that might be approaching toward
+him up the trail. He started to stretch his great muscles, intending to
+leave his ambush. But all at once he froze again into a lifeless gray
+patch in the thickets.</p>
+
+<p>There were light steps on the trail. Again they were the steps of
+deer,&mdash;but not of the great, wary elk this time. Instead it was just a
+fawn, or a yearling doe at least, such a creature as had not yet learned
+to suspect every turn in the trail. The morning light was steadily
+growing, the stars were all dimmed or else entirely faded in the sky,
+and it would have been highly improbable that a full-grown buck in his
+wisdom would draw within leaping range without detecting him. But he
+hadn't the slightest doubt about the fawn. They were innocent
+people,&mdash;and their flesh was very tender. The forest gods had been good
+to him, after all.</p>
+
+<p>He peered through the thickets, and in a moment more he had a glimpse of
+the spotted skin. It was almost too easy. The fawn was stealing toward
+him with mincing steps&mdash;as graceful a creature as dwelt in all this
+wilderness world of grace&mdash;and its eyes were soft and tender as a
+girl's. It was evidently giving no thought to danger, only rejoicing
+that the fearful hours of night were done. The mountain lion had already
+sought its lair. The fawn didn't know that a worse terror still lingered
+at the mouth of the trail.</p>
+
+<p>But even as the Killer watched, the prize was simply taken out of his
+mouth. A gray wolf&mdash;a savage old male that also had just finished an
+unsuccessful hunt&mdash;had been stealing through the thickets in search of a
+lair, and he came out on the trail not fifty feet distant, halfway
+between the bear and the fawn. The one was almost as surprised as the
+other. The fawn turned with a frightened bleat and darted away; the wolf
+swung into pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>The bear lunged forward with a howl of rage. He leaped into the trail
+mouth, then ran as fast as he could in pursuit of the running wolf. He
+was too enraged to stop to think that a grizzly bear has never yet been
+able to overtake a wolf, once the trim legs got well into action. At
+first he couldn't think about anything; he had been cheated too many
+times. His first impulse was one of tremendous and overpowering
+wrath,&mdash;a fury that meant death to the first living creature that he
+met.</p>
+
+<p>But in a single second he realized that this wild chase was fairly good
+tactics, after all. The chances for a meal were still rather good. The
+fawn and the wolf were in the open now, and it was wholly evident that
+the gray hunter would overtake the quarry in another moment. It was true
+that the Killer would miss the pleasure of slaying his own game,&mdash;the
+ecstatic blow to the shoulder and the bite to the throat that followed
+it. In this case, the wolf would do that part of the work for him. It
+was just a simple matter of driving the creature away from his dead.</p>
+
+<p>The fawn reached the stream bank, then went bounding down the margin.
+The distance shortened between them. It was leaping wildly, already
+almost exhausted; the wolf raced easily, body close to the ground, in
+long, tireless strides. The grizzly bear sped behind him.</p>
+
+<p>But at that instant fate took a hand in this merry little chase. To the
+fawn, it was nothing but a sharp clang of metal behind him and an
+answering shriek of pain,&mdash;sounds that in its terror it heard but dimly.
+But it was an unlooked-for and tragic reality to the wolf. His leap was
+suddenly arrested in mid-air, and he was hurled to the ground with
+stunning force. Cruel metal teeth had seized his leg, and a strong chain
+held him when he tried to escape. He fought it with desperate savagery.
+The fawn leaped on to safety.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no need of the grizzly continuing its pursuit. Everything
+had turned out quite well for him, after all. A wolf is ever so much
+more filling than any kind of seasonal fawn; and the old gray pack
+leader was imprisoned and helpless in one of Hudson's traps.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In the first gray of morning, Dave Turner started back toward his home.
+"I'll go with you to the forks in the trail," Hudson told him. "I want
+to take a look at some of my traps, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Turner had completed his business none too soon. At the same hour&mdash;as
+soon as it was light enough to see&mdash;Bruce was finishing his breakfast in
+preparation for the last lap of his journey. He had passed the night by
+a spring on a long ridge, almost in eye range of Hudson's camp. Now he
+was preparing to dip down into the Killer's glen.</p>
+
+<p>Turner and Hudson followed up the little creek, walking almost in
+silence. It is a habit all mountain men fall into, sooner or later,&mdash;not
+to waste words. The great silences of the wild places seem to forbid it.
+Hudson walked ahead, Turner possibly a dozen feet behind him. And
+because of the carpet of pine needles, the forest creatures could hardly
+hear them come.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally they caught glimpses of the wild life that teemed about
+them, but they experienced none of the delight that had made the two-day
+tramp such a pleasure to Bruce. Hudson thought in terms of pelts only;
+no creature that did not wear a marketable hide was worth a glance.
+Turner did not feel even this interest.</p>
+
+<p>The first of Hudson's sets proved empty. The second was about a turn in
+the creek, and a wall of brush made it impossible for him to tell at a
+distance whether or not he had made a catch. But when still a quarter of
+a mile distant, Hudson heard a sound that he thought he recognized. It
+was a high, sharp, agonized bark that dimmed into a low whine. "I
+believe I've got a coyote or a wolf up there," he said. They hastened
+their steps.</p>
+
+<p>"And you use that little pea-gun for wolves?" Dave Turner asked. He
+pointed to the short-barreled, twenty-two caliber rifle that was slung
+on the trapper's back. "It doesn't look like it would kill a mosquito."</p>
+
+<p>"A killer gun," Hudson explained. "For polishin' 'em off when they are
+alive in the traps. Of course, it wouldn't be no good more'n ten feet
+away, and then you have to aim at a vital spot. But I've heard tell of
+animals I wouldn't want to meet with that thirty-thirty of yours."</p>
+
+<p>This was true enough. Dave had heard of them also. A thirty-thirty is a
+powerful weapon, but it isn't an elephant gun. They hurried on, Dave
+very anxious to watch the execution that would shortly ensue if whatever
+animal had cried from the trap was still alive. Such things were only
+the day's work to Hudson, but Dave felt a little tingle of anticipation.
+And the thought damned him beyond redemption.</p>
+
+<p>But instead of the joy of killing a cowering, terror-stricken animal,
+helpless in the trap, the wilderness had made other plans for Hudson and
+Dave. They hastened about the impenetrable wall of brush, and in one
+glance they knew that more urgent business awaited them.</p>
+
+<p>The whole picture loomed suddenly before their eyes. There was no wolf
+in the trap. The steel had sprung, certainly, but only a hideous
+fragment of a foot remained between the jaws. The bone had been broken
+sharply off, as a man might break a match in his fingers. There was no
+living wolf for Hudson to execute with his killer gun. Life had gone out
+of the gray body many minutes before. The two men saw all these things
+as a background only,&mdash;dim details about the central figure. But the
+thing that froze them in their tracks with terror was the great, gray
+form of the Killer, not twenty feet distant, beside the mangled body of
+the wolf.</p>
+
+<p>The events that followed thereafter came in such quick succession as to
+seem simultaneous. For one fraction of an instant all three figures
+stood motionless, the two men staring, the grizzly half-leaning over his
+prey, his head turned, his little red eyes full of hatred. Too many
+times this night he had missed his game. It was the same intrusion that
+had angered him before,&mdash;slight figures to break to pieces with one
+blow. Perhaps&mdash;for no man may trace fully the mental processes of
+animals&mdash;his fury fully transcended the fear that he must have
+instinctively felt; at least, he did not even attempt to flee. He
+uttered one hoarse, savage note, a sound in which all his hatred and his
+fury and his savage power were made manifest, whirled with incredible
+speed, and charged.</p>
+
+<p>The lunge seemed only a swift passing of gray light. No eye could
+believe that the vast form could move with such swiftness. There was
+little impression of an actual leap. Rather it was just a blow; the
+great form, huddled over the dead wolf, had simply reached the full
+distance to Hudson.</p>
+
+<p>The man did not even have time to turn. There was no defense; his
+killer-gun was strapped on his back, and even if it had been in his
+hands, its little bullet would not have mattered the sting of a bee in
+honey-robbing. The only possible chance of breaking that deadly charge
+lay in the thirty-thirty deer rifle in Dave's arms; but the craven who
+held it did not even fire. He was standing just below the outstretched
+limb of a tree, and the weapon fell from his hands as he swung up into
+the limb. The fact that Hudson stood weaponless, ten feet away in the
+clearing, did not deter him in the least.</p>
+
+<p>No human flesh could stand against that charge. The vast paw fell with
+resistless force; and no need arose for a second blow. The trapper's
+body was struck down as if felled by a meteor, and the power of the
+impact forced it deep into the carpet of pine needles. The savage
+creature turned, the white fangs caught the light in the open mouth. The
+head lunged toward the man's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>No man may say what agony Hudson would have endured in the last few
+seconds of his life if the Killer had been given time and opportunity.
+His usual way was to linger long, sharp fangs closing again and again,
+until all living likeness was destroyed. The blood-lust was upon him;
+there would have been no mercy to the dying creature in the pine
+needles. Yet it transpired that Hudson's flesh was not to know those
+rending fangs a second time. Although it is an unfamiliar thing in the
+wilderness, the end of Hudson's trail was peaceful, after all.</p>
+
+<p>On the hillside above, a stranger to this land had dropped to his knee
+in the shrubbery, his rifle lifted to the level of his eyes. It was
+Bruce, who had come in time to see the charge through a rift in the
+trees.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were deep significances in the fact that Bruce kept his head in
+this moment of crisis. It meant nothing less than an iron self-control
+such as only the strongest men possess, and it meant nerves steady as
+steel bars.</p>
+
+<p>The bear was on Hudson, and the man had gone down, before Bruce even
+interpreted him. Then it was just a gray patch, a full three hundred
+yards away. His instinct was to throw the gun to his shoulder and fire
+without aiming; yet he conquered it with an iron will. But he did move
+quickly. He dropped to his knee the single second that the gun leaped to
+his shoulder. He seemed to know that from a lower position the target
+would be more clearly revealed. The finger pressed back against the
+trigger.</p>
+
+<p>The distance was far; Bruce was not a practiced rifle shot, and it
+bordered on the miraculous that his lead went anywhere near the bear's
+body. And it was true that the bullet did not reach a vital place. It
+stung like a wasp at the Killer's flank, however, cutting a shallow
+flesh wound. But it was enough to take his dreadful attention from the
+mortally wounded trapper in the pine needles.</p>
+
+<p>He whirled about, growling furiously and biting at the wound. Then he
+stood still, turning his gaze first to the pale face of Dave Turner
+thirty feet above him in the pine. The eyes glowed in fury and hatred.
+He had found men out at last; they died even more easily than the fawn.
+He started to turn back to the fallen, and the rifle spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>It was a complete miss, this time; yet the bear leaped in fear when the
+bullet thwacked into the dust beside him. He did not wait for a third.
+His caution suddenly returning to him, and perhaps his anger somewhat
+satiated by the blow he had dealt Hudson, he crashed into the security
+of the thicket.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce waited a single instant, hoping for another glimpse of the
+creature; then ran down to aid Hudson. But in driving the bear from the
+trapper's helpless body he had already given all the aid that he could.
+Understanding came quickly. He had arrived only in time for the
+Departure,&mdash;just a glimpse of a light as it faded. The blow had been
+more than any human being could survive; even now Hudson was entering
+upon that strange calm which often, so mercifully, immediately precedes
+death.</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes and looked with some wonder into Bruce's face. The
+light in them was dimming, fading like a twilight, yet there was
+indication of neither confusion nor delirium. Hudson, in that last
+moment of his life, was quite himself.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, some indication of perplexity at the peculiar turn
+affairs had taken. "You're not Dave Turner," he said wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>Dim though the voice was, there was considerable emphasis in the tone.
+Hudson seemed quite sure of this point, whether or not he knew anything
+concerning the dark gates he was about to enter. He wouldn't have spoken
+greatly different if he had been sitting in perfect health before his
+own camp fire and the shadow was now already so deep his eyes could
+scarcely penetrate it.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Bruce answered. "Dave Turner is up a tree. He didn't even wait to
+shoot."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he wouldn't." Hudson spoke with assurance. The words dimmed
+at the end, and he half-closed his eyes as if he were too sleepy to stay
+awake longer. Then Bruce saw a strange thing. He saw, unmistakable as
+the sun in the sky, the signs of a curious struggle in the man's face.
+There was a singular deepening of the lines, a twitching of the muscles,
+a queer set to the lips and jaws. They were as much signs of battle as
+the sound of firing a general hears from far away.</p>
+
+<p>The trapper&mdash;a moment before sinking into the calm of death&mdash;was
+fighting desperately for a few moments of respite. There could be no
+other explanation. And he won it at last,&mdash;an interlude of half a dozen
+breaths. "Who are you?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce bowed his head until his ear was close to the lips. "Bruce
+Folger," he answered,&mdash;for the first time in his knowledge speaking his
+full name. "Son of Matthew Folger who lived at Trail's End long ago."</p>
+
+<p>The man still struggled. "I knew it," he said. "I saw it&mdash;in your face.
+I see&mdash;everything now. Listen&mdash;can you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I just did a wrong&mdash;there's a hundred dollars in my pocket that I just
+got for doing it. I made a promise&mdash;to lie to you. Take the money&mdash;it
+ought to be yours, anyway&mdash;and hers; and use it toward fighting the
+wrong. It will go a little way."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Bruce looked him full in the eyes. "No matter about the money.
+What did you promise Turner?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I'd lie to you. Grip my arms with your hands&mdash;till it hurts. I've
+only got one breath more. Your father held those lands only in
+trust&mdash;the Turners' deed is forged. And the secret agreement that I
+witnessed is hidden&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The breath seemed to go out of the man. Bruce shook him by the
+shoulders. Dave, still in the tree, strained to hear the rest.
+"Yes&mdash;where?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's hidden&mdash;just&mdash;out&mdash;" The words were no longer audible to Dave, and
+what followed Bruce also strained to hear in vain. The lips ceased
+moving. The shadow grew in the eyes, and the lids flickered down over
+them. A traveler had gone.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce got up, a strange, cold light in his eyes. He glanced up. Dave
+Turner was climbing slowly down the tree. Bruce made six strides and
+seized his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>The effect on Dave was ludicrous. He clung fast to the tree limbs, as if
+he thought a bullet&mdash;like a grizzly's claws&mdash;could not reach him there.
+Bruce laid the gun behind him, then stood waiting with his own weapon
+resting in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Come down, Dave," he commanded. "The bear is gone."</p>
+
+<p>Dave crept down the trunk and halted at its base. He studied the cold
+face before him. "Better not try nothing," he advised hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" Bruce asked. "Do you think I'm afraid of a coward?" The man
+started at the words; his head bobbed backward as if Bruce had struck
+him beneath the jaw with his fist.</p>
+
+<p>"People don't call the Turners cowards and walk off with it," the man
+told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the lowest coward!" Bruce said between set teeth. "The yellowest,
+mongrel coward! Your own confederate&mdash;and you had to drop your gun and
+run up a tree. You might have stopped the bear's charge."</p>
+
+<p>Dave's face twisted in a scowl. "You're brave enough now. Wait to see
+what happens later. Give me my gun. I'm going to go."</p>
+
+<p>"You can go, but you don't get your gun. I'll fill you full of lead if
+you try to touch it."</p>
+
+<p>Dave looked up with some care. He wanted to know for certain if this
+tenderfoot meant what he said. The man was blind in some things, his
+vision was twisted and dark, but he made no mistake about the look on
+the cold, set face before him. Bruce's finger was curled about the
+trigger, and it looked to Dave as if it itched to exert further
+pressure.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why I spare you, anyway," Bruce went on. His tone was
+self-reproachful. "God knows I hadn't ought to&mdash;remembering who and what
+you are. If you'd only give me one little bit of provocation&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Dave saw lurid lights growing in the man's eyes; and all at once a
+conclusion came to him. He decided he'd make no further effort to regain
+the gun. His life was rather precious to him, strangely, and it was
+wholly plain that a dread and terrible passion was slowly creeping over
+his enemy. He could see it in the darkening face, the tight grip of the
+hands on the rifle stock. His own sharp features grew more cunning. "You
+ought to be glad I didn't stop the bear with my rifle," he said
+hurriedly. "I had Hudson bribed&mdash;you wouldn't have found out something
+that you did find out if he hadn't lain here dying. You wouldn't have
+learned&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the sentence died in the middle. Bruce made answer to it. For once
+in his life Dave's cunning had not availed him; he had said the last
+thing in the world that he should have said, the one thing that was
+needed to cause an explosion. He hadn't known that some men have
+standards other than self gain. And some small measure of realization
+came to him when he felt the dust his full length under him.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce's answer had been a straight-out blow with his fist, with all his
+strength behind it, in the very center of his enemy's face.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In his years of residence at Trail's End, Dave Turner had acquired a
+thorough knowledge of all its paths. That knowledge stood him in good
+stead now. He wished to cross the ridges to Simon's house at least an
+hour before Bruce could return to Linda.</p>
+
+<p>He traveled hard and late, and he reached Simon's door just before
+sundown of the second day. Bruce was still a full two hours distant. But
+Dave did not stay to knock. It was chore-time, and he thought he would
+find Simon in his barn, supervising the feeding and care of the
+livestock. He had guessed right, and the two men had a moment's talk in
+the dusky passage behind the stalls.</p>
+
+<p>"I've brought news," Dave said.</p>
+
+<p>Simon made no answer at first. The saddle pony in the stall immediately
+in front of them, frightened at Dave's unfamiliar figure, had crowded,
+trembling, against his manger. Simon's red eyes watched him; then he
+uttered a short oath. He took two strides into the stall and seized the
+halter rope in his huge, muscular hand. Three times he jerked it with a
+peculiar, quartering pull, a curbing that might have been ineffective by
+a man of ordinary strength, but with the incomprehensible might of the
+great forearm behind it was really terrible punishment. Dave thought for
+a moment his brother would break the animal's neck; the whites began to
+show about the soft, dark pupils of its eyes. The strap over the head
+broke with the fourth pull; then the horse recoiled, plunging and
+terrified, into the opposite corner of the stall.</p>
+
+<p>Simon leaped with shattering power at the creature's shoulders, his huge
+arms encircled its neck, his shoulders heaved, and he half-threw it to
+the floor. Then, as it staggered to rise, his heavy fist flailed against
+its neck. Again and again he struck, and in the half-darkness of the
+stable it was a dreadful thing to behold. The man's fury, always quickly
+aroused, was upon him; his brawny form moved with the agility of a
+panther. Even Dave, whose shallow eyes were usually wont to feast on
+cruelty, viewed the scene with some alarm. It wasn't that he was moved
+by the agony of the horse. But he did remember that horses cost money,
+and Simon seemed determined to kill the animal before his passion was
+spent.</p>
+
+<p>The horse cowered, and in a moment more it was hard to remember he was a
+member of a noble, high-spirited breed,&mdash;a swift runner, brainy as a
+dog, a servant faithful and worthy. It was no longer easy to think of
+him as a creature of beauty,&mdash;and there is no other word than beauty for
+these long-maned, long-tailed, trim-lined animals. He stood quiet at
+last, his head hanging low, knees bent, eyes curiously sorrowful and
+dark. Simon fastened the broken strap about his neck, gave it one more
+jerk that almost knocked the animal off his feet, then turned back to
+Dave. Except for a higher color in his cheeks, darker lights in his
+eyes, and an almost imperceptible quickening of his breathing, it did
+not seem as if he had moved.</p>
+
+<p>"You're always bringing news," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Dave opened his eyes. He had forgotten his own words in the tumult of
+the fight he had just watched, but plainly Simon hadn't forgotten. He
+opened his mouth to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is it? Out with it," his brother urged. "If it's as
+important as some of the other news you've brought don't take my time."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," the other replied sullenly. "You don't have to hear it. But
+I'm telling you it's of real importance this time&mdash;and sometime you'll
+find out." He scowled into the dark face. "But suit yourself."</p>
+
+<p>He turned as if to go. He rather thought that Simon would call him back.
+It would be, in a measure, a victory. But Simon went back to his
+inspection of the stalls.</p>
+
+<p>Dave walked clear to the door, then turned. "Don't be a fool, Simon," he
+urged. "Listen to what I have to tell you. Bruce Folger knows where that
+secret agreement is."</p>
+
+<p>For once in his life Dave got a response of sufficient emphasis to
+satisfy him. His brother whirled, his whole expression undergoing an
+immediate and startling change. If there was one emotion that Dave had
+never seen on Simon's face it was fear,&mdash;and he didn't know for certain
+that he saw it now. But there was alarm&mdash;unmistakable&mdash;and surprise
+too.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Dave exulted inwardly. His brother's response had almost made up for the
+evil news that he brought. For Dave's fortunes, as well as Simon's,
+depended on the vast fertile tract being kept in the clan's possession.
+His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. For the first time in his life, as
+far as Dave could remember, Simon had encountered a situation that he
+had not immediately mastered. Perhaps it was the beginning of Simon's
+downfall, which meant&mdash;by no great stretch of the imagination&mdash;the
+advancement of Dave. But in another second of clear thinking Dave knew
+that in his brother's strength lay his own; if this mighty force at the
+head of the clan was weakening, no hope remained for any of them. His
+own face grew anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"Out with it," Simon stormed. His tone was really urgent now, not
+insolent as usual. "Good Lord, man, don't you know that if Bruce gets
+that down to the settlements before the thirtieth of next month we're
+lost&mdash;and nothing in this world can save us? We can't drive <i>him</i> off,
+like we drove the Rosses. There's too much law down in the valleys. If
+he's got that paper, there's only one thing to do. Help me saddle a
+horse."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute. I didn't say he had it. I only said he knew where it
+was. He's still an hour or two walk from here, toward Little River, and
+if we have to wait for him on the trail, we've got plenty of time. And
+of course I ain't quite sure he <i>does</i> know where it is."</p>
+
+<p>Simon smiled mirthlessly. "The news is beginning to sound like the rest
+of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Old Hudson is dead," Dave went on. "And don't look at me&mdash;I didn't do
+it. I wish I had, though, first off. For once my judgment was better
+than yours. The Killer got him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I was with him when it happened. My gun got jammed so I couldn't
+shoot."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it now?"</p>
+
+<p>Dave scrambled in vain for a story to explain the loss of his weapon to
+Bruce, and the one that came out at last didn't do him particular
+credit. "I&mdash;I threw the damn thing away. Wish I hadn't now, but it made
+me so mad by jamming&mdash;it was a fool trick. Maybe I can go back after it
+and find it."</p>
+
+<p>Simon smiled again. "Very good so far," he commented.</p>
+
+<p>Dave flushed. "Bruce was there too&mdash;fact is, creased the bear&mdash;and the
+last minute before he died Hudson told him where the agreement was
+hidden. I couldn't hear all he said&mdash;I was too far away&mdash;but I heard
+enough to think that he told Bruce the hiding, place. It was natural
+Hudson would know it, and we were fools for not asking him about it long
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"And why didn't you get that information away from Bruce with your gun?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I tell you the thing was jammed? If it hadn't of been for that,
+I'd done something more than find out where it is. I'd stopped this
+nonsense once and for all, and let a hole through that tenderfoot big
+enough to see through. <i>Then</i> there'd never be any more trouble. It's
+the thing to do now."</p>
+
+<p>Simon looked at his brother's face with some wonder. More crafty and
+cunning, Dave was like the coyote in that he didn't yield so quickly to
+fury as that gray wolf, his brother. But when it did come, it seared
+him. It had come now. Simon couldn't mistake the fact; he saw it plain
+in the glowing eyes, the clenched hands, the drawn lips. Dave was
+remembering the pain of the blow Bruce had given him, and the smart of
+the words that had preceded it.</p>
+
+<p>"You and he must have had a little session down there by the creek,"
+Simon suggested slowly, "when your gun was jammed. Of course, he took
+the gun. What's the use of trying to lie to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did. What could I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"And now you want him potted&mdash;from ambush."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use of waiting? Who'd know?" The two men stood face to face
+in the quiet and deepening dusk of the barn; and there was growing
+determination on each face. "Every day our chance is less and less,"
+Dave went on. "We've been thinking we're safe, but if he knows where
+that agreement is, we're not safe at all. How would you like to get
+booted off these three thousand acres now, just after we've all got
+attached to them? To start making our living as day laborers&mdash;and maybe
+face a hangin' for some things of long ago? With this land behind him,
+he'd be in a position to pay old debts, I'm telling you. We're not
+secure, and you know it. The law doesn't forget, and it doesn't forgive.
+We've been fooling away our time ever since we knew he was coming. We
+should have met him on the trail and let the buzzards talk to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Simon echoed in a strange half-whisper. "Let the buzzards talk to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>Dave took fresh heart at the sound of that voice. "No one would have
+ever knowed it," he went on. "No one would ever know it now. They'd find
+his bones, some time maybe, but there'd be no one to point to. They'd
+never get any thing against us. Everybody except the mountain people
+have forgotten about this affair. Those in the mountains are too
+scattered and few to take any part in it. I tell you&mdash;it's all the way,
+or no way at all. Tell me to wait for him on the trail."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait. Wait a minute. How long before he will come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any time now. And don't postpone this matter any more. We're men, not
+babies. He's not a fool or not a coward, either. He's got his old man's
+blood in him&mdash;not his mother's to run away. As long as he ain't croaked,
+all we've done so far is apt to come to nothing. And there's one thing
+more. He's going to take the blood-feud up again."</p>
+
+<p>"Lots of good it would do him. One against a dozen."</p>
+
+<p>"But he's a shot&mdash;I saw that plain enough&mdash;and how'd you like to have
+him shoot through <i>your</i> windows some time? Old Elmira and Linda have
+set him on, and he's hot for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd got that old heifer when you got her son," Simon said. He
+still spoke calmly; but it was plain enough that Dave's words were
+having the desired effect. Dave could discern this fact by certain
+lights and expressions about the pupils of his brother's eyes, signs
+learned and remembered long ago. "So he's taken up the blood-feud, has
+he? I thought I gave his father some lessons in that a long time since.
+Well, I suppose we must let him have his way!"</p>
+
+<p>"And remember too," Dave urged, "what you told him when you met him in
+the store. You said you wouldn't warn him twice."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember." The two men were silent, but Dave stood no longer
+motionless. The motions that he made, however, were not discernible in
+the growing gloom of the barn. He was shivering all over with malice and
+fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you've given the word?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I've given the word, but I'll do it my own way. Listen, Dave." Simon
+stood, head bent, deep in thought. "Could you arrange to have Linda and
+the old hag out of the house when Bruce gets back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We've got to work this thing right. We can't operate in the open like
+we used to. This man has taken up the blood-feud&mdash;but the thing to
+do&mdash;is to let him come to us."</p>
+
+<p>"But he won't do it. He'll go to the courts first."</p>
+
+<p>Simon's face grew stern. "I don't want any more interruptions, Dave. I
+mean we will want to give the impression that he attacked us first&mdash;on
+his own free will. What if he comes into our house-a man unknown in
+these parts&mdash;and something happens to him there&mdash;in the dead of night?
+It wouldn't look so bad then, would it? Besides&mdash;if we got him
+here&mdash;before the clan, we might be able to find out where that document
+is. At least we'll have him here where everything will be in our favor.
+First, how can you tell when he's going to come?"</p>
+
+<p>"He ought to be here very soon. The moon's bright and I can get up on
+the ridge and see his shadow through your field glasses when he crosses
+the big south pasture. That will give me a full half-hour before he
+comes."</p>
+
+<p>"It's enough. I'm ready to give you your orders now. They are&mdash;just to
+use your head, and on some pretext get those two women out of the house
+so that Bruce can't find them when he returns. Don't let them come back
+for an hour, if you can help it. If it works&mdash;all right. If it doesn't,
+we'll use more direct measures. I'll tend to the rest."</p>
+
+<p>He strode to the wall and took down a saddle from the hook. Quickly he
+threw it over the back of one of the cow ponies, the animal that he had
+punished. He put the bridle in Dave's hand. "Stop at the house for the
+glasses, then ride to the ridge at once," he ordered. "Then keep
+watch."</p>
+
+<p>Without words Dave led the horse through the door and swung on to its
+back. In an instant the wild folk, in the fringe of forest beyond,
+paused in their night occupations to listen to the sound of hoof beats
+on the turf. Then Simon slowly saddled his own horse.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>The day was quite dead when Dave Turner reached his post on top of the
+ridge. The gray of twilight had passed, the forest was lost in darkness,
+the stars were all out. The only vestige of daylight that remained was a
+pale, red glow over the Western mountains,&mdash;and this was more like red
+flowers that had been placed on its grave in remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, the moon rose early. Otherwise Dave's watch would have been
+in vain. The soft light wrought strange miracles in the forest: bathing
+the tree tops in silver, laying wonderful cobweb tapestries between the
+trunks, upsetting the whole perspective as to distance and contour. Dave
+didn't have long to wait. At the end of a half-hour he saw, through the
+field glasses, the wavering of a strange black shadow on the distant
+meadow. Only the vivid quality of the full moon enabled him to see it at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to get a better focus. It might be just the shadow of deer,
+come to browse on the parched grass. Dave felt a little tremor of
+excitement at the thought that if it were not Bruce, it was more likely
+the last of the grizzlies, the Killer. The previous night the gray
+forest king had made an excursion into Simon's pastures and had killed a
+yearling calf; in all probability he would return to-night to finish his
+feast. In fact, this night would in all probability see the end of the
+Killer. Some one of the Turners would wait for him, with a loaded rifle,
+in a safe ambush.</p>
+
+<p>But it wasn't the Killer, after all. It was before his time; besides,
+the shadow was too slender to be that of the huge bear. Dave Turner
+watched a moment longer, so that there could be no possibility of a
+mistake. Bruce was returning; he was little more than a half-hour's walk
+from Linda's home.</p>
+
+<p>Turner swung on his horse, then lashed the animal into a gallop. Less
+than five minutes later he drew up to a halt beneath the Sentinel Pine,
+almost a mile distant. For the first time, Dave began to move
+cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>It would complicate matters if the two women had already gone to bed.
+The hour was early&mdash;not yet nine&mdash;but the fall of darkness is often the
+going-to-bed time of the mountain people. It is warmer there and safer;
+and the expense of candles is lessened. Incidentally, it is the natural
+course for the human breed,&mdash;to bed at nightfall and up at dawn; and
+only distortion of nature can change the habit. It is doubtful if even
+the earliest men&mdash;those curious, long-armed, stiff-thumbed, heavy-jowled
+forefathers far remote&mdash;were ever night hunters. Like the hawks and most
+of the other birds of prey they were content to leave the game trails to
+the beasts at night. As life in the mountains gets down to a primitive
+basis, most of the hill people soon fall into this natural course. But
+to-night Linda and old Elmira were sitting up, waiting for Bruce's
+return.</p>
+
+<p>A candle flame flickered at the window. Dave went up to the door and
+knocked.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" Elmira called. It was a habit learned in the dreadful
+days of twenty years ago, not to open a door without at least some
+knowledge of who stood without. A lighted doorway sets off a target
+almost as well as a field of white sets off a black bull's-eye.</p>
+
+<p>Dave knew that truth was the proper course. "Dave Turner," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>A long second of heavy, strange silence ensued. Then the woman spoke
+again. There was a new note in her voice, a curious hoarseness, but at
+the same time a sense of exultation and excitement. But Dave didn't
+notice it. Perhaps the oaken door that the voice came through stripped
+away all the overtones; possibly his own perceptions were too blunt to
+receive it. He might, however, have been interested in the singular look
+of wonder that flashed over Linda's face as she stared at her aged aunt.
+Linda was not thinking of Dave. She had forgotten that he stood outside.
+His visit was the last thing that either of them expected&mdash;except,
+perhaps, on some such deadly business as the clan had come years
+before&mdash;yet she found no space in her thought for him. Her whole
+attention was seized and held by the unfamiliar note in her aunt's
+voice, and a strange drawing of the woman's features that the closed
+door prevented Dave from seeing. It was a look almost of rapture, hardly
+to be expected in the presence of an enemy. The dim eyes seemed to glow
+in the shadows. It was the look of one who had wandered steep and
+unknown trails for uncounted years and sees the distant lights of his
+home at last.</p>
+
+<p>She got up from her chair and moved over to the little pack she had
+carried on her back when she had walked up from her cabin. Linda still
+gazed at her in growing wonder. The long years seemed to have fallen
+away from her; she slipped across the uncarpeted floor with the agility
+and silence of a tiger. She always had given the impression of latent
+power, but never so much as now. She took some little object from the
+bag and slipped it next to her withered and scrawny breast.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" she called out into the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>Dave had been getting a little restless in the silence; but the voice
+reassured him. "I'll tell you when you open the door. It's something
+about Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>Linda remembered him then. She leaped to the door and flung it wide. She
+saw the stars without, the dark fringe of pines against the sky line
+behind. She felt the wind and the cool breath of the darkness. But most
+of all she saw the cunning, sharp-featured face of Dave Turner, with the
+candlelight upon him. The yellow beams were in his eyes too. They seemed
+full of guttering lights.</p>
+
+<p>The few times that Linda had talked to Dave she had always felt uneasy
+beneath his speculative gaze. The same sensation swept over her now. She
+knew perfectly what she would have had to expect, long since, from this
+man, were it not that he had lived in fear of his brother Simon. The
+mighty leader of the clan had set a barrier around her as far as
+personal attentions went,&mdash;and his reasons were obvious. The mountain
+girls do not usually attain her perfection of form and face; his desire
+for her was as jealous as it was intense and real. This dark-hearted man
+of great and terrible emotions did not only know how to hate. In his own
+savage way he could love too. Linda hated and feared him, but the
+emotion was wholly different from the dread and abhorrence with which
+she regarded Dave. "What about Bruce?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Dave leered. "Do you want to see him? He's lying&mdash;up here on the hill."</p>
+
+<p>The tone was knowing, edged with cruelty; and it had the desired effect.
+The color swept from the girl's face. In a single fraction of an instant
+it showed stark white in the candlelight.</p>
+
+<p>There was an instant's sensation of terrible cold. But her voice was
+hard and lifeless when she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you've killed him?" she asked simply.</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't killed him. We've just been teaching him a lesson," Dave
+explained. "Simon warned him not to come up&mdash;and we've had to talk to
+him a little&mdash;with fists and heels."</p>
+
+<p>Linda cried out then, one agonized syllable. She knew what fists and
+heels could do in the fights between the mountain men. They are as much
+weapons of torture as the claws and fangs of the Killer. She had an
+instant's dread picture of this strong man of hers lying maimed and
+broken, a battered, whimpering, ineffective thing in the moonlight of
+some distant hillside. The vision brought knowledge to her. Even more
+clearly than in the second of their kiss, before he had gone to see
+Hudson, she realized what an immutable part of her he was. She gazed
+with growing horror at Dave's leering face. "Where is he?" she asked.
+She remembered, with singular steadfastness, the pistol she had
+concealed in her own room.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show you. If you want to get him in you'd better bring the old hag
+with you. It'll take two of you to carry him."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come," the old woman said from across the shadowed room. She spoke
+with a curious breathlessness. "I'll go at once."</p>
+
+<p>The door closed behind the three of them, and they went out into the
+moonlit forest. Dave walked first. There was an unlooked-for eagerness
+in his motions, but Linda thought that she understood it. It was wholly
+characteristic of him that he should find a degenerate rapture in
+showing these two women the terrible handiwork of the Turners. He
+rejoiced in just this sort of cruelty. She had no suspicion that this
+excursion was only a pretext to get the two women away from the house,
+and that his eagerness arose from deeper causes. It was true that Dave
+exulted in the work, and strangely the fact that it was part of the plot
+against Bruce had been almost forgotten in the face of a greater
+emotion. He was alone in the darkness with Linda&mdash;except of course for a
+helpless old woman&mdash;and the command of Simon in regard to his attitude
+toward her seemed suddenly dim and far away. He led them over a hill,
+into the deeper forest.</p>
+
+<p>He walked swiftly, eagerly; the two women could hardly keep pace with
+him. He left the dim trail and skirted about the thickets. No cry for
+help could carry from this lonely place. No watchman on a hill could see
+what transpired in the heavy coverts.</p>
+
+<p>So intent was he that he quite failed to observe a singular little
+signal between old Elmira and Linda. The woman half turned about, giving
+the girl an instant's glimpse of something that she transferred from her
+breast to her sleeve. It was slender and of steel, and it caught the
+moonlight on its shining surface.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's eyes glittered when she beheld it. She nodded, scarcely
+perceptibly, and the strange file plunged deeper into the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen minutes later Dave drew up to a halt in a little patch of
+moonlight, surrounded by a wall of low trees and brush.</p>
+
+<p>"There's more than one way to make a date for a walk with a pretty
+girl," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared coldly into his eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The man laughed harshly. "I mean that Bruce ain't got back yet&mdash;he's
+still on the other side of Little River, for all I know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then why did you bring us here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just to be sociable," Dave returned. "I'll tell you, Linda. I wanted to
+talk to you. I ain't been in favor of a lot of things Simon's been
+doing&mdash;to you and your people. I thought maybe you and I would like to
+be&mdash;friends."</p>
+
+<p>No one could mistake the emotion behind the strained tone, the peculiar
+languor in the furtive eyes. The girl drew back, shuddering. "I'm going
+back," she told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait. I'll take you back soon. Let's have a kiss and make friends. The
+old lady won't look&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again, a hoarse sound that rang far through the silences. He
+moved toward her, hands reaching. She backed away. Then she half-tripped
+over an outstretched root.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant she was in his arms, struggling against their steel.
+She didn't waste words in pleading. A sob caught at her throat, and she
+fought with all her strength against the drawn, nearing face. She had
+forgotten Elmira; in this dreadful moment of terror and danger the old
+woman's broken strength seemed too little to be of aid. And Dave thought
+her as helpless to oppose him as the tall pines that watched from above
+them.</p>
+
+<p>His wild laughter obscured the single sound that she made, a strange cry
+that seemed lacking in all human quality. Rather it was such a sound as
+a puma utters as it leaps upon its prey. It was the articulation of a
+whole life of hatred that had come to a crisis at last,&mdash;of deadly and
+terrible triumph after a whole decade of waiting. If Dave had discerned
+that cry in time he would have hurled Linda from his arms to leap into a
+position of defense. The desire for women in men goes down to the roots
+of the world, but self-preservation is a deeper instinct still.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn't hear it in time. Elmira had not struck with her knife. The
+distance was too far for that. But she swung her cane with all her
+force. The blow caught the man at the temple, his arms fell away from
+the girl's body, he staggered grotesquely in the carpet of pine needles.
+Then he fell face downward.</p>
+
+<p>"His belt, quick!" the woman cried. No longer was her voice that of
+decrepit age. The girl struggled with herself, wrenched back her
+self-control, and leaped to obey her aunt. They snatched the man's belt
+from about his waist, and the women locked it swiftly about his ankles.
+With strong, hard hands they drew his wrists back of him and tied them
+tight with the long bandana handkerchief he wore about his neck. They
+worked almost in silence, with incredible rapidity and deftness.</p>
+
+<p>The man was waking now, stirring in his unconsciousness, and swiftly the
+old woman cut the buckskin thongs from his tall logging boots. These
+also she twisted about the wrists, knotting them again and again, and
+pulling them so tight they were almost buried in the lean flesh. Then
+they turned him face upward to the moon.</p>
+
+<p>The two women stood an instant, breathing hard. "What now?" Linda asked.
+And a shiver of awe went over her at the sight of the woman's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more, Linda," she answered, in a distant voice. "Leave Dave
+Turner to me."</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange picture. Womanhood&mdash;the softness and tenderness which
+men have learned to associate with the name&mdash;seemed fallen away from
+Linda and Elmira. They were only avengers,&mdash;like the she-bear that
+fights for her cubs or the she-wolf that guards the lair. There was no
+more mercy in them than in the females of the lower species. The moon
+flooded the place with silver, the pines were dark and impassive as ever
+above them.</p>
+
+<p>Dave wakened. They saw him stir. They watched him try to draw his arms
+from behind him. It was just a faint, little-understanding pull at
+first. Then he wrenched and tugged with all his strength, flopping
+strangely in the dirt. The effort increased until it was some way
+suggestive of an animal in the death struggle,&mdash;a fur bearer dying in
+the trap.</p>
+
+<p>Terror was upon him. It was in his wild eyes and his moonlit face; it
+was in the desperation and frenzy of his struggles. And the two women
+saw it and smiled into each other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly his efforts ceased. He lay still in the pine needles. He turned
+his head, first toward Linda, then to the inscrutable, dark face of the
+old woman. As understanding came to him, the cold drops emerged upon his
+swarthy skin.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" he asked. "What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going back," Linda answered. "You had some other purpose in
+bringing me out here&mdash;or you wouldn't have brought Elmira, too. I'm
+going back to wait for Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>"And you and I will linger here," Elmira told him. "We have many things
+to say to each other. We have many things to do. About my Abner&mdash;there
+are many things you'll want to hear of him."</p>
+
+<p>The last vestige of the man's spirit broke beneath the words. Abner had
+been old Elmira's son,&mdash;a youth who had laughed often, and the one hope
+of the old woman's declining years. And he had fallen before Dave's
+ambush in a half-forgotten fight of long years before.</p>
+
+<p>The man shivered in his bonds. Linda turned to go. The silence of the
+wilderness deepened about them. "Oh, Linda, Linda," the man called.
+"Don't leave me. Don't leave me here with her!" he pleaded.
+"Please&mdash;please don't leave me in this devil's power. Make her let me
+go."</p>
+
+<p>But Linda didn't seem to hear. The brush crackled and rustled; and the
+two&mdash;this dark-hearted man and the avenger&mdash;were left together.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>The homeward journey over the ridges had meant only pleasure to Bruce.
+Every hour of it had brought a deeper and more intimate knowledge of the
+wilderness. The days had been full of little, nerve-tingling adventures,
+and the nights full of peace. And beyond all these, there was the hope
+of seeing Linda again at the end of the trail.</p>
+
+<p>Thoughts of her hardly ever left him throughout the long tramp. She had
+more than fulfilled every expectation. It was true that he had found no
+one of his own kin, as he had hoped; but the fact opened up new
+possibilities that would have been otherwise forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>It was strange how he remembered her kiss. He had known other kisses in
+his days&mdash;being a purely rational and healthy young man&mdash;but there had
+been nothing of immortality about them. Their warmth had died quickly,
+and they had been forgotten. They were just delights of moonlight nights
+and nothing more. But he would wake up from his dreams at night to feel
+Linda's kiss still upon his lips. To recall it brought a strange
+tenderness,&mdash;a softening of all the hard outlines of his picture of
+life. It changed his viewpoint; it brought him a knowledge of a joy and
+a gentleness that could exist even in this stern world of wilderness and
+pines. With her face lingering before his eyes, the ridges themselves
+seemed less stern and forbidding; there were softer messages in the
+wind's breath; the drama of the wild that went on about him seemed less
+remorseless and cruel.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered the touch of her hands. They had been so cool, so gentle.
+He remembered the changing lights in her dark eyes. Life had opened up
+new vistas to him. Instead of a stern battleground, he began to realize
+that it had a softer, gentler, kinder side,&mdash;a place where there could
+be love as well as hatred, peace as well as battle, cheery homes and
+firesides and pleasant ways and laughter instead of cold ways and lonely
+trails and empty hearts and grim thoughts. Perhaps, if all went well,
+tranquillity might come to him after all. Perhaps he might even know the
+tranquil spirit of the pines.</p>
+
+<p>These were mating days. It was true that the rutting season had not, in
+reality, commenced. The wolf pack had not yet gathered, and would not
+until after the heavy frosts. But the bucks had begun to rub the velvet
+from their horns so that they would be hard and sharp for the fights to
+come. And these would be savage battles&mdash;with death at the end of many
+of them. But perhaps the joys that would follow&mdash;the roving, mating days
+with the does&mdash;would more than make up for their pain. The trim females
+were seen less often with their fawns; and they seemed strangely
+restless and tremulous, perhaps wondering what fortune the fall would
+have for them in the way of a mate.</p>
+
+<p>The thought gave Bruce pleasure. He could picture the deer herd in the
+fall,&mdash;the proud buck in the lead, ready to fight all contenders, his
+harem of does, and what fawns and young bucks he permitted to follow
+him. They would make stealing journeys down to the foothills to avoid
+the snow, and all manner of pleasures would be theirs in the gentler
+temperatures of the lowlands. They would know crisp dawns and breathless
+nights, long runnings into the valleys, and to the does the realization
+of motherhood when the spring broke.</p>
+
+<p>But aside from his contemplations of Linda, the long tramp had many
+delights for him. He rejoiced in every manifestation of the wild life
+about him, whether it was a bushy-tailed old gray squirrel, watching him
+from a tree limb, a magpie trying its best to insult him, or the
+fleeting glimpse of a deer in the coverts. Once he saw the black form of
+Ashur the bear, mumbling and grunting as he searched under rotten logs
+for grubs. But he didn't see the Killer again. He didn't particularly
+care to do so.</p>
+
+<p>He kept his rifle ready during the day for game, but he shot only what
+he needed. He did not attempt to kill the deer. He knew that he would
+have no opportunity to care for the meat. But he did, occasionally,
+shoot the head off a cock-grouse at close range, and no chef of Paris
+could offer a more tempting dish than its flesh, rolled in flour and
+served up, fried brown, in bacon grease. It was mostly white meat,
+exceedingly tender, yet with the zest of wild game. But he dined on
+bacon exclusively one night because, after many misses at grouse, he
+declined to take the life of a gray squirrel that had perched in an oak
+tree above the trail. Someway, it seemed to be getting too much pleasure
+out of life for him to blast it with a rifle shot. A squirrel has only a
+few ounces of flesh, and the woods without them would be dull and inane
+indeed. Besides, they were bright-eyed, companionable people&mdash;dwellers
+of the wilderness even as Bruce&mdash;and their personality had already
+endeared itself to him.</p>
+
+<p>Once he startled a fawn almost out of its wits when he came upon it
+suddenly in a bend in the trail, and he shouted with delight as it
+bounded awkwardly away. Once a porcupine rattled its quills at him and
+tried to seem very ferocious. But it was all the most palpable of
+bluffs, for Urson, while particularly adept at defense, has no powers of
+offense whatever. He cannot move quickly. He can't shoot his spines, as
+the story-books say. He can only sit on the ground and erect them into a
+sort of suit of armor to repel attack. But Bruce knew enough not to
+attempt to stroke the creature. If he had done so, he would have spent
+the remainder of the season pulling out spines from the soft flesh of
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Urson was a patient, stupid, guileless creature, and he and Bruce had a
+strange communion together as they stood face to face on the trail.
+"You've got the right idea," Bruce told him. "To erect a wall around you
+and let 'em yell outside without giving them a thought. To stand firm,
+not to take part. You're a true son of the pines, Urson. Now let me
+past."</p>
+
+<p>But the idea was furthest from Urson's mind. He sat firm on the trail,
+hunched into a spiny ball. Instead of killing him with his rifle butt,
+as Dave would have done, Bruce laughed good-naturedly and went around
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Both days of the journey home he wakened sharply at dawn. The cool,
+morning hours were the best for travel. He would follow down the narrow,
+brown trail,&mdash;now through a heavy covert that rustled as the wild
+creatures sped from his path, now up a long ridge, now down into a
+still, dark glen, and sometimes into a strange, bleak place where the
+forest fire had swept. Every foot was a delight to him.</p>
+
+<p>He was of naturally strong physique, and although the days fatigued him
+unmercifully, he always wakened refreshed in the dawn. At noon he would
+stop to lunch, eating a few pieces of jerkey and frying a single
+flapjack in his skillet. He learned how to effect it quickly, first
+letting his fire burn down to coals. And usually, during the noon rest,
+he would practice with his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that if he were to fight the Turners, skill with a rifle was an
+absolute necessity; such skill as would have felled the grizzly with one
+shot instead of administering merely a flesh wound, accuracy to take off
+the head of a grouse at fifty yards; and at the same time, an ability to
+swing and aim the weapon in the shortest possible space of time. The
+only thing that retarded him was the realization that he must not waste
+too many cartridges. Elmira had brought him only a small supply.</p>
+
+<p>He would walk all afternoon&mdash;going somewhat easier and resting more
+often than in the morning; and these were the times that he appreciated
+a fragment of jerked venison. He would halt just before nightfall and
+make his camp.</p>
+
+<p>The first work was usually to strip a young fir tree of its young,
+slender branches. These, according to Linda's instructions, were laid on
+the ground, their stalks overlapping, and in a remarkably few minutes he
+could construct a bed as comfortable as a hair mattress. It was true
+that the work always came at an hour when most of all he wanted food and
+rest, but he knew that a restless night means quick fatigue the next
+day. Then he would clean his game and build his fire and cook his
+evening meal. Simple food had never tasted so good to him before. Bacon
+grease was his only flavor, but it had a zest that all the sauces and
+dressings of France could not approach. The jerkey was crisp and nutty;
+his flapjacks went directly to the spot where he desired them to go.</p>
+
+<p>But the best hour of all was after his meal, as he sat in the growing
+shadows with his pipe. It was always an hour of calm. The little,
+breathless noises of the wild people in the thickets; the gophers, to
+whose half blind eyes&mdash;used to the darkness of their underground
+passages&mdash;the firelight was almost blinding; the chipmunks, and even the
+larger creatures came clearest to him then and told him more. But they
+didn't frighten him. Ordinarily, he knew, the forest creatures of the
+Southern Oregon mountains mean and do no harm to lonely campers.
+Nevertheless, he kept fairly accurate track of his rifle. He had enough
+memory of the charge of the Killer to wish to do that. And he thought
+with some pleasure that he had a reserve arsenal,&mdash;Dave's thirty-thirty
+with five shells in its magazine.</p>
+
+<p>At this hour he felt the spirit of the pines as never before. He knew
+their great, brooding sorrow, their infinite wisdom, their inexpressible
+aloofness with which they kept watch over the wilderness. The smoke
+would drift about him in soothing clouds; the glow of the coals was red
+and warm over him. He could think then. Life revealed some of its lesser
+mysteries to him. And he began to glimpse the distant gleam of even
+greater truths, and sometimes it seemed to him that he could almost
+catch and hold them. Always it was some message that the pines were
+trying to tell him,&mdash;partly in words they made when their limbs rubbed
+together, partly in the nature of a great allegory of which their dark,
+impassive forms were the symbols. If he could only see clearly! But it
+seemed to him that passion blinded his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"They talk only to the stars," Linda had said once of the pines. But he
+had no illusions about this talk of theirs. It was greater, more fraught
+with wisdom, than anything men might say together below them. He could
+imagine them telling high secrets that he himself could discern but
+dimly and could hardly understand. More and more he realized that the
+pines, like the stars, were living symbols of great powers who lived
+above the world, powers that would speak to men if they would but listen
+long and patiently enough, and in whose creed lay happiness.</p>
+
+<p>When the pipe was out he would go to his fragrant bed. The night hours
+would pass in a breath. And he would rise and go on in the crisp dawns.</p>
+
+<p>The last afternoon he traveled hard. He wanted to reach Linda's house
+before nightfall. But the trail was too long for that. The twilight
+fell, to find him still a weary two miles distant. And the way was quite
+dark when he plunged into the south pasture of the Ross estates.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later he was beneath the Sentinel Pine. He wondered why
+Linda was not waiting beneath it; in his fancy, he thought of it as
+being the ordained place for her. But perhaps she had merely failed to
+hear his footsteps. He called into the open door.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda," he said. "I've come back."</p>
+
+<p>No answer reached him. The words rang through the silent rooms and
+echoed back to him. He walked over the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>A chair in the front room was turned over. His heart leaped at the sight
+of it. "Linda," he called in alarm, "where are you? It's Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>He stood an instant listening, a great fear creeping over him. He called
+once more, first to Linda and then to the old woman. Then he leaped
+through the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen was similarly deserted. From there he went to Linda's room.
+Her coat and hat lay on the bed, but there was no Linda to stretch her
+arms to him. He started to go out the way he had come, but went instead
+to his own room. A sheet of note-paper lay on the bed.</p>
+
+<p>It had been scrawled hurriedly; but although he had never received a
+written word from Linda he did not doubt but that it was her hand:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The Turners are coming&mdash;I caught a glimpse of them on the
+ridge. There is no use of my trying to resist, so I'll wait for
+them in the front room and maybe they won't find this note.
+They will take me to Simon's house, and I know from its
+structure that they will lock me in an interior room in the
+East wing. Use the window on that side nearest the North
+corner. My one hope is that you will come at once to save me.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Bruce's eyes leaped over the page; then thrust it into his pocket. He
+slipped through the rear door of the house, into the shadows.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>As Bruce hurried up the hill toward the Ross estates, he made a swift
+calculation of the rifle shells in his pocket. The gun held six. He had
+perhaps fifteen others in his pockets, and he hadn't stopped to
+replenish them from the supply Elmira had brought. He hadn't brought
+Dave's rifle with him, but had left it with the remainder of his pack.
+He knew that the lighter he traveled the greater would be his chance of
+success.</p>
+
+<p>The note had explained the situation perfectly. Obviously the girl had
+written when the clan was closing about the house, and finding her in
+the front room, there had been no occasion to search the other rooms and
+thus discover it. The girl had kept her head even in that moment of
+crisis. A wave of admiration for her passed over him.</p>
+
+<p>And the little action had set an example for him. He knew that only
+rigid self-control and cool-headed strategy could achieve the thing he
+had set out to do. There must be no false motions, no missteps. He must
+put out of his mind all thought of what dreadful fate might have already
+come upon the girl; such fancies would cost him his grip upon his own
+faculties and lose him the power of clear thinking. His impulse was to
+storm the door, to pour his lead through the lighted windows; but such
+things could never take Linda out of Simon's hands. Only stealth and
+caution, not blind courage and frenzy, could serve her now. Such blind
+killing as his heart prompted had to wait for another time.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the stock of his rifle felt good in his hands. Perhaps
+there would be a running fight after he got the girl out of the house,
+and then his cartridges would be needed. There might even be a moment of
+close work with what guards the Turners had set over her. But the heavy
+stock, used like a club, would be most use to him then.</p>
+
+<p>He knew only the general direction of the Ross house where Simon lived.
+Linda had told him it rested upon the crest of a small hill, beyond a
+ridge of timber. The moonlight showed him a well-beaten trail, and he
+strode swiftly along it. For once, he gave no heed to the stirring
+forest life about him. When a dead log had fallen across his path, he
+swung over it and hastened on.</p>
+
+<p>He had a vague sense of familiarity with this winding trail. Perhaps he
+had toddled down it as a baby, perhaps his mother had carried him along
+it on a neighborly visit to the Rosses. He went over the hill and pushed
+his way to the edge of the timber. All at once the moon showed him the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>He couldn't mistake it, even at this distance. And to Bruce it had a
+singular effect of unreality. The mountain men did not ordinarily build
+homes of such dimensions. They were usually merely log cabins of two or
+three lower rooms and a garret to be reached with a ladder; or else, on
+the rough mountain highways, crude dwellings of unpainted frame. The
+ancestral home of the Rosses, however, had fully a dozen rooms, and it
+loomed to an incredible size in the mystery of the moonlight. He saw
+quaint gabled roofs and far-spreading wings. And it seemed more like a
+house of enchantment, a structure raised by the rubbing of a magic lamp,
+than the work of carpenters and masons.</p>
+
+<p>Probably its wild surroundings had a great deal to do with this effect.
+There were no roads leading to Trail's End. Material could not be
+carried over its winding trails except on pack animals. He had a
+realization of tremendous difficulties that had been conquered by
+tireless effort, of long months of unending toil, of exhaustless
+patience, and at the end,&mdash;a dream come true. All of its lumber had to
+be hewed from the forests about. Its stone had been quarried from the
+rock cliffs and hauled with infinite labor over the steep trails.</p>
+
+<p>He understood now why the Turners had coveted it. It seemed the acme of
+luxury to them. And more clearly than ever he understood why the Rosses
+had died, sooner than relinquish it, and why its usurpation by the
+Turners had left such a debt of hatred to Linda. It was such a house as
+men dream about, a place to bequeath to their children and to perpetuate
+their names. Built like a rock, it would stand through the decades, to
+pass from one generation to another,&mdash;an enduring monument to the strong
+thews of the men who had builded it. All men know that the love of home
+is one of the few great impulses that has made toward civilization, but
+by the same token it has been the cause of many wars. It was never an
+instinct of a nomadic people, and possibly in these latter days&mdash;days
+of apartments and flats and hotels&mdash;its hold is less. Perhaps the day is
+coming when this love will die in the land, but with it will die the
+strength to repel the heathen from our walls, and the land will not be
+worth living in, anyway. But it was not dead to the mountain people. No
+really primitive emotion ever is.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, after all, it is a question of the age-old longing for
+immortality, and therefore it must have its seat in a place higher than
+this world of death. Men know that when they walk no longer under the
+sun and the moon it is good to have certain monuments to keep their name
+alive, whether it be blocks of granite at the grave-head, or sons living
+in an ancestral home. The Rosses had known this instinct very well. As
+all men who are strong-thewed and of real natural virtue, they had known
+pride of race and name, and it had been a task worth while to build this
+stately house on their far-lying acres. They had given their fiber to it
+freely; no man who beheld the structure could doubt that fact. They had
+simply consecrated their lives to it; their one Work by which they could
+show to all who came after that by their own hands they had earned their
+right to live.</p>
+
+<p>They had been workers, these men; and there is no higher degree. But
+their achievements had been stolen from their hands. Bruce felt the real
+significance of his undertaking as never before.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the broad lands lying under the moon. There were hundreds of
+acres in alfalfa and clover to furnish hay for the winter feeding.
+There were wide, green pastures, ensilvered by the moon; and fields of
+corn laid out in even rows. The old appeal of the soil, an instinct that
+no person of Anglo-Saxon descent can ever completely escape, swept
+through him. They were worth fighting for, these fertile acres. The wind
+brought up the sweet breath of ripening hay.</p>
+
+<p>Not for nothing have a hundred generations of Anglo-Saxon people been
+tillers of the soil. They had left a love of it to Bruce. In a single
+flash of thought, even as he hastened toward the house where he supposed
+Linda was held prisoner, the ancient joy returned to him. He knew what
+it would be like to feel the earth's pulse through the handles of a
+plow, to behold the first start of green things in the spring and the
+golden ripening in fall; to watch the flocks through the breathless
+nights and the herds feeding on the distant hills.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce looked over the ground. He knew enough not to continue the trail
+farther. The space in front was bathed in moonlight, and he would make
+the best kind of target to any rifle-man watching from the windows of
+the house. He turned through the coverts, seeking the shadow of the
+forests at one side.</p>
+
+<p>By going in a quartering direction he was able to approach within two
+hundred yards of the house without emerging into the moonlight. At that
+point the real difficulty of the stalk began. He hovered in the shadows,
+then slipped one hundred feet farther to the trunk of a great oak tree.</p>
+
+<p>He could see the house much more plainly now. True, it had suffered
+neglect in the past twenty years; it needed painting and many of its
+windows were broken, but it was a magnificent old mansion even yet. It
+stood lost in its dreams in the moonlight; and if, as old stories say,
+houses have memories, this old structure was remembering certain tragic
+dramas that had waged within and about it in a long-ago day. Bruce
+rejoiced to see that there were no lights in the east wing of the house;
+the window that Linda had indicated in the note was just a black square
+on the moonlit wall.</p>
+
+<p>There was a neglected garden close to this wing of the house. Bruce
+could make out rose bushes, grown to brambles, tall, rank weeds, and
+heavy clumps of vines. If he could reach this spot in safety he could
+approach within a few feet of the house and still remain in cover. He
+went flat; then slowly crawled toward it.</p>
+
+<p>Once a light sprang up in a window near the front, and he pressed close
+to the earth. But in a moment it went away. He crept on. He didn't know
+when a watchman in one of the dark windows would discern his creeping
+figure. But he did know perfectly just what manner of greeting he might
+expect in this event. There would be a single little spurt of fire in
+the darkness, so small that probably his eyes would quite fail to catch
+it. If they did discern it, there would be no time for a message to be
+recorded in his brain. It would mean a swift and certain end of all
+messages. The Turners would lose no time in emptying their rifles at
+him, and there wouldn't be the slightest doubt about their hitting the
+mark. All the clan were expert shots and the range was close.</p>
+
+<p>The house was deeply silent. He felt a growing sense of awe. In a moment
+more, he slipped into the shadows of the neglected rose gardens.</p>
+
+<p>He lay quiet an instant, resting. He didn't wish to risk the success of
+his expedition by fatiguing himself now. He wanted his full strength and
+breath for any crisis that he should meet in the room where Linda was
+confined.</p>
+
+<p>Many times, he knew, skulking figures had been concealed in this garden.
+Probably the Turners, in the days of the blood-feud, had often waited in
+its shadows for a sight of some one of their enemies in a lighted
+window. Old ghosts dwelt in it; he could see their shadows waver out of
+the corner of his eyes. Or perhaps it was only the shadow of the
+brambles, blown by the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Once his heart leaped into his throat at a sharp crack of brush beside
+him; and he could scarcely restrain a muscular jerk that might have
+revealed his position. But when he turned his head he could see nothing
+but the coverts and the moon above them. A garden snake, or perhaps a
+blind mole, had made the sound.</p>
+
+<p>Four minutes later he was within one dozen feet of the designated
+window. There was a stretch of moonlight between, but he passed it
+quickly. And now he stood in bold relief against the moonlit house-wall.</p>
+
+<p>He was in perfectly plain sight of any one on the hill behind. Possibly
+his distant form might have been discerned from the window of one of the
+lesser houses occupied by Simon's kin. But he was too close to the wall
+to be visible from the windows of Simon's house, except by a deliberate
+scrutiny. And the window slipped up noiselessly in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>He was considerably surprised. He had expected this window to be locked.
+Some way, he felt less hopeful of success. He recalled in his mind the
+directions that Linda had left, wondering if he had come to the wrong
+window. But there was no chance of a mistake in this regard; it was the
+northernmost window in the east wing. However, she had said that she
+would be confined in an interior room, and possibly the Turners had seen
+no need of barriers other than its locked door. Probably they had not
+even anticipated that Bruce would attempt a rescue.</p>
+
+<p>He leaped lightly upward and slipped silently into the room. Except for
+the moonlit square on the floor it was quite in darkness. It seemed to
+him that even in the night hours over a camp fire he had never known
+such silence as this that pressed about him now.</p>
+
+<p>He stood a moment, hardly breathing. But he decided it was not best to
+strike a match. There were no enemies here, or they certainly would have
+accosted him when he raised the window; and a match might reveal his
+presence to some one in an adjoining room. He rested his hand against
+the wall, then moved slowly around the room. He knew that by this
+course he would soon encounter the door that led into the interior
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment he found it. He stood waiting. He turned the knob gently;
+then softly pulled. But the door was locked.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sound now but the loud beating of his own heart. He could
+no longer hear the voices of the wind outside the open window. He
+wondered whether, should he hurl all his magnificent strength against
+the panels, he could break the lock; and if he did so, whether he could
+escape with the girl before he was shot down. But his hand, wandering
+over the lock, encountered the key.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy, after all. He turned the key. The door opened beneath his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>If there had been a single ray of light under the door or through the
+keyhole, his course would have been quite different. He would have
+opened the door suddenly in that case, hoping to take by surprise
+whosoever of the clan were guarding Linda. To open a door slowly into a
+room full of enemies is only to give them plenty of time to cock their
+rifles. But in this case the room was in darkness, and all that he need
+fear was making a sudden sound. The opening slowly widened. Then he
+slipped through and stood ten breathless seconds in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda," he whispered. He waited a long time for an answer. Then he
+stole farther into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda," he said again. "It's Bruce. Are you here?"</p>
+
+<p>And in that unfathomable silence he heard a sound&mdash;a sound so dim and
+small that it only reached the frontier of hearing. It was a strange,
+whispering, eerie sound, and it filled the room like the faintest,
+almost imperceptible gust of wind. But there was no doubting its
+reality. And after one more instant in which his heart stood still, he
+knew what it was: the sound of suppressed breathing. A living creature
+occupied this place of darkness with him, and was either half-gagged by
+a handkerchief over the face or was trying to conceal its presence by
+muffling its breathing. "Linda," he said again.</p>
+
+<p>There was a strange response to the calling of that name. He heard no
+whispered answer. Instead, the door he had just passed through shut
+softly behind him.</p>
+
+<p>For a fleeting instant he hoped that the wind had blown it shut. For it
+is always the way of youth to hope,&mdash;as long as any hope is left. His
+heart leaped and he whirled to face it. Then he heard the unmistakable
+sound of a bolt being slid into place.</p>
+
+<p>Some little space of time followed in silence. He struggled with growing
+horror, and time seemed limitless. Then a strong man laughed grimly in
+the darkness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>As Bruce waited, his eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. He
+began to see the dim outlines of his fellow occupants of the
+room,&mdash;fully seven brawny men seated in chairs about the walls. "Let's
+hear you drop your rifle," one of them said.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce recognized the grim voice as Simon's,&mdash;heard on one occasion
+before. He let his rifle fall from his hands. He knew that only death
+would be the answer to any resistance to these men. Then Simon scratched
+a match, and without looking at him, bent to touch it to the wick of the
+lamp.</p>
+
+<p>The tiny flame sputtered and flickered, filling the room with dancing
+shadows. Bruce looked about him. It was the same long, white-walled room
+that Dave and Simon had conversed in, after Elmira had first dispatched
+her message by Barney Wegan. Bruce knew that he faced the Turner clan at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>Simon sat beside the fireplace, the lamp at his elbow. As the wick
+caught, the light brightened and steadied, and Bruce could see plainly.
+On each side of him, in chairs about the walls, sat Simon's brothers and
+his blood relations that shared the estate with him. They were huge,
+gaunt men, most of them dark-bearded and sallow-skinned, and all of
+them regarded him with the same gaze of speculative interest.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce did not flinch before their gaze. He stood erect as he could,
+instinctively defiant.</p>
+
+<p>"Our guest is rather early," Simon began. "Dave hasn't come yet, and
+Dave is the principal witness."</p>
+
+<p>A bearded man across the room answered him. "But I guess we ain't goin'
+to let the prisoner go for lack of evidence."</p>
+
+<p>The circle laughed then,&mdash;a harsh sound that was not greatly different
+from the laughter of the coyotes on the sagebrush hills. But they
+sobered when they saw that Simon hadn't laughed. His dark eyes were
+glowing.</p>
+
+<p>"You, by no chance, met him on the way home, did you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had," Bruce replied. "But I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand your eagerness. You didn't seem overly eager to meet
+us."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce smiled wanly. These wilderness men regarded him with fresh
+interest. Somehow, they hadn't counted on his smiling. It was almost as
+if he were of the wilderness breed himself, instead of the son of
+cities. "I'm here, am I not?" he said. "It isn't as if you came to my
+house first."</p>
+
+<p>He regarded the clansmen again. He <i>had</i> missed Dave's crafty face in
+the circle.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you're here," Simon confirmed. "And I'm wondering if you remember
+what I told you just as you left Martin's store that day&mdash;that I gave no
+man two warnings."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember that," Bruce replied. "I saw no reason for listening to you.
+I don't see any reason now, and I wouldn't if it wasn't for that row of
+guns."</p>
+
+<p>Simon studied his pale face. "Perhaps you'll be sorry you didn't listen,
+before this night is over. And there are many hours yet in it.
+Bruce&mdash;you came up here to these mountains to open old wounds."</p>
+
+<p>"Simon, I came up here to right wrongs&mdash;and you know it. If old wounds
+are opened, I can't help it."</p>
+
+<p>"And to-night," Simon went on as if he had not been answered, "you have
+come unbidden into our house. It would be all the evidence the courts
+would need, Bruce&mdash;that you crept into our house in the dead of night.
+If anything happened to you here, no word could be raised against us.
+You were a brave man, Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>"So I can suppose you left the note?"</p>
+
+<p>The circle laughed again, but Simon silenced them with a gesture.
+"You're very keen," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then where is Linda?" Bruce's eyes hardened. "I am more interested in
+her whereabouts than in this talk with you."</p>
+
+<p>"The last seen of her, she was going up a hill with Dave. When Dave
+returns you can ask him."</p>
+
+<p>The bearded man opposite from Simon uttered a short syllable of a laugh.
+"And it don't look like he's going to return," he said. The knowing
+look on his face was deeply abhorrent to Bruce. Curiously, Simon's face
+flushed, and he whirled in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean anything in particular, Old Bill?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks to me like maybe Dave's forgot a lot of things you told him,
+and he and Linda are havin' a little sparkin' time together out in the
+brush."</p>
+
+<p>The idea seemed to please the clan. But Simon's eyes glowed, and Bruce
+himself felt the beginnings of a blind rage that might, unless he held
+hard upon it, hurl him against their remorseless weapons. "I don't want
+any more such talk out of you, Old Bill," Simon reproved him, "and we've
+talked enough, anyway." His keen eyes studied Bruce's flushed face. "One
+of you give our guest a chair and fix him up in it with a thong. We
+don't want him flying off the coop and getting shot until we're done
+talking to him."</p>
+
+<p>One of the clansmen pushed a chair forward with sudden force, striking
+Bruce in the knees and almost knocking him over. The circle leered, and
+he sat down in it with as much ease as possible. Then one of the men
+looped his arms to the arms of the chair with thongs of buckskin.
+Another thong was tied about his ankles. Then the clansmen went back to
+their chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't see the use of all these dramatics," Bruce said coldly.
+"And I don't particularly like veiled threats. At present I seem to be
+in your hands."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't seem to be," Simon answered with reddening eyes. "You are."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no intention of saying I'm sorry I didn't heed the threats you
+gave me before&mdash;and as to those I've heard to-night&mdash;they're not going
+to do you any good, either. It is true that you found me in the house
+you occupy in the dead of night&mdash;but it isn't your house to start with.
+What a man seizes by murder isn't his."</p>
+
+<p>"What a man holds with a hard fist and his rifle&mdash;in these
+mountains&mdash;<i>is</i> his," Simon contradicted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, you got me here with a trick," Bruce went on without heeding
+him. "So don't pretend that any wickedness you do to-night was justified
+by my coming. You'll have to answer for it just the same."</p>
+
+<p>Simon leaned forward in his chair. His dark eyes glowed in the
+lamplight. "I've heard such talk as that before," he said. "I expect
+your own father talked like that a few times himself."</p>
+
+<p>The words seemed to strike straight home to the gathered Turners. The
+moment was breathless, weighted with suspense. All of them seemed
+straining in their chairs.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce's head bowed, but the veins stood out beneath the short hair on
+his temples, and his lips trembled when he answered. "That was a greater
+wickedness than anything&mdash;<i>anything</i> you can do to-night. And you'll
+have to answer for it all the more."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke the last sentence with a calm assurance. Though spoken softly,
+the words rang clear. But the answer of the evil-hearted man before him
+was only a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"And there's one thing more I want to make clear," Bruce went on in the
+strong voice of a man who had conquered his terror. And it was not
+because he did not realize his danger. He was in the hands of the
+Turners, and he knew that Simon had spoken certain words that, if for no
+other reason than his reputation with his followers, he would have to
+make good. Bruce knew that no moment of his life was ever fraught with
+greater peril. But the fact itself that there were no doors of escape
+open to him, and he was face to face with his destiny, steadied him all
+the more.</p>
+
+<p>The boy that had been wakened in his bed at home by the ring of the
+'phone bell had wholly vanished now. A man of the wild places had come
+instead, stern and courageous and unflinching.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything is tolerable clear to us already," Simon said, "except your
+sentence."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to know that I refuse to be impressed with this judicial
+attitude of you and your blackguard followers," Bruce went on. "This
+gathering of the group of you doesn't make any evil that you do any less
+wrong, or the payment you'll have to make any less sure. It lies wholly
+in your power to kill me while I'm sitting here, and I haven't much hope
+but that you'll do it. But let me tell you this. A reign of bloodshed
+and crime can go on only so long. You've been kings up here, and you
+think the law can't reach you. But it will&mdash;believe me, it will."</p>
+
+<p>"And this was the man who was going to begin the blood-feud&mdash;already
+hollering about the law," Simon said to his followers. He turned to
+Bruce. "It's plain that Dave isn't going to come. I'll have to be the
+chief witness myself, after all. However, Dave told me all that I needed
+to know. The first question I have to ask of you, Folger, is the
+whereabouts of that agreement between your late lamented father and the
+late lamented Matthew Ross, according to what the trapper Hudson told
+you a few days ago."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce was strong enough to laugh in his bonds. "Up to this time I have
+given you and your murderous crowd credit for at least natural
+intelligence," he replied, "but I see I was mistaken&mdash;or you wouldn't
+expect an answer to that question."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean you don't know its whereabouts?"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't give you the satisfaction of knowing whether I know or not. I
+just refuse to answer."</p>
+
+<p>"I trust the ropes are tight enough about your wrists."</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty tight, thank you. They are cutting the flesh so it bleeds."</p>
+
+<p>"How would you like them some tighter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pull them till they cut my arms off, and you won't get a civil answer
+out of me. In fact&mdash;" and the man's eyes blazed&mdash;"I'm tired of talking
+to this outlaw crowd. And the sooner you do what you're going to do, the
+better it will suit me."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll come to that shortly enough. Disregarding that for a moment&mdash;we
+understand that you want to open up the blood-feud again. Is that true?"</p>
+
+<p>Bruce made no answer, only gazed without flinching into his questioner's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"That was what my brother Dave led me to understand," Simon went on, "so
+we've decided to let you have your way. It's open&mdash;it's been open since
+you came here. You disregarded the warning I gave&mdash;and men don't
+disregard my warnings twice. You threatened Dave with your rifle. This
+is a different land than you're used to, Bruce, and we do things our own
+way. You've hunted for trouble and now you've found it. Your father
+before you thought he could stand against us&mdash;but he's been lying still
+a long time. The Rosses thought so too. And it is part of our code never
+to take back a threat&mdash;but always to make it good."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce still sat with lowered head, seemingly not listening. The clansmen
+gazed at him, and a new, more deadly spirit was in the room. None of
+them smiled now; the whole circle of faces was dark and intent, their
+eyes glittered through narrowed lids, their lips set. The air was
+charged with suspense. The moment of crisis was near.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the men glanced at their leader's face, and what they saw
+there filled them with a grim and terrible eagerness. Simon was
+beginning to run true to form. His dark passions were slowly mastering
+him. For a moment they all sat as if entranced in a communion of
+cruelty, and to Bruce they seemed like a colony of spotted rattlesnakes
+such as sometimes hold their communions of hatred on the sun-blasted
+cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>All at once Simon laughed,&mdash;a sharp, hoarse sound that had, in its
+overtones, a note of madness. Every man in the room started. They seemed
+to have forgotten Bruce. They looked at their leader with a curious
+expectancy. They seemed to know that that wild laugh betokened but one
+thing&mdash;the impact of some terrible sort of inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>As they watched, they saw the idea take hold of him. The huge face
+darkened. His eyes seemed to smolder as he studied his huge hands. They
+understood, these wilderness men. They had seen their leader in such
+sessions before. A strange and grim idea had come to him; already he was
+feasting on its possibilities. It seemed to heat his blood and blur his
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>"We've decided to be merciful, after all," he said slowly. But neither
+Bruce nor the clansmen misunderstood him or were deceived. They only
+knew that these words were simply part of a deadly jest that in a moment
+all would understand. "Instead of filling you full of thirty-thirty
+bullets, as better men than you have been filled and what we <i>ought</i> to
+do&mdash;we're just going to let you lay out all night&mdash;in the pasture&mdash;with
+your feet tied and your hands behind your back."</p>
+
+<p>No one relaxed. They listened, staring, for what would follow.</p>
+
+<p>"You may get a bit cold before morning," Simon went on, "but you're
+warmly dressed, and a little frost won't hurt you. And I've got the
+place all picked out for you. And we're even going to move something
+that's laying there so it will be more pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>Again he paused. Bruce looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing that's lying there is a dead yearling calf, half ate up. It
+was killed last night by the Killer&mdash;the old grizzly that maybe you've
+heard of before. Some of the boys were going to wait in trees to-night
+by the carcass and shoot the Killer when he comes back after another
+meal&mdash;something that likely won't happen until about midnight if he runs
+true to form. But it won't be necessary now. We're going to haul the
+carcass away&mdash;down wind where he won't smell it. And we're going to
+leave you there in its place to explain to him what became of it."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce felt their glowing eyes upon him. Exultation was creeping over the
+clan; once more their leader had done himself proud. It was such
+suggestions as this that kept them in awe of him.</p>
+
+<p>And they thought they understood. They supposed that the night would be
+of the utter depths of terror to the tenderfoot from the cities, that
+the bear would sniff and wander about him, and perchance the man's hair
+would be turned quite white by morning. But being mountain men, they
+thought that the actual danger of attack was not great. They supposed
+that the inborn fear of men that all animals possess would keep him at a
+distance. And, if by any unlikely chance the theft of the beef-carcass
+should throw him into such a rage that he would charge Bruce, no harm
+in particular would be done. The man was a Folger, an enemy of the clan,
+and after once the telltale ropes were removed, no one would ask
+questions about the mutilated, broken thing that would be found next
+morning in the pasture. The story would carry down to the settlements
+merely as a fresh atrocity of the Killer, the last and greatest of the
+grizzlies.</p>
+
+<p>But they had no realization of the full dreadfulness of the plan. They
+hadn't heard the more recent history of the Killer,&mdash;the facts that
+Simon had just learned from Dave. Strange and dark conjecturing occupied
+Simon's mind, and he knew&mdash;in a moment's thought&mdash;that something more
+than terror and indignity might be Bruce's fate. But his passion was
+ripe for what might come. The few significant facts that they did not
+know were merely that the Killer had already found men out, that he had
+learned in an instant's meeting with Hudson beside Little River that men
+were no longer to be feared, and worse, that he was raving and deadly
+from the pain of the wound that Bruce's bullet had inflicted.</p>
+
+<p>The circle of faces faded out for both of them as the eyes of Bruce and
+Simon met and clashed and battled in the silent room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>"If Simon Turner isn't a coward," Bruce said slowly to the clan, "he
+will give me a chance to fight him now."</p>
+
+<p>The room was wholly silent, and the clan turned expectant eyes to their
+leader. Simon scowled, but he knew he had to make answer. His eyes crept
+over Bruce's powerful body. "There is no obligation on my part to answer
+any challenges by you," he said. "You are a prisoner. But if you think
+you can sleep better in the pasture because of it, I'll let you have
+your chance. Take off his ropes."</p>
+
+<p>A knife slashed at his bonds. Simon stood up, and Bruce sprang from his
+chair like a wild cat, aiming his hardened knuckles straight for the
+leering lips. He made the attack with astonishing swiftness and power,
+and his intention was to deliver at least one terrific blow before Simon
+could get his arms up to defend himself. He had given the huge clan
+leader credit for tremendous physical strength, but he didn't think that
+the heavy body could move with real agility. But the great muscles
+seemed to snap into tension, the head ducked to one side, and his own
+huge fists struck out.</p>
+
+<p>If Bruce's blow had gone straight home where it had been aimed, Simon
+would have had nothing more to say for a few moments at least. When man
+was built of clay, Nature saw fit to leave him with certain
+imperfections lest he should think himself a god, and a weak spot in the
+region of the chin is one of them. The jaw bones carry the impact of a
+hard blow to certain nerve centers near the temples, and restful sleep
+comes quickly. There are never any ill effects, unless further damage is
+inflicted while unconsciousness is upon him. In spite of the fact that
+Simon got quickly into a position of defense, that first blow still had
+a fair chance of bringing the fight to an abrupt end. But still another
+consideration remained.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce's muscles had refused to respond. The leap had been powerful and
+swift yet wholly inaccurate. And the reason was just that his wrists and
+ankles had been numbed by the tight thongs by which they had been
+confined. Simon met the leap with a short, powerful blow into Bruce's
+face; and he reeled backward. The arms of the clansmen alone kept him
+from falling.</p>
+
+<p>The blow seemed to daze Bruce; and at first his only realization was
+that the room suddenly rang with harsh and grating laughter. Then
+Simon's words broke through it. "Put back the thongs," he ordered, "and
+go get your horses."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce was dimly aware of the falling of a silence, and then the arms of
+strong men half carrying him to the door. But he couldn't see plainly at
+first. The group stood in the shadow of the building; the moon was
+behind. He knew that the clan had brought their horses and were waiting
+for Simon's command. They loosened the ropes from about his ankles, and
+two of the clansmen swung him on to the back of a horse. Then they
+passed a rope under the horse's belly and tied his ankles anew.</p>
+
+<p>Simon gave a command, and the strange file started. The night air
+dispelled the mists in Bruce's brain, and full realization of all things
+came to him again. One of the men&mdash;he recognized him as Young Bill&mdash;led
+the horse on which he rode. Two of the clansmen rode in front, grim,
+silent, incredibly tall figures in the moonlight. The remainder rode
+immediately behind. Simon himself, bowed in his saddle, kept a little to
+one side. Their shadows were long and grotesque on the soft grass of the
+meadows, and the only sound was the soft footfall of their mounts.</p>
+
+<p>A full mile distant across the lush fields the cavalcade halted about a
+grotesque shadow in the grass. Bruce didn't have to look at it twice to
+know what it was: the half-devoured body of the yearling calf that had
+been the Killer's prey the night before. From thence on, their
+operations became as outlandish occurrences in a dream. They seemed to
+know just what to do. They took him from the saddle and bound his feet
+again; then laid him in the fragrant grass. They searched his pockets,
+taking the forged note that had led to his downfall. "It saves me a
+trip," Simon commented. He saw two of them lift the torn body of the
+animal on to the back of one of the horses, and he watched dully as the
+horse plunged and wheeled under the unfamiliar weight. He thought for an
+instant that it would step upon his own prone body, but he didn't
+flinch. Simon spoke in the silence, but his words seemed to come from
+far away.</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet that horse or kill him," he said softly. "You can't drag the
+carcass with your rope&mdash;the Killer would trace it if you did and maybe
+spoil the evening for Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>Strong arms sawed at the bits, and the horse quieted, trembling. For a
+moment Bruce saw their white moonlit faces as they stared down at him.</p>
+
+<p>"What about a gag?" one of them asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Let him shout if he likes. There is no one to hear him here."</p>
+
+<p>Then the tall men swung on their horses and headed back across the
+fields. Bruce watched them dully. Their forms grew constantly more dim,
+the sense of utter isolation increased. Then he saw the file pause, and
+it seemed to him that words, too faint for him to understand, reached
+him across the moonlit spaces. Then one of the party turned off toward
+the ridge.</p>
+
+<p>He guessed that it was Simon. He thought the man was riding toward
+Linda's home.</p>
+
+<p>He watched until the shadows had hidden them all. Then, straining
+upward, he tested his bonds. He tugged with the full strength of his
+arms, but there was not the play of an inch between his wrists. The
+Turners had done their work well. Not the slightest chance of escape lay
+in this quarter.</p>
+
+<p>He wrenched himself to one side, then looked about him. The fields
+stretched even and distant on one side, but he saw that the dark forest
+was but fifty yards away on the other. He listened; and the little
+night sounds reached him clearly. They had been sounds to rejoice in
+before,&mdash;impulses to delightful fancies of a fawn stealing through the
+thickets, or some of the Little People in their scurried, tremulous
+business of the night hours. But lying helpless at the edge of the
+forest, they were nothing to rejoice in now. He tried to shut his ears
+to them.</p>
+
+<p>He rolled again to his back and tried to find peace for his spirit in
+the stars. There were millions of them. They were larger and more bright
+than any time he had ever seen them. They stood in their high places,
+wholly indifferent and impassive to all the strife and confusion of the
+world below them; and Bruce wished that he could partake of their spirit
+enough so that he could rise above the fear and bitterness that had
+begun to oppress him. But only the pines could talk to them. Only the
+tall trees, stretching upward toward them, could reach into their
+mysterious calm.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes discerned a thin filament of cloud that had swept up from
+behind the ridges, and the sight recalled him to his own position with
+added force. The moonlight, soft as it was, had been a tremendous relief
+to him. At least, it would have enabled him to keep watch, and now he
+dreaded the fall of utter darkness more than he had ever dreaded
+anything in his life. It was an ancient instinct, coming straight from
+the young days of the world when nightfall brought the hunting creatures
+to the mouth of the cave, but he had never really experienced it before.
+If the clouds spread, the moon that was his last remaining solace would
+be obscured.</p>
+
+<p>He watched with growing horror the slow extension of the clouds. One by
+one the stars slipped beneath them. They drew slowly up to the moon and
+for a long minute seemed to hover. They were not heavy clouds, however,
+and in their thinner patches the stars looked dimly through. Finally the
+moon swept under them.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow fell around Bruce. For the first time he knew the age-old
+terror of the darkness. Dreadful memories arose within him,&mdash;vague
+things that had their font in the labyrinthal depths of the germ-plasm.
+It is a knowledge that no man, with the weapons of the twentieth century
+in his hands and in the glow of that great symbol of domain, the camp
+fire, can really possess; but here, bound hand and foot in the darkness,
+full understanding came to Bruce. He no longer knew himself as one of a
+dominant breed, master of all the wild things in the world. He was
+simply a living creature in a grim and unconquered world, alone and
+helpless in the terror of the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The moonlight alternately grew and died as the moon passed in and out of
+the heavier cloud patches. Winds must have been blowing in the high
+lanes of the air, but there was no breath of them where Bruce lay. The
+forests were silent, and the little rustlings and stirrings that reached
+him from time to time only seemed to accentuate the quiet.</p>
+
+<p>He speculated on how many hours had passed. He wondered if he could dare
+to hope that midnight had already gone by and, through some divergence
+from wilderness customs, the grizzly had failed to return to his feast.
+It seemed endless hours since he had reëntered the empty rooms of
+Linda's home. A wave of hope crept through the whole hydraulic system of
+his veins. And then, as a sudden sound reached him from the forests at
+one side, that bright wave of hope turned black, receded, and left only
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the sound but dimly. In fact, except for his straining with
+every nerve alert, he might not have heard it at all. Nevertheless,
+distance alone had dimmed it; it had been a large sound to start with.
+So far had it come that only a scratch on the eardrums was left of it;
+but there was no chance to misunderstand it. It cracked out to him
+through the unfathomable silence, and all the elements by which he might
+recognize it were distinct. It was the noise of a heavy thicket being
+broken down and parted before an enormous body.</p>
+
+<p>He waited, scarcely breathing, trying to tell himself he had been
+mistaken. But a wiser, calmer self deep within him would not accept the
+lie. He listened, straining. Then he heard the sound again.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever came toward him had passed the heavy brush by now. The sounds
+that reached him were just faint and intermittent whispers,&mdash;first of a
+twig cracking beneath a heavy foot, then the rattle of two pebbles
+knocked together. Long moments of utter silence would ensue between, in
+which he could hear the steady drum of his heart in his breast and the
+long roll of his blood in his veins. The shadows grew and deepened and
+faded and grew again, as the moon passed from cloud to cloud.</p>
+
+<p>The limbs of a young fir tree rustled and whispered as something brushed
+against them. Leaves flicked together, and once a heavy limb popped like
+a distant small-calibered rifle as a great weight broke it in two. Then,
+as if the gods of the wilderness were using all their ingenuity to
+torture him, the silence closed down deeper than ever before.</p>
+
+<p>It lasted so long that he began to hope again. Perhaps the sounds had
+been made by a deer stealing on its way to feed in the pastures. Yet he
+knew the step had been too heavy for anything but the largest deer, and
+their way was to encircle a thicket rather than crash through it. The
+deer make it their business always to go with silence in these hours
+when the beasts of prey are abroad, and usually a beetle in the leaves
+makes more noise than they. It might have been the step of one of the
+small, black bears&mdash;a harmless and friendly wilderness dweller. Yet the
+impression lingered and strengthened that only some great hunter, a
+beast who feared neither other beasts nor men, had been steadily coming
+toward him through the forest. In the long silence that ensued Bruce
+began to hope that the animal had turned off.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the moon slipped under a particularly heavy fragment of
+cloud, and deep darkness settled over him. Even his white face was no
+longer discernible in the dusk. He lay scarcely breathing, trying to
+fight down his growing terror.</p>
+
+<p>This silence could mean but one of two things. One of them was that the
+creature who had made the sounds had turned off on one of the many
+intersecting game trails that wind through the forest. This was his
+hope. The alternative was one of despair. It was simply that the
+creature had detected his presence and was stalking him in silence
+through the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>He thought that the light would never come. He strained again at his
+ropes. The dark cloud swept on; and the moonlight, silver and bright,
+broke over the scene.</p>
+
+<p>The forest stood once more in sharp silhouette against the sky. The moon
+stood high above the tapering tops of the pines. He studied with
+straining eyes the dark fringe of shadows one hundred feet distant. And
+at first he could see only the irregularities cast by the young trees,
+the firs between which lay the brush coverts.</p>
+
+<p>Then he detected a strange variation in the dark border of shadows. It
+held his gaze, and its outlines slowly strengthened. So still it stood,
+so seemingly a natural shadow that some irregularly shaped tree had
+cast, that his eyes refused to recognize it. But in an instant more he
+knew the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow was that of a great beast that had stalked him clear to the
+border of the moonlight. The Killer had come for his dead.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Linda returned home the events of the night partook even of a
+greater mystery. The front door was open, and she found plenty of
+evidence that Bruce had returned from his journey. In the center of the
+room lay his pack, a rifle slanting across it.</p>
+
+<p>At first she did not notice the gun in particular. She supposed it was
+Bruce's weapon and that he had come in, dropped his luggage, and was at
+present somewhere in the house. It was true that one chair was upset,
+but except for an instant's start she gave no thought to it. She thought
+that he would probably go to the kitchen first for a bite to eat. He was
+not in this room, however, nor had the lamp been lighted.</p>
+
+<p>Her next idea was that Bruce, tired out, had gone to bed. She went back
+softly to the front room, intending not to disturb him. Once more she
+noticed the upset chair. The longer she regarded it, the more of a
+puzzle it became. She moved over toward the pack and looked casually at
+the rifle. In an instant more it was in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>She saw at once that it was not Bruce's gun. The action, make, and
+caliber were different. She was not a rifle-woman, and the little
+shooting she had done had been with a pistol; but even a layman could
+tell this much. Besides, it had certain peculiar notches on the stock
+that the gun Elmira had furnished Bruce did not have.</p>
+
+<p>She stood a moment in thought. The problem offered no ray of light. She
+considered what Bruce's first action would have been, on returning to
+the house to find her absent. Possibly he had gone in search of her. She
+turned and went to the door of his bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>She knocked on it softly. "Are you there, Bruce?" she called.</p>
+
+<p>No answer returned to her. The rooms, in fact, were deeply silent. She
+tried the door and found it unlocked. The room had not been occupied.</p>
+
+<p>Thoroughly alarmed, she went back into the front room and tried to
+decipher the mystery of the strange weapon. She couldn't conceive of any
+possibility whereby Bruce would exchange his father's trusted gun for
+this. Possibly it was an extra weapon that he had procured on his
+journey. And since no possible gain would come of her going out into the
+forests to seek him, she sat down to wait for his return. She knew that
+if she did start out he might easily return in her absence and be
+further alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>The moments dragged by and her apprehension grew. She took the rifle in
+her hands and, slipping the lever part way back, looked to see if there
+were a cartridge in the barrel. She saw a glitter of brass, and it gave
+her a measure of assurance. She had a pistol in her own room&mdash;a weapon
+that Elmira had procured, years before, from a passing sportsman&mdash;and
+for a moment she considered getting it also. She understood its action
+better and would probably be more efficient with it if the need arose,
+but for certain never-to-be-forgotten reasons she wished to keep this
+weapon until the moment of utmost need.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole stock of pistol cartridges consisted of six&mdash;completely
+filling the magazine of the pistol. Closely watched by the Turners, she
+had been unable to procure more. Many a dreadful night these six little
+cylinders of brass had been a tremendous consolation to her. They had
+been her sole defense, and she knew that in the final emergency she
+could use them to deadly effect.</p>
+
+<p>Linda was a girl who had always looked her situations in the face. She
+was not one to flinch from the truth and with false optimism disbelieve
+it. She had the courage of many generations of frontiersmen and
+woodsmen, and she had their vision too. She knew these mountain realms;
+better still she understood the dark passions of Simon and his
+followers, and this little half-pound of steel and wood with its brass
+shells might mean, in the dreadful last moment of despair, deliverance
+from them. It might mean escape for herself when all other ways were cut
+off. In this wild land, far from the reaches of law and without allies
+except for a decrepit old woman, the pistol and its deadly loads had
+been her greatest solace.</p>
+
+<p>But she relied on the rifle now. And sitting in the shadow, she kept
+watch over the moonlit ridge.</p>
+
+<p>The hours passed, and the clouds were starting up from the horizon when
+she thought she saw Bruce returning. A tall form came swinging toward
+her, over the little trail that led between the tree trunks. She peered
+intently. And in one instant more she knew that the approaching figure
+was not Bruce, but the man she most feared of anyone on earth, Simon
+Turner.</p>
+
+<p>She knew him by his great form, his swinging stride. Her thoughts came
+clear and true. It was obvious that his was no mission of stealth. He
+was coming boldly, freely, not furtively; and he must have known that he
+presented a perfect rifle target from the windows. Nevertheless, it is
+well to be prepared for emergencies. If life in the mountains teaches
+anything, it teaches that. She took the rifle and laid it behind a
+little desk, out of sight. Then she went to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to come in, Linda," Simon told her.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you long ago you couldn't come to this house," Linda answered
+through the panels. "I want you to go away."</p>
+
+<p>Simon laughed softly. "You'd better let me in. I've brought word of the
+child you took to raise. You know who I mean."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Linda knew. "Do you mean Bruce?" she asked. "I let Dave in to-night
+on the same pretext. Don't expect me to be caught twice by the same
+lie."</p>
+
+<p>"Dave? Where is Dave?" The fact was that the whereabouts of his brother
+had suddenly become considerable of a mystery to Simon. All the way
+from the pasture where he had left his clan he had been having black
+pictures of Dave. He had thought about him and Linda out in the darkness
+together, and his heart had seemed to smolder and burn with jealousy in
+his breast. It had been a great relief to him to find her in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder&mdash;where he is by now," Linda answered in a strange voice. "No
+one in this world can answer that question, Simon. Tell me what you
+want."</p>
+
+<p>She opened the door. She couldn't bear to show fear of this man. And she
+knew that an appearance of courage, at least, was the wisest course.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter about him now. I want to talk to you on business. If I had
+meant rough measures, I wouldn't have come alone."</p>
+
+<p>"No," Linda scorned. "You would have brought your whole murdering band
+with you. The Turners believe in overwhelming numbers."</p>
+
+<p>The words stung him but he smiled grimly into her face. "I've come in
+peace, Linda," he said, more gently. "I've come to give you a last
+chance to make friends."</p>
+
+<p>He walked past her into the room. He straightened the chair that had
+been upset, smiling strangely the while, and sat down in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me what you have to tell me," she said. "I'm in a hurry to go
+to bed&mdash;and this really isn't the hour for calls."</p>
+
+<p>He looked a long time into her face. She found it hard to hold her own
+gaze. Many things could be doubted about this man, but his power and
+his courage were not among them. The smile died from his lips, the
+lines deepened on his face. She realized as never before the tempestuous
+passions and unfathomable intensity of his nature.</p>
+
+<p>"We've never been good friends," Simon went on slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"We never could be," the girl answered. "We've stood for different
+things."</p>
+
+<p>"At first my efforts to make friends were just&mdash;to win you over to our
+side. It didn't work&mdash;all it did was to waken other desires in
+me&mdash;desires that perhaps have come to mean more than the possession of
+the lands. You know what they are. You've always known&mdash;that any time
+you wished&mdash;you could come and rule my house."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. She knew that she had won, against her will, the strange,
+somber love of this mighty man. She had known it for months.</p>
+
+<p>"As my wife&mdash;don't make any mistake about that. Linda, I'm a stern, hard
+man. I've never known how to woo. I don't know that I want to know how,
+the way it is done by weaker men. It has never been my way to ask for
+what I wanted. But sometimes it seems to me that if I'd been a little
+more gentle&mdash;not so masterful and so relentless&mdash;that I'd won you long
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>Linda looked up bravely into his face. "No, Simon. You could have
+never&mdash;never won me! Oh, can't you see&mdash;even in this awful place a woman
+wants something more than just brute strength and determination. Every
+woman prays to find strength in the man she loves&mdash;but it isn't the
+kind that you have, the kind that makes your men grovel before you, and
+makes me tremble when I'm talking to you. It's a big, calm
+strength&mdash;and I can't tell you what it is. It's something the pines
+have, maybe&mdash;strength not to yield to the passions, but to restrain, not
+to be afraid of, but to cling to&mdash;to stand upright and honorable and
+manly, and make a woman strong just to see it in the man she loves."</p>
+
+<p>He listened gravely. Her cheeks blazed. It was a strange scene&mdash;the
+silent room, the implacable foes, the breathless suspense, the prophecy
+and inspiration in her tones.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I should have been more gentle," he admitted. "I might have
+forgotten&mdash;for a little while&mdash;this surging, irresistible impulse in my
+muscles&mdash;and tried just to woo you, gently and humbly. But it's too late
+now. I'm not a fool. I can't expect you to begin at the beginning. I can
+only go on in my own way&mdash;my hard, remorseless, ruthless way.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't every man who is brave enough to see what he wants and knock
+away all obstacles to get it," he went on. "Put that bravery to my
+credit. To pay no attention to methods, only to look forward to the
+result. That has been my creed. It is my creed now. Many less brave men
+would fear your hatred&mdash;but I don't fear it as long as I possess what I
+go after and a hope that I can get you over it. Many of my own brothers
+hate me, but yet I don't care as long as they do my will. No matter how
+much you scorn it, this bravery has always got me what I wanted, and it
+will get me what I want now."</p>
+
+<p>The high color died in her face. She wondered if the final emergency had
+come at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to make a bargain. You can take it or you can refuse. On one
+side is the end of all this conflict, to be my wife, to have what you
+want&mdash;bought by the rich return from my thousands of acres. And I love
+you, Linda. You know that."</p>
+
+<p>The man spoke the truth. His terrible, dark love was all over him&mdash;in
+his glowing eyes, in his drawn, deeply-lined face.</p>
+
+<p>"In time, when you come around to my way of thinking, you'll love me. If
+you refuse&mdash;this last time&mdash;I've got to take other ways. On that side is
+defeat for you&mdash;as sure as day. The time is almost up when the title to
+those lands is secure. Bruce is in our hands&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She got up, white-faced. "Bruce&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>He arose too. "Yes! Did you think he could stand against us? I'll show
+him to you in the morning. To-night he's paying the price for ever
+daring to oppose my will."</p>
+
+<p>She turned imploring eyes. He saw them, and perhaps&mdash;far distant&mdash;he saw
+the light of triumph too. A grim smile came to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Simon," she cried. "Have mercy."</p>
+
+<p>The word surprised him. It was the first time she had ever asked this
+man for mercy. "Then you surrender&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Simon, listen to me," she begged. "Let him go&mdash;and I won't even try to
+fight you any more. I'll let you keep those lands and never try any more
+to make you give them up. You and your brothers can keep them forever,
+and we won't try to get revenge on you either. He and I will go away."</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her in deepening wonderment. For the moment, his mind
+refused to accept the truth. He only knew that since he had faced her
+before, some new, great strength had come to her,&mdash;that a power was in
+her life that would make her forego all the long dream of her days.</p>
+
+<p>He had known perfectly the call of the blood in her. He had understood
+her hatred of the Turners, he could hate in the same way himself. He
+realized her love for her father's home and how she had dreamed of
+expelling its usurpers. Yet she was willing to renounce it all. The
+power that had come to her was one that he, a man whose code of life was
+no less cruel and remorseless than that of the Killer himself, could not
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>"But why?" he demanded. "Why are you willing to do all this for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she echoed. Once more the luster was in her dark eyes. "I suppose
+it is because&mdash;I love him."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with slowly darkening face. Passion welled within him.
+An oath dropped from his lips, blasphemous, more savage than any
+wilderness voice. Then he raised his arm and struck her tender flesh.</p>
+
+<p>He struck her breast. The brutality of the man stood forth at last. No
+picture that all the dreadful dramas of the wild could portray was more
+terrible than this. The girl cried out, reeled and fell fainting from
+the pain, and with smoldering eyes he gazed at her unmoved. Then he
+turned out of the door.</p>
+
+<p>But the curtain of this drama in the mountain home had not yet rung
+down. Half-unconscious, she listened to his steps. He was out in the
+moonlight, vanishing among the trees. Strange fancies swept her, all in
+the smallest fraction of an instant, and a voice spoke clearly. With all
+the strength of her will she dispelled the mists of dawning
+unconsciousness that the pain had wrought and crept swiftly to the
+little desk placed against the wall. Her hand fumbled in the shadow
+behind it and brought out a glittering rifle. Then she crept to the open
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Lying on the floor, she raised the weapon to her shoulder. Her thumb
+pressed back, strong and unfaltering, against the hammer; and she heard
+it click as it sprung into place. Then she looked along the barrel until
+she saw the swinging form of Simon through the sights.</p>
+
+<p>There was no remorse in that cold gaze of hers. The wings of death
+hovered over the man, ready to swoop down. Her fingers curled tighter
+about the trigger. One ounce more pressure, and Simon's trail of
+wickedness and bloodshed would have come to an end at last. But at that
+instant her eyes widened with the dawn of an idea.</p>
+
+<p>She knew this man. She knew the hatred that was upon him. And she
+realized, as if by an inspiration from on High, that before he went to
+his house and to sleep he would go once more into the presence of Bruce,
+confined somewhere among these ridges and suffering the punishment of
+having opposed his will. Simon would want one look to see how his plan
+was getting on; perhaps he would want to utter one taunting word. And
+Linda saw her chance.</p>
+
+<p>She started to creep out of the door. Then she turned back, crawled
+until she was no longer revealed in the silhouette of the lighted
+doorway, and got swiftly to her feet. She dropped the rifle and darted
+into her own room. There she procured a weapon that she trusted more,
+her little pistol, loaded with six cartridges.</p>
+
+<p>If she had understood the real nature of the danger that Bruce faced she
+would have retained the rifle. It shot with many times the smashing
+power of the little gun, and at long range was many times as accurate,
+but even it would have seemed an ineffective defense against such an
+enemy as was even now creeping toward Bruce's body. But she knew that in
+a crisis, against such of the Turners as she thought she might have to
+face, it would serve her much better than the more awkward, heavier
+weapon. Besides, she knew how to wield it, and all her life she had kept
+it for just such an emergency.</p>
+
+<p>The pain of the blow was quite gone now, except for a strange sickness
+that had encompassed her. But she was never colder of nerve and surer
+of muscle. Cunningly she lay down again before she crept through the
+door, so that if Simon chanced to look about he would fail to see that
+she followed him. She crept to the thickets, then stood up. Three
+hundred yards down the slope she could see Simon's dimming figure in the
+moonlight, and swiftly she sped after him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The shadow that Bruce saw at the edge of the forest could not be
+mistaken as to identity. The hopes that he had held before&mdash;that this
+stalking figure might be that of a deer or an elk&mdash;could no longer be
+entertained. Men as a rule do not love the wild and wailing sobs of a
+coyote, as he looks down upon a camp fire from the ridge above. Sleep
+does not come easily when a gaunt wolf walks in a slow, inquisitive
+circle about the pallet, scarcely a leaf rustling beneath his feet. And
+a few times, in the history of the frontier, men have had queer
+tinglings and creepings in the scalp when they have happened to glance
+over their shoulders and see the eyes of a great, tawny puma, glowing an
+odd blue in the firelight. Yet Bruce would have had any one of these, or
+all three together, in preference to the Killer.</p>
+
+<p>The reason was extremely simple. No words have ever been capable of
+expressing the depths of cowardice of which a coyote is capable. He will
+whine and weep about a camp, like a soul lost between two worlds, but if
+he is in his right mind he would have each one of his gray hairs plucked
+out, one by one, rather than attack a man. The cunning breed to which he
+belongs has found out that it doesn't pay. The wolf is sometimes
+disquietingly brave when he is fortified by his pack brethren in the
+winter, but in such a season as this he is particularly careful to keep
+out of the sight of man. And the Tawny One himself, white-fanged and
+long-clawed and powerful as he is, never gets farther than certain
+dreadful, speculative dreams.</p>
+
+<p>But none of these things was true of the Killer. He had already shown
+his scorn of men. His very stride showed that he feared no living
+creature that shared the forest with him. In fact, he considered himself
+the forest master. The bear is never a particularly timid animal, and
+whatever timidity the Killer possessed was as utterly gone as
+yesterday's daylight.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce watched him with unwinking eyes. The shadow wavered ever so
+slightly, as the Killer turned his head this way and that. But except to
+follow it with his eyes, Bruce made no motion. The inner guardians of a
+man's life&mdash;voices that are more to be relied upon than the promptings
+of any conscious knowledge&mdash;had already told him what to do. These
+monitors had the wisdom of the pines themselves, and they had revealed
+to him his one hope. It was just to lie still, without a twitch of a
+muscle. It might be that the Killer would fail to discern his outline.
+Bruce had no conscious knowledge, as yet, that it is movement rather
+than form to which the eyes of the wild creatures are most receptive.
+But he acted upon that fact now as if by instinct. He was not lying in
+quite the exact spot where the Killer had left his dead the preceding
+night, and possibly his outline was not enough like it to attract the
+grizzly's attention. Besides, in the intermittent light, it was wholly
+possible that the grizzly would try to find the remains of his feast by
+smell alone; and if this were lacking, and Bruce made no movements to
+attract his attention, he might wander away in search of other game.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time in his life, Bruce knew Fear as it really was. It is
+a knowledge that few dwellers in cities can possibly have; and so few
+times has it really been experienced in these days of civilization that
+men have mostly forgotten what it is like. If they experience it at all,
+it is usually only in a dream that arises from the germ-plasm,&mdash;a
+nightmare to paralyze the muscles and chill the heart and freeze a man
+in his bed. The moon was strange and white as it slipped in and out of
+the clouds, and the forest, mysterious as Death itself, lightened and
+darkened alternately with a strange effect of unreality; but for all
+that, Bruce could not make himself believe that this was just a dream.
+The dreadful reality remained that the Killer, whose name and works he
+knew, was even now investigating him from the shadows one hundred feet
+away.</p>
+
+<p>The fear that came to him was that of the young world,&mdash;fear without
+recompense, direct and primitive fear that grew on him like a sickness.
+It was the fear that the deer knew as they crept down their dusky trails
+at night; it was the fear of darkness and silence and pain and heaven
+knows what cruelty that would be visited upon him by those terrible,
+rending fangs and claws. It was the fear that can be heard in the pack
+song in the dreadful winter season, and that can be felt in strange
+overtones, in the sobbing wail of despair that the coyote utters in the
+half-darkness. He had been afraid for his life every moment he was in
+the hands of the Turners. He knew that if he survived this night, he
+would have to face death again. He had no hopes of deliverance
+altogether. But the Turners were men, and they worked with knife blade
+and bullet, not rending fang and claw. He could face men bravely; but it
+was hard to keep a strong heart in the face of this ancient fear of
+beasts.</p>
+
+<p>The Killer seemed disturbed and moved slowly along the edge of the
+moonlight. Bruce could trace his movements by the irregularity in the
+line of shadows. He seemed to be moving more cautiously than ever, now.
+Bruce could not hear the slightest sound.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Bruce had an exultant hope that the bear would continue
+on down the edge of the forest and leave him; and his heart stood still
+as the great beast paused, sniffing. But some smell in the air seemed to
+reach him, and he came stealing back.</p>
+
+<p>In reality, the Killer was puzzled. He had come to this place straight
+through the forest with the expectation that food&mdash;flesh to tear with
+his fangs&mdash;would be waiting for him. Perhaps he had no actual memory of
+killing the calf the night before. Possibly it was only instinct, not
+conscious intelligence, that brought him back to what was left of his
+feast the preceding night. And now, as he waited at the border of the
+darkness, he knew that a strange change had taken place. And the Killer
+did not like strangeness.</p>
+
+<p>The smell that he had expected had dimmed to such an extent that it
+promoted no muscular impulse. Perhaps it was only obliterated by a
+stranger smell,&mdash;one that was vaguely familiar and wakened a slow,
+brooding anger in his great beast's heart.</p>
+
+<p>He was not timid; yet he retained some of his natural caution and
+remained in the gloom while he made his investigations. Probably it was
+a hunting instinct alone. He crept slowly up and down the border of
+moonlight, and his anger seemed to grow and deepen within him. He felt
+dimly that he had been cheated out of his meal. And once before he had
+been similarly cheated; but there had been singular triumph at the end
+of that experience.</p>
+
+<p>All at once a movement, far across the pasture, caught his attention.
+Remote as it was, he identified the tall form at once; it was just such
+a creature as he had blasted with one blow a day or two before. But it
+dimmed quickly in the darkness. It seemed only that some one had come,
+taken one glance at the drama at the edge of the forest, and had
+departed. Bruce himself had not seen the figure; and perhaps it was the
+mercy of Fate&mdash;not usually merciful&mdash;that he did not. He might have been
+caused to hope again, only to know a deeper despair when the man left
+him without giving aid. For the tall form had been that of Simon coming,
+as Linda had anticipated, for a moment's inspection of his handiwork.
+And seeing that it was good, he had departed again.</p>
+
+<p>The grizzly watched him go, then turned back to his questioning regard
+of the strange, dark figure that lay so prone in the grass in front. The
+darkness dropped over him as the moon went behind a heavy patch of
+cloud.</p>
+
+<p>And in that moment of darkness, the Killer understood. He remembered
+now. Possibly the upright form of Simon had suggested it to him;
+possibly the wind had only blown straighter and thus permitted him to
+identify the troubling smells. All at once a memory flashed over
+him,&mdash;of a scene in a distant glen, and similar tall figures that tried
+to drive him from his food. He had charged then, struck once, and one of
+the forms had lain very still. He remembered the pungent, maddening odor
+that had reached him after his blow had gone home. Most clearly of all,
+he remembered how his fangs had struck and sunk.</p>
+
+<p>He knew this strange shadow now. It was just another of that tall breed
+he had learned to hate, and it was simply lying prone as his foe had
+done after the charge beside Little River. In fact, the still-lying form
+recalled the other occasion with particular vividness. The excitement
+that he had felt before returned to him now; he remembered his
+disappointment when the whistling bullets from the hillside above had
+driven him from his dead. But there were no whistling bullets now.
+Except for them, there would have been further rapture beside that
+stream; but he might have it now.</p>
+
+<p>His fangs had sunk home just once, before, and his blood leaped as he
+recalled the passion he had felt. The old hunting madness came back to
+him. It was the fair game, this that lay so still in the grass, just as
+the body of the calf had been and just as the warm body of Hudson in the
+distant glen.</p>
+
+<p>The wound at his side gave him a twinge of pain. It served to make his
+memories all the clearer. The lurid lights grew in his eyes. Rage swept
+over him.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn't charge blindly. He retained enough of his hunting caution
+to know that to stalk was the proper course. It was true that there was
+no shrubbery to hide him, yet in his time he had made successful stalks
+in the open, even upon deer. He moved farther out from the edge of the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant the moon came out and revealed him, all too vividly, to
+Bruce. The Killer's great gray figure in the silver light was creeping
+toward him across the silvered grass.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When Linda left her house, her first realization was the need of
+caution. It would not do to let Simon see her. And she knew that only
+her long training in the hills, her practice in climbing the winding
+trails, would enable her to keep pace with the fast-walking man without
+being seen.</p>
+
+<p>In her concern for Bruce, she had completely forgotten the events of the
+earlier part of the evening. Wild and stirring though they were, they
+now seemed to her as incidents of remote years, nothing to be
+remembered in this hour of crisis. But she remembered them vividly when,
+two hundred yards from the house, she saw two strange figures coming
+toward her between the moonlit tree trunks.</p>
+
+<p>There was very little of reality about either. The foremost figure was
+bent and strange, but she knew that it could be no one but Elmira. The
+second, however&mdash;half-obscured behind her&mdash;offered no interpretation of
+outline at all at first. But at the turn of the trail she saw both
+figures in vivid profile. Elmira was coming homeward, bent over her
+cane, and she led a saddled horse by its bridle rein.</p>
+
+<p>Still keeping Simon in sight, Linda ran swiftly toward her. She didn't
+understand the deep awe that stole over her,&mdash;an emotion that even her
+fear for Bruce could not transcend. There was a quality in Elmira's face
+and posture that she had never seen before. It was as if she were
+walking in her sleep, she came with such a strange heaviness and
+languor, her cane creeping through the pine needles of the trail in
+front. She did not seem to be aware of Linda's approach until the girl
+was only ten feet distant. Then she looked up, and Linda saw the
+moonlight on her face.</p>
+
+<p>She saw something else too, but she didn't know what it was. Her own
+eyes widened. The thin lips were drooping, the eyes looked as if she
+were asleep. The face was a strange net of wrinkles in the soft light.
+Terrible emotions had but recently died and left their ashes upon it.
+But Linda knew that this was no time to stop and wonder and ask
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the horse," she commanded. "I'm going to help Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>"You can have it," Elmira answered in an unfamiliar voice. "It's the
+horse that&mdash;that Dave Turner rode here&mdash;and he won't want him any more."</p>
+
+<p>Linda took the rein, passed it over the horse's head, and started to
+swing into the saddle. Then she turned with a gasp as the woman slipped
+something into her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Linda looked down and saw it was the hilt of the knife that Elmira had
+carried with her when the two women had gone with Dave into the woods.
+The blade glittered; but Linda was afraid to look at it closely. "You
+might need that, too," the old woman said. "It may be wet&mdash;I can't
+remember. But take it, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>Linda hardly heard. She thrust the blade into the leather of the saddle,
+then swung on her horse. Once more she sought Simon's figure. Far away
+she saw it, just as it vanished into the heavy timber on top of the
+hill.</p>
+
+<p>She rode swiftly until she began to fear that he might hear the hoof
+beat of her mount; then she drew up to a walk. And when she had crested
+the hill and had followed down its long slope into the glen, the moon
+went under the clouds for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>She lost sight of Simon at once. Seemingly her effort to save Bruce had
+come to nothing, after all.</p>
+
+<p>But she didn't turn back. There were light patches in the sky, and the
+moon might shine forth again.</p>
+
+<p>She followed down the trail toward the cleared lands that the Turners
+cultivated. She went to their very edge. It was a rather high point, so
+she waited here for the moon to emerge again. Never, it seemed to her,
+had it moved so slowly. But all at once its light flowed forth over the
+land.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes searched the distant spaces, but she could catch no glimpse of
+Simon between the trees. Evidently he no longer walked in the direction
+of the house. Then she looked out over the tilled lands.</p>
+
+<p>Almost a quarter of a mile away she saw the flicker of a miniature
+shadow. Only the vivid quality of the moonlight, against which any
+shadow was clear-cut and sharp, enabled her to discern it at all. It was
+Simon, and evidently his business had taken him into the meadows.
+Feeling that she was on the right track at last, she urged her horse
+forward again, keeping to the shadow of the timber at first.</p>
+
+<p>Simon walked almost parallel to the dark fringe for nearly a mile; then
+turned off into the tilled lands. She rode opposite him and reined in
+the horse to watch.</p>
+
+<p>When the distance had almost obscured him, she saw him stop. He waited a
+long time, then turned back. The moon went in and out of the clouds.
+Then, trusting to the distance to conceal her, Linda rode slowly out
+into the clearing.</p>
+
+<p>Simon reëntered the timber, his inspection seemingly done, and Linda
+still rode in the general direction he had gone. The darkness fell
+again, and for the space of perhaps five minutes all the surroundings
+were obscured. A curious sense of impending events came over her as she
+headed on toward the distant wall of forest beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Then, the clouds slowly dimming under the moon, the light grew with
+almost imperceptible encroachments. At first it was only bright enough
+to show her own dim shadow on the grass. The utter gloom that was over
+the fields lessened and drew away like receding curtains; her vision
+reached ever farther, the shadows grew more clearly outlined and
+distinct. Then the moon rolled forth into a wholly open patch of sky&mdash;a
+white sphere with a sprinkling of vivid stars around it&mdash;and the silver
+radiance poured down.</p>
+
+<p>It was like the breaking of dawn. The fields stretched to incredible
+distances about her. The forest beyond emerged in distinct outline; she
+could see every irregularity in the plain. And in one instant's glance
+she knew that she had found Bruce.</p>
+
+<p>His situation went home to her in one sweep of the eyes. Bruce was not
+alone. Even now a great, towering figure was creeping toward him from
+the forest. Linda cried out, and with the long strap of her rein lashed
+her horse into the fastest pace it knew.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Bruce did not hear her come. He lay in the soft grass, waiting for
+death. A great calm had come upon him; a strange, quiet strength that
+the pines themselves might have lent to him; and he made no cry. In this
+dreadful last moment of despair the worst of his terror had gone and
+left his thoughts singularly clear. And but one desire was left to him:
+that the Killer might be merciful and end his frail existence with one
+blow.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a great deal to ask for; but he knew perfectly that only by
+the mercy of the forest gods could it come to pass. They are usually not
+so kind to the dying; and it is not the wild-animal way to take pains to
+kill at the first blow. Yet his eyes held straight. The Killer crept
+slowly toward him; more and more of his vast body was revealed above the
+tall heads of the grass. And now all that Bruce knew was a great
+wonder,&mdash;a strange expectancy and awe of what the opening gates of
+darkness would reveal.</p>
+
+<p>The Killer moved with dreadful slowness and deliberation. He was no
+longer afraid. It was just as it had been before,&mdash;a warm figure lying
+still and helpless for his own terrible pleasure. A few more steps and
+he would be near enough to see plainly; then&mdash;after the grizzly
+habit&mdash;to fling into the charge. It was his own way of hunting,&mdash;to
+stalk within a few score of feet, then to make a furious, resistless
+rush. He paused, his muscles setting. And then the meadows suddenly rang
+with the undulations of his snarl.</p>
+
+<p>Almost unconscious, Bruce did not understand what had caused this
+utterance. But strangely, the bear had lifted his head and was staring
+straight over him. For the first time Bruce heard the wild beat of
+hoofs on the turf behind him.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't have time to turn and look. There was no opportunity even for
+a flood of renewed hope. Events followed upon one another with startling
+rapidity. The sharp, unmistakable crack of a pistol leaped through the
+dusk, and a bullet sung over his body. And then a wild-riding figure
+swept up to him.</p>
+
+<p>It was Linda, firing as she came. How she had been able to control her
+horse and ride him into that scene of peril no words may reveal.
+Perhaps, running wildly beneath the lash, his starting eyes did not
+discern or interpret the gray figure scarcely a score of yards distant
+from Bruce; and it is true the grizzly's pungent smell&mdash;a thing to
+terrify much more and to be interpreted more clearly than any kind of
+dim form in the moonlight&mdash;was blown in the opposite direction. Perhaps
+the lashing strap recalled the terrible punishment the horse had
+undergone earlier that evening at the hands of Simon and no room was
+left for any lesser terror. But most likely of all, just as in the case
+of brave soldiers riding their horses into battle, the girl's own
+strength and courage went into him. Always it has been the same; the
+steed partook of its rider's own spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The bear reared up, snarling with wrath, but for a moment it dared not
+charge. The sudden appearance of the girl and the horse held him
+momentarily at bay. The girl swung to the ground in one leap, fired
+again, thrust her arm through the loop of the bridle rein, then knelt
+at Bruce's side. The white blade that she carried in her left hand
+slashed at his bonds.</p>
+
+<p>The horse, plunging, seemed to jerk her body back and forth, and endless
+seconds seemed to go by before the last of the thongs was severed. In
+reality the whole rescue was unbelievably swift. The man helped her all
+he could. "Up&mdash;up into the saddle," she commanded. The grizzly growled
+again, advancing remorselessly toward them, and twice more she fired.
+Two of the bullets went home in his great body, but their weight and
+shocking power were too slight to affect him. He went down once more on
+all fours, preparing to charge.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce, in spite of the fact that his limbs had been nearly paralyzed by
+the tight bonds, managed to grasp the saddlehorn. In the strength of
+new-born hope he pulled himself half up on it, and he felt Linda's
+strong arms behind him pushing up. The horse plunged in deadly fear; and
+the Killer leaped toward them. Once more the pistol cracked. Then the
+horse broke and ran in a frenzy of terror.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce was full in the saddle by then, and even at the first leap his arm
+swept out to the girl on the ground beside him. He swung her towards
+him, and at the same time her hands caught at the arching back of the
+saddle. Never had her fine young strength been put to a greater test
+than when she tried to pull herself up on the speeding animal's back.
+For the first fifty feet she was half-dragged, but slowly&mdash;with Bruce's
+help&mdash;she pulled herself up to a position of security.</p>
+
+<p>The Killer's charge had come a few seconds too late. For a moment he
+raced behind them in insane fury, but only his savage growl leaped
+through the darkness fast enough to catch up with them. And the distance
+slowly widened.</p>
+
+<p>The Killer had been cheated again; and by the same token Simon's oath
+had been proved untrue. For once the remorseless strength of which he
+boasted had been worsted by a greater strength; and love, not hate, was
+the power that gave it. For once a girl's courage&mdash;a courage greater
+than that with which he obeyed the dictates of his cruel will&mdash;had cost
+him his victory. The war that he and his outlaw band had begun so long
+ago had not yet been won.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, if Simon could have seen what the moon saw as it peered out from
+behind the clouds, he would have known that one of the debts of blood
+incurred so many years ago had even now been paid. Far away on a distant
+hillside there was one who gave no heed to the fast hoof beats of the
+speeding horse. It was Dave Turner, and his trail of lust and wickedness
+was ended at last. He lay with lifted face, and there were curious dark
+stains on the pine needles.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first blood since the reopening of the feud. And the pines,
+those tall, dark sentinels of the wilderness, seemed to look down upon
+him in passionless contemplation, as if they wondered at the stumbling
+ways of men. Their branches rubbed together and made words as the wind
+swept through them, but no man may say what those words were.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_THREE" id="BOOK_THREE"></a>BOOK THREE</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMING OF THE STRENGTH</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Fall was at hand at Trail's End. One night, and the summer was still a
+joyous spirit in the land, birds nested, skies were blue, soft winds
+wandered here and there through the forest. One morning, and a startling
+change had come upon the wilderness world. The spirit of autumn had come
+with golden wings.</p>
+
+<p>The wild creatures, up and about at their pursuits long before dawn,
+were the first to see the change. A buck deer&mdash;a noble creature with six
+points on his spreading horns&mdash;got the first inkling of it when he
+stopped at a spring to drink. It was true that an hour before he had
+noticed a curious crispness and a new stir in the air, but he had been
+so busy keeping out of the ambushes of the Tawny One that he had not
+noticed it. The air had been chill in his nostrils, but thanks to a
+heavy growth of hair that&mdash;with mysterious foresight&mdash;had begun to come
+upon his body, it gave him no discomfort. But it was a puzzling and
+significant thing that the water he bent to drink had been transformed
+to something hard and white and burning cold to the tip of his nose.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first real freeze. True, for the past few nights there had
+been a measure of tinkling, cobweb frost on the ground in wet places,
+but even the tender-skinned birds&mdash;always most watchful of signs of this
+kind&mdash;had disregarded it. But there was no disregarding this half-inch
+of blue ice that had covered the spring. The buck deer struck it angrily
+with his front hoofs, broke through and drank; then went snorting up the
+hill.</p>
+
+<p>His anger was in itself a significant thing. In the long, easy-going
+summer days, Blacktail had almost forgotten what anger was like. He had
+been content to roam over the ridges, cropping the leaves and grass,
+avoiding danger and growing fat. But all at once this kind of existence
+had palled on him. He felt that he wanted only one thing&mdash;not food or
+drink or safety&mdash;but a good, slashing, hooking, hoof-carving battle with
+another buck of his own species. An unwonted crossness had come upon
+him, and his soft eyes burned with a blue fire. He remembered the does,
+too&mdash;with a sudden leap of his blood&mdash;and wondered where they were
+keeping themselves. Being only a beast he did not know that this new
+belligerent spirit was just as much a sign of fall as the soft blush
+that was coming on the leaves. The simple fact was that fall means the
+beginning of the rut&mdash;the wild mating days when the bucks battle among
+themselves and choose their harems of does.</p>
+
+<p>He had rather liked his appearance as he saw himself in the water of the
+spring. The last of the velvet had been rubbed from his horns, and the
+twelve tines (six on each horn) were as hard and almost as sharp as so
+many bayonet points. As the morning dawned, the change in the face of
+nature became ever more manifest. The leaves of the shrubbery began to
+change in color. The wind out of the north had a keener, more biting
+quality, and the birds were having some sort of exciting debate in the
+tree tops.</p>
+
+<p>The birds are always a scurried, nervous, rather rattle-brained outfit,
+and seem wholly incapable of making a decision about anything without
+hours of argument and discussion. Their days are simply filled with one
+excitement after another, and they tell more scandal in an hour than the
+old ladies in a resort manage in the entire summer. This slow
+transformation in the color of the leaves, not to mention the chill of
+the frost through their scanty feathers, had created a sensation from
+one end of birdland to another. And there was only one thing to do about
+it. That was to wait until the darkness closed down again, then start
+away toward the path of the sun in search of their winter resorts in the
+south.</p>
+
+<p>The Little People in the forest of ferns beneath were not such gay
+birds, and they did not have such high-flown ideas as these feathered
+folk in the branches. They didn't talk such foolishness and small talk
+from dawn to dark. They didn't wear gay clothes that weren't a particle
+of good to them in cold weather. You can imagine them as being good,
+substantial, middle-class people, much more sober-minded, tending
+strictly to business and working hard, and among other things they saw
+no need of flitting down to southern resorts for the cold season. These
+people&mdash;being mostly ground squirrels and gophers and chipmunks and
+rabbits&mdash;had not been fitted by nature for wide travel and had made all
+arrangements for a pleasant winter at home. You could almost see a smile
+on the fat face of a plump old gopher when he came out and found the
+frost upon the ground; for he knew that for months past he had been
+putting away stores for just this season. In the snows that would follow
+he would simply retire into the farthest recesses of his burrow and let
+the winds whistle vainly above him.</p>
+
+<p>The larger creatures, however, were less complacent. The wolves&mdash;if
+animals have any powers of foresight whatever&mdash;knew that only hard days,
+not luscious nuts and roots, were in store for them. There would be many
+days of hunger once the snow came over the land. The black bear saw the
+signs and began a desperate effort to lay up as many extra pounds of fat
+as possible before the snows broke. Ashur's appetite was always as much
+with him as his bobbed-off excuse for a tail, and as he was more or less
+indifferent to a fair supply of dirt, he always managed to put away
+considerable food in a rather astonishingly short period of time; and
+now he tried to eat all the faster in view of the hungry days to come.
+He would have need of the extra flesh. The time was coming when all
+sources of food would be cut off by the snows, and he would have to seek
+the security of hibernation. He had already chosen an underground abode
+for himself and there he could doze away in the cold-trance through the
+winter months, subsisting on the supplies of fat that he had stored next
+to his furry hide.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest of all the bears, the Killer, knew that some such fate
+awaited him also. But he looked forward to it with wretched spirit. He
+was master of the forest, and perhaps he did not like to yield even to
+the spirit of winter. His savagery grew upon him every day, and his
+dislike for men had turned to a veritable hatred. But he had found them
+out. When he crossed their trails again, he would not wait to stalk.
+They were apt to slip away from him in this case and sting him
+unmercifully with bullets. The thing to do was charge quickly and strike
+with all his power.</p>
+
+<p>The three minor wounds he had received&mdash;two from pistol bullets and one
+from Bruce's rifle&mdash;had not lessened his strength at all. They did,
+however, serve to keep his blood-heat at the explosive stage most of the
+day and night.</p>
+
+<p>The flowers and the grasses were dying; the moths that paid calls on the
+flowers had laid their eggs and had perished, and winter lurked&mdash;ready
+to pounce forth&mdash;just beyond the distant mountains. There is nothing so
+thoroughly unreliable as the mountain autumn. It may linger in
+entrancing golds and browns month after month, until it is almost time
+for spring to come again; and again it may make one short bow and usher
+in the winter. To Bruce and Linda, in the old Folger home in Trail's
+End, these fall days offered the last hope of success in their war
+against the Turners.</p>
+
+<p>The adventure in the pasture with the Killer had handicapped them to an
+unlooked-for degree. Bruce's muscles had been severely strained by the
+bonds; several days had elapsed before he regained their full use. Linda
+was a mountain girl, hardy as a deer, yet her nerves had suffered a
+greater shock by the experience than either of them had guessed. The
+wild ride, the fear and the stress, and most of all the base blow that
+Simon had dealt her had been too much even for her strong constitution;
+and she had been obliged to go to bed for a few days of rest. Old Elmira
+worked about the house the same as ever, but strange, new lights were in
+her eyes. For reasons that went down to the roots of things, neither
+Bruce nor Linda questioned her as to her scene with Dave Turner in the
+coverts; and what thoughts dwelt in her aged mind neither of them could
+guess.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that in these short weeks of trial and danger whatever
+dreadful events had come to pass in that meeting were worth neither
+thought nor words. Both Bruce and Linda were down to essentials. It is a
+descent that most human beings&mdash;some time in their lives&mdash;find they are
+able to make; and there was no room for sentimentality or hysteria in
+this grim household. The ideas, the softnesses, the laws of the valleys
+were far away from them; they were face to face with realities. Their
+code had become the basic code of life: to kill for self-protection
+without mercy or remorse.</p>
+
+<p>They did not know when the Turners would attack. It was the dark of the
+moon, and the men would be able to approach the house without presenting
+themselves as targets for Bruce's rifle. The danger was not a thing on
+which to conjecture and forget; it was an ever-present reality. Never
+they stepped out of the door, never they crossed a lighted window, never
+a pane rattled in the wind but that the wings of Death might have been
+hovering over them. The days were passing, the date when the chance for
+victory would utterly vanish was almost at hand, and they were haunted
+by the ghastly fact that their whole defense lay in a single
+thirty-thirty rifle and five cartridges. Bruce's own gun had been taken
+from him in Simon's house; Linda had emptied her pistol at the Killer.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got to get more shells," Bruce told Linda. "The Turners won't be
+such fools as to wait until we have the moon again to attack. I can't
+understand why they haven't already come. Of course, they don't know the
+condition of our ammunition supply, but it doesn't seem to me that that
+alone would have held them off. They are sure to come soon, and you know
+what we could do with five cartridges, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know." She looked up into his earnest face. "We could die&mdash;that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;like rabbits. Without hurting them at all. I wouldn't mind dying
+so much, if I did plenty of damage first. It's death for me, anyway, I
+suppose&mdash;and no one but a fool can see it otherwise. There are simply
+too many against us. But I do want to make some payment first."</p>
+
+<p>Her hand fumbled and groped for his. Her eyes pled to him,&mdash;more than
+any words. "And you mean you've given up hope?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled down at her,&mdash;a grave, strange little smile that moved her in
+secret ways. "Not given up hope, Linda," he said gently. They were
+standing at the door and the sunlight&mdash;coming low from the South&mdash;was on
+his face. "I've never had any hope to give up&mdash;just realization of what
+lay ahead of us. I'm looking it all in the face now, just as I did at
+first."</p>
+
+<p>"And what you see&mdash;makes you afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>Yet she need not have asked that question. His face gave an unmistakable
+answer: that this man had conquered fear in the terrible night with the
+Killer. "Not afraid, Linda," he explained, "only seeing things as they
+really are. There are too many against us. If we had that great estate
+behind us, with all its wealth, we might have a chance; if we had an
+arsenal of rifles with thousands of cartridges, we might make a stand
+against them. But we are three&mdash;two women and one man&mdash;and one rifle
+between us all. Five little shells to be expended in five seconds. They
+are seven or eight, each man armed, each man a rifle-shot. They are
+certain to attack within a day or two&mdash;before we have the moon again. In
+less than two weeks we can no longer contest their title to the estate.
+A little month or two more and we will be snowed in&mdash;with no chance to
+get out at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps before that," she told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Perhaps before that."</p>
+
+<p>They found a confirmation of this prophecy in the signs of fall
+without&mdash;the coloring leaves, the dying flowers, the new, cold breath of
+the wind. Only the pines remained unchanged; they were the same grave
+sentinels they always were.</p>
+
+<p>"And you can forgive me?" Linda asked humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive you?" The man turned to her in surprise. "What have you done
+that needs to be forgiven?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't you see? To bring you here&mdash;out of your cities&mdash;to throw your
+life away. To enlist you in a fight that you can't hope to win. I've
+killed you, that's all I've done. Perhaps to-night&mdash;perhaps a few days
+later."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"And I've already killed your smile," she went on, looking down. "You
+don't smile any more the way you used to. You're not the boy you were
+when you came. Oh, to think of it&mdash;that it's all been my work. To kill
+your youth, to lead you into this slaughter pen where nothing&mdash;nothing
+lives but death&mdash;and hatred&mdash;and unhappiness."</p>
+
+<p>The tears leaped to her eyes. He caught her hands and pressed them
+between his until pain came into her fingers. "Listen, Linda," he
+commanded. She looked straight up at him. "Are you sorry I came?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than I can tell you&mdash;for your sake."</p>
+
+<p>"But when people look for the truth in this world, Linda, they don't
+take any one's sake into consideration. They balance all things and give
+them their true worth. Would you rather that you and I had never
+met&mdash;that I had never received Elmira's message&mdash;that you should live
+your life up here without ever hearing of me?"</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her eyes. "It isn't fair&mdash;to ask me that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me the truth. Hasn't it been worth while? Even if we lose and die
+before this night is done, hasn't it all been worth while? Are you sorry
+you have seen me change? Isn't the change for the better&mdash;a man grown
+instead of a boy? One who looks straight and sees clear?"</p>
+
+<p>He studied her face; and after a while he found his answer. It was not
+in the form of words at first. As a man might watch a miracle he watched
+a new light come into her dark eyes. All the gloom and sorrow of the
+wilderness without could not affect its quality. It was a light of joy,
+of exultation, of new-found strength.</p>
+
+<p>"You hadn't ought to ask me that, Bruce," she said with a rather
+strained distinctness. "It has been like being born again. There aren't
+any words to tell you what it has meant to me. And don't think I haven't
+seen the change in you, too&mdash;the birth of a new strength that every day
+is greater, higher&mdash;until it is&mdash;almost more than I can understand. The
+old smiles are gone, but something else has taken their place&mdash;something
+much more dear to me&mdash;but what it is I can hardly tell you. Maybe it's
+something that the pines have."</p>
+
+<p>But he hadn't wholly forgotten how to smile. His face lighted as
+remembrance came to him. "They are a different kind of smiles&mdash;that's
+all," he explained. "Perhaps there will be many of them in the days to
+come. Linda, I have no regrets. I've played the game. Whether it was
+Destiny that brought me here, or only chance, or perhaps&mdash;if we take
+just life and death into consideration&mdash;just misfortune, whatever it is
+I feel no resentment toward it. It has been the worthwhile adventure. In
+the first place, I love the woods. There's something else in them
+besides death and hatred and unhappiness. Besides, it seems to me that I
+can understand the whole world better than I used to. Maybe I can begin
+to see a big purpose and theme running through it all&mdash;but it's not yet
+clear enough to put into words. Certain things in this world are
+essentials, certain other ones are froth. And I see which things belong
+to one class and which to another so much more clearly than I did
+before. One of the things that matters is throwing one's whole life into
+whatever task he has set out to do&mdash;whether he fails or succeeds doesn't
+seem greatly to matter. The main thing, it appears to me, is that he has
+tried. To stand strong and kind of calm, and not be afraid&mdash;if I can
+always do it, Linda, it is all I ask for myself. Not to flinch now. Not
+to give up as long as I have the strength for another step. And to have
+you with me&mdash;all the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you and I&mdash;take fresh heart?"</p>
+
+<p>"We've never lost heart, Linda."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to give up, but only be glad we've tried?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And keep on trying."</p>
+
+<p>"With no regrets?"</p>
+
+<p>"None&mdash;and maybe to borrow a little strength from the pines!"</p>
+
+<p>This was their new pact. To stand firm and strong and unflinching, and
+never to yield as long as an ounce of strength remained. As if to seal
+it, her arms crept about his neck and her soft lips pressed his.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Toward the end of the afternoon Linda saddled the horse and rode down
+the trail toward Martin's store. She had considerable business to attend
+to. Among other things, she was going to buy thirty-thirty
+cartridges,&mdash;all that Martin had in stock. She had some hope of securing
+an extra gun or two with shells to match. The additional space in her
+pack was to be filled with provisions.</p>
+
+<p>For she was faced with the unpleasant fact that her larder was nearly
+empty. The jerked venison was almost gone; only a little flour and a few
+canned things remained. She had space for only small supplies on the
+horse's back, and there would be no luxuries among them.&mdash;Their fare had
+been plain up to this time; but from now on it was to consist of only
+such things as were absolutely necessary to sustain life.</p>
+
+<p>She rode unarmed. Without informing him of the fact, the rifle had been
+left for Bruce. She did not expect for herself a rifle shot from
+ambush&mdash;for the simple reason that Simon had bidden otherwise&mdash;and Bruce
+might be attacked at any moment.</p>
+
+<p>She was dreaming dreams, that day. The talk with Bruce had given her
+fresh heart, and as she rode down the sunlit trail the future opened up
+entrancing vistas to her. Perhaps they yet could conquer, and that would
+mean reëstablishment on the far-flung lands of her father. Matthew
+Folger had possessed a fertile farm also, and its green pastures might
+still be utilized. It suddenly occurred to her that it would be of
+interest to turn off the main trail, take a little dim path up the ridge
+that she had discovered years before, and look over these lands. The
+hour was early; besides, Bruce would find her report of the greatest
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>She jogged slowly along in the Western fashion,&mdash;which means something
+quite different from army fashion or sportsman fashion. Western riders
+do not post. Riding is not exercise to them; it is rest. They hang limp
+in the saddle, and all jar is taken up, as if by a spring, somewhere in
+the region of the floating ribs that only a physician can correctly
+designate. They never sit firm, these Western riders, and as a rule
+their riding is not a particularly graceful thing to watch. But they do
+not care greatly about grace as long as they may encompass their fifty
+miles a day and still be fresh enough for a country dance at night.
+There are many other differences in Western and Eastern riding, one of
+them being the way in which the horse is mounted. Another difference is
+the riding habit. Linda had no trim riding trousers, with tall glossy
+boots, red coat, and stock. It was rather doubtful whether she knew such
+things existed. She did, however, wear a trim riding skirt of khaki and
+a middie blouse washed spotlessly clean by her own hands; and no one
+would have missed the other things. It is an indisputable fact that she
+made a rather alluring picture&mdash;eyes bright and hair dark and strong
+arms bare to the elbow&mdash;as she came riding down the pine-needle trail.</p>
+
+<p>She came to the opening of the dimmer trail and turned down it. She did
+not jog so easily now. The descent was more steep. She entered a still
+glen, and the color in her cheeks and the soft brown of her arms blended
+well with the new tints of the autumn leaves. Then she turned up a long
+ridge.</p>
+
+<p>The 'trail led through an old burn&mdash;a bleak, eerie place where the fire
+had swept down the forest, leaving only strange, black palings here and
+there&mdash;and she stopped in the middle of it to look down. The mountain
+world was laid out below her as clearly as in a relief map. Her eyes
+lighted as its beauty and its fearsomeness went home to her, and her
+keen eyes slowly swept over the surrounding hill tops. Then for a long
+moment she sat very still in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand feet distant, on the same ridge on which she rode, she caught
+sight of another horse. It held her gaze, and in an instant she
+discerned the rather startling fact that it was saddled, bridled, and
+apparently tied to a tree. Momentarily she thought that its rider was
+probably one of the Turners who was at present at work on the old Folger
+farm; yet she knew at once the tilled lands were still too far distant
+for that. She studied closely the maze of light and shadow of the
+underbrush and in a moment more distinguished the figure of the
+horseman.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the Turners,&mdash;but he was not working in the fields. He was
+standing near the animal's head, back to her, and his rifle lay in his
+arms. And then Linda understood.</p>
+
+<p>He was simply guarding the trail down to Martin's store. Except for the
+fact that she had turned off the main trail by no possibility could she
+have seen him and escaped whatever fate he had for her.</p>
+
+<p>She held hard on her faculties and tried to puzzle it out. She
+understood now why the Turners had not as yet made an attack upon them
+at their home. It wasn't the Turner way to wage open warfare. They were
+the wolves that struck from ambush, the rattlesnakes that lunged with
+poisoned fangs from beneath the rocks. There was some security for her
+in the Folger home, but none whatever here. There she had a strong man
+to fight for her, a loaded rifle, and under ordinary conditions the
+Turners could not hope to batter down the oaken door and overwhelm them
+without at least some loss of life. For all they knew, Bruce had a large
+stock of rifles and ammunition,&mdash;and the Turners did not look forward
+with pleasure to casualties in their ranks. The much simpler way was to
+watch the trail.</p>
+
+<p>They had known that sooner or later one of them would attempt to ride
+down after either supplies or aid. Linda was a mountain girl and she
+knew the mountain methods of procedure; and she knew quite well what she
+would have had to expect if she had not discovered the ambush in time.
+She didn't think that the sentry would actually fire on her; he would
+merely shoot the horse from beneath her. It would be a simple feat by
+the least of the Turners,&mdash;for these gaunt men were marksmen if nothing
+else. It wouldn't be in accord with Simon's plan or desire to leave her
+body lying still on the trail. But the horse killed, flight would be
+impossible, and what would transpire thereafter she did not dare to
+think. She had not forgotten Simon's threat in regard to any attempt to
+go down into the settlements. She knew that it still held good.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if Bruce made the excursion, the sentry's target would be
+somewhat different. He would shoot him down as remorselessly as he would
+shatter a lynx from a tree top.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that Linda had guessed just right. "It's the easiest way,"
+Simon had said. "They'll be trying to get out in a very few days. If the
+man&mdash;shoot straight and to kill! If Linda, plug the horse and bring her
+here behind the saddle."</p>
+
+<p>Linda turned softly, then started back. She did not even give a second's
+thought to the folly of trying to break through. She watched the
+sentinel over her shoulder and saw him turn about. Far distant though he
+was, she could tell by the movement he made that he had discovered her.</p>
+
+<p>She was almost four hundred yards away by then, and she lashed her horse
+into a gallop. The man cried to her to halt, a sound that came dim and
+strange through the burn, and then a bullet sent up a cloud of ashes a
+few feet to one side. But the range was too far even for the Turners,
+and she only urged her horse to a faster pace.</p>
+
+<p>She flew down the narrow trail, turned into the main trail, and galloped
+wildly toward home. But the sentry did not follow her. He valued his
+precious life too much for that. He had no intention of offering himself
+as a target to Bruce's rifle as he neared the house. He headed back to
+report to Simon.</p>
+
+<p>Young Bill&mdash;for such had been the identity of the sentry&mdash;found his
+chief in the large field not far distant from where Bruce had been
+confined. The man was supervising the harvest of the fall growth of
+alfalfa. The two men walked slowly away from the workers, toward the
+fringe of woods.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks as if we'll have to adopt rough measures, after all," Young
+Bill began.</p>
+
+<p>Simon turned with flushing face. "Do you mean you let him get past
+you&mdash;and missed him? Young Bill, if you've done that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you wait till I've told you how it happened? It wasn't Bruce; it
+was Linda. For some reason I can't dope out, she went up in the big burn
+back of me and saw me&mdash;when I was too far off to shoot her horse. Then
+she rode back like a witch. They'll not take that trail again."</p>
+
+<p>"It means one of two things," Simon said after a pause. "One of them is
+to starve 'em out. It won't take long. Their supplies won't last
+forever. The other is to call the clan and attack&mdash;to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"And that means loss of life."</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessarily. I don't know how many guns they've got. If any of you
+were worth your salt, you'd find out those things. I wish Dave was
+here."</p>
+
+<p>And Simon spoke the truth for once in his life: he did miss Dave. And it
+was not that there had been any love lost between them. But the truth
+was&mdash;although Simon never would have admitted it&mdash;the weaker man's
+cunning had been of the greatest aid to his chief. Simon needed it
+sorely now.</p>
+
+<p>"And we can't wait till to-morrow night&mdash;because we've got the moon
+then," Young Bill added. "Just a new moon, but it will prevent a
+surprise attack. I suppose you still have hopes of Dave coming back?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why not. I'll venture to say now he's off on some good
+piece of business&mdash;doing something none of the rest of you have thought
+of. He'll come riding back one of these days with something actually
+accomplished. I see no reason for thinking that he's dead. Bruce hasn't
+had any chance at him that I know of. But if I thought he was&mdash;there'd
+be no more waiting. We'd tear down that nest to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Simon spoke in his usual voice&mdash;with the same emphasis, the same
+undertones of passion. But the last words ended with a queer inflection.
+The truth was that he had slowly become aware that Young Bill was not
+giving him his full attention, but rather was gazing off&mdash;unfamiliar
+speculation in his eyes&mdash;toward the forests beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Simon's impulse was to follow the gaze; yet he would not yield to it.
+"Well?" he demanded. "I'm not talking to amuse myself."</p>
+
+<p>The younger man seemed to start. His eyes were half-closed; and there
+was a strange look of intentness about his facial lines when he turned
+back to Simon. "You haven't missed any stock?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Simon's eyes widened. "No. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look there&mdash;over the forest." Young Bill pointed. Simon shielded his
+eyes from the sunset glare and studied the blue-green skyline above the
+fringe of pines. There were many grotesque, black birds wheeling on slow
+wings above the spot. Now and then they dropped down, out of sight
+behind the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Buzzards!" Simon exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Young Bill answered quietly. "You see, it isn't much over a mile
+from Folger's house&mdash;in the deep woods. There's something dead there,
+Simon. And I think we'd better look to see what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"You think&mdash;" Then Simon hesitated and looked again with reddening eyes
+toward the gliding buzzards.</p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;that maybe we're going to find Dave," Young Bill replied.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The darkness of this October night fell before its time. The twilight at
+Trail's End is never long in duration, due to the simple fact that the
+mountains cut off the flood of light from the west after the setting of
+the sun, but to-night there seemed none at all. The reason was merely
+that heavy banks of clouds swept up from the southeast just after
+sunset.</p>
+
+<p>They came with rather startling rapidity and almost immediately
+completely filled the sky. Young Bill had many things on his mind as he
+rode beneath them, yet he found time to gaze at them with some
+curiosity. They were of singular greenish hue, and they hung so low that
+the tops of near-by mountains were obscured.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that there would be no moon to-night was no longer important.
+The clouds would have cut off any telltale light that might illumine the
+activities of the Turners. There would not be even the dim mist of
+starlight.</p>
+
+<p>Young Bill rode from house to house through the estate,&mdash;the homes
+occupied by Simon's brothers and cousins and their respective families.
+He knocked on each door and he only gave one little message. "Simon
+wants you at the house," he said, "and come heeled."</p>
+
+<p>He would turn to go, but always a singular quiet and breathlessness
+remained in the homes after his departure. There would be a curious
+exchange of glances and certain significant sounds. One of them was the
+metallic click of cartridges being slipped into the magazine of a rifle.
+Another was the buckling on of spurs, and perhaps the rattle of a pistol
+in its holster. Before the night fell in reality, the clan came
+riding&mdash;strange, tall figures in the half-darkness&mdash;straight for Simon's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>His horse was saddled too, and he met them in front of his door. And in
+a very few words he made all things plain to them.</p>
+
+<p>"We've found Dave," he told them simply. "Most of you already know it.
+We've decided there isn't any use of waiting any more. We're going to
+the Folger house to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The men stood silent, breathing hard. The clouds seemed to lower,
+menacingly, toward them. Simon spoke very quietly, yet his voice carried
+far. In their growing excitement they did not observe the reason, that a
+puzzling, deep calm had come over the whole wilderness world. Even in
+the quietest night there is usually a faint background of winds in the
+mountain realms&mdash;troubled breaths that whisper in the thickets and
+rustle the dead leaves&mdash;but to-night the heavy air had no breath of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"To-night Bruce Folger is going to pay the price, just as I said." He
+spoke rather boastingly; perhaps more to impress his followers than from
+impulse. Indeed, the passion that he felt left no room for his usual
+arrogance. "Fire on sight. Bill and I will come from the rear, and we
+will be ready to push through the back door the minute you break through
+the front. The rest of you surround the house on three sides. And
+remember&mdash;no man is to touch Linda."</p>
+
+<p>They nodded grimly; then the file of horsemen started toward the ridge.
+Far distant they heard a sound such as had reached them often in summer
+but was unfamiliar in fall. It was the faint rumble of distant thunder.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Bruce and Linda sat in the front room of the Folger house, quiet and
+watchful and unafraid. It was not that they did not realize their
+danger. They had simply taken all possible measures of defense; and they
+were waiting for what the night would bring forth.</p>
+
+<p>"I know they'll come to-night," Linda had said. "To-morrow night there
+will be a moon, and though it won't give much light, it will hurt their
+chances of success. Besides&mdash;they've found that their other plot&mdash;to
+kill you from ambush&mdash;isn't going to work."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce nodded and got up to examine the shutters. He wanted no ray of
+light to steal out into the growing darkness and make a target. It was a
+significant fact that the rifle did not occupy its usual place behind
+the desk. Bruce kept it in his hands as he made the inspection. Linda
+had her empty pistol, knowing that it might&mdash;in the mayhap of
+circumstance&mdash;be of aid in frightening an assailant. Old Elmira sat
+beside the fire, her stiff fingers busy at a piece of sewing.</p>
+
+<p>"You know&mdash;" Bruce said to her, "that we are expecting an attack
+to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman nodded, but didn't miss a stitch. No gleam of interest came
+into her eyes. Bruce's gaze fell to her work basket, and something
+glittered from its depth. Evidently Elmira had regained her knife.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to his chair beside Linda, and the two sat listening. They
+had never known a more quiet night. They listened in vain for the little
+night sounds that usually come stealing, so hushed and tremulous, from
+the forest. The noises that always, like feeble ghosts, dwell in a house
+at night&mdash;the little explosions of a scraping board or a banging shutter
+or perhaps a mouse, scratching in the walls&mdash;were all lacking too. And
+they both started, ever so slightly, when they heard a distant rumble of
+thunder.</p>
+
+<p>"It's going to storm," Linda told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. A thunderstorm&mdash;rather unusual in the fall, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Almost unknown. It's growing cold too."</p>
+
+<p>They waited a breathless minute, then the thunder spoke again. It was
+immeasurably nearer. It was as if it had leaped toward them, through the
+darkness, with incredible speed in the minute that had intervened. The
+last echo of the sound was not dead when they heard it a third time.</p>
+
+<p>The storm swept toward them and increased in fury. On a distant hillside
+the strange file that was the Turners halted, then gathered around
+Simon. Already the lightning made vivid, white gashes in the sky and
+illumined&mdash;for a breathless instant&mdash;the long sweep of the ridge above
+them. "We'll make good targets in the lightning," Old Bill said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ride on," Simon ordered. "You know a man can't find a target in the
+hundredth of a second of a lightning flash. We're not going to turn back
+now."</p>
+
+<p>They rode on. Far away they heard the whine and roar of wind, and in a
+moment it was upon them. The forest was no longer silent. The peal of
+the thunder was almost continuous.</p>
+
+<p>The breaking of the storm seemed to rock the Folger house on its
+foundation. Both Linda and Bruce leaped to their feet; but they felt a
+little tingle of awe when they saw that old Elmira still sat sewing. It
+was as if the calm that dwelt in the Sentinel Pine outside had come down
+to abide in her. No force that the world possessed could ever take it
+from her.</p>
+
+<p>They heard the rumble and creak of the trees as the wind smote them, and
+the flame of the lamp danced wildly, filling the room with flickering
+shadows. Bruce straightened, the lines of his face setting deep. He
+glanced once more at the rifle in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda," he said, "put out that fire. If there's going to be an attack,
+we'd have a better chance if the room were in darkness. We can shoot
+through the door then."</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed at once, knocking the burning sticks apart and drenching them
+with water. They hissed, and steamed, but the noise of the storm almost
+effaced the sound. "Now the light?" Linda asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. See where you are and have everything ready."</p>
+
+<p>She took off the glass shade of the lamp, and the little gusts of wind
+that crept in the cracks of the windows immediately extinguished the
+flame. The darkness dropped down. Then Bruce opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>The whole wilderness world struggled in the grasp of the storm. The
+scene was such that no mortal memory could possibly forget. They saw it
+in great, vivid glimpses in the intermittent flashes of the lightning,
+and the world seemed no longer that which they had come to know. Chaos
+was upon it. They saw young trees whipping in the wind, their slender
+branches flailing the air. They saw the distant ridges in black and
+startling contrast against the lighted sky. The tall tops of the trees
+wagged back and forth in frenzied signals; their branches smote and
+rubbed together. And just without their door the Sentinel Pine stood
+with top lifted to the fury of the storm.</p>
+
+<p>A strange awe swept over Bruce. A moment later he was to behold a sight
+that for the moment would make him completely forget the existence of
+the great tree; but for an instant he poised at the brink of a profound
+and far-reaching discovery. There was a great lesson for him in that
+dark, towering figure that the lightning revealed. Even in the fury of
+the storm it still stood infinitely calm, watchful, strong as the
+mountains themselves. Its great limbs moved and spoke; its top swayed
+back and forth, yet still it held its high place as Sentinel of the
+Forest, passionless, patient, talking through the murk of clouds to the
+stars that burned beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"See," Linda said. "The Turners are coming."</p>
+
+<p>It was true. Bruce dropped his eyes. Even now the clan had spread out in
+a great wing and was bearing down upon the house. The lightning showed
+them in strange, vivid flashes. Bruce nodded slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," he answered. "I'm ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Then shoot them, quick&mdash;when the lightning shows them," she whispered
+in his ear. "They're in range now." Her hand seized his arm. "What are
+you waiting for?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned to her sternly. "Have you forgotten we only have five shells?"
+he asked. "Go back to Elmira."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes met his, and she tried to smile into them. "Forgive me,
+Bruce&mdash;it's hard&mdash;to be calm."</p>
+
+<p>But at once she understood why he was waiting. The flashes of lightning
+offered no opportunity for an accurate shot. Bruce meant to conserve his
+little supply of shells until the moment of utmost need. The clan drew
+nearer. They were riding slowly, with ready rifles. And ever the storm
+increased in fury. The thunder was so close that it no longer gave the
+impression of being merely sound. It was a veritable explosion just
+above their heads. The flashes came so near together that for an
+instant Bruce began to hope they would reveal the attackers clearly
+enough to give him a chance for a well-aimed shot. The first drops of
+rain fell one by one on the roof.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes sought for Simon's figure. To Simon he owed the greatest debt,
+and to lay Simon low might mean to dishearten the whole clan. But
+although the attackers were in fair range now, scarcely two hundred
+yards away, he could not identify him. They drew closer. He raised his
+gun, waiting for a chance to fire. And at that instant a resistless
+force hurled him to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>There was the sense of vast catastrophe, a great rocking and shuddering
+that was lost in billowing waves of sound; and then a frantic effort to
+recall his wandering faculties. A blinding light cut the darkness in
+twain; it smote his eyeballs as if with a physical blow; and summoning
+all his powers of will he sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>There was only darkness at first; and he did not understand. But it was
+of scarcely less duration than the flash of lightning. A red flame
+suddenly leaped into the air, roared and grew and spread as if scattered
+by the wind itself. And Bruce's breath caught in a sob of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>The Sentinel Pine, that ancient friend and counselor that stood not over
+one hundred feet from the house, had been struck by a lightning bolt,
+its trunk had been cleft open as if by a giant's ax, and the flame was
+already springing through its balsam-laden branches.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Bruce stood as if entranced, gazing with awed face at the flaming tree.
+There was little danger of the house itself catching fire. The wind blew
+the flame in the opposite direction; besides, the rains were beating on
+the roof. The fire in the great tree itself, however, was too well
+started to be extinguished at once by any kind of rainfall; but it did
+burn with less fierceness.</p>
+
+<p>Dimly he felt the girl's hand grasping at his arm. Her fingers pressed
+until he felt pain. His eyes lowered to hers. The sight of that
+passion-drawn face&mdash;recalling in an instant the scene beside the camp
+fire his first night at Trail's End&mdash;called him to himself. "Shoot, you
+fool!" she stormed at him. "The tree's lighted up the whole countryside,
+and you can't miss. Shoot them before they run away."</p>
+
+<p>He glanced quickly out. The clan that had drawn within sixty yards of
+the house at the time the lightning struck had been thrown into
+confusion. Their horses had been knocked down by the force of the bolt
+and were fleeing, riderless, away. The men followed them, shouting,
+plainly revealed in the light from the burning tree. The great torch
+beside the house had completely turned the tables. And Linda spoke true;
+they offered the best of targets.</p>
+
+<p>Again the girl's eyes were lurid slits between the lids. Her lips were
+drawn, and her breathing was strange. He looked at her calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Linda. I can't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't," she cried. "You coward&mdash;you traitor! Kill&mdash;kill&mdash;kill them
+while there's time."</p>
+
+<p>She saw the resolve in his face, and she snatched the rifle from his
+hands. She hurled it to her shoulder and three times fired blindly
+toward the retreating Turners.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant Bruce seemed to come to life. His thoughts had been
+clear ever since the tree had been struck; his vision was straighter and
+more far-reaching than ever in his life before, but now his muscles
+wakened too. He sprang toward the girl and snatched the rifle from her
+hand. She fought for it, and he held her with a strong arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait&mdash;wait, Linda," he said gently. "You've wasted three cartridges
+now. There are only two left. And we may need them some other time."</p>
+
+<p>He held her from him with his arm; and it was as if his strength flowed
+into her. Her blazing eyes sought his, and for a long second their wills
+battled. And then a deep wonder seemed to come over her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she breathed. "What have you found out?"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in a strange and distant voice. Slowly the fire died in her
+eyes, the drawn features relaxed, her hands fell at her side. He drew
+her away from he lighted doorway, out of the range of any of the
+Turners that should turn to answer the rifle fire. The wind roared over
+the house and swept by in clamoring fury, the electric storm dimmed and
+lessened as it journeyed on.</p>
+
+<p>These two knew that if death spared them in all the long passage of
+their years, they could never forget that moment. The girl watched him
+breathlessly, oblivious to all things else. He seemed wholly unaware of
+her now. There was something aloof, impassive, infinitely calm about
+him, and a great, far-reaching understanding was in his eyes. Her own
+eyes suddenly filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda, there's something come to me&mdash;and I don't know that I can make
+you understand. I can only call it strength&mdash;a new strength and a
+greater strength than I ever had before. It's something that the
+pine&mdash;that great tree that we just saw split open&mdash;has been trying to
+tell me for a long time. Oh, can't you see, Linda? There it stood,
+hundreds of years&mdash;so great, so tall, so wise&mdash;in a moment broken like a
+reed. It takes away my arrogance, Linda. It makes me see myself as I
+really am. And that means&mdash;<i>power</i>."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes blazed, and he caught her hands in his.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a symbol, Linda, not only of the wilderness, but of powers
+higher and greater than the wilderness. Powers that can look down, and
+not be swept away by passion, and not try to tear to pieces those who in
+their folly harm them. There's no room for such things as vengeance in
+this new strength. There's no room for murder, and malice, and hatred,
+and bloodshed."</p>
+
+<p>Linda understood. She knew that this new-found strength did not mean
+renunciation of her cause. It did not mean that he would give over his
+attempt to reinstate her as the owner of her father's estates. It only
+meant that the impulse of personal vengeance was dead within him. He
+knew now&mdash;the same as ever&mdash;that the duty of the men that dwell upon the
+earth is to do their allotted tasks, and without hatred and without
+passion to overcome the difficulties that stand in the way. She realized
+that if one of the Turners should leap through the door and attack her,
+Bruce would kill him without mercy or regret. She knew that he would
+make every effort to bring the offenders to the law. But the ability to
+shoot a fleeing enemy in the back, because of wrongs done long ago, was
+past.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce's vision had come to him. He knew that if vengeance had been the
+creed of the powers that ruled the world, the sphere would have been
+destroyed with fire long since. To stand firm and straight and
+unflinching; not to judge, not to condemn, not to resent; this was true
+strength. He began to see the whole race of men as so many leaves,
+buffeted by the winds of chance and circumstance; and was it for the oak
+leaf that the wind carried swift and high to hold in scorn the shrub
+leaf that the storm had already hurled to the dust?</p>
+
+<p>"I know," the girl said, her thoughts wandering afar. "Perhaps the name
+for it all is&mdash;tolerance."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," he nodded. "And possibly it is only&mdash;worship!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The Turners had gone. The dimming lightning revealed the entire
+attacking party half a mile distant and out of rifle range on the ridge;
+and Bruce and Linda stole together out into the storm. The green foliage
+of the tree had already burned away, but some of the upper branches
+still glowed against the dark sky. A fallen branch smoldered on the
+ground, hissing in the rain, and it lighted their way.</p>
+
+<p>Awed and mystified, Bruce halted before the ruin of the great tree. He
+had almost forgotten the stress of the moment just passed. It did not
+even occur to him that some of his enemies, unseen before, might still
+be lurking in the shadow, watching for a chance to harm. They stood a
+moment in silence. Then Bruce uttered one little gasp and stretched his
+arm into the hollow that the cleft in the trunk had revealed.</p>
+
+<p>The light from the burning branch behind him had shown him a small, dark
+object that had evidently been inserted in the hollow tree trunk through
+some little aperture that had either since been closed up or they had
+never observed. It was a leathern wallet, and Bruce opened it under
+Linda's startled gaze. He drew out a single white paper.</p>
+
+<p>He held it in the light, and his glance swept down its lines of faded
+ink. Then he looked up with brightening eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The secret agreement between your father and mine," he told her simply.
+"And we've won."</p>
+
+<p>He watched her eyes brighten. It seemed to him that nothing life had
+ever offered had given him the same pleasure. It was a moment of
+triumph. But before half of its long seconds were gone, it became a
+moment of despair.</p>
+
+<p>A rifle spoke from the coverts beyond,&mdash;one sharp, angry note that rose
+distinct and penetrating above the noise of the distant thunder. A
+little tongue of fire darted, like a snake's head, in the darkness. And
+the triumph on Bruce's face changed to a singular look of wonder.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2>
+
+
+<p>To Simon, the night had seemingly ended in triumph after all. It had
+looked dark for a while. The bolt of lightning, setting fire to the
+pine, had deranged all of his plans. His men had been thrown from their
+horses, the blazing pine tree had left them exposed to fire from the
+house, and they had not yet caught their mounts and rallied. Young Bill
+and himself, however, had tied their horses before the lightning had
+struck and had lingered in the thickets in front of the house for just
+such a chance as had been given them.</p>
+
+<p>He hadn't understood why Bruce had not opened fire on the fleeing
+Turners. He wondered if his enemy were out of ammunition. The tragedy of
+the Sentinel Pine had had no meaning for him; and he had held his rifle
+cocked and ready for the instant that Bruce had shown himself.</p>
+
+<p>Young Bill had heard his little exultant gasp when Linda and Bruce had
+come out into the firelight. Plainly they had kept track of all the
+attacking party that had been visible, and supposed that all their
+enemies had gone. He felt the movement of Simon's strong arms as he
+raised the rifle. Those arms were never steadier. In the darkness the
+younger man could not see his face, but his own fancy pictured it with
+entire clearness. The eyes were narrowed and red, the lines cut deep
+about the bloodhound lips, and mercy was as far from him as from the
+Killer who hunted on the distant ridge.</p>
+
+<p>But Simon didn't fire at once. The two were coming steadily toward him,
+and the nearer they were the better his chance of success in the
+unsteady light. He sat as breathless, as wholly free from telltale
+motion as a puma who waits in ambush for an approaching deer. He meant
+to take careful aim. It was his big chance, and he intended to make the
+most of it.</p>
+
+<p>The two had halted beside the ruined pine, but for a moment he held his
+fire. They stood rather close together; he wanted to wait until Bruce
+offered a clear target. And at that instant Bruce had drawn the leather
+wallet from the tree.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity alone stayed Simon's finger as Bruce had opened it. He saw the
+gleam of the white paper in the dim light; and then he understood.</p>
+
+<p>Simon was a man of rigid, unwavering self-control; and his usual way was
+to look a long time between the sights before he fired. Yet the sight of
+that document&mdash;the missing Folger-Ross agreement on which had hung
+victory or defeat&mdash;sent a violent impulse through all his nervous
+system. For the first time in his memory his reflexes got away from him.</p>
+
+<p>It had meant too much; and his finger pressed back involuntarily against
+the trigger. He hadn't taken his usual deliberate aim, although he had
+seen Brace's figure clearly between the sights the instant before he had
+fired. Simon was a rifle-man, bred in the bone, and he had no reason to
+think that the hasty aim meant a complete miss. He did realize, however,
+the difficulties of night shooting&mdash;a realization that all men who have
+lingered after dusk in the duck blind experience sooner or later&mdash;and he
+looked up over his sights to see the result of his shot. His
+self-control had completely returned to him; and he was perfectly cold
+about the whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>From the first second he knew he hadn't completely missed. He raised his
+rifle to shoot again.</p>
+
+<p>But Bruce's body was no longer revealed. Linda stood in the way. It
+looked as if she had deliberately thrown her own body as a shield
+between.</p>
+
+<p>Simon spoke then,&mdash;a single, terrible oath of hatred and jealousy. But
+in a second more he saw his triumph. Bruce swayed, reeled, and fell in
+Linda's arms, and he saw her half-drag him into the house.</p>
+
+<p>He stood shivering, but not from the cold that the storm had brought.
+"Come on," he ordered Young Bill. "I think we've downed him for good,
+but we've got to get that paper."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>But Simon did not see all things clearly. He had little real knowledge
+of the little drama that had followed his shot from ambush.</p>
+
+<p>Human nature is full of odd quirks and twists, and among other things,
+symptoms are misleading. There is an accepted way for men to act when
+they are struck with a rifle bullet. They are expected to reel, to
+throw their arms wide, and usually to cry out. The only trouble with
+these actions, as most men who have been in French battle-fields know
+very well, is that they do not usually happen in real life.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce, with Linda's eyes upon him, took one rather long, troubled
+breath. And he did look somewhat puzzled. Then he looked down at his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm hit, Linda," he said in a quiet way. "I think just a scratch."</p>
+
+<p>The tremendous shock of any kind of wound from a thirty-forty caliber
+bullet had not seemingly affected him outwardly at all. Linda's response
+was rather curious. Some hours were to pass before he completely
+understood. The truth was that the shock of that rifle bullet,
+ordinarily striking a blow of a half-ton, had cost him for the moment an
+ability to make any logical interpretation of events. The girl moved
+swiftly, yet without giving an impression of leaping, and stood very
+close and in front of him. In one lightning movement she had made of her
+own body a shield for his, in case the assassin in the covert should
+shoot again.</p>
+
+<p>She was trained to mountain ways, and instantly she regained a perfect
+mastery of herself. Her arms went about and seized his shoulders.
+"Stagger," she whispered quickly. "Pretend to fall. It's the one chance
+to save you."</p>
+
+<p>He dispelled the mists in his own brain and obeyed her. He swayed, and
+her arms went about him. Then he fell forward.</p>
+
+<p>Her strong arms encircled his waist and with all her magnificent young
+strength she dragged him to the door. It was noticeable, however&mdash;to all
+eyes except Bruce's&mdash;that she kept her own body as much as she could
+between him and the ambush. In an instant they were in the darkened
+room. Bruce stood up, once more wholly master of himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not hurt bad?" she asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Just a deep scratch in the arm muscle near the shoulder. Bullet
+just must have grazed me. But it's bleeding pretty bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's no time to be lost." Her hands in her eagerness went again
+to his shoulder. "Don't you see&mdash;he'll be here in a minute. We'll steal
+out the back door and try to ride down to the courts before they can
+overtake us&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In one instant he had grasped the idea; and he laughed softly in the
+gloom. "I know. I'll snatch two blankets and the food. You get the
+horse."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang out the kitchen door and he hurried into the bedrooms. He
+snatched two of the warmest blankets from the beds and hurled them over
+his shoulder. He hooked the camp ax on his belt, then hastened into the
+little kitchen. He took up the little sack containing a few pounds of
+jerked venison, spilled out a few pieces for Elmira, and carried
+it&mdash;with a few pounds of flour&mdash;out to meet Linda. The horse still stood
+saddled, and with deft hands they tied on their supplies and fastened
+the blankets in a long roll in front of the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Get on," she whispered. "I'll get up behind you."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in the utter darkness; he felt her breath against his cheek.
+Then the lightning came dimly and showed him her face.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Linda," he replied quietly. "You are going alone&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She cut him off with a despairing cry. "Oh, please, Bruce&mdash;I won't. I'll
+stay here then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see?" he demanded. "You can make it out without me. I'm
+wounded and bleeding, and can't tell how long I can keep up. We've only
+got one horse, and without me to weigh him down you can get down to the
+courts&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And leave you here to be murdered? Oh, don't waste the precious seconds
+any more. I won't go without you. I mean it. If you stay here, I do too.
+Believe me if you ever believed anything."</p>
+
+<p>Once more the lightning revealed her face, and on it was the
+determination of a zealot. He knew that she spoke the truth. He climbed
+with some difficulty into the saddle. A moment more and she swung up
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The entire operation had taken an astonishingly short period of time.
+Bruce had worked like mad, wholly disregarding his injured arm. The rain
+had already changed to snow, and the wet flakes beat in his face, but he
+did not heed them. Just beyond, Simon with ready rifle was creeping
+toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way?" Bruce asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The out-trail&mdash;around the mountain," she whispered. "Simon will
+overtake us on the other&mdash;he's got a magnificent horse. On the mountain
+trail we'll have a better chance to keep out of his sight."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke hurriedly, yet conveyed her message with entire clearness.
+They knew what they had to face, these two. Simon and whoever of the
+clan was with him would lose no time in springing in pursuit. They each
+had a strong horse, they knew the trails, they carried long-range rifles
+and would open fire at the first glimpse of the fugitives. Bruce was
+wounded; slight as the injury was it would seriously handicap them in
+such a test as this. Their one chance was to keep to the remote trails,
+to lurk unseen in the thickets, and try to break through to safety. And
+they knew that only by the doubtful mercy of the forest gods could they
+ever succeed.</p>
+
+<p>She took the reins and pulled out of the trail, then encircled a heavy
+wall of brush. She didn't wish to take the risk of Simon seeing their
+forms in the dimming lightning and opening fire so soon. Then she turned
+back into the trail and headed into the storm.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Simon had clear enough memory of the rifle fire that Linda had opened
+upon the clan to wish to approach the house with care. It would be
+wholly typical of the girl to lay her lover on his bed, then go back to
+the window to wait for a sight of his assassin. She could look straight
+along a rifle barrel! A few moments were lost as Young Bill and himself
+encircled the thickets, keeping out of the gleam of the smoldering tree.
+Its light was almost gone; it hissed and glowed in the wet snow.</p>
+
+<p>They crept up from the shadow, and holding their rifles ready, opened
+the door. They were somewhat surprised to find it unlocked. The truth
+was it had been left thus by design; Linda did not wish them to encircle
+the house to the rear door and discover Bruce and herself in the act of
+departure. The room was in darkness, and the two intruders rather
+expected to find Bruce's body on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>These were mountain men; and they had been in rifle duels before. They
+had the sure instincts of the beasts of prey in the hills without, and
+among other things they knew it wasn't wise to stand long in an open
+doorway with the firelight of the ruined pine behind them. They slipped
+quickly into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Then they stopped and listened. The room was deeply silent. They
+couldn't hear the sound that both of them had so confidently
+expected,&mdash;the faint breathing of a dying man. Simon struck a match. The
+room was quite deserted.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" Bill demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Simon turned toward him with a scowl, and the match flickered and burned
+out in his fingers. "Keep your rifle ready. He may be hiding
+somewhere&mdash;still able to shoot."</p>
+
+<p>They stole to the door of Linda's room and listened. Then they threw it
+wide.</p>
+
+<p>One of their foes was in this room&mdash;an implacable foe whose eyes were
+glittering and strange in the matchlight. But it was neither Bruce nor
+Linda. It was old Elmira, cold and sinister as a rattler in its lair.
+Simon cursed her and hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant both men began to move swiftly. Holding his rifle like a
+club, Simon swung through into, Bruce's room, lighted another match,
+then darted into the kitchen. In the dim matchlight the truth went home
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>He turned, eyes glittering. "They've gone&mdash;on Dave's horse," he said.
+"Thank God they've only got one horse between 'em and can't go fast. You
+ride like hell up the trail toward the store&mdash;they might have gone that
+way. Keep close watch and shoot when you can make 'em out."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;" Bill's eyes widened.</p>
+
+<p>"Mean! I mean do as I say. Shoot by sound, if you can't see them, and
+don't lose another second or I'll shoot you too. Aim for the man if a
+chance offers&mdash;but shoot, anyway. Don't stop hunting till you find
+them&mdash;they'll duck off in the brush sure. If they get through,
+everything is lost. I'll take the trail around the mountain."</p>
+
+<p>They raced to their horses, untied them, and mounted swiftly. The
+darkness swallowed them at once.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the depth of gloom even the wild folk&mdash;usually keeping so close a
+watch on those that move on the shadowed trails&mdash;did not see Linda and
+Bruce ride past. The darkness is usually their time of dominance, but
+to-night most of them had yielded to the storm and the snow. They
+hovered in their coverts. What movement there was among them was mostly
+toward the foothills; for the message had gone forth over the wilderness
+that the cold had come to stay. The little gnawing folk, emerging for
+another night's work at filling their larders with food, crept down into
+the scarcely less impenetrable darkness of their underground burrows.
+Even the bears, whose furry coats were impervious to any ordinary cold,
+felt the beginnings of the cold-trance creeping over them. They were
+remembering the security and warmth of their last winter's dens, and
+they began to long for them again.</p>
+
+<p>The horse walked slowly, head close to the ground. The girl made no
+effort to guide him. The lightning had all but ceased; and in an instant
+it had become apparent that only by trusting to the animal's instinct
+could the trail be kept at all; almost at once all sense of direction
+was lost to them. The snow and the darkness obscured the outline of the
+ridges against the sky; the trail was wholly invisible beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>After the first hundred yards, they had no way of knowing that the horse
+was actually on the trail. While animals in the light of day cannot see
+nearly so far or interpret nearly so clearly as human beings, they
+usually seem to make their way much better at night. Many a frontiersman
+has been saved from death by realization of this fact; and, bewildered
+by the ridges, has permitted his dog to lead him into camp. But nature
+has never devised a creature that can see in the utter darkness, and the
+gloom that enfolded them now seemed simply unfathomable. Bruce found it
+increasingly hard to believe that the horse's eyes could make out any
+kind of dim pathway in the pine needles. The feeling grew on him and on
+Linda as well that they were lost and aimlessly wandering in the storm.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the sensations that the wilderness can afford, there are few more
+dreadful to the spirit than this. It is never pleasant to lose one's
+bearings,&mdash;and in the night and the cold and miles from any friendly
+habitation it is particularly hard to bear. Bruce felt the age-old
+menace of the wilderness as never before. It always seemed to be
+crouching, waiting to take a man at a disadvantage; and like the gods
+that first make mad those whom they would destroy, it doesn't quite play
+fair. He understood now certain wilderness tragedies of which he had
+heard: how tenderfeet&mdash;lost among the ridges&mdash;had broken into a wild run
+that had ended nowhere except in exhaustion and death.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce himself felt a wild desire to lash his horse into a gallop, but
+he forced it back with all his powers of will. His calmer, saner self
+explained that folly with entire clearness. It would mean panic for the
+horse, and then a quick and certain death either at the foot of a
+precipice or from a blow from a low-hanging limb. The horse seemed to be
+feeling its way, rather than seeing.</p>
+
+<p>They were strange, lonely figures in the darkness; and for a long time
+they rode almost in silence. Then Bruce felt the girl's breath as she
+whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Bruce," she said. "Let's be brave and look this matter in the face. Do
+you think we've got a chance?"</p>
+
+<p>He rode a long time before he answered. He groped desperately for a word
+that might bring her cheer, but it was hard to find. The cold seemed to
+deepen about them, the remorseless snow beat into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda," he replied, "it is one of the mercies of this world for men
+always to think that they've got a chance. Maybe it's only a cruelty in
+our case."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I ought to tell you something else. I haven't the least way of
+knowing whether we are on the right trail."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew that long ago. Whether we are on any trail at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been thinking. I don't know how many forks it has. We might
+have already got on a wrong one. Perhaps the horse is turned about and
+is heading back home&mdash;toward Simon's stables."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke dully, and he thrust his arm back to her. "Linda, try to be
+brave," he urged. "We can only take a chance."</p>
+
+<p>The horse plodded a few more steps. "Brave! To think that it is <i>you</i>
+that has to encourage <i>me</i>&mdash;instead of my trying to keep up your
+spirits. I will try to be brave, Bruce. And if we don't live through the
+night, my last remembrance will be of your bravery&mdash;how you, injured and
+weak from loss of blood, still remembered to give a cheery word to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not badly injured," he told her gently. "And there are certain
+things that have come clear to me lately. One of them is that except for
+you&mdash;throwing your own precious body between&mdash;I wouldn't be here at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>The feeling that they had lost the trail grew upon them. More than once
+the stirrup struck the bark of a tree and often the thickets gave way
+beneath them. Once they halted to adjust the blankets on the saddle, and
+they listened for any sounds that might indicate that Simon was
+overtaking them. But all they heard was the soft rustle of the leaves
+under the wind-blown snow.</p>
+
+<p>"Linda," he asked suddenly. "Does it seem to you to be awfully cold?"</p>
+
+<p>She waited a long time before she spoke. This was not the hour to make
+quick answers. On any decision might rest their success or failure.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I can stand it&mdash;awhile longer," she answered at last.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think we'd better try to. It's getting cold. Every hour
+it's colder, and I seem to be getting weaker. It isn't a real wound,
+Linda&mdash;but it seems to have knocked some of my vitality out of me, and
+I'm dreadfully in need of rest. I think we'd better try to make a camp."</p>
+
+<p>"And go on by morning light?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But Simon might overtake us then."</p>
+
+<p>"We must stay out of sight of the trail. But somehow&mdash;I can't help but
+hope he won't try to follow us on such a night as this."</p>
+
+<p>He drew up the horse, and they sat in the beat of the snow. "Don't make
+any mistake about that, Bruce," she told him. "Remember, that unless he
+overtakes us before we come into the protection of the courts, his whole
+fight is lost. It doesn't alone mean loss of the estate&mdash;for which he
+would risk his life just as he has a dozen times. It means defeat&mdash;a
+thing that would come hard to Simon. Besides, he's got a fire within him
+that will keep him warm."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;hatred?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hatred. Nothing else."</p>
+
+<p>"But in spite of it we must make camp. We'll get off the trail&mdash;if we're
+still on it&mdash;and try to slip through to-morrow. You see what's going to
+happen if we keep on going this way?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know that I feel a queer dread&mdash;and hopelessness&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And that dread and hopelessness are just as much danger signals as the
+sound of Simon's horse behind us. It means that the cold and the snow
+and the fear are getting the better of us. Linda, it's a race with
+death. Don't misunderstand me or disbelieve me. It isn't Simon alone
+now. It's the cold and the snow and the fear. The thing to do is to make
+camp, keep as warm as we can in our blankets, and push on in the
+morning. It's two full days' ride, going fast, the best we can go&mdash;and
+God knows what will happen before the end."</p>
+
+<p>"Then turn off the trail, Bruce," the girl told him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that we're even on the trail."</p>
+
+<p>"Turn off, anyway. As long as we stay together&mdash;it doesn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke very quietly. Then he felt a strange thing. A warmth which
+even that growing, terrible cold could not transcend swept over him. For
+her arms had crept out under his arms and encircled his great breast,
+then pressed with all her gentle strength.</p>
+
+<p>No word of encouragement, no cheery expression of hope could have meant
+so much. Not defeat, not even the long darkness of death itself could
+appall him now. All that he had given and suffered and endured, all the
+mighty effort that he had made had in an instant been shown in its true
+light, a thing worth while, a sacrifice atoned for and redeemed.</p>
+
+<p>They headed off into the thickets, blindly, letting the horse choose the
+way. They felt him turn to avoid some object in his path&mdash;evidently a
+fallen tree&mdash;and they mounted a slight ridge or rise. Then they felt the
+wet touch of fir branches against their cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce stopped the horse and both dismounted. Both of them knew that
+under the drooping limbs of the tree they would find, at least until the
+snows deepened, comparative shelter from the storm. Here, rolled in
+their blankets, they might pass the remainder of the night hours.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce tied the horse, and the girl unrolled the blankets. But she did
+not lay them together to make a rude bed,&mdash;and the dictates of
+conventionality had nothing whatever to do with it. If one jot more
+warmth could have been achieved by it, these two would have lain side by
+side through the night hours between the same blankets. She knew,
+however, that more warmth could be achieved if each of them took a
+blanket and rolled up in it; thus they would get two thicknesses instead
+of one and no openings to admit the freezing air. When this was done
+they lay side by side, economizing the last atom of warmth.</p>
+
+<p>The night hours were dreary and long. The rain beat into the limbs above
+them, and sometimes it sifted through. At the first gray of dawn Bruce
+opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>His dreams had been troubled and strange, but the reality to which he
+wakened gave him no sense of relief. The first knowledge that he had was
+that the snow had continued to sift down throughout the night, that it
+had already laid a white mantle over the wilderness, and the whirling
+flakes still cut off all view of the familiar landmarks by which he
+might get his bearings.</p>
+
+<p>He had this knowledge before he was actually cognizant of the cold. And
+then its first realization came to him in a strange heaviness and
+dullness in his body, and an almost irresistible desire to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>He fought a little battle, lying there under the snow-covered limbs of
+the fir tree. Because it was one in which no blows were exchanged, no
+shots fired, and no muscles called into action, it was no less a battle,
+trying and stern. It was a fight waged in his own spirit, and it seemed
+to rend him in twain.</p>
+
+<p>The whole issue was clear in his mind at once. The cold had deepened in
+these hours of dawn, and he was slowly, steadily freezing to death. Even
+now the blood flowed less swiftly in his veins. Death itself, in the
+moment, had lost all horror for him; rather it was a thing of peace, of
+ease. All he had to do was to lie still. Just close his eyes,&mdash;and soft
+shadows would drop over him.</p>
+
+<p>They would drop over Linda too. She lay still beside him; perhaps they
+had already fallen. The war he had waged so long and so relentlessly
+would end in blissful calm. Outside there was only snow and cold and
+wracking limbs and pain, only further conflict with tireless enemies,
+only struggle to tear his agonized body to pieces; and the bitterness of
+defeat in the end. He saw his chances plain as he lay beneath that gray
+sky. Even now, perhaps, Simon was upon them. Only two little rifle
+shells remained with which to combat him, and he doubted that his
+wounded arm would hold the rifle steady. There were weary, innumerable
+miles between them and any shelter, and only the terrible, trackless
+forest lay between.</p>
+
+<p>Why not lie still and let the curtains fall? This was an easy, tranquil
+passing, and heaven alone knew what dreadful mode of egress would be his
+if he rose to battle further. All the argument seemed on one side.</p>
+
+<p>But high and bright above all this burned the indomitable flame of his
+spirit. Even as the thoughts came to him it mounted higher, it propelled
+its essence of strength through his veins, it brought new steel to his
+muscles. To rise, to fight, to struggle on! Never to yield until the
+Power above decreed! To stand firm, even as the pines themselves. The
+dominant greatness that Linda had found in this man rose in him, and he
+set his muscles like iron.</p>
+
+<p>He struggled to rise. He shook off the mists of the frost in his brain.
+He seemed to come to life. Quickly he knelt by Linda and shook her
+shoulders in his hands. She opened her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up, Linda," he said gently. "We have to go on."</p>
+
+<p>She started to object, but a message in his eyes kept her from it. His
+own spirit went into her. He helped her to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Help me roll the blankets," he commanded, "and take out enough food for
+breakfast. We can't stop to eat it here. I think we're in sight of the
+main trail; whether we can find it&mdash;in the snow&mdash;I don't know." She
+understood; usually the absence of vegetation on a well-worn trail makes
+a shallow covering of snow appear more level and smooth and thus
+possible to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid the snow's already too deep," he continued, "but we can go
+on in a general direction for a while at least&mdash;unless the snow gets
+worse so I can't even guess the position of the sun. We must get farther
+into the thickets before we stop to eat."</p>
+
+<p>They were strange figures in the snow flurries as they went to work to
+roll the blankets into a compact bundle. The food she had taken from
+their stores for breakfast he thrust into the pocket of his coat; the
+rest, with the blankets, she tied swiftly on the horse. They unfastened
+the animal and for a moment she stood holding the reins while Bruce
+crept back on the hillside to look for the trail.</p>
+
+<p>The snow swept round them, and they felt the lowering menace of the
+cold. And at that instant those dread spirits that rule the wilderness,
+jealous then and jealous still of the intrusion of man, dealt them a
+final, deadly blow.</p>
+
+<p>Its weapon was just a sound&mdash;a loud crash in a distant thicket&mdash;and a
+pungent message on the wind that their human senses were too blunt to
+receive. Bruce saw the full dreadfulness of the blow and was powerless
+to save. The horse suddenly snorted loudly, then reared up. He saw as in
+a tragic, dream the girl struggle to hold him; he saw her pulled down
+into the snow and the rein jerked from her hand. Then the animal
+plunged, wheeled, and raced at top speed away into the snow flurries.
+Some Terror that as yet they could not name had broken their control of
+him and in an instant taken from them this one last hope of safety.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Bruce walked over to Linda, waiting in the snow on her knees. It was not
+an intentional posture. She had been jerked down by the plunging horse,
+and she had not yet completely risen. But the sight of her slight
+figure, her raised white face, her clasped hands, and the remorseless
+snow of the wilderness about her moved Bruce to his depths. He saw her
+but dimly in the snow flurries, and she looked as if she were in an
+attitude of prayer.</p>
+
+<p>He came rather slowly, and he even smiled a little. And she gave him a
+wan, strange, little smile in return.</p>
+
+<p>"We're down to cases at last," he said, with a rather startling
+quietness of tone. "You see what it means?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, then got to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"We can walk out, if we are let alone and given time; it isn't that we
+are obliged to have the horse. But our blankets are on its back, and
+this storm is steadily becoming a blizzard. And you see&mdash;<i>time</i> is one
+thing that we don't have. No human being can stand this cold for long
+unprotected."</p>
+
+<p>"And we can't keep going&mdash;keep warm by walking?"</p>
+
+<p>His answer was to take out his knife and put the point of the steel to
+his thumb nail. His eyes strained, then looked up. "A little way," he
+answered, "but we can't keep our main directions. The sun doesn't even
+cast a shadow on my nail to show us which is west. We could keep up a
+while, perhaps, but there is no end to this wilderness and at noon or
+to-night&mdash;the result would be the same."</p>
+
+<p>"And it means&mdash;the end?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I can't catch the horse. I'm going now. If we can regain the
+blankets&mdash;by getting in rifle range of the horse&mdash;we might make some
+sort of shelter in the snow and last out until we can see our way and
+get our bearings. You don't know of any shelter&mdash;any cave or cabin where
+we might build a fire?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. There are some in the hills, but we can't see our way to find
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. I should have thought of that. And you see, we can't build a
+fire here&mdash;everything is wet, and the snow is beginning to whirl so we
+couldn't keep it going. If we should stagger on all day in this storm
+and this snow, we couldn't endure the night." He smiled again. "And I
+want you to climb a tree&mdash;and stay there&mdash;until I come back."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him dully. "What's the use, Bruce? You won't come back.
+You'll chase the thing until you die&mdash;I know you. You don't know when to
+give up. And if you want to come back&mdash;you couldn't find the way. I'm
+going with you."</p>
+
+<p>"No." Once more she started to disobey, but the grave displeasure in
+his eyes restrained her. "It's going to take all my strength to fight
+through that snow&mdash;I must go fast&mdash;and maybe life and death will have to
+depend on your strength at the end of the trail. You must save it&mdash;the
+little you have left. I can find my way back to you by following my own
+tracks&mdash;the snow won't fill them up so soon. And since I must take the
+rifle&mdash;to shoot the horse if I can't catch him&mdash;you must climb a tree.
+You know why."</p>
+
+<p>"Partly to hide from Simon if he comes this way. And partly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Because there's some danger in that thicket beyond!" he interrupted
+her. "The horse's terror was real&mdash;besides, you heard the sound. It
+might be only a puma. But it might be&mdash;the Killer. Swing your arms and
+struggle all you can to keep the blood flowing. I won't be gone long."</p>
+
+<p>He started to go, and she ran after him with outstretched arms. "Oh,
+Bruce," she cried, "come back soon&mdash;soon. Don't leave me to die alone.
+I'm not strong enough for that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He whirled, took two paces back, and his arms went about her. He had
+forgotten his injury long since. He kissed her cool lips and smiled into
+her eyes. Then at once the flurries hid him.</p>
+
+<p>The girl climbed up into the branches of a fir tree. In the thicket
+beyond a great gray form tacked back and forth, trying to locate a scent
+that a second before he had caught but dimly and had lost. It was the
+Killer, and his temper was lost long ago in the whirling snow. His anger
+was upon him, partly from the discomfort of the storm, partly from the
+constant, gnawing pain of three bullet wounds in his powerful body.
+Besides, he realized the presence of his old and greatest enemy,&mdash;those
+tall, slight forms that had crossed him so many times, that had stung
+him with their bullets, and whose weakness he had learned.</p>
+
+<p>The wind was variable, and all at once he caught the scent plain. He
+lurched forward, crashed again through the brush, and walked out into
+the snow-swept open. Linda saw his vague outline, and at first she hung
+perfectly motionless, hoping to escape his gaze. She had been told many
+times that grizzlies cannot climb, yet she had no desire to see him
+raging below her, reaching, possibly trying to shake her from the limbs.
+Her muscles were stiff and inactive from the cold, and she doubted her
+ability to hold on. Besides, in that dread moment she found it hard to
+believe that the Killer would not be able to swing into the lower limbs,
+high enough to strike her down.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't seem to see her. His eyes were lowered; besides, it was never
+the grizzly way to search the branches of a tree. The wind blew the
+message that he might have read clearly in the opposite direction. She
+saw him walk slowly across the snow, head lowered, a huge gray ghost in
+the snow flurries not one hundred feet distant. Then she saw him pause,
+with lowered head.</p>
+
+<p>In the little second before the truth came to her, the bear had already
+turned. Bruce's tracks were somewhat dimmed by the snow, but the Killer
+interpreted them truly. She saw too late that he had crossed them, read
+their message, and now had turned into the clouds of snow to trace them
+down.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant she gazed at him in speechless horror; and already the
+flurries had almost obscured his gray figure. Desperately she tried to
+call his attention from the tracks. She called, then she rustled the
+branches as loudly as she could. But the noise of the wind obscured what
+sound she made, and the bear was already too absorbed in the hunt to
+turn and see her. As always, in the nearing presence of a foe, his rage
+grew upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Sobbing, Linda swung down from the tree. She had no conscious plan of
+aid to her lover. She only had a blind instinct to seek him, to try to
+warn him of his danger, and at least to be with him at the death. The
+great tracks of the Killer, seemingly almost as long as her own arm,
+made a plain trail for her to follow. She too struck off into the
+storm-swept canyon.</p>
+
+<p>And the forest gods who dwell somewhere in the region where the pine
+tops taper into the sky, and who pull the strings that drop and raise
+the curtain and work the puppets that are the players of the wilderness
+dramas, saw a chance for a great and tragic jest in this strange chase
+over the snow. The destinies of Bruce, Linda, and the Killer were
+already converging on this trail that all three followed,&mdash;the path that
+the runaway horse made in the snow. Only one of the great forces of the
+war that had been waged at Trail's End was lacking, and now he came
+also.</p>
+
+<p>Simon Turner had ridden late into the night and from before dawn; with
+remorseless fury he had goaded on his exhausted horse, he had driven him
+with unpitying strength through coverts, over great rocks, down into
+rocky canyons in search of Bruce and Linda, and now, as the dawn broke,
+he thought that he had found them. He had suddenly come upon the tracks
+of Bruce's horse in the snow.</p>
+
+<p>If he had encountered them farther back, when the animal had been
+running wildly, he might have guessed the truth and rejoiced. No man
+would attempt to ride a horse at a gallop through that trailless
+stretch. But at the point he found the tracks most of the horse's terror
+had been spent, and it was walking leisurely, sometimes lowering its
+head to crop the shrubbery. The trail was comparatively fresh too; or
+else the fast-falling snow would have already obscured it. He thought
+that his hour of triumph was near.</p>
+
+<p>But it had come none too soon. And Simon&mdash;out of passion-filled
+eyes&mdash;looked and saw that it would likely bring death with it.</p>
+
+<p>He realized his position fully. The storm was steadily developing into
+one of those terrible mountain blizzards in which, without shelter, no
+human being might live. He was far from his home, he had no blankets,
+and he could not find his way. Yet he would not have turned back if he
+could.</p>
+
+<p>In all the manifold mysteries of the wilderness there was no stranger
+thing than this: that in the face of his passion Simon had forgotten and
+ignored even that deepest instinct, self-preservation. Nothing mattered
+any more except his hatred. No desire was left except its expression.</p>
+
+<p>The securing of the document by which Bruce could take the great estates
+from him was only a trifle now. He believed wholly within his own soul
+that the wilderness&mdash;without his aid&mdash;would do his work of hatred for
+him; and that by no conceivable circumstances could Bruce and Linda find
+shelter from the blizzard and live through the day. He could find their
+bodies in the spring if he by any chance escaped himself, and take the
+Ross-Folger agreement from them. But it was not enough. He wanted also
+to do the work of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Even his own death&mdash;if it were only delayed until his vengeance was
+wreaked&mdash;could not matter now. In all the ancient strife and fury and
+ceaseless war of the wild through which he had come, there was no
+passion to equal this. The Killer was content to let the wolf kill the
+fawn for him. The cougar will turn from its warm, newly slain prey, in
+which its white fangs have already dipped, at the sight of some great
+danger in the thickets. But Simon could not turn. Death lowered its
+wings upon him as well as upon his enemy, yet the fire in his heart and
+the fury in his brain shut out all thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>He sprang off his horse better to examine the tracks, and then stood,
+half bent over, in the snow.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Bruce Folger headed swiftly up the trail that his runaway horse had
+made. It was, he thought, his last effort, and he gave his full strength
+to it. Weakened as he was by the cold and the wound, he could not have
+made headway at all except for the fact that the wind was behind him.</p>
+
+<p>The snow ever fell faster, in larger flakes, and the track dimmed before
+his eyes. It was a losing game. Terrified not only by the beast that had
+stirred in the thicket but by the ever-increasing wind as well, the
+animal would not linger to be overtaken. Bruce had not ridden it enough
+to have tamed it, and his plan was to attempt to shoot the creature on
+sight, rather than try to catch it. They could not go forward, anyway,
+as long as the blizzard lasted. Which way was east and which was west he
+could no longer guess. And with the blankets they might make some sort
+of shelter and keep life in their bodies until the snow ceased and they
+could find their way.</p>
+
+<p>The cold was deepening, the storm was increasing in fury. Bruce's bones
+ached, his wounded arm felt numb and strange, the frost was getting into
+his lungs. The wind's breath was ever keener, its whistle was louder in
+the pines. There was no hope of the storm decreasing, rather it was
+steadily growing worse. And Bruce had some pre-knowledge&mdash;an
+inheritance, perhaps, from frontier ancestors&mdash;of the real nature of the
+mountain blizzard such as was descending on him now. It was a losing
+fight. All the optimism of youth and the spirit of the angels could not
+deny this fact.</p>
+
+<p>The tracks grew more dim, and he began to be afraid that the falling
+flakes would obscure his own footprints so that he could not find his
+way back to Linda. And he knew, beyond all other knowledge, that he
+wanted her with him when the shadows dropped down for good and all. He
+couldn't face them bravely alone. He wanted her arms about him; the
+flight would be easier then.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what's the use?" he suddenly said to the wind. "Why not give up and
+go back?"</p>
+
+<p>He halted in the trail and started to turn. But at that instant a banner
+of wind swept down into his face, and the eddy of snow in front of him
+was brushed from his gaze. Just for the space of a breath the canyon for
+a hundred feet distant was partially cleared of the blinding streamers
+of snow. And he uttered a long gasp when he saw, thirty yards distant
+and at the farthest reaches of his sight, the figure of a saddled horse.</p>
+
+<p>His gun leaped to his shoulder, yet his eagerness did not cost him his
+self-control. He gazed quietly along the sights until he saw the
+animal's shoulder between them. His finger pressed back against the
+trigger.</p>
+
+<p>The horse rocked down, seemingly instantly killed, and the snow swept in
+between. Bruce cried out in triumph. Then he broke into a run and sped
+through the flurries toward his dead.</p>
+
+<p>But it came about that there was other business for Bruce than the
+recovery of his blankets that he had supposed would be tied to the
+saddle. The snow was thick between, and he was within twenty feet of the
+animal's body before he glimpsed it clearly again. And he felt the first
+wave of wonder, the first promptings of the thought that the horse he
+had shot down was not his, but one that he had never seen before.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no time for the thought to go fully home. Some one cried
+out&mdash;a strange, half-snarl of hatred and triumph that was almost lacking
+in all human quality&mdash;and a man's body leaped toward him from the
+thicket before which the horse had fallen. It was Simon, and Bruce had
+mistaken his horse for the one he had ridden.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Even in that instant crisis Bruce did not forget that he had as yet
+neglected to expel the empty cartridge from the barrel of his rifle and
+to throw in the other from the magazine. He tried to get the gun to his
+shoulder, working the lever at the same time. But Simon's leap was too
+fast for him. His strong hand seized the barrel of the gun and snatched
+it from his hands. Then the assailant threw it back, over his shoulder,
+and it fell softly in the snow. He waited, crouched.</p>
+
+<p>The two men stood face to face at last. All things else were forgotten.
+The world they had known before&mdash;a world of sorrow and pleasures, of
+mountains and woods and homes&mdash;faded out and left no realities except
+each other's presence. All about them were the snow flurries that their
+eyes could not penetrate, and it was as if they were two lone
+contestants on an otherwise uninhabited sphere who had come to grips at
+last. The falling snow gave the whole picture a curious tone of
+unreality and dimness.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce straightened, and his face was of iron. "Well, Simon," he said.
+"You've come."</p>
+
+<p>The man's eyes burned red through the snow. "Of course I would. Did you
+think you could escape me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It didn't much matter whether I escaped you or not," Bruce answered
+rather quietly. "Neither one of us is going to escape the storm and the
+cold. I suppose you know that."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that <i>one</i> of us is. Because one of us is going out&mdash;a more
+direct way&mdash;first. Which one that is doesn't much matter." His great
+hands clasped. "Bruce, when I snatched your gun right now I could have
+done more. I could have sprung a few feet farther and had you around the
+waist&mdash;taken by surprise. The fight would have been already over. I
+think I could have done more than that even&mdash;with my own rifle as you
+came up. It's laying there, just beside the horse."</p>
+
+<p>But Bruce didn't turn his eyes to look at it. He was waiting for the
+attack.</p>
+
+<p>"I could have snatched your life just as well, but I wanted to wait,"
+Simon went on. "I wanted to say a few words first, and wanted to master
+you&mdash;not by surprise&mdash;but by superior strength alone."</p>
+
+<p>It came into Brace's mind that he could tell Simon of the wound near his
+shoulder, how because of it no fight between them would be a fair test
+of superiority, yet the words didn't come to his lips. He could not ask
+mercy of this man, either directly or indirectly, any more than the
+pines asked mercy of the snows that covered them.</p>
+
+<p>"You were right when you said there is no escaping from this storm,"
+Simon went on. "But it doesn't much matter. It's the end of a long war,
+and what happens to the victor is neither here nor there. It seems all
+the more fitting that we should meet just as we have&mdash;at the very brink
+of death&mdash;and Death should be waiting at the end for the one of us who
+survives. It's so like this damned, terrible wilderness in which we
+live."</p>
+
+<p>Bruce gazed in amazement. The dark and dreadful poetry of this man's
+nature was coming to the fore. The wind made a strange echo to his
+words,&mdash;a long, wild shriek as it swept over the heads of the pines.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are you waiting?" Bruce asked.</p>
+
+<p>"So you can understand everything. But I guess that time is here. There
+is to be no mercy at the end of this fight, Bruce; I ask none and will
+give none. You have waged a war against me, you have escaped me many
+times, you have won the love of the woman I love&mdash;and this is to be my
+answer." His voice dropped a note and he spoke more quietly. "I'm going
+to kill you, Bruce."</p>
+
+<p>"Then try it," Bruce answered steadily. "I'm in a hurry to go back to
+Linda."</p>
+
+<p>Simon's smoldering wrath blazed up at the words. Both men seemed to
+spring at the same time. Their arms flailed, then interlocked; and they
+rocked a long time&mdash;back and forth in the snow.</p>
+
+<p>They fought in silence. The flurries dropped over them, and the wind
+swept by in its frantic wandering. Bruce called upon his last ounce of
+reserve strength,&mdash;that mysterious force that always sweeps to a man's
+aid in a moment of crisis.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time he had full realization of Simon's mighty strength.
+With all the power of his body he tried to wrench him off his feet, but
+it was like trying to tear a tree from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>But surprise at the other's power was not confined to Bruce alone. Simon
+knew that he had an opponent worthy of the iron of his own muscles, and
+he put all his terrible might into the battle. He tried to reach Bruce's
+throat, but the man's strong shoulder held the arm against his side.
+Simon's great hand reached to pin Bruce's arm, and for the first time he
+discovered the location of his weakness.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the color sweep from Bruce's face and water drops that were not
+melted snow come upon it. It was all the advantage needed between such
+evenly matched contestants. And Simon forgot his spoken word that he
+wished this fight to be a test of superiority alone. His fury swept over
+him like a flood and effaced all things else; and he centered his whole
+attack upon Bruce's wound.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment he had him down, and he struck once into Bruce's white face
+with his terrible knuckles. The blow sent a strange sickness through the
+younger man's frame; and he tried vainly to struggle to his feet.
+"Fight! Fight on!" was the message his mind dispatched along his nerves
+to his tortured muscles, but for an instant they wholly refused to
+respond. They had endured too much. Total unconsciousness hovered above
+him, ready to descend.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely, he seemed to know that Simon had crept from his body and was
+even now reaching some dreadful weapon that lay beside the dead form of
+the horse. In an instant he had it, and Bruce's eyes opened in time to
+see him swinging it aloft. It was his rifle, and Simon was aiming a
+murderous blow at him with its stock.</p>
+
+<p>There was no chance to ward it off. No human skull could withstand its
+shattering impact. Bruce saw the man's dark face with the murder madness
+upon it, the blazing eyes, the lips drawn back. The muscles contracted
+to deal the blow.</p>
+
+<p>But that war of life and death in the far reaches of Trail's End was not
+to end so soon. At that instant there was an amazing intervention.</p>
+
+<p>A great gray form came lunging out of the snow flurries. Their vision
+was limited to a few feet, and so fast the creature came, with such
+incredible, smashing power, that he was upon them in a breath. It was
+the Killer in the full glory of the charge; and he had caught up with
+them at last.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce saw only his great figure looming just over him. Simon, with
+amazing agility, leaped to one side just in time, then battered down the
+rifle stock with all his strength. But the blow was not meant for Bruce.
+It struck where aimed,&mdash;the great gray shoulder of the grizzly.</p>
+
+<p>Then, dimmed and half-obscured by the snow flurries, there began as
+strange a battle as the great pines above them had ever beheld. The
+Killer's rage was upon him, and the blow at the shoulder had arrested
+his charge for a moment only. Then he wheeled, a snarling, fighting
+monster with death for any living creature in the blow of his forearm,
+and lunged toward Simon again.</p>
+
+<p>It was the Killer at his grandest. The little eyes blazed, the neck hair
+bristled, he struck with forearms and jaws&mdash;lashing, lunging,
+recoiling&mdash;all the terrible might and fury of the wilderness centered
+and personified in his mighty form. Simon had no chance to shoot his
+rifle. In the instant that he would raise it those great claws and fangs
+would be upon him. He swung it as a club, striking again and again,
+dodging the sledge-hammer blows and springing aside in the second of the
+Killer's lunges. He was fighting for his life, and no eye could bemean
+that effort.</p>
+
+<p>Simon himself seemed exalted, and for once it appeared that the grizzly
+had found an opponent worthy of his might. It was all so fitting: that
+these two mighty powers, typifying all that is remorseless and terrible
+in the wild, should clash at last in the gathering fury of the storm.
+They were of one kind, and they seemed to understand each other. The
+lust and passion and fury of battle were upon them both.</p>
+
+<p>The scene harked back to the young days of the world, when man and beast
+battled for dominance. Nothing had changed. The forest stood grave and
+silent, just the same. The elements warred against them from the
+clouds,&mdash;that ancient persecution of which the wolf pack sings on the
+ridge at night, that endless strife that has made of existence a travail
+and a scourge. Man and beast and storm&mdash;those three great foes were
+arrayed the same as ever. Time swung backward a thousand-thousand
+years.</p>
+
+<p>The storm gathered in force. The full strength of the blizzard was upon
+them. The snow seemed to come from all directions in great clouds and
+flurries and streamers, and time after time it wholly hid the
+contestants from Bruce's eyes. At such times he could tell how the fight
+was going by sound alone,&mdash;the snarls of the Killer, the wild oaths of
+Simon, the impact of the descending rifle-butt. Bruce gave no thought to
+taking part. Both were enemies; his own strength seemed gone. The cold
+deepened; Bruce could feel it creeping into his blood, halting its flow,
+threatening the spark of life within him. The full light of day had come
+out upon the land.</p>
+
+<p>Bruce knew the wilderness now. All its primitive passions were in play,
+all its mighty forces at grips. The storm seemed to be trying to
+extinguish these mortal lives; jealous of their intrusion, longing for
+the world it knew before living things came to dwell upon it, when its
+winds swept endlessly over an uninhabited earth, and its winter snows
+lay trackless and its rule was supreme. And beneath it, blind to the
+knowledge that in union alone lay strength to oppose its might&mdash;to
+oppose all those cruel forces that make a battleground of life&mdash;man and
+beast fought their battle to the death.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to go on forever. Linda came stealing out of the
+snow&mdash;following the grizzly's trail&mdash;and crept beside Bruce. She
+crouched beside him, and his arm went about her as if to shield her.
+She had heard the sounds of the battle from afar; she had thought that
+Bruce was the contestant, and her terror had left a deep pallor upon her
+face; yet now she gazed upon that frightful conflict with a strange and
+enduring calm. Both she and Bruce knew that there was but one sure
+conqueror, and that was Death. If the Killer survived the fight and
+through the mercy of the forest gods spared their lives, there remained
+the blizzard. They could conceive of no circumstances whereby further
+effort would be of the least avail. The horse on which was tied their
+scanty blankets was miles away by now; its tracks were obscured in the
+snow, and they could not find their way to any shelter that might be
+concealed among the ridges.</p>
+
+<p>The scene grew in fury. The last burst of strength was upon Simon; in
+another moment he would be exhausted. The bear had suffered terrible
+punishment from the blows of the rifle stock. He recoiled once more,
+then lunged with unbelievable speed. His huge paw, with all his might
+behind it, struck the weapon from Simon's hand.</p>
+
+<p>It shot through the air seemingly almost as fast as the bullets it had
+often propelled from its muzzle and struck the trunk of a tree. So hard
+it came that the lock was shattered; they heard the ring of metal. The
+bear rocked forward once more and struck again. And then all the sound
+that was left was the eerie complaint of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Simon lay still. The brave fight was over. His trial had ended
+fittingly,&mdash;in the grip of such powers as were typical of himself. But
+the bear did not leap upon him to tear his flesh. For an instant he
+stood like a statue in gray stone, head lowered, as if in a strange
+attitude of thought. The snow swept over him.</p>
+
+<p>Linda and Bruce gazed at him in silent awe. Some way, they felt no fear.
+No room in their hearts was left for it after the tumult of that battle.
+The great grizzly uttered one deep note and half-turned about. His eyes
+rested upon the twain, but he did not seem to see them.</p>
+
+<p>The fury was dead within him; this much was plain. The hair began to lie
+down at his shoulders. The terrible eyes lost their fire. Then he turned
+again and headed off slowly, deliberately, directly into the face of the
+storm.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The flurries almost immediately obscured the Killer's form, and Bruce
+turned his attention back to Linda. "It's the end," he said quietly.
+"Why not here&mdash;as well as anywhere else?"</p>
+
+<p>But before the question was finished, a strange note had come into his
+voice. It was as if his attention had been called from his words by
+something much more momentous. The truth was that it had been caught and
+held by a curious expression on the girl's face.</p>
+
+<p>Some great idea, partaking of the nature of inspiration, had come to
+her. He saw it in the growing light in her eyes, the deepening of the
+soft lines of her face. All at once she sprang to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Bruce!" she cried. "Perhaps there's a way yet. A long, long chance, but
+maybe a way yet. Get your rifle&mdash;Simon's is broken&mdash;and come with me."</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for him to rise she struck off into the storm, following
+the huge footprints of the bear. The man struggled with himself,
+summoned all that was left of his reserve supply of strength, and leaped
+up. He snatched his rifle from the ground where Simon had thrown it, and
+in an instant was beside her. Her cheeks were blazing.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe it just means further torture," she confessed to him, "but don't
+you want to make every effort we can to save ourselves? Don't you want
+to fight till the last breath?"</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up and saw her answer in the growing strength of his face.
+Then his words spoke too. "As long as the slightest chance remains," he
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll forgive me if it comes to nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, dimly. She took fresh heart when she saw he still had
+strength enough to smile. "You don't have to ask me that."</p>
+
+<p>"A moment ago an idea came to me&mdash;it came so straight and sure it was as
+if a voice told me," she explained hurriedly. She didn't look at him
+again. She kept her eyes intent upon the great footprints in the snow.
+To miss them for a second meant, in that world of whirling snow, to lose
+them forever. "It was after the bear had killed Simon and had gone away.
+He acted exactly as if he thought of something and went out to do
+it&mdash;exactly as if he had a destination in view. Didn't you see&mdash;his
+anger seemed to die in him and he started off in the <i>face of the
+storm</i>. I've watched the ways of animals too long not to know that he
+had something in view. It wasn't food; he would have attacked the body
+of the horse, or even Simon's body. If he had just been running away or
+wandering, he would have gone with the wind, not against it. He was
+weakened from the fight, perhaps dying&mdash;and I think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He finished the sentence for her, breathlessly. "That he's going toward
+shelter."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You know, Bruce&mdash;the bears hibernate every year. They always seem
+to have places all chosen&mdash;usually caverns in the hillsides or under
+uprooted trees&mdash;and when the winter cuts off their supplies of food they
+go straight toward them. That's my one hope now&mdash;that the Killer has
+gone to some cave he knows about to hibernate until this storm is over.
+I think from the way he started off, so sure and so straight, that it's
+near. It would be dry and out of the storm, and if we could take it away
+from him we could make a fire that the snow wouldn't put out. It would
+mean life&mdash;and we could go on when the storm is over."</p>
+
+<p>"You remember&mdash;we have only one cartridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know&mdash;I heard you fire. And it's only a thirty-thirty at that.
+It's a risk&mdash;as terrible a risk as we've yet run. But it's a chance."</p>
+
+<p>They talked no more. Instead, they walked as fast as they could into the
+face of the storm. It was a moment of respite. This new hope returned
+some measure of their strength to them. They walked much more swiftly
+than the bear, and they could tell by the appearance of the tracks that
+they were but a few yards behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't smell us, the wind blowing as it does," Linda encouraged. "And
+he won't hear us either."</p>
+
+<p>Now the tracks were practically unspotted with the flakes. They strained
+into the flurries. Now they walked almost in silence, their footfall
+muffled in the snow.</p>
+
+<p>They soon became aware that they were mounting a low ridge. They left
+the underbrush and emerged into the open timber. And all at once Bruce,
+who now walked in front, paused with lifted hand, and pointed. Dim
+through the flurries they made out the outline of the bear. And Linda's
+inspiration had come true.</p>
+
+<p>There was a ledge of rocks just in front&mdash;a place such as the
+rattlesnakes had loved in the blasting sun of summer&mdash;and a black hole
+yawned in its side. The aperture had been almost covered with the snow,
+and they saw that the great creature was scooping away the remainder of
+the white drift with his paw. As they waited, the opening grew steadily
+wider, revealing the mouth of a little cavern in the face of the rock.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot!" Linda whispered. "If he gets inside we won't be able to get him
+out."</p>
+
+<p>But Bruce shook his head, then stole nearer. She understood; he had only
+one cartridge, and he must not take the risk of wounding the animal. The
+fire had to be centered on a vital place.</p>
+
+<p>He walked steadily nearer until it seemed to Linda he would advance
+straight into reach of the terrible claws. He held the rifle firmly; his
+jaw was set, his face white, his eyes straight and strong with the
+strength of the pines themselves. He went as softly as he could&mdash;nearer,
+ever nearer&mdash;the rifle cocked and ready in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>The Killer turned his head and saw Bruce. Rage flamed again in his eyes.
+He half-turned about; then poised to charge.</p>
+
+<p>The gun moved swiftly, easily, to the man's shoulder, his chin dropped
+down, his straight eyes gazed along the barrel. In spite of his wound
+never had human arms held more steady than his did then. And he marked
+the little space of gray squarely between the two reddening eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The finger pressed back steadily against the trigger. The rifle cracked
+in the silence. And then there was a curious effect of tableau, a long
+second in which all three figures seemed to stand deathly still.</p>
+
+<p>The bear leaped forward, and it seemed wholly impossible to Linda that
+Bruce could swerve aside in time to avoid the blow. She cried out in
+horror as the great paws whipped down in the place where Bruce had
+stood. But the man had been prepared for this very recoil, and he had
+sprung aside just as the claws raked past.</p>
+
+<p>And the Killer would hunt no more in Trail's End. At the end of that
+leap he fell, his great body quivering strangely in the snow. The lead
+had gone straight home where it had been aimed, and the charge itself
+had been mostly muscular reflex. He lay still at last, a gray, mammoth
+figure that was majestic even in death.</p>
+
+<p>No more would the deer shudder with terror at the sound of his heavy
+step in the thicket. No more would the herds fly into stampede at the
+sight of his great shadow on the moonlit grass. The last of the Oregon
+grizzlies had gone the way of all his breed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>To Bruce and Linda, standing breathless and awed in the snow-flurries,
+his death imaged the passing of an old order&mdash;the last stand that the
+forces of the wild had made against conquering man. But there was pathos
+in it too. There was the symbol of mighty breeds humbled and destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>But the pines were left. Those eternal symbols of the wilderness&mdash;and of
+powers beyond the wilderness&mdash;still stood straight and grand and
+impassive above them. While these two lived, at least, they would still
+keep their watch over the wilderness, they would still stand erect and
+brave to the buffeting of the storm and snow, and in their shade dwelt
+strength and peace.</p>
+
+<p>The cavern that was revealed to them had a rock floor and had been
+hollowed out by running water in ages past. Bruce built a fire at its
+mouth of some of the long tree roots that extended down into it, and the
+life-giving warmth was a benediction. Already the drifting snow had
+begun to cover the aperture.</p>
+
+<p>"We can wait here until the blizzard is done," Bruce told Linda, as she
+sat beside him in the soft glow of the fire. "We have a little food, and
+we can cut more from the body of the grizzly when we need it. There's
+dead wood under the snow. And when the storm is over, we can get our
+bearings and walk out."</p>
+
+<p>She sat a long time without answering. "And after that?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. "No one knows. It's ten days before the thirtieth&mdash;the
+blizzards up here never last over three or four days. We've got plenty
+of time to get the document down to the courts. The law will deal with
+the rest of the Turners. We've won, Linda."</p>
+
+<p>His hands groped for hers, and he laid it against his lips. With her
+other hand she stroked his snow-wet hair. Her eyes were lustrous in the
+firelight.</p>
+
+<p>"And after that&mdash;after all that is settled? You will come back to the
+mountains?"</p>
+
+<p>"Could I ever leave them!" he exclaimed. "Of course, Linda. But I don't
+know what I can do up here&mdash;except maybe to establish my claim to my
+father's old farm. There's a hundred or so acres. I believe I'd like to
+feel the handles of a plow in my palms."</p>
+
+<p>"It was what you were made for, Bruce," she told him. "It's born in you.
+There's a hundred acres there&mdash;and three thousand&mdash;somewhere else.
+You've got new strength, Bruce. You could take hold and make them yield
+up their hay&mdash;and their crops&mdash;and fill all these hills with the herds."
+She stretched out her arms. Then all at once she dropped them almost as
+if in supplication. But her voice had regained the old merry tone he had
+learned to love when she spoke again. "Bruce, have I got to do all the
+asking?"</p>
+
+<p>His answer was to stretch his great arms and draw her into them. His
+laugh rang in the cavern.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dearest!" he cried. The eyes lighted in his bronzed face. "I ask
+for everything&mdash;everything&mdash;bold that I am! And what I want worst&mdash;this
+minute&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Is just&mdash;a kiss."</p>
+
+<p>She gave it to him with all the tenderness of her soft lips. The snow
+sifted down outside. Again the pines spoke to one another, but the
+sadness seemed mostly gone from their soft voices.</p>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="By_EDISON_MARSHALL" id="By_EDISON_MARSHALL"></a>By EDISON MARSHALL</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE VOICE OF THE PACK</h3>
+
+<h3>With frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton</h3>
+
+<p><i>Love story, adventure story, nature story&mdash;all three qualities combine
+in this tale of modern man and woman arrayed against the forces of
+age-old savagery.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'The Voice of the Pack' is clean, fine, raw, bold, primitive; and has a
+wonderfully haunting quality in the repeated wolf-note"&mdash;<i>Zane Grey.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Taken all around 'The Voice of the Pack' is the best of the stories
+about wild life that has come out in many, many moons."&mdash;<i>The Chicago
+Daily News.</i></p>
+
+<p>"As a story that mingles Adventure, Nature Study and Romance, 'The Voice
+of the Pack' is undeniably of the front rank. Mr. Marshall knows the
+wild places and the ways of the wild creatures that range them&mdash;and he
+knows how to write. The study of Dan Failing's development against a
+background of the wild life of the mountains, is an exceedingly clever
+piece of literary work."&mdash;<i>The Boston Herald.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An unusually good tale of the West, evidently written by a man who
+knows about the habits of the wolf-packs and cougars."&mdash;<i>The New York
+Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 35378-h.txt or 35378-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/3/7/35378">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/7/35378</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/35378-h/images/cover.jpg b/35378-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..488257f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/35378-h/images/front.jpg b/35378-h/images/front.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..213306b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378-h/images/front.jpg
diff --git a/35378.txt b/35378.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38f3260
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8578 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Strength of the Pines, by Edison
+Marshall, Illustrated by W. Herbert Dunton
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Strength of the Pines
+
+
+Author: Edison Marshall
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2011  [eBook #35378]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Michael, Mary Meehan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 35378-h.htm or 35378-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35378/35378-h/35378-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35378/35378-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES
+
+by
+
+EDISON MARSHALL
+
+With Frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Boston
+Little, Brown, and Company
+1921
+
+Copyright, 1921,
+By Little, Brown, and Company.
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Published February, 1921
+
+The Colonial Press
+C. H. Simonds Co., Boston, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    LILLE BARTOO MARSHALL
+    DEAR COMRADE AND GUIDE
+    WHO GAVE ME LIFE
+
+
+[Illustration: He marked the little space of gray squarely between the
+two reddening eyes.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK ONE THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
+
+BOOK TWO THE BLOOD ATONEMENT
+
+BOOK THREE THE COMING OF THE STRENGTH
+
+
+
+
+THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Bruce was wakened by the sharp ring of his telephone bell. He heard its
+first note; and its jingle seemed to continue endlessly. There was no
+period of drowsiness between sleep and wakefulness; instantly he was
+fully aroused, in complete control of all his faculties. And this is not
+especially common to men bred in the security of civilization. Rather it
+is a trait of the wild creatures; a little matter that is quite
+necessary if they care at all about living. A deer, for instance, that
+cannot leap out of a mid-afternoon nap, soar a fair ten feet in the air,
+and come down with legs in the right position for running comes to a sad
+end, rather soon, in a puma's claws. Frontiersmen learn the trait too;
+but as Bruce was a dweller of cities it seemed somewhat strange in him.
+The trim, hard muscles were all cocked and primed for anything they
+should be told to do.
+
+Then he grunted rebelliously and glanced at his watch beneath the
+pillow. He had gone to bed early; it was just before midnight now. "I
+wish they'd leave me alone at night, anyway," he muttered, as he slipped
+on his dressing gown.
+
+He had no doubts whatever concerning the nature of this call. There had
+been one hundred like it during the previous month. His foster father
+had recently died, his estate was being settled up, and Bruce had been
+having a somewhat strenuous time with his creditors. He understood the
+man's real financial situation at last; at his death the whole business
+structure collapsed like the eggshell it was. Bruce had supposed that
+most of the debts had been paid by now; he wondered, as he fumbled into
+his bedroom slippers, whether the thousand or so dollars that were left
+would cover the claim of the man who was now calling him to the
+telephone. The fact that he was, at last, the penniless "beggar" that
+Duncan had called him at their first meeting didn't matter one way or
+another. For some years he had not hoped for help from his foster
+parent. The collapse of the latter's business had put Bruce out of work,
+but that was just a detail too. All he wanted now was to get things
+straightened up and go away--where, he did not know or care.
+
+"This is Mr. Duncan," he said coldly into the transmitter.
+
+When he heard a voice come scratching over the wires, he felt sure that
+he had guessed right. Quite often his foster father's creditors talked
+in that same excited, hurried way. It was rather necessary to be hurried
+and excited if a claim were to be met before the dwindling financial
+resources were exhausted. But the words themselves, however--as soon as
+they gave their interpretation in his brain--threw a different light on
+the matter.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Duncan," the voice answered. "Pardon me if I got you
+up. I want to talk to your son, Bruce."
+
+Bruce emitted a little gasp of amazement. Whoever talked at the end of
+the line obviously didn't know that the elder Duncan was dead. Bruce had
+a moment of grim humor in which he mused that this voice would have done
+rather well if it could arouse his foster father to answer it. "The
+elder Mr. Duncan died last month," he answered simply. There was not the
+slightest trace of emotion in his tone. No wayfarer on the street could
+have been, as far as facts went, more of a stranger to him; there was no
+sense of loss at his death and no cause for pretense now. "This is Bruce
+speaking."
+
+He heard the other gasp. "Old man, I'm sorry," his contrite voice came.
+"I didn't know of your loss. This is Barney--Barney Wegan--and I just
+got in from the West. Haven't had a bit of news for months. Accept my
+earnest sympathies--"
+
+"Barney! Of course." The delight grew on Bruce's face; for Barney Wegan,
+a man whom he had met and learned to know on the gym floor of his club,
+was quite near to being a real friend. "And what's up, Barney?"
+
+The man's voice changed at once--went back to its same urgent, but
+rather embarrassed tone. "You won't believe me if I tell you, so I won't
+try to tell you over the 'phone. But I must come up--right away. May I?"
+
+"Of course--"
+
+"I'll jump in my car and be there in a minute."
+
+Bruce hung up, slowly descended to his library, and flashed on the
+lights.
+
+For the first time he was revealed plainly. His was a familiar type; but
+at the same time the best type too. He had the face and the body of an
+athlete, a man who keeps himself fit; and there was nothing mawkish or
+effeminate about him. His dark hair was clipped close about his temples,
+and even two hours in bed had not disarranged its careful part. It is
+true that men did look twice at Bruce's eyes, set in a brown, clean-cut
+face, never knowing exactly why they did so. They had startling
+potentialities. They were quite clear now, wide-awake and cool, yet they
+had a strange depth of expression and shadow that might mean, somewhere
+beneath the bland and cool exterior, a capacity for great emotions and
+passions.
+
+He had only a few minutes to wait; then Barney Wegan tapped at his door.
+This man was bronzed by the sun, never more fit, never straighter and
+taller and more lithe. He had just come from the far places. The
+embarrassment that Bruce had detected in his voice was in his face and
+manner too.
+
+"You'll think I'm crazy, for routing you out at this time of night,
+Bruce," he began. "And I'm going to get this matter off my chest as
+soon as possible and let you go to bed. It's all batty, anyway. But I
+was cautioned by all the devils of the deep to see you--the moment I
+came here."
+
+"Cigarettes on the smoking-stand," Bruce said steadily. "And tell away."
+
+"But tell me something first. Was Duncan your real father? If he was,
+I'll know I'm up a wrong tree. I don't mean to be personal--"
+
+"He wasn't. I thought you knew it. My real father is something like
+you--something of a mystery."
+
+"I won't be a mystery long. He's not, eh--that's what the old hag said.
+Excuse me, old man, for saying 'hag.' But she was one, if there is any
+such. Lord knows who she is, or whether or not she's a relation of
+yours. But I'll begin at the beginning. You know I was way back on the
+Oregon frontier--back in the Cascades?"
+
+"I didn't know," Bruce replied. "I knew you were somewhere in the wilds.
+You always are. Go on."
+
+"I was back there fishing for steelhead in a river they call the Rogue.
+My boy, a steelhead is--but you don't want to hear that. You want to get
+the story. But a steelhead, you ought to know, is a trout--a fish--and
+the noblest fish that ever was! Oh, Heavens above! how they can strike!
+But while way up on the upper waters I heard of a place called Trail's
+End--a place where wise men do not go."
+
+"And of course you went."
+
+"Of course. The name sounds silly now, but it won't if you ever go
+there. There are only a few families, Bruce, miles and miles apart, in
+the whole region. And it's enormous--no one knows how big. Just ridge on
+ridge. And I went back to kill a bear."
+
+"But stop!" Bruce commanded. He lighted a cigarette. "I thought you were
+against killing bears--any except the big boys up North."
+
+"That's just it. I am against killing the little black fellows--they are
+the only folk with any brains in the woods. But this, Bruce, was a real
+bear,--a left-over from fifty years ago. There used to be grizzlies
+through that country, you see, but everybody supposed that the last of
+them had been shot. But evidently there was one family that still
+remained--in the farthest recesses of Trail's End--and all at once the
+biggest, meanest grizzly ever remembered showed up on the cattle ranges
+of the plateau. With some others, I went to get him. 'The Killer', they
+call him--and he certainly is death on live stock. I didn't get the
+bear, but one day my guide stopped at a broken-down old cabin on the
+hillside for a drink of water. I was four miles away in camp. The guide
+came back and asked me if I was from this very city.
+
+"I told him yes, and asked him why he wanted to know. He said that this
+old woman sent word, secretly, to every stranger that ever came to fish
+or hunt in the region of Trail's End, wanting to know if they came from
+here. I was the first one that answered 'yes.' And the guide said that
+she wanted me to come to her cabin and see her.
+
+"I went--and I won't describe to you how she looked. I'll let you see
+for yourself, if you care to follow out her instructions. And now the
+strange part comes in. The old witch raised her arm, pointed her cane at
+me, and asked me if I knew Newton Duncan.
+
+"I told her there might be several Newton Duncans in a city this size.
+You should have seen the pain grow on her face. 'After so long, after so
+long!' she cried, in the queerest, sobbing way. She seemed to have
+waited years to find some one from here, and when I came I didn't know
+what she wanted. Then she took heart and began again.
+
+"'This Newton Duncan had a son--a foster-son--named Bruce,' she told me.
+And then I said I knew you.
+
+"You can't imagine the change that came over her. I thought she'd die of
+heart failure. The whole thing, Bruce--if you must know--gave me the
+creeps. 'Tell him to come here,' she begged me. 'Don't lose a moment. As
+soon as you get home, tell him to come here.'
+
+"Of course I asked other questions, but I couldn't get much out of her.
+One of 'em was why she hadn't written to Duncan. The answer was simple
+enough--that she didn't know how to write. Those in the mountains that
+could write wouldn't, or couldn't--she was a trifle vague on that
+point--dispatch a letter. Something is up."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Before the gray of dawn came over the land Bruce Duncan had started
+westward. He had no self-amazement at the lightning decision. He was
+only strangely and deeply exultant.
+
+The reasons why went too deep within him to be easily seen. In the first
+place, it was adventure--and Bruce's life had not been very adventurous
+heretofore. It was true that he had known triumphs on the athletic
+fields, and his first days at a great University had been novel and
+entertaining. But now he was going to the West, to a land he had dreamed
+about, the land of wide spaces and great opportunities. It was not his
+first western journey. Often he had gone there as a child--had engaged
+in furious battles with outlaws and Indians; but those had been
+adventures of imagination only. This was reality at last. The clicking
+rails beneath the speeding train left no chance for doubt.
+
+Then there was a sense of immeasurable relief at his sudden and
+unexpected freedom from the financial problems his father had left. He
+would have no more consultations with impatient creditors, no more would
+he strive to gather together the ruins of the business, and attempt to
+salvage the small remaining fragments of his father's fortune. He was
+free of it all, at last. He had never known a darker hour--and none of
+them that this quiet, lonely-spirited man had known had been very
+bright--than the one he had spent just before going to bed earlier that
+evening. He had no plans, he didn't know which way to turn. All at once,
+through the message that Barney had brought him, he had seen a clear
+trail ahead. It was something to do, something at last that mattered.
+
+Finally there remained the eminent fact that this was an answer to his
+dream. He was going toward Linda, at last. The girl had been the one
+living creature in his memory that he had cared for and who cared for
+him--the one person whose interest in him was real. Men are a gregarious
+species. The trails are bewildering and steep to one who travels them
+alone. Linda, the little "spitfire" of his boyhood, had suddenly become
+the one reality in his world, and as he thought of her, his memory
+reviewed the few impressions he had retained of his childhood.
+
+First was the Square House--the orphanage--where the Woman had turned
+him over to the nurse in charge. Sometimes, when tobacco smoke was heavy
+upon him, Bruce could catch very dim and fleeting glimpses of the
+Woman's face. He would bend his mind to it, he would probe and probe,
+with little, reaching filaments of thought, into the dead years--and
+then, all at once, the filaments would rush together, catch hold of a
+fragment of her picture, and like a chain-gang of ants carrying a straw,
+come lugging it up for him to see. It was only a fleeting glimpse, only
+the faintest blur in half-tone, and then quite gone. Yet he never gave
+up trying. He never quit longing for just one second of vivid
+remembrance. It was one of the few and really great desires that Bruce
+had in life.
+
+The few times that her memory-picture did come to him, it brought a
+number of things with it. One of them was a great and overwhelming
+realization of some terrible tragedy and terror the nature of which he
+could not even guess. There had been terrible and tragic events--where
+and how he could not guess--lost in those forgotten days of his
+babyhood.
+
+"She's been through fire," the nurse told the doctor when he came in and
+the door had closed behind the Woman. Bruce _did_ remember these words,
+because many years elapsed before he completely puzzled them out. The
+nurse hadn't meant such fires as swept through the far-spread evergreen
+forests of the Northwest. It was some other, dread fire that seared the
+spirit and burned the bloom out of the face and all the gentle lights
+out of the eyes. It did, however, leave certain lights, but they were
+such that their remembrance brought no pleasure to Bruce. They were just
+a wild glare, a fixed, strange brightness as of great fear or insanity.
+
+The Woman had kissed him and gone quickly; and he had been too young to
+remember if she had carried any sort of bundle close to her breast. Yet,
+the man considered, there must have been such a bundle--otherwise he
+couldn't possibly account for Linda. And there were no doubts about
+her, at all. Her picture was always on the first page of the photograph
+album of his memory; he had only to turn over one little sheet of years
+to find her.
+
+Of course he had no memories of her that first day, nor for the first
+years. But all later memories of the Square House always included her.
+She must have been nearly four years younger than himself; thus when he
+was taken to the house she was only an infant. But thereafter, the
+nurses put them together often; and when Linda was able to talk, she
+called him something that sounded like Bwovaboo. She called him that so
+often that for a long time he couldn't be sure that wasn't his real
+name. Now, in manhood, he interpreted.
+
+"Brother Bruce, of course. Linda was of course a sister."
+
+Linda had been homely; even a small boy could notice that. Besides,
+Linda was nearly six when Bruce had left for good; and he was then at an
+age in which impressions begin to be lasting. Her hair was quite blond
+then, and her features rather irregular. But there had been a light in
+her eyes! By his word, there had been!
+
+She had been angry at him times in plenty--over some childish game--and
+he remembered how that light had grown and brightened. She had flung at
+him too, like a lynx springing from a tree. Bruce paused in his
+reflections to wonder at himself over the simile--for lynx were no
+especial acquaintances of his. He knew them only through books, as he
+knew many other things that stirred his imagination. But he laughed at
+the memory of her sudden, explosive ferocity,--the way her hands had
+smacked against his cheeks, and her sharp little nails had scratched
+him. Curiously, he had never fought back as is the usual thing between
+small boys and small girls. And it wasn't exactly chivalry either,
+rather just an inability to feel resentment. Besides, there were always
+tears and repentance afterward, and certain pettings that he openly
+scorned and secretly loved.
+
+"I must have been a strange kid!" Bruce thought.
+
+It was true he had; and nothing was stranger than this attitude toward
+Baby Sister. He was always so gentle with her, but at the same time he
+contemplated her with a sort of amused tolerance that is to be expected
+in strong men rather than solemn little boys. "Little Spitfire" he
+sometimes called her; but no one else could call her anything but Linda.
+For Bruce had been an able little fighter, even in those days.
+
+There was other evidence of strangeness. He was fond of drawing
+pictures. This was nothing in itself; many little boys are fond of
+drawing pictures. Nor were his unusually good. Their strangeness lay in
+his subjects. He liked to draw animals in particular,--the animals he
+read about in school and in such books as were brought to him. And
+sometimes he drew Indians and cowboys. And one day--when he wasn't half
+watching what he was doing--he drew something quite different.
+
+Perhaps he wouldn't have looked at it twice, if the teacher hadn't
+stepped up behind him and taken it out of his hands. It was "geography"
+then, not "drawing", and he should have been "paying attention." And he
+had every reason to think that the teacher would crumple up his picture
+and send him to the cloak-room for punishment.
+
+But she did no such thing. It was true that she seized the paper, and
+her fingers were all set to crumple it. But when her eyes glanced down,
+her fingers slowly straightened. Then she looked again--carefully.
+
+"What is this, Bruce?" she asked. "What have you been drawing?"
+
+Curiously, she had quite forgotten to scold him for not paying
+attention. And Bruce, who had drawn the picture with his thoughts far
+away from his pencil, had to look and see himself. Then he couldn't be
+sure.
+
+"I--I don't know," the child answered. But the picture was even better
+than his more conscious drawings, and it did look like something. He
+looked again, and for an instant let his thoughts go wandering here and
+there. "Those are trees," he said. A word caught at his throat and he
+blurted it out. "Pines! Pine trees, growing on a mountain."
+
+Once translated, the picture could hardly be mistaken. There was a range
+of mountains in the background, and a distinct sky line plumed with
+pines,--those tall, dark trees that symbolize, above all other trees,
+the wilderness.
+
+"Not bad for a six-year-old boy," the teacher commented. "But where,
+Bruce, have you ever seen or heard of such pines?" But Bruce did not
+know.
+
+Another puzzling adventure that stuck in Bruce's memory had happened
+only a few months after his arrival at the Square House when a man had
+taken him home on trial with the idea of adoption. Adoption, little
+Bruce had gathered, was something like heaven,--a glorious and happy end
+of all trouble and unpleasantness. Such was the idea he got from the
+talk of the other Orphans, and even from the grown-ups who conducted the
+establishment.
+
+All the incidents and details of the excursion with this prospective
+parent were extremely dim and vague. He did not know to what city he
+went, nor had he any recollection whatever of the people he met there.
+But he did remember, with remarkable clearness, the perplexing talk that
+the man and the superintendent of the Square House had together on his
+return.
+
+"He won't do," the stranger had said. "I tried him out and he won't fill
+in in my family. And I've fetched him back."
+
+The superintendent must have looked at the little curly-haired boy with
+considerable wonder; but he didn't ask questions. There was no
+particular need of them. The man was quite ready to talk, and the fact
+that a round-eyed child was listening to him with both ears open, did
+not deter him a particle.
+
+"I believe in being frank," the man said, "and I tell you there's
+something vicious in that boy's nature. It came out the very first
+moment he was in the house, when the Missus was introducing him to my
+eight-year-old son. 'This is little Turner,' she said--and this boy
+sprang right at him. I'd never let little Turner learn to fight, and
+this boy was on top of him and was pounding him with his fists before we
+could pull him off. Just like a wildcat--screaming and sobbing and
+trying to get at him again. I didn't understand it at all."
+
+Nor did the superintendent understand; nor--in these later years--Bruce
+either.
+
+He was quite a big boy, nearly ten, when he finally left the Square
+House. And there was nothing flickering or dim about the memory of this
+occasion.
+
+A tall, exceedingly slender man sat beside the window,--a man well
+dressed but with hard lines about his mouth and hard eyes. Yet the
+superintendent seemed particularly anxious to please him. "You will like
+this sturdy fellow," he said, as Bruce was ushered in.
+
+The man's eyes traveled slowly from the child's curly head to his
+rapidly growing feet; but no gleam of interest came into the thin face.
+"I suppose he'll do--as good as any. It was the wife's idea, anyway, you
+know. What about parentage? Anything decent at all?"
+
+The superintendent seemed to wait a long time before answering. Little
+Bruce, already full of secret conjectures as to his own parentage,
+thought that some key might be given him at last. "There is nothing that
+we can tell you, Mr. Duncan," he said at last. "A woman brought him
+here--with an infant girl--when he was about four. I suppose she was
+his mother--and she didn't wait to talk to me. The nurse said that she
+wore outlandish clothes and had plainly had a hard time."
+
+"But she didn't wait--?"
+
+"She dropped her children and fled."
+
+A cold little smile flickered at the man's lips.
+
+"It looks rather damnable," he said significantly. "But I'll take the
+little beggar--anyway."
+
+And thus Bruce went to the cold fireside of the Duncans--a house in a
+great and distant city where, in the years that had passed, many things
+scarcely worth remembering had transpired. It was a gentleman's
+house--as far as the meaning of the word usually goes--and Bruce had
+been afforded a gentleman's education. There was also, for a while, a
+certain amount of rather doubtful prosperity, a woman who died after a
+few months of casual interest in him, and many, many hours of almost
+overwhelming loneliness. Also there were many thoughts such as are not
+especially good for the spirits of growing boys.
+
+There is a certain code in all worlds that most men, sooner or later,
+find it wisest to adopt. It is simply the code of forgetfulness. The
+Square House from whence Bruce had come had been a good place to learn
+this code; and Bruce--child though he was--had carried it with him to
+the Duncans'. But there were two things he had been unable to forget.
+One was the words his foster father had spoken on accepting him,--words
+that at last he had come to understand.
+
+A normal child, adopted into a good home, would not have likely given a
+second thought to a dim and problematical disgrace in his unknown and
+departed family. He would have found his pride in the achievements and
+standing of his foster parents. But the trouble was that little Bruce
+had not been adopted into any sort of home, good or bad. The place where
+the Duncans lived was a house, but under no liberal interpretation of
+the word could it be called a home. There was nothing homelike in it to
+little Bruce. It wasn't that there was actual cruelty to contend with.
+Bruce had never known that. But there was utter indifference which
+perhaps is worse. And as always, the child filled up the empty space
+with dreams. He gave all the love and worship that was in him to his own
+family that he had pictured in imagination. Thus any disgrace that had
+come upon them went home to him very straight indeed.
+
+The other lasting memory was of Linda. She represented the one living
+creature in all his assemblage of phantoms--the one person with whom he
+could claim real kinship. Never a wind blew, never the sun shone but
+that he missed her, with a terrible, aching longing for which no one has
+ever been able to find words. He had done a bold thing, after his first
+few years with the Duncans. He planned it long and carried it out with
+infinite care as to details. He wrote to Linda, in care of the
+superintendent of the orphanage.
+
+The answer only deepened the mystery. Linda was missing. Whether she had
+run away, or whether some one had come by in a closed car and carried
+her off as she played on the lawns, the superintendent could not tell.
+They had never been able to trace her. He had been fifteen then, a tall
+boy with rather unusual muscular development, and the girl was eleven.
+And in the year nineteen hundred and twenty, ten years after the reply
+to his letter, Bruce had heard no word from her. A man grown, and his
+boyish dreams pushed back into the furthest deep recesses of his mind,
+where they could no longer turn his eyes away from facts, he had given
+up all hope of ever hearing from her again. "My little sister," he said
+softly to a memory. Then bitterness--a whole black flood of it--would
+come upon him. "Good Lord, I don't even know that she _was_ my sister."
+But now he was going to find her and his heart was full of joy and eager
+anticipation.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+There had not been time to make inquiry as to the land Bruce was going
+to. He only knew one thing,--that it was the wilderness. Whether it was
+a wilderness of desert or of great forest, he did not know. Nor had he
+the least idea what manner of adventure would be his after he reached
+the old woman's cabin; and he didn't care. The fact that he had no
+business plans for the future and no financial resources except a few
+hundred dollars that he carried in his pocket did not matter one way or
+another. He was willing to spend all the money he had; after it was
+gone, he would take up some work in life anew.
+
+He had a moment's wonder at the effect his departure would have upon the
+financial problem that had been his father's sole legacy to him. He
+laughed a little as he thought of it. Perhaps a stronger man could have
+taken hold, could have erected some sort of a structure upon the ruins,
+and remained to conquer after all. But Bruce had never been particularly
+adept at business. His temperament did not seem suited to it. But the
+idea that others also--having no business relations with his
+father--might be interested in this western journey of his did not even
+occur to him. He would not be missed at his athletic club. He had
+scarcely any real friends, and none of his acquaintances kept
+particularly close track of him.
+
+But the paths men take, seemingly with wholly different aims, crisscross
+and become intertwined much more than Bruce knew. Even as he lay in his
+berth, the first sweet drifting of sleep upon him, he was the subject of
+a discussion in a far-distant mountain home; and sleep would not have
+fallen so easily and sweetly if he had heard it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It might have been a different world. Only a glimpse of it, illumined by
+the moon, could be seen through the soiled and besmirched window pane;
+but that was enough to tell the story. There were no tall buildings,
+lighted by a thousand electric lights, such as Bruce could see through
+the windows of his bedroom at night. The lights that could be discerned
+in this strange, dark sky were largely unfamiliar to Bruce, because of
+the smoke-clouds that had always hung above the city where he lived.
+There were just stars, but there were so many of them that the mind was
+unable to comprehend their number.
+
+There is a perplexing variation in the appearance of these twinkling
+spheres. No man who has traveled widely can escape this fact. Likely
+enough they are the same stars, but they put on different faces. They
+seem almost insignificant at times,--dull and dim and unreal. It is not
+this way with the stars that peer down through these high forests. Men
+cannot walk beneath them and be unaware of them. They are incredibly
+large and bright and near, and the eyes naturally lift to them. There
+are nights in plenty, in the wild places, where they seem much more real
+than the dim, moonlit ridge or even the spark of a trapper's campfire,
+far away. They grow to be companions, too, in time. Perhaps after many,
+many years in the wild a man even attains some understanding of them,
+learning their infinite beneficence, and finding in them rare comrades
+in loneliness, and beacons on the dim and intertwining trails.
+
+There was also a moon that cast a little square of light, like a fairy
+tapestry, on the floor. It was not such a moon as leers down red and
+strange through the smoke of cities. It was vivid and quite white,--the
+wilderness moon that times the hunting hours of the forest creatures.
+But the patch that it cast on the floor was obscured in a moment because
+the man who had been musing in the big chair beside the empty fireplace
+had risen and lighted a kerosene lamp.
+
+The light prevented any further scrutiny of the moon and stars. And what
+remained to look at was not nearly so pleasing to the spirit. It was a
+great, white-walled room that would have been beautiful had it not been
+for certain unfortunate attempts to beautify it. The walls, that should
+have been sweeping and clean, were adorned with gaudily framed pictures
+which in themselves were dim and drab from many summers' accumulation of
+dust. There was a stone fireplace, and certain massive, dust-covered
+chairs grouped about it. But the eyes never would have got to these.
+They would have been held and fascinated by the face and the form of
+the man who had just lighted the lamp.
+
+No one could look twice at that massive physique and question its might.
+He seemed almost gigantic in the yellow lamplight. In reality he stood
+six feet and almost three inches, and his frame was perfectly in
+proportion. He moved slowly, lazily, and the thought flashed to some
+great monster of the forest that could uproot a tree with a blow. The
+huge muscles rippled and moved under the flannel shirt. The vast hand
+looked as if it could seize the glass bowl of the lamp and crush it like
+an eggshell.
+
+The face was huge, big and gaunt of bone; and particularly one would
+notice the mouth. It would be noticed even before the dark, deep-sunken
+eyes. It was a bloodhound mouth, the mouth of a man of great and
+terrible passions, and there was an unmistakable measure of cruelty and
+savagely about it. But there was strength, too. No eye could doubt that.
+The jaw muscles looked as powerful as those of a beast of prey. But it
+was not an ugly face, for all the brutality of the features. It was even
+handsome in the hard, mountain way. One would notice straight, black
+hair--the man's age was about thirty-nine--long over rather dark ears,
+and a great, gnarled throat. The words when he spoke seemed to come from
+deep within it.
+
+"Come in, Dave," he said.
+
+In this little remark lay something of the man's power. The visitor had
+come unannounced. His visit had been unexpected. His host had not yet
+seen his face. Yet the man knew, before the door was opened, who it was
+that had come.
+
+The reason went back to a certain quickening of the senses that is the
+peculiar right and property of most men who are really residents of the
+wilderness. And resident, in this case, does not mean merely one who
+builds his cabin on the slopes and lives there until he dies. It means a
+true relationship with the wild, an actual understanding. This man was
+the son of the wild as much as the wolves that ran in the packs. The
+wilderness is a fecund parent, producing an astounding variety of types.
+Some are beautiful, many stronger than iron, but her parentage was never
+more evident than in the case of this bronze-skinned giant that called
+out through the open doorway. Among certain other things he had acquired
+an ability to name and interpret quickly the little sounds of the
+wilderness night. Soft though it was, he had heard the sound of
+approaching feet in the pine needles. As surely as he would have
+recognized the dark face of the man in the doorway, he recognized the
+sound as Dave's step.
+
+The man came in, and at once an observer would have detected an air of
+deference in his attitude. Very plainly he had come to see his chief. He
+was a year or two older than his host, less powerful of physique, and
+his eyes did not hold quite so straight. There was less savagery but
+more cunning in his sharp features.
+
+He blurted out his news at once. "Old Elmira has got word down to the
+settlements at last," he said.
+
+There was no muscular response in the larger man. Dave was plainly
+disappointed. He wanted his news to cause a stir. It was true, however,
+that his host slowly raised his eyes. Dave glanced away.
+
+"What do you mean?" the man demanded.
+
+"Mean--I mean just what I said. We should have watched closer.
+Bill--Young Bill, I mean--saw a city chap just in the act of going in to
+see her. He had come on to the plateaus with his guide--Wegan was the
+man's name--and Bill said he stayed a lot longer than he would have if
+he hadn't taken a message from her. Then Young Bill made some
+inquiries--innocent as you please--and he found out for sure that this
+Wegan was from--just the place we don't want him to be from. And he'll
+carry word sure."
+
+"How long ago was this?"
+
+"Week ago Tuesday."
+
+"And why have you been so long in telling me?"
+
+When Dave's chief asked questions in this tone, answers always came
+quickly. They rolled so fast from the mouth that they blurred and ran
+together. "Why, Simon--you ain't been where I could see you. Anyway,
+there was nothin' we could have done."
+
+"There wasn't, eh? I don't suppose you ever thought that there's yet two
+months before we can clinch this thing for good, and young Folger
+might--I say might--have kicking about somewhere in his belongings the
+very document we've all of us been worrying about for twenty years."
+Simon cursed--a single, fiery oath. "I don't suppose you could have
+arranged for this Wegan to have had a hunting accident, could you? Who
+in the devil would have thought that yelping old hen could have ever
+done it--would have ever kept at it long enough to reach anybody to
+carry her message! But as usual, we are yelling before we're hurt. It
+isn't worth a cussword. Like as not, this Wegan will never take the
+trouble to hunt him up. And if he does--well, it's nothing to worry
+about, either. There is one back door that has been opened many times to
+let his people go through, and it may easily be opened again."
+
+Dave's eyes filled with admiration. Then he turned and gazed out through
+the window. Against the eastern sky, already wan and pale from the
+encroaching dawn, the long ridge of a mountain stood in vivid and
+startling silhouette. The edge of it was curiously jagged with many
+little upright points.
+
+There was only one person who would have been greatly amazed by that
+outline of the ridge; and the years and distance had obscured her long
+ago. This was a teacher at an orphanage in a distant city, who once had
+taken a crude drawing from the hands of a child. Here was the original
+at last. It was the same ridge, covered with pines, that little Bruce
+had drawn.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The train came to a sliding halt at Deer Creek, paused an infinitesimal
+fraction of a second, and roared on in its ceaseless journey. That
+infinitesimal fraction was long enough for Bruce, poised on the bottom
+step of a sleeping car, to swing down on to the gravel right-of-way. His
+bag, hurled by a sleepy porter, followed him.
+
+He turned first to watch the vanishing tail light, speeding so swiftly
+into the darkness; and curiously all at once it blinked out. But it was
+not that the switchmen were neglectful of their duties. In this certain
+portion of the Cascades the railroad track is constructed something
+after the manner of a giant screw, coiling like a great serpent up the
+ridges, and the train had simply vanished around a curve.
+
+Duncan's next impression was one of infinite solitude. He hadn't read
+any guidebooks about Deer Creek, and he had expected some sort of town.
+A western mining camp, perhaps, where the windows of a dance hall would
+gleam through the darkness; or one of those curious little
+mushroom-growth cities that are to be found all over the West. But at
+Deer Creek there was one little wooden structure with only three
+sides,--the opening facing the track. It was evidently the waiting room
+used by the mountain men as they waited for their local trains.
+
+There were no porters to carry his bag. There were no shouting
+officials. His only companions were the stars and the moon and, farther
+up the slope, certain tall trees that tapered to incredible points
+almost in the region where the stars began. The noise of the train died
+quickly. It vanished almost as soon as the dot of red that had been its
+tail light. It was true that he heard a faint pulsing far below him, a
+sound that was probably the chug of the steam, but it only made an
+effective background for the silence. It was scarcely more to be heard
+than the pulse of his own blood; and as he waited even this faded and
+died away.
+
+The moon cast his shadow on the yellow grass beside the crude station,
+and a curious flood of sensations--scarcely more tangible than its
+silver light--came over him. The moment had a quality of enchantment;
+and why he did not know. His throat suddenly filled, a curious weight
+and pain came to his eyelids, a quiver stole over his nerves. He stood
+silent with lifted face,--a strange figure in that mystery of moonlight.
+
+The whole scene, for causes deeper than any words may ever seek and
+reveal, moved him past any experience in his life. It was wholly new.
+When he had gone to sleep in his berth, earlier that same night, the
+train had been passing through a level, fertile valley that might have
+been one of the river bottoms beyond the Mississippi. When darkness had
+come down he had been in a great city in the northern part of the
+State,--a noisy, busy place that was not greatly different from the city
+whence he had come. But now he seemed in a different world.
+
+Possibly, in the long journey to the West, he had passed through forest
+before. But some way their appeal had not got to him. He was behind
+closed windows, his thoughts had been busy with reading and other
+occupations of travel. There had been no shading off, no gradations; he
+had come straight from a great seat of civilization to the heart of the
+wilderness.
+
+He turned about until the wind was in his face. It was full of
+fragrances,--strange, indescribable smells that seemed to call up a
+forgotten world. They carried a message to him, but as yet he hadn't
+made out its meaning. He only knew it was something mysterious and
+profound: great truths that flickered, like dim lights, in his
+consciousness, but whose outline he could not quite discern. They went
+straight home to him, those night smells from the forest. One of them
+was a balsam: a fragrance that once experienced lingers ever in the
+memory and calls men back to it in the end. Those who die in its
+fragrance, just as those who go to sleep, feel sure of having pleasant
+dreams. There were other smells too--delicate perfumes from mountain
+flowers that were deep-hidden in the grass--and many others, the nature
+of which he could not even guess.
+
+Perhaps there were sounds, but they only seemed part of the silence. The
+faintest rustle in the world reached him from the forests above of many
+little winds playing a running game between the trunks, and the stir of
+the Little People, moving in their midnight occupations. Each of these
+sounds had its message for Bruce. They all seemed to be trying to tell
+him something, to make clear some great truth that was dawning in his
+consciousness.
+
+He was not in the least afraid. He felt at peace as never before. He
+picked up his bag, and with stealing steps approached the long slope
+behind. The moon showed him a fallen log, and he found a comfortable
+seat on the ground beside it, his back against its bark. Then he waited
+for the dawn to come out.
+
+Not even Bruce knew or understood all the thoughts that came over him in
+that lonely wait. But he did have a peculiar sense of expectation, a
+realization that the coming of the dawn would bring him a message
+clearer than all these messages of fragrance and sound. The moon made
+wide silver patches between the distant trees; but as yet the forest had
+not opened its secrets to him. As yet it was but a mystery, a profundity
+of shadows and enchantment that he did not understand.
+
+The night hours passed. The sense of peace seemed to deepen on the man.
+He sat relaxed, his brown face grave, his eyes lifted. The stars began
+to dim and draw back farther into the recesses of the sky. The round
+outline of the moon seemed less pronounced. And a faint ribbon of light
+began to grow in the east.
+
+It widened. The light grew. The night wind played one more little game
+between the tree trunks and slipped away to the Home of Winds that lies
+somewhere above the mountains. The little night sounds were slowly
+stilled.
+
+Bruce closed his eyes, not knowing why. His blood was leaping in his
+veins. An unfamiliar excitement, almost an exultation, had come upon
+him. He lowered his head nearly to his hands that rested in his lap,
+then waited a full five minutes more.
+
+Then he opened his eyes. The light had grown around him. His hands were
+quite plain. Slowly, as a man raises his eyes to a miracle, he lifted
+his face.
+
+The forest was no longer obscured in darkness. The great trees had
+emerged, and only the dusk as of twilight was left between. He saw them
+plainly,--their symmetrical forms, their declining limbs, their tall
+tops piercing the sky. He saw them as they were,--those ancient, eternal
+symbols and watchmen of the wilderness. And he knew them at last,
+acquaintances long forgotten but remembered now.
+
+"The pines!" he cried. He leaped to his feet with flashing eyes. "I have
+come back to the pines!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The dawn revealed a narrow road along the bank of Deer Creek,--a brown
+little wanderer which, winding here and there, did not seem to know
+exactly where it wished to go. It seemed to follow the general direction
+of the creek bed; it seemed to be a prying, restless little highway,
+curious about things in general as the wild creatures that sometimes
+made tracks in its dust, thrusting now into a heavy thicket, now
+crossing the creek to examine a green and grassy bank on the opposite
+side, now taking an adventurous tramp about the shoulder of a hill,
+circling back for a drink in the creek and hurrying on again. It made
+singular loops; it darted off at a right and left oblique; it made
+sudden spurts and turns seemingly without reason or sense, and at last
+it dimmed away into the fading mists of early morning. Bruce didn't know
+which direction to take, whether up or down the creek.
+
+He gave the problem a moment's thought. "Take the road up the Divide,"
+Barney Wegan had said; and at once Bruce knew that the course lay up the
+creek, rather than down. A divide means simply the high places between
+one water-shed and another, and of course Trail's End lay somewhere
+beyond the source of the stream. The creek itself was apparently a
+sub-tributary of the Rogue, the great river to the south.
+
+There was something pleasing to his spirit in the sight of the little
+stream, tumbling and rippling down its rocky bed. He had no vivid
+memories of seeing many waterways. The river that flowed through the
+city whence he had come had not been like this at all. It had been a
+great, slow-moving sheet of water, the banks of which were lined with
+factories and warehouses. The only lining of the banks of this little
+stream were white-barked trees, lovely groves with leaves of glossy
+green. It was a cheery, eager little waterway, and more than once--as he
+went around a curve in the road--it afforded him glimpses of really
+striking beauty. Sometimes it was just a shimmer of its waters beneath
+low-hanging bushes, sometimes a distant cataract, and once or twice a
+long, still place on which the shadows were still deep.
+
+These sloughs were obviously the result of dams, and at first he could
+not understand what had been the purpose of dam-building in this lonely
+region. There seemed to be no factories needing water power, no
+slow-moving mill wheels. He left the road to investigate. And he
+chuckled with delight when he knew the truth.
+
+These dams had not been the work of men at all. Rather they were
+structures laid down by those curious little civil engineers, the
+beavers. The cottonwood trees had been felled so that the thick branches
+had lain across the waters, and in their own secret ways the limbs had
+been matted and caked until no water could pass through. True, the
+beavers themselves did not emerge for him to converse with. Perhaps
+they were busy at their under-water occupations, and possibly the
+trappers who sooner or later penetrate every wilderness had taken them
+all away. He looked along the bank for further evidence of the beavers'
+work.
+
+Wonderful as the dams were, he found plenty of evidence that the beavers
+had not always used to advantage the crafty little brains that nature
+has given them. They had made plenty of mistakes. But these very
+blunders gave Bruce enough delight almost to pay for the extra work they
+had occasioned. After all, he considered, human beings in their works
+are often just as short-sighted. For instance, he found tall trees lying
+rotting and out of reach, many feet back from the stream. The beavers
+had evidently felled them in high water, forgetting that the stream
+dwindled in summer and the trees would be of no use to them. They had
+been an industrious colony! He found short poles of cottonwood sharpened
+at the end, as if the little fur bearers had intended them for braces,
+but which--through some wilderness tragedy--had never been utilized.
+
+But Bruce was in a mood to be delighted, these early morning hours. He
+was on the way to Linda; a dream was about to come true. The whole
+adventure was of the most thrilling and joyous anticipations. He did not
+feel the load of his heavy suitcase. It was nothing to his magnificent
+young strength. And all at once he beheld an amazing change in the
+appearance of the stream.
+
+It had abruptly changed to a stream of melted, shimmering silver. The
+waters broke on the rocks with opalescent spray; the whole coloring was
+suggestive of the vivid tints of a Turner landscape. The waters gleamed;
+they danced and sparkled as they sped about the boulders of the river
+bed; the leaves shimmered above them. And it was all because the sun had
+risen at last above the mountain range and was shining down.
+
+At first Bruce could hardly believe that just sunlight could effect such
+a transformation. For no other reason than that he couldn't resist doing
+so, he left his bag on the road and crept down to the water's edge.
+
+He stood very still. It seemed to him that some one had told him, far
+away and long ago, that if he wished to see miracles he had only to
+stand very still. Not to move a muscle, so that his vivid shadow would
+not even waver. It is a trait possessed by all men of the wilderness,
+but it takes time for city men to learn it. He waited a long time. And
+all at once the shining surface of a deep pool below him broke with a
+fountain of glittering spray.
+
+Something that was like light itself flung into the air and down again
+with a splash. Bruce shouted then. He simply couldn't help it. And all
+the time there was a strange straining and travail in his brain, as if
+it were trying to give birth to a memory from long ago. He knew now what
+had made that glittering arc. Such a common thing,--it was singular that
+it should yield him such delight. It was a trout, leaping for an insect
+that had fallen on the waters.
+
+It was strange that he had such a sense of familiarity with trout. True,
+he had heard Barney Wegan tell of them. He had listened to many tales of
+the way they seized a fly, how the reel would spin, and how they would
+fight to absolute exhaustion before they would yield to the landing net.
+"The King among fish," Barney had called them. Yet the tales seemingly
+had meant little to him then. His interest in them had been superficial
+only; and they had seemed as distant and remote as the marsupials of
+Australia. But it wasn't this way now. He had a sense of long and close
+acquaintance, of an interest such as men have in their own townsmen.
+
+He went on, and the forest world opened before him. Once a flock of
+grouse--a hen and a dozen half-grown chickens--scurried away through the
+underbrush at the sound of his step. One instant, and he had a clear
+view of the entire covey. The next, and they had vanished like so many
+puffs of smoke. He had a delicious game of hide-and-seek with them
+through the coverts, but he was out-classed in every particular. He knew
+that the birds were all within forty feet of him, each of them pressed
+flat to the brown earth, but in this maze of light and shadow he could
+not detect their outline. Nature has been kind to the grouse family in
+the way of protective coloration. He had to give up the search and
+continue up the creek for further adventure.
+
+Once a pair of mallards winged by on a straight course above his head.
+Their sudden appearance rather surprised him. These beautiful game
+birds are usually habitants of the lower lakes and marshes, not
+rippling mountain streams. He didn't know that a certain number of these
+winged people nested every year along the Rogue River, far below, and
+made rapturous excursions up and down its tributaries. Mallards do not
+have to have aeroplanes to cover distance quickly. They are the very
+masters of the aerial lanes, and in all probability this pair had come
+forty miles already that morning. Where they would be at dark no man
+could guess. Their wings whistled down to him, and it seemed to him that
+the drake stretched down his bright green head for a better look. Then
+he spurted ahead, faster than ever.
+
+Once, at a distance, Bruce caught a glimpse of a pair of peculiar,
+little, sawed-off, plump-breasted ducks that wagged their tails, as if
+in signals, in a still place above a dam. He made a wide circle,
+intending to wheel back to the creekside for a closer inspection of the
+singular flirtation of those bobbing, fan-like tails. He rather thought
+he could outwit these little people, at least. But when he turned back
+to the water's edge they were nowhere to be seen.
+
+If he had had more experience with the creatures of the wild he could
+have explained this mysterious disappearance. These little
+ducks--"ruddies" the sportsmen call them--have advantages other than an
+extra joint in their tails. One of them seems to be a total and
+unprincipled indifference to the available supply of oxygen. When they
+wish to go out of sight they simply duck beneath the water and stay
+apparently as long as they desire. Of course they have to come up some
+time--but usually it is just the tip of a bill--like the top of a
+river-bottom weed, thrust above the surface. Bruce gaped in amazement,
+but he chuckled again when he discovered his birds farther up the creek,
+just as far distant from him as ever.
+
+The sun rose higher, and he began to feel its power. But it was a kindly
+heat. The temperature was much higher than was commonly met in the
+summers of the city, but there was little moisture in the air to make it
+oppressive. The sweat came out on his bronze face, but he never felt
+better in his life. There was but one great need, and that was
+breakfast.
+
+A man of his physique feels hunger quickly. The sensation increased in
+intensity, and the suitcase grew correspondingly heavy. And all at once
+he stopped short in the road. The impulse along his nerves to his leg
+muscles was checked, like an electric current at the closing of a
+switch, and an instinct of unknown origin struggled for expression
+within him.
+
+In an instant he had it. He didn't know whence it came. It was nothing
+he had read or that any one had told him. It seemed to be rather the
+result of some experience in his own immediate life, an occurrence of so
+long ago that he had forgotten it. He suddenly knew where he could find
+his breakfast. There was no need of toiling farther on an empty stomach
+in this verdant season of the year. He set his suitcase down, and with
+the confidence of a man who hears the dinner call in his own home, he
+struck off into the thickets beside the creek bed. Instinct--and really,
+after all, instinct is nothing but memory--led his steps true.
+
+He glanced here and there, not even wondering at the singular fact that
+he did not know exactly what manner of food he was seeking. In a moment
+he came to a growth of thorn-covered bushes, a thicket that only the
+she-bear knew how to penetrate. But it was enough for Bruce just to
+stand at its edges. The bushes were bent down with a load of delicious
+berries.
+
+He wasn't in the least surprised. He had known that he would find them.
+Always, at this season of the year, the woods were rich with them; one
+only had to slip quickly through the back door--while the mother's eye
+was elsewhere--to find enough of them not only to pack the stomach full
+but to stain and discolor most of the face. It seemed a familiar thing
+to be plucking the juicy berries and cramming them into his mouth,
+impervious as the old she-bear to the remonstrance of the thorns. But it
+seemed to him that he reached them easier than he expected. Either the
+bushes were not so tall as he remembered them, or--since his first
+knowledge of them--his own stature had increased.
+
+When he had eaten the last berry he could possibly hold, he went to the
+creek to drink. He lay down beside a still pool, and the water was cold
+to his lips. Then he rose at the sound of an approaching motor car
+behind him.
+
+The driver--evidently a cattleman--stopped his car and looked at Bruce
+with some curiosity. He marked the perfectly fitting suit of dark
+flannel, the trim, expensive shoes that were already dust-stained, the
+silken shirt on which a juicy berry had been crushed. "Howdy," the man
+said after the western fashion. He was evidently simply feeling
+companionable and was looking for a moment's chat. It is a desire that
+often becomes very urgent and most real after enough lonely days in the
+wilderness.
+
+"How do you do," Bruce replied. "How far to Martin's store?"
+
+The man filled his pipe with great care before he answered. "Jump in the
+car," he replied at last, "and I'll show you. I'm going up that way
+myself."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Martin's was a typical little mountain store, containing a small sample
+of almost everything under the sun and built at the forks in the road.
+The ranchman let Bruce off at the store; then turned up the right-hand
+road that led to certain bunch-grass lands to the east. Bruce entered
+slowly, and the little group of loungers gazed at him with frank
+curiosity.
+
+Only one of them was of a type sufficiently distinguished so that
+Bruce's own curiosity was aroused. This was a huge, dark man who stood
+alone almost at the rear of the building,--a veritable giant with
+savage, bloodhound lips and deep-sunken eyes. There was a quality in his
+posture that attracted Bruce's attention at once. No one could look at
+him and doubt that he was a power in these mountain realms. He seemed
+perfectly secure in his great strength and wholly cognizant of the hate
+and fear, and at the same time, the strange sort of admiration with
+which the others regarded him.
+
+He was dressed much as the other mountain men who had assembled in the
+store. He wore a flannel shirt over his gorilla chest, and corduroy
+trousers stuffed into high, many-seamed riding boots. A dark felt hat
+was crushed on to his huge head. But there was an aloofness about the
+man; and Bruce realized at once he had taken no part in the friendly
+gossip that had been interrupted by his entrance.
+
+The dark eyes were full upon Bruce's face. He felt them--just as if they
+had the power of actual physical impact--the instant that he was inside
+the door. Nor was it the ordinary look of careless speculation or
+friendly interest. Mountain men have not been taught it is not good
+manners to stare, but no traveler who falls swiftly into the spirit of
+the forest ordinarily resents their open inspection. But this look was
+different. It was such that no man, to whom self-respect is dear, could
+possibly disregard. It spoke clearly as words.
+
+Bruce flushed, and his blood made a curious little leap. He slowly
+turned. His gaze moved until it rested full upon the man's eyes. It
+seemed to Bruce that the room grew instantly quiet. The merchant no
+longer tied up his bundles at the counter. The watching mountain men
+that he beheld out of the corners of his eyes all seemed to be standing
+in peculiar fixed attitudes, waiting for some sort of explosion. It took
+all of Bruce's strength to hold that gaze. The moment was charged with a
+mysterious suspense.
+
+The stranger's face changed too. He did not flush, however. His lips
+curled ever so slightly, revealing an instant's glimpse of strong,
+rather well-kept teeth. His eyes were narrowing too; and they seemed to
+come to life with singular sparkles and glowings between the lids.
+
+"Well?" he suddenly demanded. Every man in the room--except
+one--started. The one exception was Bruce himself. He was holding hard
+on his nerve control, and he only continued to stare coldly.
+
+"Are you the merchant?" Bruce asked.
+
+"No, I ain't," the other replied. "You usually look for the merchant
+behind the counter."
+
+There was no smile on the faces of the waiting mountain men, usually to
+be expected when one of their number achieves repartee on a tenderfoot.
+Nevertheless, the tension was broken. Bruce turned to the merchant.
+
+"I would like to have you tell me," he said quite clearly, "the way to
+Mrs. Ross's cabin."
+
+The merchant seemed to wait a long time before replying. His eye stole
+to the giant's face, found the lips curled in a smile; then he flushed.
+"Take the left-hand road," he said with a trace of defiance in his tone.
+"It soon becomes a trail, but keep right on going up it. At the fork in
+the trail you'll find her cabin."
+
+"How far is it, please?"
+
+"Two hours' walk; you can make it easy by four o'clock."
+
+"Thank you." His eyes glanced over the stock of goods and he selected a
+few edibles to give him strength for the walk. "I'll leave my suitcase
+here if I may," he said, "and will call for it later." He turned to go.
+
+"Wait just a minute," a voice spoke behind him. It was a commanding
+tone--implying the expectation of obedience. Bruce half turned. "Simon
+wants to talk to you," the merchant explained.
+
+"I'll walk with you a way and show you the road," Simon continued. The
+room seemed deathly quiet as the two men went out together.
+
+They walked side by side until a turn of the road took them out of
+eye-range of the store. "This is the road," Simon said. "All you have to
+do is follow it. Cabins are not so many that you could mistake it. But
+the main thing is--whether or not you want to go."
+
+Bruce had no misunderstanding about the man's meaning. It was simply a
+threat, nothing more nor less.
+
+"I've come a long way to go to that cabin," he replied. "I'm not likely
+to turn off now."
+
+"There's nothing worth seeing when you get there. Just an old hag--a
+wrinkled old dame that looks like a witch."
+
+Bruce felt a deep and little understood resentment at the words. Yet
+since he had as yet established no relations with the woman, he had no
+grounds for silencing the man. "I'll have to decide that," he replied.
+"I'm going to see some one else, too."
+
+"Some one named--Linda?"
+
+"Yes. You seem quite interested."
+
+They were standing face to face in the trail. For once Bruce was glad of
+his unusual height. He did not have to raise his eyes greatly to look
+squarely into Simon's. Both faces were flushed, both set; and the eyes
+of the older man brightened slowly.
+
+"I am interested," Simon replied. "You're a tenderfoot. You're fresh
+from cities. You're going up there to learn things that won't be any
+pleasure to you. You're going into the real mountains--a man's land such
+as never was a place for tenderfeet. A good many things can happen up
+there. A good many things have happened up there. I warn you--go back!"
+
+Bruce smiled, just the faint flicker of a smile, but Simon's eyes
+narrowed when he saw it. The dark face lost a little of its insolence.
+He knew men, this huge son of the wilderness, and he knew that no coward
+could smile in such a moment as this. He was accustomed to implicit
+obedience and was not used to seeing men smile when he uttered a threat.
+"I've come too far to go back," Bruce told him. "Nothing can turn me."
+
+"Men have been turned before, on trails like this," Simon told him.
+"Don't misunderstand me. I advised you to go back before, and I usually
+don't take time or trouble to advise any one. Now I _tell_ you to go
+back. This is a man's land, and we don't want any tenderfeet here."
+
+"The trail is open," Bruce returned. It was not his usual manner to
+speak in quite this way. He seemed at once to have fallen into the
+vernacular of the wilderness of which symbolic reference has such a
+part. Strange as the scene was to him, it was in some way familiar too.
+It was as if this meeting had been ordained long ago; that it was part
+of an inexorable destiny that the two should be talking together, face
+to face, on this winding mountain road. Memories--all vague, all
+unrecognized--thronged through him.
+
+Many times, during the past years, he had wakened from curious dreams
+that in the light of day he had tried in vain to interpret. He was never
+able to connect them with any remembered experience. Now it was as if
+one of these dreams were coming true. There was the same silence about
+him, the dark forests beyond, the ridges stretching ever. There was some
+great foe that might any instant overwhelm him.
+
+"I guess you heard me," Simon said; "I told you to go back."
+
+"And I hope you heard me too. I'm going on. I haven't any more time to
+give you."
+
+"And I'm not going to take any more, either. But let me make one thing
+plain. No man, told to go back by me, ever has a chance to be told
+again. This ain't your cities--up here. There ain't any policeman on
+every corner. The woods are big, and all kinds of things can happen in
+them--and be swallowed up--as I swallow these leaves in my hand."
+
+His great arm reached out with incredible power and seized a handful of
+leaves off a near-by shrub. It seemed to Bruce that they crushed like
+fruit and stained the dark skin.
+
+"What is done up here isn't put in the newspapers down below. We're
+mountain men; we've lived up here as long as men have lived in the West.
+We have our own way of doing things, and our own law. Think once more
+about going back."
+
+"I've already decided. I'm going on."
+
+Once more they stood, eyes meeting eyes on the trail, and Simon's face
+was darkening with passion. Bruce knew that his hands were clenching,
+and his own muscles bunched and made ready to resist any kind of attack.
+
+But Simon didn't strike. He laughed instead,--a single deep note of
+utter and depthless scorn. Then he drew back and let Bruce pass on up
+the road.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Bruce couldn't mistake the cabin. At the end of the trail he found
+it,--a little shack of unpainted boards with a single door and a single
+window.
+
+He stood a moment in the sunlight. His shadow was already long behind
+him, and the mountains had that curious deep blue of late afternoon. The
+pine needles were soft under his feet; the later-afternoon silence was
+over the land. He could not guess what was his destiny behind that rude
+door. It was a moment long waited; for one of the few times in his life
+he was trembling with excitement. He felt as if a key, long lost, was
+turning in the doorway of understanding.
+
+He walked nearer and tapped with his knuckles on the door.
+
+If the forests have one all-pervading quality it is silence. Of course
+the most silent time is at night, but just before sunset, when most of
+the forest creatures are in their mid-afternoon sleep, any noise is a
+rare thing. What sound there is carries far and seems rather out of
+place. Bruce could picture the whole of the little drama that followed
+his knock by just the faint sounds--inaudible in a less silent
+land--that reached him from behind the door. At first it was just a
+start; then a short exclamation in the hollow, half-whispering voice of
+old, old age. A moment more of silence--as if a slow-moving, aged brain
+were trying to conjecture who stood outside--then the creaking of a
+chair as some one rose. The last sounds were of a strange hobbling
+toward him,--a rustle of shoes half dragged on the floor and the
+intermittent tapping of a cane.
+
+The face that showed so dimly in the shadowed room looked just as Bruce
+had expected,--wrinkled past belief, lean and hawk-nosed from age. The
+hand that rested on the cane was like a bird's claw, the skin blue and
+hard and dry. There were a few strands of hair drawn back over her lean
+head, but all its color had faded out long ago. She stood bowed over her
+cane.
+
+Yet in that first instant Bruce had an inexplicable impression of being
+in the presence of a power. He did not have the wave of pity with which
+one usually greets the decrepit. And at first he didn't know why. But
+soon he grew accustomed to the shadows and he could see the woman's
+eyes. Then he understood.
+
+They were set deep behind grizzled brows, but they glowed like coals.
+There was no other word. They were not the eyes of one whom time is
+about to conquer. Her bodily strength was gone; any personal beauty that
+she might have had was ashes long and long ago, but some great fire
+burned in her yet. As far as bodily appearance went the grave should
+have claimed her long since; but a dauntless spirit had sustained her.
+For, as all men know, the power of the spirit has never yet been
+measured.
+
+She blinked in the light. "Who is it?" she croaked.
+
+Bruce did not answer. He had not prepared a reply for this question. But
+it was not needed. The woman leaned forward, and a vivid light began to
+dawn in her dark, furrowed face.
+
+Even to Bruce, already succumbed to this atmosphere of mystery into
+which his adventure had led him, that dawning light was the single most
+startling phenomenon he had ever beheld. It is very easy to imagine a
+radiance upon the face. But in reality, most all facial expression is
+simply a change in the contour of lines. But this was not a case of
+imagination now. The witchlike face seemed to gleam with a white flame.
+And Bruce knew that his coming was the answer to the prayer of a whole
+lifetime. It was a thought to sober him. No small passion, no weak
+desire, no prayer that time or despair could silence could effect such a
+light as this.
+
+"Bruce," he said simply. It did not even occur to him to use the surname
+of Duncan. It was a name of a time and sphere already forgotten. "I
+don't know what my real last name is."
+
+"Bruce--Bruce," the woman whispered. She stretched a palsied hand to him
+as if it would feel his flesh to reassure her of its reality. The wild
+light in her eyes pierced him, burning like chemical rays, and a great
+flood of feeling yet unknown and unrecognized swept over him. He saw her
+snags of teeth as her dry lips half-opened. He saw the exultation in her
+wrinkled, lifted face. "Oh, praises to His Everlasting Name!" she
+cried. "Oh, Glory--Glory to on High!"
+
+And this was not blasphemy. The words came from the heart. No matter how
+terrible the passion from which they sprang, whether it was such evil as
+would cast her to hell, such a cry as this could not go unheard. The
+strength seemed to go out of her as water flows. She rocked on her cane,
+and Bruce, thinking she was about to fall, seized her shoulders. "At
+last--at last," she cried. "You've come at last."
+
+She gripped herself, as if trying to find renewed strength. "Go at
+once," she said, "to the end of the Pine-needle Trail. It leads from
+behind the cabin."
+
+He tried to emerge from the dreamlike mists that had enveloped him. "How
+far is it?" he asked her steadily.
+
+"To the end of Pine-needle Trail," she rocked again, clutched for one of
+his brown hands, and pressed it between hers.
+
+Then she raised it to her dry lips. Bruce could not keep her from it.
+And after an instant more he did not attempt to draw it from her
+embrace. In the darkness of that mountain cabin, in the shadow of the
+eternal pines, he knew that some great drama of human life and love and
+hatred was behind the action; and he knew with a knowledge unimpeachable
+that it would be only insolence for him to try further to resist it. Its
+meaning went too deep for him to see; but it filled him with a great and
+wondering awe.
+
+Then he turned away, up the Pine-needle Trail. Clear until the deeper
+forest closed around him her voice still followed him,--a strange
+croaking in the afternoon silence. "At last," he heard her crying. "At
+last, at last."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+In almost a moment, Duncan was out of the thickets and into the big
+timber, for really the first time. In his journey up the mountain road
+and on the trail that led to the old woman's cabin, he had been many
+times in the shade of the tall evergreens, but always there had been
+some little intrusion of civilization, some hint of the works of man
+that had kept him from the full sense of the majesty of the wild. At
+first it had been the gleaming railroad tracks, and then a road that had
+been built with blasting and shovels. To get the full effect of the
+forest one must be able to behold wide-stretching vistas, and that had
+been impossible heretofore because of the brush thickets. But this was
+the virgin forest. As far as he could see there was nothing but the
+great pines climbing up the long slope of the ridge. He caught glimpses
+of them in the vales at either side, and their dark tops made a curious
+background at the very extremity of his vision. They stood straight and
+aloof, and they were very old.
+
+He fell into their spirit at once. The half-understood emotions that had
+flooded him in the cabin below died within him. The great calm that is,
+after all, the all-pervading quality of the big pines came over him. It
+is always this way. A man knows solitude, his thoughts come clear,
+superficialities are left behind in the lands of men. Bruce was rather
+tremulous and exultant as he crept softly up the trail.
+
+It was the last lap of his journey. At the end of the trail he would
+find--Linda! And it seemed quite fitting that she would be waiting
+there, where the trail began, in the wildest heart of the pine woods. He
+was quite himself once more,--carefree, delighting in all the little
+manifestations of the wild life that began to stir about him.
+
+No experience of his existence had ever yielded the same pleasure as
+that long walk up the trail. Every curve about the shoulder of a hill,
+every still glen into which he dipped, every ridge that he surmounted
+wakened curious memories within him and stirred him in little secret
+ways under the skin. His delight grew upon him. It was a dream coming
+true. Always, it seemed to him, he had carried in his mind a picture of
+this very land, a sort of dream place that was a reality at last. He had
+known just how it would be. The wind made the same noise in the tree
+tops that he expected. Yet it was such a little sound that it could
+never be heard in a city at all. His senses had already been sharpened
+by the silence and the calm.
+
+He had always known how the pine shadows would fall across the carpet of
+needles. The trees themselves were the same grave companions that he had
+expected, but his delight was all the more because of his expectations.
+
+He began to catch glimpses of the smaller forest creatures,--the Little
+People that are such a delight to all real lovers of the wilderness.
+Sometimes it was a chipmunk, trusting to his striped skin--blending
+perfectly with the light and shadow--to keep him out of sight. These are
+quivering, restless, ever-frightened little folk, and heaven alone knows
+what damage they may do to the roots of a tree. But Bruce wasn't in the
+mood to think of forest conservation to-day. He had left a number of his
+notions in the city where he had acquired them,--and this little,
+bright-eyed rodent in the tree roots had almost the same right to the
+forests that he had himself. Before, he had a measure of the same
+arrogance with which most men--realizing the dominance of their
+breed--regard the lesser people of the wild; but something of a
+disastrous nature had happened to it. He spoke gayly to the chipmunk and
+passed on.
+
+As the trail climbed higher, the sense of wilderness became more
+pronounced. Even the trees seemed larger and more majestic, and the
+glimpses of the wild people were more frequent. The birds stopped their
+rattle-brained conversation and stared at him with frank curiosity. The
+grouse let him get closer before they took to cover.
+
+Of course the bird life was not nearly so varied as in the pretty groves
+of the Middle West. Most birds are gentle people, requiring an easy and
+pleasant environment, and these stern, stark mountains were no place for
+them. Only the hardier creatures could flourish here. Their songs would
+have been out of place in the great silences and solemnity of the
+evergreen forest. This was no land for weaklings. Bruce knew that as
+well as he knew that his legs were under him. The few birds he saw were
+mostly of the hardier varieties,--hale-fellows-well-met and cheerful
+members of the lower strata in bird society. "Good old roughnecks," he
+said to them, with an intuitive understanding.
+
+That was just the name for them,--a word that is just beginning to
+appear in dictionaries. They were rough in manner and rough in speech,
+and they pretended to be rougher than they were. Yet Bruce liked them.
+He exulted in the easy freedom of their ways. Creatures have to be rough
+to exist in and love such wilderness as this. Life gets down to a matter
+of cold metal,--some brass but mostly iron! He rather imagined that they
+could be fairly capable thieves if occasion arose, making off with the
+edibles he had bought without a twitch of a feather. They squawked and
+scolded at him, after their curiosity was satisfied. They said the most
+shocking things they could think of and seemed to rejoice in it. He
+didn't know their breeds, yet he felt that they were old friends. They
+were rather large birds, mostly of the families of jays and magpies.
+
+The hours passed. The trail grew dimmer. Now it was just a brown serpent
+in the pine needles, coiling this way and that,--but he loved every foot
+of it. It dipped down to a little stream, of which the blasting sun of
+summer had made only a succession of shallow pools. Yet the water was
+cold to his lips. And he knew that little brook trout--waiting until
+the fall rains should make a torrent of their tiny stream and thus
+deliver them--were gazing at him while he drank.
+
+The trail followed the creek a distance, and at last he found the spring
+that was its source. It was only a small spring, lost in a bed of deep,
+green ferns. He sat down to rest and to eat part of his lunch. The
+little wind had died, leaving a profound silence.
+
+By a queer pounding of his blood Bruce knew that he was in the high
+altitudes. He had already come six miles from the cabin. The hour was
+about six-thirty; in two hours more it would be too dark to make his way
+at all.
+
+He examined the mud about the spring, and there was plenty of evidence
+that the forest creatures had passed that way. Here was a little
+triangle where a buck had stepped, and farther away he found two pairs
+of deer tracks,--evidently those of a doe with fawn. A wolf had stopped
+to cool his heated tongue in the waters, possibly in the middle of some
+terrible hunt in the twilight hours.
+
+There was a curious round track, as if of a giant cat, a little way
+distant in the brown earth. It told a story plainly. A cougar--one of
+those great felines that is perhaps better called puma--had had an
+ambush there a few nights before. Bruce wondered what wilderness tragedy
+had transpired when the deer came to drink. Then he found another huge
+abrasion in the mud that puzzled him still more.
+
+At first he couldn't believe that it was a track. The reason was simply
+that the size of the thing was incredible,--as if some one had laid a
+flour sack in the mud and taken it up again. He did not think of any of
+the modern-day forest creatures as being of such proportions. It was
+very stale and had been almost obliterated by many days of sun. Perhaps
+he had been mistaken in thinking it an imprint of a living creature. He
+went to his knees to examine it.
+
+But in one instant he knew that he had not been mistaken. It was a track
+not greatly different from that of an enormous human foot; and the
+separate toes were entirely distinct. It was a bear track, of course,
+but one of such size that the general run of little black bears that
+inhabited the hills could almost use it for a den of hibernation!
+
+His thought went back to his talk with Barney Wegan; and he remembered
+that the man had spoken of a great, last grizzly that the mountaineers
+had named "The Killer." No other animal but the great grizzly bear
+himself could have made such a track as this. Bruce wondered if the
+beast had yet been killed.
+
+He got up and went on,--farther toward Trail's End. He walked more
+swiftly now, for he hoped to reach the end of Pine-needle Trail before
+nightfall, but he had no intention of halting in case night came upon
+him before he reached it. He had waited too long already to find Linda.
+
+The land seemed ever more familiar. A high peak thrust a white head
+above a distant ridge, and it appealed to him almost like the face of an
+old friend. Sometime--long and long ago--he had gazed often at a white
+peak of a mountain thrust above a pine-covered ridge.
+
+Another hour ended the day's sunlight. The shadows fell quickly, but it
+was a long time yet until darkness. He yet might make the trail-end. He
+gave no thought to fatigue. In the first place, he had stood up
+remarkably well under the day's tramp for no other reason than that he
+had always made a point of keeping in the best of physical condition.
+Besides, there was something more potent than mere physical strength to
+sustain him now. It was the realization of the nearing end of the
+trail,--a knowledge of tremendous revelations that would come to him in
+a few hours more.
+
+Already great truths were taking shape in his brain; he only needed a
+single sentence of explanation to connect them all together. He began to
+feel a growing excitement and impatience.
+
+For the first time he began to notice a strange breathlessness in the
+air. He paused, just for an instant, his face lifted to the wind. He did
+not realize that all his senses were at razor edge, trying to interpret
+the messages that the wind brought. He felt that the forest was
+wakening. A new stir and impulse had come in the growing shadows. All at
+once he understood. It was the hunting hour.
+
+Yet even this seemed familiar. Always, it seemed to him, he had known
+this same strange thrill at the fall of darkness, the same sense of
+deepening mystery. The jays no longer gossiped in the shrubs. They had
+been silenced by the same awe that had come over Bruce. And now the man
+began to discern, here and there through the forest, queer rustlings of
+the foliage that meant the passing through of some of the great beasts
+of prey.
+
+Once two deer flashed by him,--just a streak that vanished quickly. The
+dusk deepened. The further trees were dimming. The sky turned green,
+then gray. The distant mountains were enfolded in gloom. Bruce headed
+on--faster, up the trail.
+
+The heaviness in his limbs had changed to an actual ache, but he gave no
+thought to it. He was enthralled by the change that was on the
+forest,--a whipping-back of a thousand-thousand years to a young and
+savage world. There was the sense of vast and tragic events all in
+keeping with the gathering gloom of the forest. He was awed and
+mystified as never before.
+
+It was quite dark now, and he could barely see the trail. For the first
+time he began to despair, feeling that another night of overpowering
+impatience must be spent before he could reach Trail's End. The stars
+began to push through the darkening sky. Then, fainter than the gleam of
+a firefly, he saw the faint light of a far distant camp fire.
+
+His heart bounded. He knew what was there. It was the end of the trail
+at last. And it guided him the rest of the way. When he reached the top
+of a little rise in the trail, the whole scene was laid out in mystery
+below him.
+
+The fire had been built at the door of a mountain house,--a log
+structure of perhaps four rooms. The firelight played in its open
+doorway. Something beside it caught his attention, and instinctively he
+followed it with his eyes until it ended in an incredible region of the
+stars. It was a great pine tree, the largest he had ever
+seen,--seemingly a great sentinel over all the land.
+
+But the sudden awe that came over him at the sight of it was cut short
+by the sight of a girl's figure in the firelight. He had an instant's
+sense that he had come to the wilderness's heart at last, that this tall
+tree was its symbol, that if he could understand the eternal watch that
+it kept over this mountain world, he would have an understanding of all
+things,--but all these thoughts were submerged in the realization that
+he had come back to Linda at last.
+
+He had known how the mountains would seem. All that he had beheld to-day
+was just the recurrence of things beheld long ago. Nothing had seemed
+different from what he had expected; rather he had a sense that a lost
+world had been returned to him, and it was almost as if he had never
+been away. But the girl in the firelight did not answer in the least
+degree the picture he had carried of Linda.
+
+He remembered her as a blond-headed little girl with irregular features
+and a rather unreasonable allowance of homeliness. All the way he had
+thought of her as a baby sister,--not as a woman in her flower. For a
+long second he gazed at her in speechless amazement.
+
+Her hair was no longer blond. Time, it had peculiar red lights when the
+firelight shone through it; but he knew that by the light of day it
+would be deep brown. He remembered her as an awkward little thing that
+was hardly able to keep her feet under her. This tall girl had the
+wilderness grace,--which is the grace of a deer and only blind eyes
+cannot see it. He dimly knew that she wore a khaki-colored skirt and a
+simple blouse of white tied with a blue scarf. Her arms were bare in the
+fire's gleam. And there was a dark beauty about her face that simply
+could not be denied.
+
+She came toward him, and her hands were open before her. And her lips
+trembled. Bruce could see them in the firelight.
+
+It was a strange meeting. The firelight gave it a tone of unreality, and
+the whole forest world seemed to pause in its whispered business as if
+to watch. It was as if they had been brought face to face by the
+mandates of an inexorable destiny.
+
+"So you've come," the girl said. The words were spoken unusually soft,
+scarcely above a whisper; but they were inexpressibly vivid to Bruce. In
+his lifetime he had heard many words that were just so many lifeless
+selections from a dictionary,--flat utterances with no overtones to give
+them vitality. He had heard voices in plenty that were merely the
+mechanical result of the vibration of vocal cords. But these words--not
+for their meaning but because of the quality of the voice that had
+spoken them--really lived. They told first of a boundless relief and joy
+at his coming. But more than that, in these deep vibrant tones was the
+expression of an unquenchable life and spirit. Every fiber of her body
+lived in the fullest sense; he knew this fact the instant that she
+spoke.
+
+She smiled at him, ever so quietly. "Bwovaboo," she said, recalling the
+name by which she called him in her babyhood, "you've come to Linda."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+As the fire burned down to coals and the stars wheeled through the sky,
+Linda told her story. The two of them were seated in the soft grass in
+front of the cabin, and the moonlight was on Linda's face as she talked.
+She talked very low at first. Indeed there was no need for loud tones.
+The whole wilderness world was heavy with silence, and a whisper carried
+far. Besides, Bruce was just beside her, watching her with narrowed
+eyes, forgetful of everything except her story.
+
+It was a perfect background for the savage tale that she had to tell.
+The long shadow of the giant pine tree fell over them. The fire made a
+little circle of red light, but the darkness ever encroached upon it.
+Just beyond the moonlight showed them silver-white patches between the
+trees, across which shadows sometimes wavered from the passing of the
+wild creatures.
+
+"I've waited a long time to tell you this," she told him. "Of course,
+when we were babies together in the orphanage, I didn't even know it. It
+has taken me a long time since to learn all the details; most of them I
+got from my aunt, old Elmira, whom you talked to on the way out. Part of
+it I knew by intuition, and a little of it is still doubtful.
+
+"You ought to know first how hard I have tried to reach you. Of course,
+I didn't try openly except at first--the first years after I came here,
+and before I was old enough to understand." She spoke the last word with
+a curious depth of feeling and a perceptible hardness about her lips and
+eyes. "I remembered just two things. That the man who had adopted you
+was Newton Duncan; one of the nurses at the asylum told me that. And I
+remembered the name of the city where he had taken you.
+
+"You must understand the difficulties I worked under. There is no rural
+free delivery up here, you know, Bruce. Our mail is sent from and
+delivered to the little post-office at Martin's store--over fifteen
+miles from here. And some one member of a certain family that lives near
+here goes down every week to get the mail for the entire district.
+
+"At first--and that was before I really understood--I wrote you many
+letters and gave them to one of this family to mail for me. I was just a
+child then, you must know, and I lived in the same house with these
+people. And queer letters they must have been."
+
+For an instant a smile lingered at her lips, but it seemed to come hard.
+It was all too plain that she hadn't smiled many times in the past days.
+But for some unaccountable reason Bruce's heart leaped when he saw it.
+It had potentialities, that smile. It seemed to light her whole face. He
+was suddenly exultant at the thought that once he understood everything,
+he might bring about such changes that he could see it often.
+
+"They were just baby letters from--from Linda-Tinda to Bwovaboo--letters
+about the deer and the berries and the squirrels--and all the wild
+things that lived up here."
+
+"Berries!" Bruce cried. "I had some on the way up." His tone wavered,
+and he seemed to be speaking far away. "I had some once--long ago."
+
+"Yes. You will understand, soon. I didn't understand why you didn't
+answer my letters. I understand now, though. You never got them."
+
+"No. I never got them. But there are several Duncans in my city. They
+might have gone astray."
+
+"They went astray--but it was before they ever reached the post-office.
+They were never mailed, Bruce. I was to know why, later. Even then it
+was part of the plan that I should never get in communication with you
+again--that you would be lost to me forever.
+
+"When I got older, I tried other tacks. I wrote to the asylum, enclosing
+a letter to you. But those letters were not mailed, either.
+
+"Now we can skip a long time. I grew up. I knew everything at last and
+no longer lived with the family I mentioned before. I came here, to this
+old house--and made it decent to live in. I cut my own wood for my fuel
+except when one of the men tried to please me by cutting it for me. I
+wouldn't use it at first. Oh, Bruce--I wouldn't touch it!"
+
+Her face was no longer lovely. It was drawn with terrible passions. But
+she quieted at once.
+
+"At last I saw plainly that I was a little fool--that all they would do
+for me, the better off I was. At first, I almost starved to death
+because I wouldn't use the food that they sent me. I tried to grub it
+out of the hills. But I came to it at last. But, Bruce, there were many
+things I didn't come to. Since I learned the truth, I have never given
+one of them a smile except in scorn, not a word that wasn't a word of
+hate.
+
+"You are a city man, Bruce. You are what I read about as a gentleman.
+You don't know what hate means. It doesn't live in the cities. But it
+lives up here. Believe me if you ever believed anything--that it lives
+up here. The most bitter and the blackest hate--from birth until death!
+It burns out the heart, Bruce. But I don't know that I can make you
+understand."
+
+She paused, and Bruce looked away into the pine forest. He believed the
+girl. He knew that this grim land was the home of direct and primitive
+emotions. Such things as mercy and remorse were out of place in the game
+trails where the wolf pack hunted the deer.
+
+"When they knew how I hated them," she went on, "they began to watch me.
+And once they knew that I fully understood the situation, I was no
+longer allowed to leave this little valley. There are only two trails,
+Bruce. One goes to Elmira's cabin on the way to the store. The other
+encircles the mountain. With all their numbers, it was easy to keep
+watch of those trails. And they told me what they would do if they found
+me trying to go past."
+
+"You don't mean--they threatened you?"
+
+She threw back her head and laughed, but the sound had no joy in it.
+"Threatened! If you think threats are common up here, you are a greener
+tenderfoot than I ever took you for. Bruce, the law up here is the law
+of force. The strongest wins. The weakest dies. Wait till you see Simon.
+You'll understand then--and you'll shake in your shoes."
+
+The words grated upon him, yet he didn't resent them. "I've seen Simon,"
+he told her.
+
+She glanced toward him quickly, and it was entirely plain that the quiet
+tone in his voice had surprised her. Perhaps the faintest flicker of
+admiration came into her eyes.
+
+"He tried to stop you, did he? Of course he would. And you came anyway.
+May Heaven bless you for it, Bruce!" She leaned toward him, appealing.
+"And forgive me what I said."
+
+Bruce stared at her in amazement. He could hardly realize that this was
+the same voice that had been so torn with passion a moment before. In an
+instant all her hardness was gone, and the tenderness of a sweet and
+wholesome nature had taken its place. He felt a curious warmth stealing
+over him.
+
+"They meant what they said, Bruce. Believe me, if those men can do no
+other thing, they can keep their word. They didn't just threaten death
+to me. I could have run the risk of that. Badly as I wanted to make them
+pay before I died, I would have gladly run that risk.
+
+"You are amazed at the free way I speak of death. The girls you know, in
+the city, don't even know the word. They don't know what it means. They
+don't understand the sudden end of the light--the darkness--the
+cold--the awful fear that it is! It is no companion of theirs, down in
+the city. Perhaps they see it once in a while--but it isn't in their
+homes and in the air and on the trails, like it is here. It's a reality
+here, something to fight against every hour of every day. There are just
+three things to do in the mountains--to live and love and hate. There's
+no softness. There's no middle ground." She smiled grimly. "Let them
+live up here with me--those girls you know--and they'd understand what a
+reality Death is. They'd know it was something to think about and fight
+against. Self-preservation is an instinct that can be forgotten when you
+have a policeman at every corner. But it is ever present here.
+
+"I've lived with death, and I've heard of it, and I've seen it all my
+life. If there hadn't been any other way, I would have seen it in the
+dramas of the wild creatures that go on around me all the time. You'll
+get down to cases here, Bruce--or else you'll run away. These men said
+they'd do worse things to me than kill me--and I didn't dare take the
+risk.
+
+"But once or twice I was able to get word to old Elmira--the only ally I
+had left. She was of the true breed, Bruce. You'll call her a hag, but
+she's a woman to be reckoned with. She could hate too--worse than a
+she-rattlesnake hates the man that killed her mate--and hating is all
+that's kept her alive. You shrink when I say the word. Maybe you won't
+shrink when I'm done. Hating is a thing that gentlefolk don't do--but
+gentlefolk don't live up here. It isn't a land of gentleness. Up here
+there are just men and women, just male and female.
+
+"This old woman tried to get in communication with every stranger that
+visited the hills. You see, Bruce, she couldn't write herself. And the
+one time I managed to get a written message down to her, telling her to
+give it to the first stranger to mail--one of my enemies got it away
+from her. I expected to die that night. I wasn't going to be alive when
+the clan came. The only reason I didn't was because Simon--the greatest
+of them all and the one I hate the most--kept his clan from coming. He
+had his own reasons.
+
+"From then on she had to depend on word of mouth. Some of the men
+promised to send letters to Newton Duncan--but there was more than one
+Newton Duncan--as you say--and possibly if the letters were sent they
+went astray. But at last--just a few weeks ago--she found a man that
+knew you. And it is your story from now on."
+
+They were still a little while. Bruce arose and threw more wood on the
+fire.
+
+"It's only the beginning," he said.
+
+"And you want me to tell you all?" she asked hesitantly.
+
+"Of course. Why did I come here?"
+
+"You won't believe me when I say that I'm almost sorry I sent for you."
+She spoke almost breathlessly. "I didn't know that it would be like
+this. That you would come with a smile on your face and a light in your
+eyes, looking for happiness. And instead of happiness--to find _all
+this_!"
+
+She stretched her arms to the forests. Bruce understood her perfectly.
+She did not mean the woods in the literal sense. She meant the primal
+emotions that were their spirit.
+
+She went on with lowered tones. "May Heaven forgive me if I have done
+wrong to bring you here," she told him. "To show you--all that I have to
+show--you who are a city man and a gentleman. But, Bruce, I couldn't
+fight alone any more. I had to have help.
+
+"To know the rest, you've got to go back a whole generation. Bruce, have
+you heard of the terrible blood-feuds that the mountain families
+sometimes have?"
+
+"Of course. Many times."
+
+"These mountains of Trail's End have been the scene of as deadly a
+blood-feud as was ever known in the West. And for once, the wrong was
+all on one side.
+
+"A few miles from here there is a wonderful valley, where a stream
+flows. There is not much tillable land in these mountains, Bruce, but
+there, along that little stream, there are almost five sections--three
+thousand acres--of as rich land as was ever plowed. And Bruce--the home
+means something in the mountains. It isn't just a place to live in, a
+place to leave with relief. I've tried to tell you that emotions are
+simple and direct up here, and love of home is one of them. That tract
+of land was acquired long ago by a family named Ross, and they got it
+through some kind of grant. I can't be definite as to the legal aspects
+of all this story. They don't matter anyway--only the results remain.
+
+"These Ross men were frontiersmen of the first order. They were virtuous
+men too--trusting every one, and oh! what strength they had! With their
+own hands they cleared away the forest and put the land into rich
+pasture and hay and grain. They built a great house for the owner of the
+land, and lesser houses for his kinsfolk that helped him work it on
+shares. Then they raised cattle, letting them range on the hills and
+feeding them in winter. You see, the snow is heavy in winter, and unless
+the stock are fed many of them die. The Rosses raised great herds of
+cattle and had flocks of sheep too.
+
+"It was then that dark days began to come. Another family--headed by the
+father of the man I call Simon--migrated here from the mountain
+districts of Oklahoma. But they were not so ignorant as many mountain
+people, and they were _killers_. Perhaps that's a word you don't know.
+Perhaps you didn't know it existed. A killer is a man that has killed
+other men. It isn't a hard thing to do at all, Bruce, after you are used
+to it. These people were used to it. And because they wanted these great
+lands--my own father's home--they began to kill the Rosses.
+
+"At first they made no war on the Folgers. The Folgers, you must know,
+were good people too, honest to the last penny. They were connected, by
+marriage only, to the Ross family. They were on our side clear through.
+At the beginning of the feud the head of the Folger family was just a
+young man, newly married. And he had a son after a while.
+
+"The newcomers called it a feud. But it wasn't a feud--it was simply
+murder. Oh, yes, we killed some of them. Folger and my father and all
+his kin united against them, making a great clan--but they were nothing
+in strength compared to the usurpers. Simon himself was just a boy when
+it began. But he grew to be the greatest power, the leader of the enemy
+clan before he was twenty-one.
+
+"You must know, Bruce, that my own father held the land. But he was so
+generous that his brothers who helped him farm it hardly realized that
+possession was in his name. And father was a dead shot. It took a long
+time before they could kill him."
+
+The coldness that had come over her words did not in the least hide her
+depth of feeling. She gazed moodily into the darkness and spoke almost
+in a monotone.
+
+"But Simon--just a boy then--and Dave, his brother, and the others of
+them kept after us like so many wolves. There was no escape. The only
+thing we could do was to fight back--and that was the way we learned to
+hate. A man can hate, Bruce, when he is fighting for his home. He can
+learn it very well when he sees his brother fall dead, or his father--or
+a stray bullet hit his wife. A woman can learn it too, as old Elmira
+did, when she finds her son's body in the dead leaves. There was no law
+here to stop it. The little semblance of law that was in the valleys
+below regarded it as a blood-feud, and didn't bother itself about it.
+Besides--at first we were too proud to call for help. And after our
+numbers were few, the trails were watched--and those who tried to go
+down into the valleys--never got there.
+
+"One after another the Rosses were killed, and I needn't make it any
+worse for you than I can help--by telling of each killing. Enough to say
+that at last no one was left except a few old men whose eyes were too
+dim to shoot straight, and my own father. And I was a baby then--just
+born.
+
+"Then one night my father--seeing the fate that was coming down upon
+him--took the last course to defeat them. Matthew Folger--a connection
+by marriage--was still alive. Simon's clan hadn't attacked him yet. He
+had no share in the land, but instead lived in this house I live in now.
+He had a few cattle and some pasture land farther down the Divide. There
+had been no purpose in killing him. He hadn't been worth the extra
+bullet.
+
+"One night my father left me asleep and stole through the forests to
+talk to him. They made an agreement. I have pieced it out, a little at a
+time. My father deeded all his land to Folger.
+
+"I can understand now. The enemy clan pretended it was a blood-feud
+only--and that it was fair war to kill the Rosses. Although my father
+knew their real aim was to obtain the land, he didn't think they would
+dare kill Matthew Folger to get it. He knew that he himself would fall,
+sooner or later, but he thought that to kill Folger would show their
+cards--and that would be too much, even for Simon's people. But he
+didn't know. He hadn't foreseen to what lengths they would go."
+
+Bruce leaned forward. "So they killed--Matthew Folger?" he asked.
+
+He didn't know that his face had gone suddenly stark white, and that a
+curious glitter had come to his eyes. He spoke breathlessly. For the
+name--Matthew Folger--called up vague memories that seemed to reveal
+great truths to him. The girl smiled grimly.
+
+"Let me go on. My father deeded Folger the land. The deed was to go on
+record so that all the world would know that Folger owned it, and if the
+clan killed him it was plainly for the purposes of greed alone. But
+there was also a secret agreement--drawn up in black and white and to be
+kept hidden for twenty-one years. In this agreement, Folger promised to
+return to me--the only living heir of the Rosses--the lands acquired by
+the deed. In reality, he was only holding them in trust for me, and was
+to return them when I was twenty-one. In case of my father's death,
+Folger was to be my guardian until that time.
+
+"Folger knew the risk he ran, but he was a brave man and he did not
+care. Besides, he was my father's friend--and friendship goes far in the
+mountains. And my father was shot down before a week was past.
+
+"The clan had acted quick, you see. When Folger heard of it, before the
+dawn, he came to my father's house and carried me away. Before another
+night was done he was killed too."
+
+The perspiration leaped out on Bruce's forehead. The red glow of the
+fire was in his eyes.
+
+"He fell almost where this fire is built, with a thirty-thirty bullet in
+his brain. Which one of the clan killed him I do not know--but in all
+probability it was Simon himself--at that time only eighteen years of
+age. And Folger's little boy--something past four years old--wandered
+out in the moonlight to find his father's body."
+
+The girl was speaking slowly now, evidently watching the effect of her
+words on her listener. He was bent forward, and his breath came in
+queer, whispering gusts. "Go on!" he ordered savagely. "Tell me the
+rest. Why do you keep me waiting?"
+
+The girl smiled again,--like a sorceress. "Folger's wife was from the
+plains' country," she told him slowly. "If she had been of the mountains
+she might have remained to do some killing on her own account. Like old
+Elmira herself remained to do--killing on her own account! But she was
+from cities, just as you are, but she--unlike you--had no mountain blood
+in her. She wasn't used to death, and perhaps she didn't know how to
+hate. She only knew how to be afraid.
+
+"They say that she went almost insane at the sight of that strong, brave
+man of hers lying still in the pine needles. She hadn't even known he
+was out of the house. He had gone out on some secret business--late at
+night. She had only one thing left--her baby boy and her little
+foster-daughter--little Linda Ross who is before you now. Her only
+thought was to get those children out of that dreadful land of bloodshed
+and to hide them so that they could never come back. And she didn't even
+want them to know their true parentage. She seemed to realize that if
+they had known, both of them would return some time--to collect their
+debts. Sooner or later, that boy with the Folger blood in him and that
+girl with the Ross blood would return, to attempt to regain their
+ancient holdings, and to make the clan pay!
+
+"All that was left were a few old women with hate in their hearts and a
+strange tradition to take the place of hope. They said that sometime, if
+death spared them, they would see Folger's son come back again, and
+assert his rights. They said that a new champion would arise and right
+their wrongs. But mostly death didn't spare them. Only old Elmira is
+left.
+
+"What became of the secret agreement I do not know. I haven't any hope
+that you do, either. The deed was carried down to the courts by Sharp,
+one of the witnesses who managed to get past the guard, and put on file
+soon after it was written. The rest is short. Simon and his clan took up
+the land, swearing that Matthew Folger had deeded it to them the day he
+had procured it. They had a deed to show for it--a forgery. And the one
+thing that they feared, the one weak chain, was that this secret
+agreement between Folger and my father would be found.
+
+"You see what that would mean. It would show that he had no right to
+deed away the land, as he was simply holding it in trust for me. Old
+Elmira explained the matter to me--if I get mixed up on the legal end
+of it, excuse it. If that document could be found, their forged deed
+would be obviously invalid. And it angered them that they could not find
+it.
+
+"Of course they never filed their forged deed--afraid that the forgery
+would be discovered--but they kept it to show to any one that was
+interested. But they wanted to make themselves still safer.
+
+"There had been two witnesses to the agreement. One of them, a man named
+Sharp, died--or was killed--shortly after. The other, an old trapper
+named Hudson, was indifferent to the whole matter--he was just passing
+through and was at Folger's house for dinner the night Ross came. He is
+still living in these mountains, and he might be of value to us yet.
+
+"Of course the clan did not feel at all secure. They suspected the
+secret agreement had been mailed to some one to take care of, and they
+were afraid that it would be brought to light when the time was ripe.
+They knew perfectly that their forged deed would never stand the test,
+so one of the things to do was to prevent their claim ever being
+contested. That meant to keep Folger's son in ignorance of the whole
+matter.
+
+"I hope I can make that clear. The deed from my father to Folger was on
+record, Folger was dead, and Folger's son would have every right and
+opportunity to contest the clan's claim to the land. If he could get the
+matter into court, he would surely win.
+
+"The second thing to do was to win me over. I was just a child, and it
+looked the easiest course of all. That's why I was stolen from the
+orphanage by one of Simon's brothers. The idea was simply that when the
+time came I would marry one of the clan and establish their claim to the
+land forever.
+
+"Up to a few weeks ago it seemed to me that sooner or later I would win
+out. Bruce, you can't dream what it meant! I thought that some time I
+could drive them out and make them pay, a little, for all they have
+done. But they've tricked me, after all. I thought that I would get word
+to Folger's son, who by inheritance would have a clear title to the
+land, and he, with the aid of the courts, could drive these usurpers
+out. But just recently I've found out that even this chance is all but
+gone.
+
+"Within a few more weeks, they will have been in possession of the land
+for a full twenty years. Through some legal twist I don't understand, if
+a man pays taxes and has undisputed possession of land for that length
+of time, his title is secure. They failed to win me over, but it looks
+as if they had won, anyway. The only way that they can be defeated now
+is for that secret agreement--between my father and Folger--to reappear.
+And I've long ago given up all hope of that.
+
+"There is no court session between now and October thirtieth--when their
+twenty years of undisputed possession is culminated. There seems to be
+no chance to contest them--to make them bring that forged deed into the
+light before that time. We've lost, after all. And only one thing
+remains."
+
+He looked up to find her eyes full upon him. He had never seen such
+eyes. They seemed to have sunk so deep into the flesh about them that
+only lurid slits remained. It was not that her lids were partly down.
+Rather it was because the flesh-sacks beneath them had become charged
+with her pounding blood. The fire's glow was in them and cast a strange
+glamour upon her face. It only added to the strangeness of the picture
+that she sat almost limp, rather than leaning forward in appeal. Bruce
+looked at her in growing awe.
+
+But as the second passed he seemed no longer able to see her plainly.
+His eyes were misted and blurred, but they were empty of tears as
+Linda's own. Rather the focal points of his brain had become seared by a
+mounting flame within himself. The glow of the fire had seemingly spread
+until it encompassed the whole wilderness world.
+
+"What is the one thing that remains?" he asked her, whispering.
+
+She answered with a strange, terrible coldness of tone. "The blood
+atonement," she said between back-drawn lips.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+When the minute hand of the watch in his pocket had made one more
+circuit, both Bruce and Linda found themselves upon their feet. The
+tension had broken at last. Her emotion had been curbed too long. It
+broke from her in a flood.
+
+She seized his hands, and he started at their touch. "Don't you
+understand?" she cried. "You--you--you are Folger's son. You are the boy
+that crept out--under this very tree--to find him dead. All my life
+Elmira and I have prayed for you to come. And what are you going to do?"
+
+Her face was drawn in the white light of the moon. For an instant he
+seemed dazed.
+
+"Do?" he repeated. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
+
+"You don't!" she cried, in infinite scorn. "Are you just clay? Aren't
+you a man? Haven't you got arms to strike with and eyes to see along a
+rifle barrel? Are you a coward--and a weakling; one of your mother's
+blood to run away? Haven't you anything to avenge? I thought you were a
+mountain man--that all your years in cities couldn't take that quality
+away from you! Haven't you any answer?"
+
+He looked up, a strange light growing on his face. "You mean--killing?"
+
+"What else? To kill--never to stop killing--one after another until they
+are gone! Till Simon Turner and the whole Turner clan have paid the
+debts they owe."
+
+Bruce recoiled as if from a blow. "Turner? Did you say Turner?" he asked
+hoarsely.
+
+"Yes. That's the clan's name. I thought you knew."
+
+There was an instant of strange truce. Both stood motionless. The scene
+no longer seemed part of the world that men have come to know in these
+latter years,--a land of cities and homes and peaceful twilights over
+quiet countrysides. The moon was still strange and white in the sky; the
+pines stood tall and dark and sad,--eternal emblems of the wilderness.
+The fire had burned down to a few lurid coals glowing in the gray ashes.
+No longer were these two children of civilization. Their passion had
+swept them back into the immeasurable past; they were simply human
+beings deep in the simplest of human passions. They trembled all over
+with it.
+
+Bruce understood now his unprovoked attack on the little boy when he had
+been taken from the orphanage on trial. The boy had been named Turner,
+and the name had been enough to recall a great and terrible hatred that
+he had learned in earliest babyhood. The name now recalled it again; the
+truth stood clear at last. It was the key to all the mystery of his
+life; it stirred him more than all of Linda's words. In an instant all
+the tragedy of his babyhood was recalled,--the hushed talk between his
+parents, the oaths, the flames in their eyes, and finally the body he
+had found lying so still beneath the pines. It was always the Turners,
+the dread name that had filled his baby days with horror. He hadn't
+understood then. It had been blind hatred,--hatred without understanding
+or self-analysis.
+
+As she watched, his mountain blood mounted to the ascendancy. A strange
+transformation came over him. The gentleness that he had acquired in his
+years of city life began to fall away from him. The mountains were
+claiming him again.
+
+It was not a mental change alone. It was a thing to be seen with the
+unaided eyes. His hand had swept through his hair, disturbing the part,
+and now the black locks dropped down on his forehead, almost to his
+eyes. The whole expression of his face seemed to change. His look of
+culture dropped from him; his eyes narrowed; he looked grotesquely out
+of place in his soft, well-tailored clothes.
+
+But he was quite cold now. His passion was submerged under a steel
+exterior. His voice was cold and hard when he spoke.
+
+"Then you and I are no relation whatever?"
+
+"None."
+
+"But we fight the same fight now."
+
+"Yes. Until we both win--or both die."
+
+Before he could speak again, a strange answer came out of the darkness.
+"Not two of you," a croaking old voice told them. It rose, shrill and
+cracked, from the shadows beyond the fire. They turned, and the
+moonlight showed a bent old figure hobbling toward them.
+
+It was old Elmira, her cane tapping along in front of her; and something
+that caught the moonlight lay in the hollow of her left arm. Her eyes
+still glowed under the grizzled brows.
+
+"Not two, but three," she corrected, in the hollow voice of uncounted
+years. In the magic of the moonlight it seemed quite fitting to both of
+them that she should have come. She was one of the triumvirate; they
+wondered why they had not missed her before. It was farther than she had
+walked in years, but her spirit had kept her up.
+
+She put the glittering object that she carried into Bruce's hands. It
+was a rifle--a repeating breechloader of a famous make and a model of
+thirty years before. It was such a rifle as lives in legend, with sights
+as fine as a razor edge and an accuracy as great as light itself. Loving
+hands had polished it and kept it in perfect condition.
+
+"Matthew Folger's rifle," the old woman explained, "for Matthew Folger's
+son."
+
+And that is how Bruce Folger returned to the land of his birth--as most
+men do, unless death cheats them first--and how he made a pact to pay
+old debts of death.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+THE BLOOD ATONEMENT
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"Men own the day, but the night is ours," is an old saying among the
+wild folk that inhabit the forests of Trail's End. And the saying has
+really deep significances that can't be discerned at one hearing.
+Perhaps human beings--their thoughts busy with other things--can never
+really get them at all. But the mountain lion--purring a sort of queer,
+singsong lullaby to her wicked-eyed little cubs in the lair--and the
+gray wolf, running along the ridges in the mystery of the moon--and
+those lesser hunters, starting with Tuft-ear the lynx and going all the
+way down to that terrible, white-toothed cutthroat, Little Death the
+mink--_they_ know exactly what the saying means, and they know that it
+is true. The only one of the larger forest creatures that doesn't know
+is old Ashur, the black bear (_Ashur_ means black in an ancient tongue,
+just as _Brunn_ means brown, and the common Oregon bear is usually
+decidedly black) and the fact that he doesn't is curious in itself. In
+most ways Ashur has more intelligence than all the others put together;
+but he is also the most indifferent. He is not a hunter; and he doesn't
+care who owns anything as long as there are plenty of bee trees to mop
+out with his clumsy paw, and plenty of grubs under the rotten logs.
+
+The saying originated long and long ago when the world was quite young.
+Before that time, likely enough, the beasts owned both the day and the
+night, and you can imagine them denying man's superiority just as long
+as possible. But they came to it in the end, and perhaps now they are
+beginning to be doubtful whether they still hold dominion over the night
+hours. You can fancy the forest people whispering the saying back and
+forth, using it as a password when they meet on the trails, and trying
+their best to believe it. "Man owns the day but the night is ours," the
+coyotes whisper between sobs. In a world where men have slowly, steadily
+conquered all the wild creatures, killed them and driven them away,
+their one consolation lies in the fact that when the dark comes down
+their old preeminence returns to them.
+
+Of course the saying is ridiculous if applied to cities or perhaps even
+to the level, cleared lands of the Middle West. The reason is simply
+that the wild life is practically gone from these places. Perhaps a
+lowly skunk steals along a hedge on the way to a chicken pen, but he
+quivers and skulks with fear, and all the arrogance of hunting is as
+dead in him as his last year's perfume. And perhaps even the little
+bobwhites, nestling tail to tail, know that it is wholly possible that
+the farmer's son has marked their roost and will come and pot them while
+they sleep. But a few places remain in America where the reign of the
+wild creatures, during the night hours at least, is still supreme. And
+Trail's End is one of them.
+
+It doesn't lie in the Middle West. It is just about as far west as one
+can conveniently go, unless he cares to trace the rivers down to their
+mouths. Neither was it cleared land, nor had its soil ever been turned
+by a plow. The few clearings that there were--such as the great five
+sections of the Rosses--were so far apart that a wolf could run all
+night (and the night-running of a wolf is something not to speak of
+lightly) without passing one. There is nothing but forest,--forest that
+stretches without boundaries, forest to which a great mountain is but a
+single flower in a meadow, forest to make the brain of a timber cruiser
+reel and stagger from sheer higher mathematics. Perhaps man owns these
+timber stretches in the daytime. He can go out and cut down the trees,
+and when they don't choose to fall over on top of him, return safely to
+his cabin at night. He can venture forth with his rifle and kill Ashur
+the black bear and Blacktail the deer, and even old Brother Bill, the
+grand and exalted ruler of the elk lodge. The sound of his feet disturbs
+the cathedral silence of the tree aisles, and his oaths--when the
+treacherous trail gives way beneath his feet--carry far through the
+coverts. But he behaves somewhat differently at night. He doesn't feel
+nearly so sure of himself. The sound of a puma screaming a few dozen
+feet away in the shadows is likely enough to cause an unpleasant
+twitching of the skin of his back. And he feels considerably better if
+there are four stout walls about him. At nighttime, the wild creatures
+come into their own.
+
+Bruce sensed these things as he waited for the day to break. For all the
+hard exertion of the previous day, he wakened early on the first morning
+of his return to his father's home. Through the open window he watched
+the dawn come out. And he fancied how a puma, still hungry, turned to
+snarl at the spreading light as he crept to his lair.
+
+All over the forest the hunting creatures left their trails and crept
+into the coverts. Their reign was done until darkness fell again. The
+night life of the forest was slowly stilled. The daylight
+creatures--such as the birds--began to waken. Probably they welcomed the
+sight of day as much as Bruce himself. The man dressed slowly. He
+wouldn't waken the two women that slept in the next room, he thought. He
+crept slowly out into the gray dawn.
+
+He made straight for the great pine that stood a short distance from the
+house. For reasons unknown to him, the pine had come often into his
+dreams. He had thought that its limbs rubbed together and made
+words,--but of the words themselves he had hardly caught the meaning.
+There was some high message in them, however; and the dream had left him
+with a vague curiosity, an unexplainable desire to see the forest
+monarch in the daylight.
+
+As he waited, the mist blew off of the land; the gray of twilight was
+whisked away to a twilightland that is hidden in the heart of the
+forest. He found to his delight that the tree was even more impressive
+in the vivid morning light than it had been at night. It was not that
+the light actually got into it. Its branches were too thick and heavy
+for that. It still retained its air of eternal secrecy, an impression
+that it knew great mysteries that a thousand philosophers would give
+their lives to learn. He was constantly awed by the size of it. He
+guessed its circumference as about twenty-five feet. The great lower
+limbs were themselves like massive tree trunks. Its top surpassed by
+fifty feet any pine in the vicinity.
+
+As he watched, the sun came up, gleaming first on its tall spire. It
+slowly overtook it. The dusk of its green lightened. Bruce was not a
+particularly imaginative man; but the impression grew that this towering
+tree had an answer for some great question in his own heart,--a question
+that he had never been able to shape into words. He felt that it knew
+the wholly profound secret of life.
+
+After all, it could not but have such knowledge. It was so incredibly
+old; it had seen so much. His mind flew back to some of the dramas of
+human life that had been enacted in its shade, and his imagination could
+picture many more. His own father had lain here dead, shot down by a
+murderer concealed in the distant thicket. It had beheld his own wonder
+when he had found the still form lying in the moonlight; it had seen his
+mother's grief and terror. Wilderness dramas uncounted had been enacted
+beneath it. Many times the mountain lion had crept into its dark
+branches. Many times the bear had grunted beneath it and reached up to
+write a challenge with his claws in its bark. The eyes of Tuft-ear the
+lynx had gleamed from its very top, and the old bull-elk had filed off
+his velvet on the sharp edges of the bark. It had seen savage battles
+between the denizens of the wood; the deer racing by with the wolf pack
+in pursuit. For uncounted years it had stood aloft, above all the
+madness and bloodshed and passion that are the eternal qualities of the
+wilderness, somber, stately, unutterably aloof.
+
+It had known the snows. When the leaves fell and the wind came out of
+the north, it would know them again. For the snow falls for a depth of
+ten feet or more over most of Trail's End. For innumerable winters its
+limbs had been heaped with the white load, the great branches bending
+beneath it. The wind made faint sounds through its branches now, but
+would be wholly silent when the winter snows weighted the limbs. He
+could picture the great, white giant, silent as death, still keeping its
+vigil over the snow-swept wilderness.
+
+Bruce felt a growing awe. The great tree seemed so wise, it gave him
+such a sense of power. The winds had buffeted it in vain. It had endured
+the terrible cold of winter. Generation after generation of the
+creatures who moved on the face of the earth had lived their lives
+beneath it; they had struggled and mated and fought their battles and
+felt their passions, and finally they had died; and still it
+endured,--silent, passionless, full of thoughts. Here was real
+greatness. Not stirring, not struggling, not striving; only standing
+firm and straight and impassive; not taking part, but only watching,
+knowing no passion but only strength,--ineffably patient and calm.
+
+But it was sad too. Such knowledge always brings sadness. It had seen
+too much to be otherwise. The pines are never cheerful trees, like the
+apple that blossoms in spring, or the elm whose leaves shimmer in the
+sunlight; and this great monarch of all the pines was sad as great
+music. In this quality, as well as in its strength, it was the symbol of
+the wilderness itself. But it was more than that. It was the Great
+Sentinel, and in its unutterable impassiveness it was the emblem and
+symbol of even mightier powers. Bruce's full wisdom had not yet come to
+him, so he couldn't name these powers. He only knew that they lived far
+and far above the world and, like the tree itself, held aloof from all
+the passion of Eve and the blood-lust of Cain. Like the pine itself,
+they were patient, impassive, and infinitely wise.
+
+He felt stilled and calmed himself. Such was its influence. And he
+turned with a start when he saw Linda in the doorway.
+
+Her face was calm too in the morning light. Her dark eyes were lighted.
+He felt a curious little glow of delight at the sight of her.
+
+"I've been talking to the pine--all the morning," he told her.
+
+"But it won't talk to you," she answered. "It talks only to the stars."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Bruce and Linda had a long talk while the sun climbed up over the great
+ridges to the east and old Elmira cooked their breakfast. There was no
+passion in their words this morning. They had got down to a basis of
+cold planning.
+
+"Let me refresh my memory about a few of those little things you told
+me," Bruce requested. "First--on what date does the twenty-year
+period--of Turners' possession of the land--expire?"
+
+"On the thirtieth of October, of this year."
+
+"Not very long, is it? Now you understand that on that date they will
+have had twenty years of undisputed possession of the land; they will
+have paid taxes on it that long; and unless their title is proven false
+between now and that date, we can't ever drive them out."
+
+"That's just right."
+
+"And the fall term of court doesn't begin until the fifth of the
+following month."
+
+"Yes, we're beaten. That's all there is to it. Simon told me so the last
+time he talked to me."
+
+"It would be to his interest to have you think so. But Linda--we mustn't
+give up yet. We must try as long as one day remains. The law is full of
+twists; we might find a way to checkmate them, especially if that secret
+agreement should show up. It isn't just enough--to have vengeance. That
+wouldn't put the estate back in your hands; they would have won, after
+all. It seems to me that the first thing to do is to find the trapper,
+Hudson--the one witness that is still alive. You say he witnessed that
+secret agreement between your father and mine."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"His testimony would be invaluable to us. He might be able to prove to
+the court that as my father never owned the land in reality, he couldn't
+possibly have deeded it to the Turners. Do you know where this Hudson
+is?"
+
+"I asked old Elmira last night. She thinks she knows. A man told her he
+had his trap line on the upper Umpqua, and his main headquarters--you
+know that trappers have a string of camps--was at the mouth of Little
+River, that flows into the Umpqua. But it is a long way from here."
+
+Bruce was still a moment. "How far?" he asked.
+
+"Two full days' tramp at the least--barring out accidents. But if you
+think it is best--you can start out to-day."
+
+Bruce was a man who made decisions quickly. He had learned the wisdom of
+it,--that after all the evidence is gathered on each side, a single
+second is all the time that is needed for any kind of decision. Beyond
+that point there is only vacillation. "Then I'll start--right away. Can
+you tell me how to find the trail?"
+
+"I can only tell you to go straight north. Use your watch as a compass
+in the daytime and the North Star at night."
+
+"I didn't suppose that it was wisdom to travel at night."
+
+She looked at him in sudden astonishment. "And where did you learn that
+fact, Bruce?"
+
+The man tried hard to remember. "I don't know. I suppose it was
+something I heard when I was a baby--in these mountains."
+
+"It is one of the first things a mountaineer has to know--to make camp
+at nightfall. You would want to, anyway, Bruce. You've got enough real
+knowledge of the wilderness in you--born in you--to want a camp and a
+fire at night. Besides, the trails are treacherous."
+
+"Then the thing to do is to get ready at once. And then try to bring
+Hudson back with me--down to the valley. After we get there we can see
+what can be done."
+
+Linda smiled rather sadly. "I'm not very hopeful. But he's our last
+chance--and we might as well make a try. There is no hope that the
+secret agreement will show up in these few weeks that remain. We'll get
+your things together at once."
+
+They breakfasted, and after the simple meal was finished, Bruce began to
+pack for the journey. He was very thankful for the months he had spent
+in an army camp. He took a few simple supplies of food: a piece of
+bacon, a little sack of dried venison--that delicious fare that has held
+so many men up on long journeys--and a compact little sack of prepared
+flour. There was no space for delicacies in the little pack. Besides, a
+man forgets about such things on the high trails. Butter, sugar, even
+that ancient friend coffee had to be left behind. He took one little
+utensil for cooking--a small skillet--and Linda furnished him with a
+camp ax and a long-bladed hunting knife. These things (with the
+exception of the knife and ax) he tied up in one heavy, all-wool
+blanket, making a compact pack for carrying on his back.
+
+In his pocket he carried cartridges for the rifle, pipe, tobacco, and
+matches. Linda took the hob-nails out of her own shoes and pounded them
+into his. For there are certain trails in Trail's End that to the
+unnailed shoe are quite like the treadmills of ancient days; the foot
+slips back after every step.
+
+One thing more was needed: tough leggings. The soft flannel trousers had
+not been tailored for wear in the brush coverts. And there is still
+another reason why the mountain men want their ankles covered. In
+portions of Trail's End there are certain rock ledges--gray, strange
+stone heaps blasted by the summer sun--and some of the paths that Bruce
+would take crossed over them. These ledges are the home of a certain
+breed of forest creatures that Bruce did not in the least desire to
+meet. Unlike many of the wild folk, they are not at all particular about
+getting out of the way, and they are more than likely to lash up at a
+traveler's instep. It isn't wise to try to jump out of the way. If a man
+were practiced at dodging lightning bolts he might do it, but not an
+ordinary mortal. For that lunging head is one of the swiftest things in
+the whole swift-moving animal world. And it isn't entirely safe to rely
+on a warning rattle. Sometimes the old king-snake forgets to give it.
+These are the poison people--the gray rattlesnakes that gather in
+mysterious, grim companies on the rocks--and the only safety from them
+is thick covering to the knees that the fangs cannot penetrate.
+
+But the old woman solved this problem with a deer hide that had been
+curing for some seasons on the wall behind the house. Her eyes were
+dimmed with age, her fingers were stiff, but in an astonishingly short
+period of time she improvised a pair of leathern puttees, fastening with
+a strap, that answered the purpose beautifully. The two women walked
+with him, out under the pine.
+
+Bruce shook old Elmira's scrawny hand; then she turned back at once into
+the house. The man felt singularly grateful. He began to credit the old
+woman with a great deal of intuition, or else memories from her own
+girlhood of long and long ago. He _did_ want a word alone with this
+strange girl of the pines. But when Elmira had gone in and the coast was
+clear, it wouldn't come to his lips.
+
+He felt curious conjecturings and wonderment arising within him. He
+couldn't have shaped them into words. It was just that the girl's face
+intrigued him, mystified him, and perhaps moved him a little too. It was
+a frank, clear, girlish face, wonderfully tender of feature, and at
+first her eyes held him most of all. They gave an impression of
+astounding depth. They were quite serious now; and they had a luster
+such as can be seen on cold spring water over dark moss,--and few other
+places on earth.
+
+"It seems strange," he said, "to come here only last night--and then to
+be leaving again."
+
+It seemed to his astonished gaze that her lips trembled ever so
+slightly. "We have been waiting for each other a long time, Bwovaboo,"
+she replied. She spoke rather low, not looking straight at him. "And I
+hate to have you go again so soon."
+
+"But I'll be back--in a few days."
+
+"You don't know. No one ever knows when they start out in these
+mountains. Promise me, Bruce--to keep watch every minute. Remember
+there's nothing--_nothing_--that Simon won't stoop to do. He's like a
+wolf. He has no rules of fighting. He'd just as soon strike from ambush.
+How do I know that you'll ever come back again?"
+
+"But I will." He smiled at her, and his eyes dropped from hers to her
+lips. His heart seemed to miss a beat. He hadn't noticed these lips in
+particular before. The mouth was tender and girlish, its sensitiveness
+scarcely seeming fitting in a child of these wild places. He reached out
+and took her hand.
+
+"Good-by, Linda," he said, smiling.
+
+She smiled in reply, and her old cheer seemed to return to her.
+"Good-by, Bwovaboo. Be careful."
+
+"I'll be careful. And this reminds me of something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That for all the time I've been away--and for all the time I'm going to
+be away now--I haven't done anything more--well, more intimate--than
+shake your hand."
+
+Her answer was to pout out her lips in the most natural way in the
+world. Bruce was usually deliberate in his motions; but all at once his
+deliberation fell away from him. There seemed to be no interlude of time
+between one position and another. His arms went about her, and he kissed
+her gently on the lips.
+
+But it was not at all as they expected. Both had gone into it
+lightly,--a boy-and-girl caress such as is usually not worth thinking
+about twice. He had supposed it would be just like the other kisses he
+had known in his growing-up days: a moment's soft pressure of the lips,
+a moment's delight, and nothing either to regret or rejoice in. But it
+was far more than this, after all. Perhaps because they had been too
+long in one another's thoughts; perhaps--living in a land of hated
+foes--because Linda had not known many kisses, this little caress
+beneath the pine went very straight home indeed to them both. They fell
+apart, both of them suddenly sobered. The girl's eyes were tender and
+lustrous, but startled too.
+
+"Good-by, Linda," he told her.
+
+"Good-by--Bwovaboo," she answered. He turned up the trail past the pine.
+
+He did not know that she stood watching him a long time, her hands
+clasped over her breast.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Miles farther than Linda's cabin, clear beyond the end of the trail that
+Duncan took, past even the highest ridge of Trail's End and in the
+region where the little rivers that run into the Umpqua have their
+starting place, is a certain land of Used to Be. Such a name as that
+doesn't make very good sense to a tenderfoot on the first hearing.
+Perhaps he can never see the real intelligence of it as long as he
+remains a tenderfoot. Such creatures cannot exist for long in the
+silences and the endless ridges and the unbeaten trails of this land;
+they either become woodsmen or have communication with the buzzards.
+
+It isn't a land of the Present Time at all. It is a place that has never
+grown old. When a man passes the last outpost of civilization, and the
+shadows of the unbroken woods drop over him, he is likely to forget that
+the year is nineteen hundred and twenty, and that the day before
+yesterday he had seen an aeroplane passing over his house. It is true
+that in this place he sees winged creatures in the air, seeming masters
+of the aerial tracts, but they are not aeroplanes. Instead they are the
+buzzards, and they are keeping even a closer watch on him than he is on
+them. They know that many things may happen whereby they can get
+acquainted before the morning breaks. The world seems to have kicked off
+its thousand-thousand years as a warm man at night kicks off covers; and
+all things are just as they used to be. It is the Young World,--a world
+of beasts rather than men, a world where the hand of man has not yet
+been felt.
+
+Of course it won't be that way forever. Sometime the forests will fall.
+What will become of the beasts that live in them there is no telling;
+there are not many places left for them to go. But at present it is just
+as savage, just as primitive and untamed as those ancient forests of the
+Young World that a man recalls sometimes in dreams.
+
+On this particular early-September day, the age-old drama of the
+wilderness was in progress. It was the same play that had been enacted
+day after day, year upon year, until the centuries had become too many
+to count, and as usual, there were no human observers. There were no
+hunters armed with rifles waiting on the deer trails to kill some of the
+players. There were no naturalists taking notes that no one will believe
+in the coverts. It was the usual matinee performance; the long, hot day
+was almost at a close. The play would get better later in the evening,
+and really would not be at its best until the moon rose; but it was not
+a comedy-drama even now. Rather it was a drama of untamed passions and
+bloodshed, strife and carnage and lust and rapine; and it didn't,
+unfortunately, have a particularly happy ending. Mother Nature herself,
+sometimes kind but usually cruel, was the producer; she furnished the
+theater, even the spotted costume by which the fawn remained invisible
+in the patches of light and shadow; and she had certain great purposes
+of her own that no man understands. As the play was usually complicated
+with many fatalities, the buzzards were about the only ones to benefit.
+They were the real heroes of the play after all. Everything always
+turned out all right for them. They always triumphed in the end.
+
+The greatest difference between this wilderness drama and the dramas
+that human beings see upon a stage is that one was reality and the other
+is pretense. The players were beasts, not men. The only human being
+anywhere in the near vicinity was the old trapper, Hudson, following
+down his trap line on the creek margin on the way to his camp. It is
+true that two other men, with a rather astounding similarity of purpose,
+were at present coming down two of the long trails that led to the
+region; but as yet the drama was hidden from their eyes. One of these
+two was Bruce, coming from Linda's cabin. One was Dave Turner,
+approaching from the direction of the Ross estates. Turner was much the
+nearer. Curiously, both had business with the trapper Hudson.
+
+The action of the play was calm at first. Mostly the forest creatures
+were still in their afternoon sleep. Brother Bill, the great stag elk,
+had a bed in the very center of a thick wall of buckbush, and human
+observers at first could not have explained how his great body, with his
+vast spread of antlers, had been able to push through. But in reality
+his antlers aided rather than hindered. Streaming almost straight back
+they act something like a snow-plow, parting the heavy coverts.
+
+The bull elk is in some ways the master of the forest, and one would
+wonder why he had gone to such an out-of-the-way place to sleep. Unless
+he is attacked from ambush, he has little to fear even from the Tawny
+One, the great cougar, and ordinarily the cougar waits until night to do
+his hunting. The lynx is just a source of scorn to the great bull, and
+even the timber wolf--except when he is combined with his relatives in
+winter--is scarcely to be feared. Yet he had been careful to surround
+himself with burglar alarms,--in other words, to go into the deep
+thicket that no beast of prey could penetrate without warning him--by
+the sound of breaking brush--of its approach. It would indicate that
+there was at least one living creature in this region--a place where men
+ordinarily did not come--that the bull elk feared.
+
+The does and their little spotted fawns were sleeping too; the blacktail
+deer had not yet sought the feeding grounds on the ridges. The cougar
+yawned in his lair, the wolf dozed in his covert, even the poison-people
+lay like long shadows on the hot rocks. But these latter couldn't be
+relied upon to sleep soundly. One of the many things they can do is to
+jump straight out of a dream like a flicking whiplash, coil and hit a
+mark that many a good pistol shot would miss.
+
+Yet there was no chance of the buzzards, at present spectators in the
+clouds and waiting for the final act, to become bored. Particularly the
+lesser animals of the forest--the Little People--were busy at their
+occupations. A little brown-coated pine marten--who is really nothing
+but an overgrown weasel famous for his particularly handsome coat--went
+stealing through the branches of a pine as if he had rather questionable
+business. Some one had told him, and he couldn't remember who, that a
+magpie had her nest in that same tree, and Red Eye was going to look and
+see. Of course he merely wanted to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps he
+would try to arrange to get a little sip of the mother's blood, just as
+it passed through the big vein of the throat,--but of course that was
+only incidental. He felt some curiosity about the magpie's eggs too, the
+last brood of the year. It might be that there were some little magpies
+all coiled up inside of them, that would be worth investigation by one
+of his scientific turn of mind. Perhaps even the male bird, coming
+frantically to look for his wife, might fly straight into the nest
+without noticing his brown body curled about the limb. It offered all
+kinds of pleasing prospects, this hunt through the branches.
+
+Of course it is doubtful if the buzzards could detect his serpent-like
+form; yet it is a brave man who will say what a buzzard can and cannot
+see. Anything that can remain in the air as they do, seemingly without
+the flutter of a wing, has powers not to speak of lightly. But if they
+could have seen him they would have been particularly interested. A
+marten isn't a glutton in his feeding, and often is content with just a
+sip of blood from the throat. That leaves something warm and still for
+the buzzard's beak.
+
+A long, spotted gopher snake slipped through the dead grass on the
+ground beneath. He didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular. He
+was just moseying--if there is such a word--along. Not a blade of grass
+rustled. Of course there was a chipmunk, sitting at the door of his
+house in the uplifted roots of a tree; but the snake--although he was
+approaching in his general direction--didn't seem at all interested in
+him. Were it not for two things, the serpent would have seemed to be
+utterly bored and indifferent to life in general. One of these things
+was its cold, glittering, reptile eyes. The other was its darting,
+forked tongue.
+
+It may be, after all, that this little tongue was of really great
+importance in the serpent's hunting. Many naturalists think that quite
+often the little, rattle-brained birds and rodents that it hunts are so
+interested in this darting tongue that they quite fail to see the slow
+approach of the mottled body of the snake behind it. At least it was
+perfectly evident that the chipmunk did not see Limber-spine at present.
+Otherwise he wouldn't have been enjoying the scenery with quite the same
+complacency. If all went well, there might be a considerable lump in the
+snake's throat yet this afternoon. But it would be a quite different
+kind of lump from the one the chipmunk's little mate, waiting in vain
+for her lord to come to supper, would have in _her_ throat.
+
+An old raccoon wakened from his place on a high limb, stretched himself,
+scratched at his fur, then began to steal down the limb. He had a long
+way to go before dark. Hunting was getting poor in this part of the
+woods. He believed he would wander down toward Hudson's camp and look
+for crayfish in the water. A coyote is usually listed among the larger
+forest creatures, but early though the hour was--early, that is, for
+hunters to be out--he was stalking a fawn in a covert. The coyote has
+not an especially high place among the forest creatures, and he has to
+do his hunting early and late and any time that offers. Most of the
+larger creatures pick on him, all the time detesting him for his
+cunning. The timber wolf, a rather close relation whom he cordially
+hates, is apt to take bites out of him if he meets him on the trail. The
+old bull elk would like nothing better than to cut his hide into rag
+patches with the sharp-edged front hoofs. Even the magpies in the tree
+tops made up ribald verses about him. But nevertheless the spotted fawn
+had cause to fear him. The coyote is an infamous coward; but even the
+little cotton tail rabbit does not have to fear a fawn.
+
+All these hunts were progressing famously when there came a curious
+interruption. It was just a sound at first. And strangely, not one of
+the forest creatures that heard it had ears sharp enough to tell exactly
+from what direction it had come. And that made it all the more
+unpleasant to listen to.
+
+It was a peculiar growl, quite low at first. It lasted a long time, then
+died away. There was no opposition to it. The forest creatures had
+paused in their tracks at its first note, and now they stood as if the
+winter had come down upon them suddenly and frozen them solid. All the
+other sounds of the forest--the little whispering noises of gliding
+bodies and fluttering feet, and perhaps a bird's call in a shrub--were
+suddenly stilled. There was a moment of breathless suspense. Then the
+sound commenced again.
+
+It was louder this time. It rose and gathered volume until it was almost
+a roar. It carried through the silences in great waves of sound. And in
+it was a sense of resistless power; no creature in the forest but what
+knew this fact.
+
+"The Gray King," one could imagine them saying among themselves. The
+effect was instantaneous. The little raccoon halted in his descent, then
+crept out to the end of a limb. Perhaps he knew that the gray monarch
+could not climb trees, but nevertheless he felt that he would be more
+secure clear at the swaying limb-tip. The marten forgot his curiosity in
+regard to the nest of the magpie. The gopher snake coiled, then slipped
+away silently through the grass.
+
+The coyote, an instant before crawling with body close to the earth,
+whipped about as if he had some strange kind of circular spring inside
+of him. His nerves were always rather ragged, and the sound had
+frightened out of him the rigid control of his muscles that was so
+necessary if he were to make a successful stalk upon the fawn. The
+spotted creature bleated in terror, then darted away; and the coyote
+snarled once in the general direction of the Gray King. Then he lowered
+his head and skulked off deeper into the coverts.
+
+The blacktail deer, the gray wolf, even the stately Tawny One, stretched
+in grace in his lair, wakened from sleep. The languor died quickly in
+the latter's eyes, leaving only fear. These were braver than the Little
+People. They waited until the thick brush, not far distant from where
+the bull elk slept, began to break down and part before an enormous,
+gray body.
+
+No longer would an observer think of the elk as the forest monarch. He
+was but a pretender, after all. The real king had just wakened from his
+afternoon nap and was starting forth to hunt.
+
+Even his little cousins, the black bears (who, after all is said and
+done, furnish most of the comedy of the deadly forest drama) did not
+wait to make conversation. They tumbled awkwardly down the hill to get
+out of his way. For the massive gray form--weighing over half a ton--was
+none other than that of the last of the grizzly bears, that terrible
+forest hunter and monarch, the Killer himself.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Long ago, when Oregon was a new land to white men, in the days of the
+clipper ships and the Old Oregon Trail, the breed to which the Killer
+belonged were really numerous through the little corner north of the
+Siskiyous and west of the Cascades. The land was far different then. The
+transcontinental lines had not yet been built; the only settlements were
+small trading posts and mining camps, and people did not travel over
+paved highways in automobiles. If they went at all it was in a
+prairie-schooner or on horseback. And the old grizzly bears must have
+found the region a veritable heaven.
+
+They were a worthy breed! It is doubtful if any other section of the
+United States offered an environment so favorable to them. Game was in
+abundance, they could venture down into the valleys at the approach of
+winter and thus miss the rigors of the snow, and at first there were no
+human enemies. Unfortunately, stories are likely to grow and become
+sadly addled after many tellings; but if the words of certain old men
+could be believed, the Southern Oregon grizzly occasionally, in the
+bountiful fall days, attained a weight of two thousand pounds. No doubt
+whatever remains that thousand-pound bears were fairly numerous. They
+trailed up and down the brown hillsides; they hunted and honey-grubbed
+and mated in the fall; they had their young and fought their battles and
+died, and once in a long while the skeleton of a frontiersman would be
+found with his skull battered perfectly flat where one of the great
+beasts had taken a short-arm pat at him.
+
+But unlike the little black bears, the grizzlies developed displeasing
+habits. They were much more carnivorous in character than the blacks,
+and their great bodily strength and power enabled them to master all of
+the myriad forms of game in the Oregon woods. By the same token, they
+could take a full-grown steer and carry it off as a woman carries her
+baby.
+
+It couldn't be endured. The cattlemen had begun to settle the valleys,
+and it was either a case of killing the grizzlies or yielding the
+valleys to them. In the relentless war that followed, the breed had been
+practically wiped out. A few of them, perhaps, fled farther and farther
+up the Cascades, finding refuges in the Canadian mountains. Others
+traveled east, locating at last in the Rocky Mountains, and countless
+numbers of them died. At last, as far as the frontiersmen knew, only one
+great specimen remained. This was a famous bear that men called
+Slewfoot,--a magnificent animal that ranged far and hunted relentlessly,
+and no one ever knew just when they were going to run across him. It
+made traveling in the mountains a rather ticklish business. He was apt
+suddenly to loom up, like a gray cliff, at any turn in the trail, and
+his disposition grew querulous with age. In fact, instead of fleeing as
+most wild creatures have learned to do, he was rather likely to make
+sudden and unexpected charges.
+
+He was killed at last; and seemingly the Southern Oregon grizzlies were
+wiped out. But it is rather easy to believe that in some of his
+wanderings he encountered--lost and far in the deepest heart of the land
+called Trail's End--a female of his own breed. There must have been cubs
+who, in their turn, mated and fought and died, and perhaps two
+generations after them. And out of the last brood had emerged a single
+great male, a worthy descendant of his famous ancestor. This was the
+Killer, who in a few months since he had left his fastnesses, was
+beginning to ruin the cattle business in Trail's End.
+
+As he came growling from his bed this September evening he was not a
+creature to speak of lightly. He was down on all fours, his vast head
+was lowered, his huge fangs gleamed in the dark red mouth. The eyes were
+small, and curious little red lights glowed in each of them. The Killer
+was cross; and he didn't care who knew it. He was hungry too; but hunger
+is an emotion for the beasts of prey to keep carefully to themselves. He
+walked slowly across the little glen, carelessly at first, for he was
+too cross and out of temper to have the patience to stalk. He stopped,
+turning his head this way and that, marking the flight of the wild
+creatures. He saw a pair of blacktail bucks spring up from a covert and
+dash away; but he only made one short, angry lunge toward them. He knew
+that it would only cost him his dignity to try to chase them. A grizzly
+bear can move astonishingly fast considering his weight--for a short
+distance he can keep pace with a running horse--but a deer is light
+itself. He uttered one short, low growl, then headed over toward a great
+wall of buckbush at the base of the hill.
+
+But now his hunting cunning had begun to return to him. The sun was
+setting, the pines were growing dusky, and he began to feel the first
+excitement and fever that the fall of night always brings to the beasts
+of prey. It is a feeling that his insignificant cousins, the black
+bears, could not possibly have,--for the sole reason that they are
+berry-eaters, not hunters. But the cougar, stealing down a deer trail on
+the ridge above, and a lean old male wolf--stalking a herd of deer on
+the other side of the thicket--understood it very well. His blood began
+to roll faster through his great veins. The sullen glare grew in his
+eyes.
+
+It was the beginning of the hunting hour of the larger creatures. All
+the forest world knew it. The air seemed to throb and tingle, the
+shadowing thickets began to pulse and stir with life. The Fear--the
+age-old heritage of all the hunted creatures--returned to the deer.
+
+The Killer moved quite softly now. One would have marveled how silently
+his great feet fell upon the dry earth and with what slight sound his
+heavy form moved through the thickets. Once he halted, gazing with
+reddening eyes. But the coyote--the gray figure that had broken a twig
+on the trail beside him--slipped quickly away.
+
+He skirted the thicket, knowing that no successful stalk could be made
+where he had to force his way through dry brush. He moved slowly,
+cautiously--all the time mounting farther up the little hill that rose
+from the banks of the stream. He came to an opening in the thicket, a
+little brown pathway that vanished quickly into the shadows of the
+coverts.
+
+The Killer slipped softly into the heavy brush just at its mouth. It was
+his ambush. Soon, he knew, some of the creatures that had bowers in the
+heart of the thicket would be coming along that trail toward the feeding
+grounds on the ridge. He only had to wait.
+
+As the shadows grew and the twilight deepened, the undercurrent of
+savagery that is the eternal quality of the wilderness grew ever more
+pronounced. A thrill and fever came in the air, mystery in the deepening
+shadows, and brighter lights into the eyes of the hunting folk. The dusk
+deepened between the trees; the distant trunks dimmed and faded quite
+away. The stars emerged. The nightwind, rising somewhere in the region
+of the snow banks on the highest mountains, blew down into the Killer's
+face and brought messages that no human being may ever receive. Then his
+sharp ears heard the sound of brush cracked softly as some one of the
+larger forest creatures came up the trail toward him.
+
+The steps drew nearer and the Killer recognized them. They were plainly
+the soft footfall of some member of the deer tribe, yet they were too
+pronounced to be the step of any of the lesser deer. The bull elk had
+left his bed. The red eyes of the grizzly seemed to glow as he waited.
+Great though the stag was, only one little blow of the massive forearm
+would be needed. The huge fangs would have to close down but once. The
+long, many-tined antlers, the sharp front hoofs would not avail him in a
+surprise attack such as this would be. Best of all, he was not
+suspecting danger. He was walking down wind, so that the pungent odor of
+the bear was blown away from him.
+
+The bear did not move a single telltale muscle. He scarcely breathed.
+And the one movement that there was was such that not even the keen ears
+of an elk could discern, just a curious erection of the gray hairs on
+his vast neck.
+
+The bull was almost within striking range now. The wicked red eyes could
+already discern the dimmest shadow of his outline through the thickets.
+But all at once he stopped, head lifting.
+
+Perhaps a grizzly bear does not have mental processes as human
+beings know them. Perhaps all impulse is the result of instinct
+alone,--instinct tuned and trained to a degree that human beings find
+hard to imagine. But if the bear couldn't understand the sudden halt
+just at the eve of his triumph, at least he felt growing anger. He knew
+perfectly that the elk had neither detected his odor nor heard him, and
+he had made no movements that the sharp eyes could detect. Just a
+glimpse of gray in the heavy brush would not have been enough in itself
+to arouse the stag's suspicions. For the lower creatures are rarely able
+to interpret outline alone; there must be movement too.
+
+Yet the bull was evidently alarmed. He stood immobile, one foot lifted,
+nostrils open, head raised. Then, the wind blowing true, the grizzly
+understood.
+
+A pungent smell reached him from below,--evidently the smell of a living
+creature that followed the trail along the stream that flowed through
+the glen. He recognized it in an instant. He had detected it many times,
+particularly when he went into the cleared lands to kill cattle. It was
+man, an odor almost unknown in this lonely glen. Dave Turner, brother of
+Simon, was walking down the stream toward Hudson's camp.
+
+The elk was widely traveled too, and he also realized the proximity of
+man. But his reaction was entirely different. To the grizzly it was an
+annoying interruption to his hunt; and a great flood of rage swept over
+him. It seemed to him that these tall creatures were always crossing his
+path, spoiling his hunting, even questioning his rule of the forests.
+They did not seem to realize that he was the wilderness king, and that
+he could break their slight forms in two with one blow of his paw. It
+was true that their eyes had strange powers to disquiet him; but his
+isolation in the fastnesses of Trail's End had kept him from any full
+recognition of their real strength, and he was unfortunately lacking in
+the awe with which most of the forest creatures regard them. But to the
+elk this smell was Fear itself. He knew the ways of men only too well.
+Too many times he had seen members of his herd fall stricken at a word
+from the glittering sticks they carried in their hands. He uttered a
+far-ringing snort.
+
+It was a distinctive sound, beginning rather high on the scale as a loud
+whistle and descending into a deep bass bawl. And the Killer knew
+perfectly what that sound meant. It was a simple way of saying that the
+elk would progress no further down _that_ trail. The bear leaped in wild
+fury.
+
+A growl that was more near a puma-like snarl came from between the bared
+teeth, and the great body lunged out with incredible speed. Although the
+distance was far, the charge was almost a success. If one second had
+intervened before the elk saw the movement, if his muscles had not been
+fitted out with invisible wings, he would have fought no more battles
+with his herd brethren in the fall. The bull seemed to leap straight up.
+His muscles had been set at his first alarm from Turner's smell on the
+wind, and they drove forth the powerful limbs as if by a powder
+explosion. He was full in the air when the forepaws battered down where
+he had been. Then he darted away into the coverts.
+
+The grizzly knew better than to try to overtake him. Almost rabid with
+wrath he turned back to his ambush.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Simon Turner had given Dave very definite instructions concerning his
+embassy to Hudson. They were given in the great house that Simon
+occupied, in the same room, lighted by the fire's glow, from which
+instructions had gone out to the clan so many times before. "The first
+thing this Bruce will do," Simon had said, "is to hunt up Hudson--the
+one living man that witnessed that agreement between Ross and old
+Folger. One reason is that he'll want to verify Linda's story. The next
+is to persuade the old man to go down to the courts with him as his
+witness. And what you have to do is line him up on our side first."
+
+Dave had felt Simon's eyes upon him, so he didn't look straight up. "And
+that's what the hundred is for?" he asked.
+
+"Of course. Get the old man's word that he'll tell Bruce he never
+witnessed any such agreement. Maybe fifty dollars will do it; the old
+trapper is pretty hard up, I reckon. He'd make us a lot of trouble if
+Bruce got him as a witness."
+
+"You think--" Dave's eyes wandered about the room, "you think that's the
+best way?"
+
+"I wouldn't be tellin' you to do it if I didn't think so." Simon
+laughed,--a sudden, grim syllable. "Dave, you're a blood-thirsty devil.
+I see what you're thinking of--of a safer way to keep him from telling.
+But you know the word I sent out. 'Go easy!' That's the wisest course to
+follow at present. The valley people pay more attention to such things
+than they used to; the fewer the killings, the wiser we will be. If
+he'll keep quiet for the hundred let him have it in peace."
+
+Dave hadn't forgotten. But his features were sharper and more ratlike
+than ever when he came in sight of Hudson's camp, just after the fall of
+darkness of the second day out. The trapper was cooking his simple
+meal,--a blue grouse frying in his skillet, coffee boiling, and flapjack
+batter ready for the moment the grouse was done. He was kneeling close
+to the coals; the firelight cast a red glow over him, and the picture
+started a train of rather pleasing conjectures in Dave's mind.
+
+He halted in the shadows and stood a moment watching. After all he
+wasn't greatly different from the wolf that watched by the deer trail or
+the Killer in his ambush, less than a mile distant in the glen. The same
+strange, dark passion that was over them both was over him also. One
+could see it in the almost imperceptible drawing back of his dark lips
+over his teeth. There was just a hint of it in the lurid eyes.
+
+Dave's thought returned to the hundred dollars in his pocket,--a good
+sum in the hills. A brass rifle cartridge, such as he could fire in the
+thirty-thirty that he carried in the hollow of his arm, cost only about
+six cents. The net gain would be--the figures flew quickly through his
+mind--ninety-nine dollars and ninety-four cents; quite a good piece of
+business for Dave. But the trouble was that Simon might find out.
+
+It was not, he remembered, that Simon was adverse to this sort of
+operation when necessary. Perhaps the straight-out sport of the thing
+meant more to him than to Dave; he was a braver man and more primitive
+in impulse. There were certain memory pictures in Dave's mind of this
+younger, more powerful brother of his; and he smiled grimly when he
+recalled them. They had been wild, strange scenes of long ago, usually
+in the pale light of the moon, and he could recall Simon's face with
+singular clearness. There had always been the same drawing back of the
+lips, the same gusty breathing, the same strange little flakes of fire
+in the savage eyes. He had always trembled all over too, but not from
+fear; and Dave remembered especially well the little drama outside
+Matthew Folger's cabin in the darkness. He was no stranger to the blood
+madness, this brother of his, and the clan had high hopes for him even
+in his growing days. And he had fulfilled those hopes. Never could the
+fact be doubted! He could still make a fresh notch in his rifle stock
+with the same rapture. But the word had gone out, for the present at
+least, to "go easy." Such little games as occurred to Dave now--as he
+watched the trapper in the firelight with one hundred dollars of the
+clan's money in his own pocket--had been prohibited until further
+notice.
+
+The thing looked so simple that Dave squirmed all over with annoyance.
+It hurt him to think that the hundred dollars that he carried was to be
+passed over, without a wink of an eye, to this bearded trapper; and the
+only return for it was to be a promise that Hudson would not testify in
+Bruce's behalf. And a hundred dollars was real money! It was to be
+thought of twice. On the other hand, it would be wholly impossible for
+one that lies face half-buried in the pine needles beside a dead fire to
+make any kind of testimony whatsoever. It would come to the same thing,
+and the hundred dollars would still be in his pocket. Just a little
+matter of a single glance down his rifle barrel at the figure in the
+silhouette of the fire glow--and a half-ounce of pressure on the hair
+trigger. Half jesting with himself, he dropped on one knee and raised
+the weapon. The trapper did not guess his presence. The blood leaped in
+Dave's veins.
+
+It would be so easy; the drawing back of the hammer would be only the
+work of a second; and an instant's peering through the sights was all
+that would be needed further. His body trembled as if with passion, as
+he started to draw back the hammer.
+
+But he caught himself with a wrench. He had a single second of vivid
+introspection; and what he saw filled his cunning eyes with wonder.
+There would have been no holding back, once the rifle was cocked and he
+saw the man through the sights. The blood madness would have been too
+strong to resist. He felt as might one who, taking a few injections of
+morphine on prescription, finds himself inadvertently with a loaded
+needle in his hands. He knew a moment of remorse--so overwhelming that
+it was almost terror--that the shedding of blood had become so easy to
+him. He hadn't known how easy it had been to learn. He didn't know that
+a vice is nothing but a lust that has been given free play so many times
+that the will can no longer restrain it.
+
+But the sight of Hudson's form, sitting down now to his meal, dispelled
+his remorse quickly. After all, his own course would have been the
+simplest way to handle the matter. There would be no danger that Hudson
+would double-cross them then. But he realized that Simon had spoken true
+when he said that the old days were gone, that the arm of the law
+reached farther than formerly, and it might even stretch to this far
+place. He remembered Simon's instructions. "The quieter we can do these
+things, the better," the clan leader had said. "If we can get through to
+October thirtieth with no killings, the safer it is for us. We don't
+know how the tenderfeet in the valley are going to act--there isn't the
+same feeling about blood-feuds that there used to be. Go easy, Dave.
+Sound this Hudson out. If he'll keep still for a hundred, let him have
+it in peace."
+
+Dave slipped his rifle into the hollow of his arm and continued on down
+the trail. He didn't try to stalk. In a moment Hudson heard his step and
+looked up. They met in a circle of firelight.
+
+It is not the mountain way to fraternize quickly, nor are the mountain
+men quick to show astonishment. Hudson had not seen another human being
+since his last visit to the settlements. Yet his voice indicated no
+surprise at this visitation.
+
+"Howdy," he grunted.
+
+"Howdy," Dave replied. "How about grub?"
+
+"Help yourself. Supper just ready."
+
+Dave helped himself to the food of the man that, a moment before, he
+would have slain; and in the light of the high fire that followed the
+meal, he got down to the real business of the visit.
+
+Dave knew that a fairly straight course was best. It was general
+knowledge through the hills that the Turners had gouged the Rosses of
+their lands and it was absurd to think that Hudson did not realize the
+true state of affairs. "I suppose you've forgotten that little deed you
+witnessed between old Mat Folger and Ross--twenty years ago," Dave began
+easily, his pipe between his teeth.
+
+Hudson turned with a cunning glitter in his eyes. Dave saw it and grew
+bolder. "Who wants me to forget it?" Hudson demanded.
+
+"I ain't said that anybody wants you to," Dave responded. "I asked if
+you had."
+
+Hudson was still a moment, stroking absently his beard. "If you want to
+know," he said, "I ain't forgotten. But there wasn't just a deed. There
+was an agreement too."
+
+Dave nodded. Hudson's eyes traveled to his rifle,--for the simple reason
+that he wanted to know just how many jumps he would be obliged to make
+to reach it in case of emergencies. Such things are good to know in
+meetings like this.
+
+"I know all about that agreement," Dave confessed.
+
+"You do, eh? So do I. I ain't likely to forget."
+
+Dave studied him closely. "What good is it going to do you to remember?"
+he demanded.
+
+"I ain't saying that it's going to do me any good. At present I ain't
+got nothing against the Turners. They've always been all right to me.
+What's between them and the Rosses is past and done--although I know
+just in what way Folger held that land and no transfer from him to you
+was legal. But that's all part of the past. As long as the Turners
+continue to be my friends I don't see why anything should be said about
+it."
+
+Dave did not misunderstand him. He didn't in the least assume that these
+friendly words meant that he could go back to the ranches with the
+hundred dollars still in his pocket. It meant merely that Hudson was
+open to reason and it wouldn't have to be a shooting affair.
+
+Dave speculated. It was wholly plain that the old man had not yet heard
+of Bruce's return. There was no need to mention him. "We're glad you are
+our friend," Dave went on. "But we don't expect no one to stay friends
+with us unless they benefit to some small extent by it. How many furs do
+you hope to take this year?"
+
+"Not enough to pay to pack out. Maybe two hundred dollars in bounties
+before New Year--coyotes and wolves. Maybe a little better in the three
+months following in furs."
+
+"Then maybe fifty or seventy-five dollars, without bothering to set the
+traps, wouldn't come in so bad."
+
+"It wouldn't come in bad, but it doesn't buy much these days. A hundred
+would do better."
+
+"A hundred it is," Dave told him with finality.
+
+The eyes above the dark beard shone in the firelight. "I'd forget I had
+a mother for a hundred dollars," he said. He watched, greedily, as
+Dave's gaunt hand went into his pocket. "I'm gettin' old, Dave. Every
+dollar is harder for me to get. The wolves are gettin' wiser, the mink
+are fewer. There ain't much that I wouldn't do for a hundred dollars
+now. You know how it is."
+
+Yes, Dave knew. The money changed hands. The fire burned down. They sat
+a long time, deep in their own thoughts.
+
+"All we ask," Dave said, "is that you don't take sides against us."
+
+"I'll remember. Of course you want me, in case I'm ever subpoenaed, to
+recall signing the deed itself."
+
+"Yes, we'd want you to testify to that."
+
+"Of course. If there hadn't been any kind of a deed, Folger couldn't
+have deeded the property to you. But how would it be, if any one asks me
+about it, to swear that there _never was_ no secret agreement, but a
+clear transfer; and to make it sound reasonable for me to say--to say
+that Ross was forced to deed the land to Folger because he'd had
+goings-on with Folger's wife, and Folger was about to kill him?"
+
+The only response, at first, was the slightest, almost imperceptible
+narrowing of Dave's eyes. He had considerable native cunning, but such
+an idea as this had never occurred to him. But he was crafty enough to
+see its tremendous possibilities at once. All that either Simon or
+himself had hoped for was that the old man would not testify in Bruce's
+behalf. But he saw that such a story, coming from the apparently honest
+old trapper, might have a profound effect upon Bruce. Dave understood
+human nature well enough to know that he would probably lose faith in
+the entire enterprise. To Bruce it had been nothing but an old woman's
+story, after all; it was wholly possible that he would relinquish all
+effort to return the lands to Linda Ross. Men always can believe
+stranger things of sex than any other thing; Bruce would in all
+probability find Hudson's story much more logical than the one Linda had
+told him under the pine. It was worth one hundred dollars, after all.
+
+"I'll bet you could make him swallow it, hook, bait, and sinker," Dave
+responded at last, flattering. They chuckled together in the darkness.
+Then they turned to the blankets.
+
+"I'll show you another trail out to-morrow," Hudson told him. "It comes
+into the glen that you passed to-night--the canyon that the Killer has
+been using lately for a hunting ground."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The Killer had had an unsuccessful night. He had waited the long hours
+through at the mouth of the trail, but only the Little People--such as
+the rabbits and similar folk that hardly constituted a single bite in
+his great jaws--had come his way. Now it was morning and it looked as if
+he would have to go hungry.
+
+The thought didn't improve his already doubtful mood. He wanted to
+growl. The only thing that kept him from it was the realization that it
+would frighten away any living creature that might be approaching toward
+him up the trail. He started to stretch his great muscles, intending to
+leave his ambush. But all at once he froze again into a lifeless gray
+patch in the thickets.
+
+There were light steps on the trail. Again they were the steps of
+deer,--but not of the great, wary elk this time. Instead it was just a
+fawn, or a yearling doe at least, such a creature as had not yet learned
+to suspect every turn in the trail. The morning light was steadily
+growing, the stars were all dimmed or else entirely faded in the sky,
+and it would have been highly improbable that a full-grown buck in his
+wisdom would draw within leaping range without detecting him. But he
+hadn't the slightest doubt about the fawn. They were innocent
+people,--and their flesh was very tender. The forest gods had been good
+to him, after all.
+
+He peered through the thickets, and in a moment more he had a glimpse of
+the spotted skin. It was almost too easy. The fawn was stealing toward
+him with mincing steps--as graceful a creature as dwelt in all this
+wilderness world of grace--and its eyes were soft and tender as a
+girl's. It was evidently giving no thought to danger, only rejoicing
+that the fearful hours of night were done. The mountain lion had already
+sought its lair. The fawn didn't know that a worse terror still lingered
+at the mouth of the trail.
+
+But even as the Killer watched, the prize was simply taken out of his
+mouth. A gray wolf--a savage old male that also had just finished an
+unsuccessful hunt--had been stealing through the thickets in search of a
+lair, and he came out on the trail not fifty feet distant, halfway
+between the bear and the fawn. The one was almost as surprised as the
+other. The fawn turned with a frightened bleat and darted away; the wolf
+swung into pursuit.
+
+The bear lunged forward with a howl of rage. He leaped into the trail
+mouth, then ran as fast as he could in pursuit of the running wolf. He
+was too enraged to stop to think that a grizzly bear has never yet been
+able to overtake a wolf, once the trim legs got well into action. At
+first he couldn't think about anything; he had been cheated too many
+times. His first impulse was one of tremendous and overpowering
+wrath,--a fury that meant death to the first living creature that he
+met.
+
+But in a single second he realized that this wild chase was fairly good
+tactics, after all. The chances for a meal were still rather good. The
+fawn and the wolf were in the open now, and it was wholly evident that
+the gray hunter would overtake the quarry in another moment. It was true
+that the Killer would miss the pleasure of slaying his own game,--the
+ecstatic blow to the shoulder and the bite to the throat that followed
+it. In this case, the wolf would do that part of the work for him. It
+was just a simple matter of driving the creature away from his dead.
+
+The fawn reached the stream bank, then went bounding down the margin.
+The distance shortened between them. It was leaping wildly, already
+almost exhausted; the wolf raced easily, body close to the ground, in
+long, tireless strides. The grizzly bear sped behind him.
+
+But at that instant fate took a hand in this merry little chase. To the
+fawn, it was nothing but a sharp clang of metal behind him and an
+answering shriek of pain,--sounds that in its terror it heard but dimly.
+But it was an unlooked-for and tragic reality to the wolf. His leap was
+suddenly arrested in mid-air, and he was hurled to the ground with
+stunning force. Cruel metal teeth had seized his leg, and a strong chain
+held him when he tried to escape. He fought it with desperate savagery.
+The fawn leaped on to safety.
+
+But there was no need of the grizzly continuing its pursuit. Everything
+had turned out quite well for him, after all. A wolf is ever so much
+more filling than any kind of seasonal fawn; and the old gray pack
+leader was imprisoned and helpless in one of Hudson's traps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the first gray of morning, Dave Turner started back toward his home.
+"I'll go with you to the forks in the trail," Hudson told him. "I want
+to take a look at some of my traps, anyhow."
+
+Turner had completed his business none too soon. At the same hour--as
+soon as it was light enough to see--Bruce was finishing his breakfast in
+preparation for the last lap of his journey. He had passed the night by
+a spring on a long ridge, almost in eye range of Hudson's camp. Now he
+was preparing to dip down into the Killer's glen.
+
+Turner and Hudson followed up the little creek, walking almost in
+silence. It is a habit all mountain men fall into, sooner or later,--not
+to waste words. The great silences of the wild places seem to forbid it.
+Hudson walked ahead, Turner possibly a dozen feet behind him. And
+because of the carpet of pine needles, the forest creatures could hardly
+hear them come.
+
+Occasionally they caught glimpses of the wild life that teemed about
+them, but they experienced none of the delight that had made the two-day
+tramp such a pleasure to Bruce. Hudson thought in terms of pelts only;
+no creature that did not wear a marketable hide was worth a glance.
+Turner did not feel even this interest.
+
+The first of Hudson's sets proved empty. The second was about a turn in
+the creek, and a wall of brush made it impossible for him to tell at a
+distance whether or not he had made a catch. But when still a quarter of
+a mile distant, Hudson heard a sound that he thought he recognized. It
+was a high, sharp, agonized bark that dimmed into a low whine. "I
+believe I've got a coyote or a wolf up there," he said. They hastened
+their steps.
+
+"And you use that little pea-gun for wolves?" Dave Turner asked. He
+pointed to the short-barreled, twenty-two caliber rifle that was slung
+on the trapper's back. "It doesn't look like it would kill a mosquito."
+
+"A killer gun," Hudson explained. "For polishin' 'em off when they are
+alive in the traps. Of course, it wouldn't be no good more'n ten feet
+away, and then you have to aim at a vital spot. But I've heard tell of
+animals I wouldn't want to meet with that thirty-thirty of yours."
+
+This was true enough. Dave had heard of them also. A thirty-thirty is a
+powerful weapon, but it isn't an elephant gun. They hurried on, Dave
+very anxious to watch the execution that would shortly ensue if whatever
+animal had cried from the trap was still alive. Such things were only
+the day's work to Hudson, but Dave felt a little tingle of anticipation.
+And the thought damned him beyond redemption.
+
+But instead of the joy of killing a cowering, terror-stricken animal,
+helpless in the trap, the wilderness had made other plans for Hudson and
+Dave. They hastened about the impenetrable wall of brush, and in one
+glance they knew that more urgent business awaited them.
+
+The whole picture loomed suddenly before their eyes. There was no wolf
+in the trap. The steel had sprung, certainly, but only a hideous
+fragment of a foot remained between the jaws. The bone had been broken
+sharply off, as a man might break a match in his fingers. There was no
+living wolf for Hudson to execute with his killer gun. Life had gone out
+of the gray body many minutes before. The two men saw all these things
+as a background only,--dim details about the central figure. But the
+thing that froze them in their tracks with terror was the great, gray
+form of the Killer, not twenty feet distant, beside the mangled body of
+the wolf.
+
+The events that followed thereafter came in such quick succession as to
+seem simultaneous. For one fraction of an instant all three figures
+stood motionless, the two men staring, the grizzly half-leaning over his
+prey, his head turned, his little red eyes full of hatred. Too many
+times this night he had missed his game. It was the same intrusion that
+had angered him before,--slight figures to break to pieces with one
+blow. Perhaps--for no man may trace fully the mental processes of
+animals--his fury fully transcended the fear that he must have
+instinctively felt; at least, he did not even attempt to flee. He
+uttered one hoarse, savage note, a sound in which all his hatred and his
+fury and his savage power were made manifest, whirled with incredible
+speed, and charged.
+
+The lunge seemed only a swift passing of gray light. No eye could
+believe that the vast form could move with such swiftness. There was
+little impression of an actual leap. Rather it was just a blow; the
+great form, huddled over the dead wolf, had simply reached the full
+distance to Hudson.
+
+The man did not even have time to turn. There was no defense; his
+killer-gun was strapped on his back, and even if it had been in his
+hands, its little bullet would not have mattered the sting of a bee in
+honey-robbing. The only possible chance of breaking that deadly charge
+lay in the thirty-thirty deer rifle in Dave's arms; but the craven who
+held it did not even fire. He was standing just below the outstretched
+limb of a tree, and the weapon fell from his hands as he swung up into
+the limb. The fact that Hudson stood weaponless, ten feet away in the
+clearing, did not deter him in the least.
+
+No human flesh could stand against that charge. The vast paw fell with
+resistless force; and no need arose for a second blow. The trapper's
+body was struck down as if felled by a meteor, and the power of the
+impact forced it deep into the carpet of pine needles. The savage
+creature turned, the white fangs caught the light in the open mouth. The
+head lunged toward the man's shoulder.
+
+No man may say what agony Hudson would have endured in the last few
+seconds of his life if the Killer had been given time and opportunity.
+His usual way was to linger long, sharp fangs closing again and again,
+until all living likeness was destroyed. The blood-lust was upon him;
+there would have been no mercy to the dying creature in the pine
+needles. Yet it transpired that Hudson's flesh was not to know those
+rending fangs a second time. Although it is an unfamiliar thing in the
+wilderness, the end of Hudson's trail was peaceful, after all.
+
+On the hillside above, a stranger to this land had dropped to his knee
+in the shrubbery, his rifle lifted to the level of his eyes. It was
+Bruce, who had come in time to see the charge through a rift in the
+trees.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+There were deep significances in the fact that Bruce kept his head in
+this moment of crisis. It meant nothing less than an iron self-control
+such as only the strongest men possess, and it meant nerves steady as
+steel bars.
+
+The bear was on Hudson, and the man had gone down, before Bruce even
+interpreted him. Then it was just a gray patch, a full three hundred
+yards away. His instinct was to throw the gun to his shoulder and fire
+without aiming; yet he conquered it with an iron will. But he did move
+quickly. He dropped to his knee the single second that the gun leaped to
+his shoulder. He seemed to know that from a lower position the target
+would be more clearly revealed. The finger pressed back against the
+trigger.
+
+The distance was far; Bruce was not a practiced rifle shot, and it
+bordered on the miraculous that his lead went anywhere near the bear's
+body. And it was true that the bullet did not reach a vital place. It
+stung like a wasp at the Killer's flank, however, cutting a shallow
+flesh wound. But it was enough to take his dreadful attention from the
+mortally wounded trapper in the pine needles.
+
+He whirled about, growling furiously and biting at the wound. Then he
+stood still, turning his gaze first to the pale face of Dave Turner
+thirty feet above him in the pine. The eyes glowed in fury and hatred.
+He had found men out at last; they died even more easily than the fawn.
+He started to turn back to the fallen, and the rifle spoke again.
+
+It was a complete miss, this time; yet the bear leaped in fear when the
+bullet thwacked into the dust beside him. He did not wait for a third.
+His caution suddenly returning to him, and perhaps his anger somewhat
+satiated by the blow he had dealt Hudson, he crashed into the security
+of the thicket.
+
+Bruce waited a single instant, hoping for another glimpse of the
+creature; then ran down to aid Hudson. But in driving the bear from the
+trapper's helpless body he had already given all the aid that he could.
+Understanding came quickly. He had arrived only in time for the
+Departure,--just a glimpse of a light as it faded. The blow had been
+more than any human being could survive; even now Hudson was entering
+upon that strange calm which often, so mercifully, immediately precedes
+death.
+
+He opened his eyes and looked with some wonder into Bruce's face. The
+light in them was dimming, fading like a twilight, yet there was
+indication of neither confusion nor delirium. Hudson, in that last
+moment of his life, was quite himself.
+
+There was, however, some indication of perplexity at the peculiar turn
+affairs had taken. "You're not Dave Turner," he said wonderingly.
+
+Dim though the voice was, there was considerable emphasis in the tone.
+Hudson seemed quite sure of this point, whether or not he knew anything
+concerning the dark gates he was about to enter. He wouldn't have spoken
+greatly different if he had been sitting in perfect health before his
+own camp fire and the shadow was now already so deep his eyes could
+scarcely penetrate it.
+
+"No," Bruce answered. "Dave Turner is up a tree. He didn't even wait to
+shoot."
+
+"Of course he wouldn't." Hudson spoke with assurance. The words dimmed
+at the end, and he half-closed his eyes as if he were too sleepy to stay
+awake longer. Then Bruce saw a strange thing. He saw, unmistakable as
+the sun in the sky, the signs of a curious struggle in the man's face.
+There was a singular deepening of the lines, a twitching of the muscles,
+a queer set to the lips and jaws. They were as much signs of battle as
+the sound of firing a general hears from far away.
+
+The trapper--a moment before sinking into the calm of death--was
+fighting desperately for a few moments of respite. There could be no
+other explanation. And he won it at last,--an interlude of half a dozen
+breaths. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+Bruce bowed his head until his ear was close to the lips. "Bruce
+Folger," he answered,--for the first time in his knowledge speaking his
+full name. "Son of Matthew Folger who lived at Trail's End long ago."
+
+The man still struggled. "I knew it," he said. "I saw it--in your face.
+I see--everything now. Listen--can you hear me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I just did a wrong--there's a hundred dollars in my pocket that I just
+got for doing it. I made a promise--to lie to you. Take the money--it
+ought to be yours, anyway--and hers; and use it toward fighting the
+wrong. It will go a little way."
+
+"Yes," Bruce looked him full in the eyes. "No matter about the money.
+What did you promise Turner?"
+
+"That I'd lie to you. Grip my arms with your hands--till it hurts. I've
+only got one breath more. Your father held those lands only in
+trust--the Turners' deed is forged. And the secret agreement that I
+witnessed is hidden--"
+
+The breath seemed to go out of the man. Bruce shook him by the
+shoulders. Dave, still in the tree, strained to hear the rest.
+"Yes--where?"
+
+"It's hidden--just--out--" The words were no longer audible to Dave, and
+what followed Bruce also strained to hear in vain. The lips ceased
+moving. The shadow grew in the eyes, and the lids flickered down over
+them. A traveler had gone.
+
+Bruce got up, a strange, cold light in his eyes. He glanced up. Dave
+Turner was climbing slowly down the tree. Bruce made six strides and
+seized his rifle.
+
+The effect on Dave was ludicrous. He clung fast to the tree limbs, as if
+he thought a bullet--like a grizzly's claws--could not reach him there.
+Bruce laid the gun behind him, then stood waiting with his own weapon
+resting in his arms.
+
+"Come down, Dave," he commanded. "The bear is gone."
+
+Dave crept down the trunk and halted at its base. He studied the cold
+face before him. "Better not try nothing," he advised hoarsely.
+
+"Why not?" Bruce asked. "Do you think I'm afraid of a coward?" The man
+started at the words; his head bobbed backward as if Bruce had struck
+him beneath the jaw with his fist.
+
+"People don't call the Turners cowards and walk off with it," the man
+told him.
+
+"Oh, the lowest coward!" Bruce said between set teeth. "The yellowest,
+mongrel coward! Your own confederate--and you had to drop your gun and
+run up a tree. You might have stopped the bear's charge."
+
+Dave's face twisted in a scowl. "You're brave enough now. Wait to see
+what happens later. Give me my gun. I'm going to go."
+
+"You can go, but you don't get your gun. I'll fill you full of lead if
+you try to touch it."
+
+Dave looked up with some care. He wanted to know for certain if this
+tenderfoot meant what he said. The man was blind in some things, his
+vision was twisted and dark, but he made no mistake about the look on
+the cold, set face before him. Bruce's finger was curled about the
+trigger, and it looked to Dave as if it itched to exert further
+pressure.
+
+"I don't see why I spare you, anyway," Bruce went on. His tone was
+self-reproachful. "God knows I hadn't ought to--remembering who and what
+you are. If you'd only give me one little bit of provocation--"
+
+Dave saw lurid lights growing in the man's eyes; and all at once a
+conclusion came to him. He decided he'd make no further effort to regain
+the gun. His life was rather precious to him, strangely, and it was
+wholly plain that a dread and terrible passion was slowly creeping over
+his enemy. He could see it in the darkening face, the tight grip of the
+hands on the rifle stock. His own sharp features grew more cunning. "You
+ought to be glad I didn't stop the bear with my rifle," he said
+hurriedly. "I had Hudson bribed--you wouldn't have found out something
+that you did find out if he hadn't lain here dying. You wouldn't have
+learned--"
+
+But the sentence died in the middle. Bruce made answer to it. For once
+in his life Dave's cunning had not availed him; he had said the last
+thing in the world that he should have said, the one thing that was
+needed to cause an explosion. He hadn't known that some men have
+standards other than self gain. And some small measure of realization
+came to him when he felt the dust his full length under him.
+
+Bruce's answer had been a straight-out blow with his fist, with all his
+strength behind it, in the very center of his enemy's face.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+In his years of residence at Trail's End, Dave Turner had acquired a
+thorough knowledge of all its paths. That knowledge stood him in good
+stead now. He wished to cross the ridges to Simon's house at least an
+hour before Bruce could return to Linda.
+
+He traveled hard and late, and he reached Simon's door just before
+sundown of the second day. Bruce was still a full two hours distant. But
+Dave did not stay to knock. It was chore-time, and he thought he would
+find Simon in his barn, supervising the feeding and care of the
+livestock. He had guessed right, and the two men had a moment's talk in
+the dusky passage behind the stalls.
+
+"I've brought news," Dave said.
+
+Simon made no answer at first. The saddle pony in the stall immediately
+in front of them, frightened at Dave's unfamiliar figure, had crowded,
+trembling, against his manger. Simon's red eyes watched him; then he
+uttered a short oath. He took two strides into the stall and seized the
+halter rope in his huge, muscular hand. Three times he jerked it with a
+peculiar, quartering pull, a curbing that might have been ineffective by
+a man of ordinary strength, but with the incomprehensible might of the
+great forearm behind it was really terrible punishment. Dave thought for
+a moment his brother would break the animal's neck; the whites began to
+show about the soft, dark pupils of its eyes. The strap over the head
+broke with the fourth pull; then the horse recoiled, plunging and
+terrified, into the opposite corner of the stall.
+
+Simon leaped with shattering power at the creature's shoulders, his huge
+arms encircled its neck, his shoulders heaved, and he half-threw it to
+the floor. Then, as it staggered to rise, his heavy fist flailed against
+its neck. Again and again he struck, and in the half-darkness of the
+stable it was a dreadful thing to behold. The man's fury, always quickly
+aroused, was upon him; his brawny form moved with the agility of a
+panther. Even Dave, whose shallow eyes were usually wont to feast on
+cruelty, viewed the scene with some alarm. It wasn't that he was moved
+by the agony of the horse. But he did remember that horses cost money,
+and Simon seemed determined to kill the animal before his passion was
+spent.
+
+The horse cowered, and in a moment more it was hard to remember he was a
+member of a noble, high-spirited breed,--a swift runner, brainy as a
+dog, a servant faithful and worthy. It was no longer easy to think of
+him as a creature of beauty,--and there is no other word than beauty for
+these long-maned, long-tailed, trim-lined animals. He stood quiet at
+last, his head hanging low, knees bent, eyes curiously sorrowful and
+dark. Simon fastened the broken strap about his neck, gave it one more
+jerk that almost knocked the animal off his feet, then turned back to
+Dave. Except for a higher color in his cheeks, darker lights in his
+eyes, and an almost imperceptible quickening of his breathing, it did
+not seem as if he had moved.
+
+"You're always bringing news," he said.
+
+Dave opened his eyes. He had forgotten his own words in the tumult of
+the fight he had just watched, but plainly Simon hadn't forgotten. He
+opened his mouth to speak.
+
+"Well, what is it? Out with it," his brother urged. "If it's as
+important as some of the other news you've brought don't take my time."
+
+"All right," the other replied sullenly. "You don't have to hear it. But
+I'm telling you it's of real importance this time--and sometime you'll
+find out." He scowled into the dark face. "But suit yourself."
+
+He turned as if to go. He rather thought that Simon would call him back.
+It would be, in a measure, a victory. But Simon went back to his
+inspection of the stalls.
+
+Dave walked clear to the door, then turned. "Don't be a fool, Simon," he
+urged. "Listen to what I have to tell you. Bruce Folger knows where that
+secret agreement is."
+
+For once in his life Dave got a response of sufficient emphasis to
+satisfy him. His brother whirled, his whole expression undergoing an
+immediate and startling change. If there was one emotion that Dave had
+never seen on Simon's face it was fear,--and he didn't know for certain
+that he saw it now. But there was alarm--unmistakable--and surprise
+too.
+
+"What do you mean?" he demanded.
+
+Dave exulted inwardly. His brother's response had almost made up for the
+evil news that he brought. For Dave's fortunes, as well as Simon's,
+depended on the vast fertile tract being kept in the clan's possession.
+His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. For the first time in his life, as
+far as Dave could remember, Simon had encountered a situation that he
+had not immediately mastered. Perhaps it was the beginning of Simon's
+downfall, which meant--by no great stretch of the imagination--the
+advancement of Dave. But in another second of clear thinking Dave knew
+that in his brother's strength lay his own; if this mighty force at the
+head of the clan was weakening, no hope remained for any of them. His
+own face grew anxious.
+
+"Out with it," Simon stormed. His tone was really urgent now, not
+insolent as usual. "Good Lord, man, don't you know that if Bruce gets
+that down to the settlements before the thirtieth of next month we're
+lost--and nothing in this world can save us? We can't drive _him_ off,
+like we drove the Rosses. There's too much law down in the valleys. If
+he's got that paper, there's only one thing to do. Help me saddle a
+horse."
+
+"Wait a minute. I didn't say he had it. I only said he knew where it
+was. He's still an hour or two walk from here, toward Little River, and
+if we have to wait for him on the trail, we've got plenty of time. And
+of course I ain't quite sure he _does_ know where it is."
+
+Simon smiled mirthlessly. "The news is beginning to sound like the rest
+of yours."
+
+"Old Hudson is dead," Dave went on. "And don't look at me--I didn't do
+it. I wish I had, though, first off. For once my judgment was better
+than yours. The Killer got him."
+
+"Yes. Go on."
+
+"I was with him when it happened. My gun got jammed so I couldn't
+shoot."
+
+"Where is it now?"
+
+Dave scrambled in vain for a story to explain the loss of his weapon to
+Bruce, and the one that came out at last didn't do him particular
+credit. "I--I threw the damn thing away. Wish I hadn't now, but it made
+me so mad by jamming--it was a fool trick. Maybe I can go back after it
+and find it."
+
+Simon smiled again. "Very good so far," he commented.
+
+Dave flushed. "Bruce was there too--fact is, creased the bear--and the
+last minute before he died Hudson told him where the agreement was
+hidden. I couldn't hear all he said--I was too far away--but I heard
+enough to think that he told Bruce the hiding, place. It was natural
+Hudson would know it, and we were fools for not asking him about it long
+ago."
+
+"And why didn't you get that information away from Bruce with your gun?"
+
+"Didn't I tell you the thing was jammed? If it hadn't of been for that,
+I'd done something more than find out where it is. I'd stopped this
+nonsense once and for all, and let a hole through that tenderfoot big
+enough to see through. _Then_ there'd never be any more trouble. It's
+the thing to do now."
+
+Simon looked at his brother's face with some wonder. More crafty and
+cunning, Dave was like the coyote in that he didn't yield so quickly to
+fury as that gray wolf, his brother. But when it did come, it seared
+him. It had come now. Simon couldn't mistake the fact; he saw it plain
+in the glowing eyes, the clenched hands, the drawn lips. Dave was
+remembering the pain of the blow Bruce had given him, and the smart of
+the words that had preceded it.
+
+"You and he must have had a little session down there by the creek,"
+Simon suggested slowly, "when your gun was jammed. Of course, he took
+the gun. What's the use of trying to lie to me?"
+
+"He did. What could I do?"
+
+"And now you want him potted--from ambush."
+
+"What's the use of waiting? Who'd know?" The two men stood face to face
+in the quiet and deepening dusk of the barn; and there was growing
+determination on each face. "Every day our chance is less and less,"
+Dave went on. "We've been thinking we're safe, but if he knows where
+that agreement is, we're not safe at all. How would you like to get
+booted off these three thousand acres now, just after we've all got
+attached to them? To start making our living as day laborers--and maybe
+face a hangin' for some things of long ago? With this land behind him,
+he'd be in a position to pay old debts, I'm telling you. We're not
+secure, and you know it. The law doesn't forget, and it doesn't forgive.
+We've been fooling away our time ever since we knew he was coming. We
+should have met him on the trail and let the buzzards talk to him."
+
+"Yes," Simon echoed in a strange half-whisper. "Let the buzzards talk to
+him."
+
+Dave took fresh heart at the sound of that voice. "No one would have
+ever knowed it," he went on. "No one would ever know it now. They'd find
+his bones, some time maybe, but there'd be no one to point to. They'd
+never get any thing against us. Everybody except the mountain people
+have forgotten about this affair. Those in the mountains are too
+scattered and few to take any part in it. I tell you--it's all the way,
+or no way at all. Tell me to wait for him on the trail."
+
+"Wait. Wait a minute. How long before he will come?"
+
+"Any time now. And don't postpone this matter any more. We're men, not
+babies. He's not a fool or not a coward, either. He's got his old man's
+blood in him--not his mother's to run away. As long as he ain't croaked,
+all we've done so far is apt to come to nothing. And there's one thing
+more. He's going to take the blood-feud up again."
+
+"Lots of good it would do him. One against a dozen."
+
+"But he's a shot--I saw that plain enough--and how'd you like to have
+him shoot through _your_ windows some time? Old Elmira and Linda have
+set him on, and he's hot for it."
+
+"I wish you'd got that old heifer when you got her son," Simon said. He
+still spoke calmly; but it was plain enough that Dave's words were
+having the desired effect. Dave could discern this fact by certain
+lights and expressions about the pupils of his brother's eyes, signs
+learned and remembered long ago. "So he's taken up the blood-feud, has
+he? I thought I gave his father some lessons in that a long time since.
+Well, I suppose we must let him have his way!"
+
+"And remember too," Dave urged, "what you told him when you met him in
+the store. You said you wouldn't warn him twice."
+
+"I remember." The two men were silent, but Dave stood no longer
+motionless. The motions that he made, however, were not discernible in
+the growing gloom of the barn. He was shivering all over with malice and
+fury.
+
+"Then you've given the word?" he asked.
+
+"I've given the word, but I'll do it my own way. Listen, Dave." Simon
+stood, head bent, deep in thought. "Could you arrange to have Linda and
+the old hag out of the house when Bruce gets back?"
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"We've got to work this thing right. We can't operate in the open like
+we used to. This man has taken up the blood-feud--but the thing to
+do--is to let him come to us."
+
+"But he won't do it. He'll go to the courts first."
+
+Simon's face grew stern. "I don't want any more interruptions, Dave. I
+mean we will want to give the impression that he attacked us first--on
+his own free will. What if he comes into our house-a man unknown in
+these parts--and something happens to him there--in the dead of night?
+It wouldn't look so bad then, would it? Besides--if we got him
+here--before the clan, we might be able to find out where that document
+is. At least we'll have him here where everything will be in our favor.
+First, how can you tell when he's going to come?"
+
+"He ought to be here very soon. The moon's bright and I can get up on
+the ridge and see his shadow through your field glasses when he crosses
+the big south pasture. That will give me a full half-hour before he
+comes."
+
+"It's enough. I'm ready to give you your orders now. They are--just to
+use your head, and on some pretext get those two women out of the house
+so that Bruce can't find them when he returns. Don't let them come back
+for an hour, if you can help it. If it works--all right. If it doesn't,
+we'll use more direct measures. I'll tend to the rest."
+
+He strode to the wall and took down a saddle from the hook. Quickly he
+threw it over the back of one of the cow ponies, the animal that he had
+punished. He put the bridle in Dave's hand. "Stop at the house for the
+glasses, then ride to the ridge at once," he ordered. "Then keep
+watch."
+
+Without words Dave led the horse through the door and swung on to its
+back. In an instant the wild folk, in the fringe of forest beyond,
+paused in their night occupations to listen to the sound of hoof beats
+on the turf. Then Simon slowly saddled his own horse.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The day was quite dead when Dave Turner reached his post on top of the
+ridge. The gray of twilight had passed, the forest was lost in darkness,
+the stars were all out. The only vestige of daylight that remained was a
+pale, red glow over the Western mountains,--and this was more like red
+flowers that had been placed on its grave in remembrance.
+
+Fortunately, the moon rose early. Otherwise Dave's watch would have been
+in vain. The soft light wrought strange miracles in the forest: bathing
+the tree tops in silver, laying wonderful cobweb tapestries between the
+trunks, upsetting the whole perspective as to distance and contour. Dave
+didn't have long to wait. At the end of a half-hour he saw, through the
+field glasses, the wavering of a strange black shadow on the distant
+meadow. Only the vivid quality of the full moon enabled him to see it at
+all.
+
+He tried to get a better focus. It might be just the shadow of deer,
+come to browse on the parched grass. Dave felt a little tremor of
+excitement at the thought that if it were not Bruce, it was more likely
+the last of the grizzlies, the Killer. The previous night the gray
+forest king had made an excursion into Simon's pastures and had killed a
+yearling calf; in all probability he would return to-night to finish his
+feast. In fact, this night would in all probability see the end of the
+Killer. Some one of the Turners would wait for him, with a loaded rifle,
+in a safe ambush.
+
+But it wasn't the Killer, after all. It was before his time; besides,
+the shadow was too slender to be that of the huge bear. Dave Turner
+watched a moment longer, so that there could be no possibility of a
+mistake. Bruce was returning; he was little more than a half-hour's walk
+from Linda's home.
+
+Turner swung on his horse, then lashed the animal into a gallop. Less
+than five minutes later he drew up to a halt beneath the Sentinel Pine,
+almost a mile distant. For the first time, Dave began to move
+cautiously.
+
+It would complicate matters if the two women had already gone to bed.
+The hour was early--not yet nine--but the fall of darkness is often the
+going-to-bed time of the mountain people. It is warmer there and safer;
+and the expense of candles is lessened. Incidentally, it is the natural
+course for the human breed,--to bed at nightfall and up at dawn; and
+only distortion of nature can change the habit. It is doubtful if even
+the earliest men--those curious, long-armed, stiff-thumbed, heavy-jowled
+forefathers far remote--were ever night hunters. Like the hawks and most
+of the other birds of prey they were content to leave the game trails to
+the beasts at night. As life in the mountains gets down to a primitive
+basis, most of the hill people soon fall into this natural course. But
+to-night Linda and old Elmira were sitting up, waiting for Bruce's
+return.
+
+A candle flame flickered at the window. Dave went up to the door and
+knocked.
+
+"Who's there?" Elmira called. It was a habit learned in the dreadful
+days of twenty years ago, not to open a door without at least some
+knowledge of who stood without. A lighted doorway sets off a target
+almost as well as a field of white sets off a black bull's-eye.
+
+Dave knew that truth was the proper course. "Dave Turner," he replied.
+
+A long second of heavy, strange silence ensued. Then the woman spoke
+again. There was a new note in her voice, a curious hoarseness, but at
+the same time a sense of exultation and excitement. But Dave didn't
+notice it. Perhaps the oaken door that the voice came through stripped
+away all the overtones; possibly his own perceptions were too blunt to
+receive it. He might, however, have been interested in the singular look
+of wonder that flashed over Linda's face as she stared at her aged aunt.
+Linda was not thinking of Dave. She had forgotten that he stood outside.
+His visit was the last thing that either of them expected--except,
+perhaps, on some such deadly business as the clan had come years
+before--yet she found no space in her thought for him. Her whole
+attention was seized and held by the unfamiliar note in her aunt's
+voice, and a strange drawing of the woman's features that the closed
+door prevented Dave from seeing. It was a look almost of rapture, hardly
+to be expected in the presence of an enemy. The dim eyes seemed to glow
+in the shadows. It was the look of one who had wandered steep and
+unknown trails for uncounted years and sees the distant lights of his
+home at last.
+
+She got up from her chair and moved over to the little pack she had
+carried on her back when she had walked up from her cabin. Linda still
+gazed at her in growing wonder. The long years seemed to have fallen
+away from her; she slipped across the uncarpeted floor with the agility
+and silence of a tiger. She always had given the impression of latent
+power, but never so much as now. She took some little object from the
+bag and slipped it next to her withered and scrawny breast.
+
+"What do you want?" she called out into the gloom.
+
+Dave had been getting a little restless in the silence; but the voice
+reassured him. "I'll tell you when you open the door. It's something
+about Bruce."
+
+Linda remembered him then. She leaped to the door and flung it wide. She
+saw the stars without, the dark fringe of pines against the sky line
+behind. She felt the wind and the cool breath of the darkness. But most
+of all she saw the cunning, sharp-featured face of Dave Turner, with the
+candlelight upon him. The yellow beams were in his eyes too. They seemed
+full of guttering lights.
+
+The few times that Linda had talked to Dave she had always felt uneasy
+beneath his speculative gaze. The same sensation swept over her now. She
+knew perfectly what she would have had to expect, long since, from this
+man, were it not that he had lived in fear of his brother Simon. The
+mighty leader of the clan had set a barrier around her as far as
+personal attentions went,--and his reasons were obvious. The mountain
+girls do not usually attain her perfection of form and face; his desire
+for her was as jealous as it was intense and real. This dark-hearted man
+of great and terrible emotions did not only know how to hate. In his own
+savage way he could love too. Linda hated and feared him, but the
+emotion was wholly different from the dread and abhorrence with which
+she regarded Dave. "What about Bruce?" she demanded.
+
+Dave leered. "Do you want to see him? He's lying--up here on the hill."
+
+The tone was knowing, edged with cruelty; and it had the desired effect.
+The color swept from the girl's face. In a single fraction of an instant
+it showed stark white in the candlelight.
+
+There was an instant's sensation of terrible cold. But her voice was
+hard and lifeless when she spoke.
+
+"You mean you've killed him?" she asked simply.
+
+"We ain't killed him. We've just been teaching him a lesson," Dave
+explained. "Simon warned him not to come up--and we've had to talk to
+him a little--with fists and heels."
+
+Linda cried out then, one agonized syllable. She knew what fists and
+heels could do in the fights between the mountain men. They are as much
+weapons of torture as the claws and fangs of the Killer. She had an
+instant's dread picture of this strong man of hers lying maimed and
+broken, a battered, whimpering, ineffective thing in the moonlight of
+some distant hillside. The vision brought knowledge to her. Even more
+clearly than in the second of their kiss, before he had gone to see
+Hudson, she realized what an immutable part of her he was. She gazed
+with growing horror at Dave's leering face. "Where is he?" she asked.
+She remembered, with singular steadfastness, the pistol she had
+concealed in her own room.
+
+"I'll show you. If you want to get him in you'd better bring the old hag
+with you. It'll take two of you to carry him."
+
+"I'll come," the old woman said from across the shadowed room. She spoke
+with a curious breathlessness. "I'll go at once."
+
+The door closed behind the three of them, and they went out into the
+moonlit forest. Dave walked first. There was an unlooked-for eagerness
+in his motions, but Linda thought that she understood it. It was wholly
+characteristic of him that he should find a degenerate rapture in
+showing these two women the terrible handiwork of the Turners. He
+rejoiced in just this sort of cruelty. She had no suspicion that this
+excursion was only a pretext to get the two women away from the house,
+and that his eagerness arose from deeper causes. It was true that Dave
+exulted in the work, and strangely the fact that it was part of the plot
+against Bruce had been almost forgotten in the face of a greater
+emotion. He was alone in the darkness with Linda--except of course for a
+helpless old woman--and the command of Simon in regard to his attitude
+toward her seemed suddenly dim and far away. He led them over a hill,
+into the deeper forest.
+
+He walked swiftly, eagerly; the two women could hardly keep pace with
+him. He left the dim trail and skirted about the thickets. No cry for
+help could carry from this lonely place. No watchman on a hill could see
+what transpired in the heavy coverts.
+
+So intent was he that he quite failed to observe a singular little
+signal between old Elmira and Linda. The woman half turned about, giving
+the girl an instant's glimpse of something that she transferred from her
+breast to her sleeve. It was slender and of steel, and it caught the
+moonlight on its shining surface.
+
+The girl's eyes glittered when she beheld it. She nodded, scarcely
+perceptibly, and the strange file plunged deeper into the shadows.
+
+Fifteen minutes later Dave drew up to a halt in a little patch of
+moonlight, surrounded by a wall of low trees and brush.
+
+"There's more than one way to make a date for a walk with a pretty
+girl," he said.
+
+The girl stared coldly into his eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked.
+
+The man laughed harshly. "I mean that Bruce ain't got back yet--he's
+still on the other side of Little River, for all I know--"
+
+"Then why did you bring us here?"
+
+"Just to be sociable," Dave returned. "I'll tell you, Linda. I wanted to
+talk to you. I ain't been in favor of a lot of things Simon's been
+doing--to you and your people. I thought maybe you and I would like to
+be--friends."
+
+No one could mistake the emotion behind the strained tone, the peculiar
+languor in the furtive eyes. The girl drew back, shuddering. "I'm going
+back," she told him.
+
+"Wait. I'll take you back soon. Let's have a kiss and make friends. The
+old lady won't look--"
+
+He laughed again, a hoarse sound that rang far through the silences. He
+moved toward her, hands reaching. She backed away. Then she half-tripped
+over an outstretched root.
+
+The next instant she was in his arms, struggling against their steel.
+She didn't waste words in pleading. A sob caught at her throat, and she
+fought with all her strength against the drawn, nearing face. She had
+forgotten Elmira; in this dreadful moment of terror and danger the old
+woman's broken strength seemed too little to be of aid. And Dave thought
+her as helpless to oppose him as the tall pines that watched from above
+them.
+
+His wild laughter obscured the single sound that she made, a strange cry
+that seemed lacking in all human quality. Rather it was such a sound as
+a puma utters as it leaps upon its prey. It was the articulation of a
+whole life of hatred that had come to a crisis at last,--of deadly and
+terrible triumph after a whole decade of waiting. If Dave had discerned
+that cry in time he would have hurled Linda from his arms to leap into a
+position of defense. The desire for women in men goes down to the roots
+of the world, but self-preservation is a deeper instinct still.
+
+But he didn't hear it in time. Elmira had not struck with her knife. The
+distance was too far for that. But she swung her cane with all her
+force. The blow caught the man at the temple, his arms fell away from
+the girl's body, he staggered grotesquely in the carpet of pine needles.
+Then he fell face downward.
+
+"His belt, quick!" the woman cried. No longer was her voice that of
+decrepit age. The girl struggled with herself, wrenched back her
+self-control, and leaped to obey her aunt. They snatched the man's belt
+from about his waist, and the women locked it swiftly about his ankles.
+With strong, hard hands they drew his wrists back of him and tied them
+tight with the long bandana handkerchief he wore about his neck. They
+worked almost in silence, with incredible rapidity and deftness.
+
+The man was waking now, stirring in his unconsciousness, and swiftly the
+old woman cut the buckskin thongs from his tall logging boots. These
+also she twisted about the wrists, knotting them again and again, and
+pulling them so tight they were almost buried in the lean flesh. Then
+they turned him face upward to the moon.
+
+The two women stood an instant, breathing hard. "What now?" Linda asked.
+And a shiver of awe went over her at the sight of the woman's face.
+
+"Nothing more, Linda," she answered, in a distant voice. "Leave Dave
+Turner to me."
+
+It was a strange picture. Womanhood--the softness and tenderness which
+men have learned to associate with the name--seemed fallen away from
+Linda and Elmira. They were only avengers,--like the she-bear that
+fights for her cubs or the she-wolf that guards the lair. There was no
+more mercy in them than in the females of the lower species. The moon
+flooded the place with silver, the pines were dark and impassive as ever
+above them.
+
+Dave wakened. They saw him stir. They watched him try to draw his arms
+from behind him. It was just a faint, little-understanding pull at
+first. Then he wrenched and tugged with all his strength, flopping
+strangely in the dirt. The effort increased until it was some way
+suggestive of an animal in the death struggle,--a fur bearer dying in
+the trap.
+
+Terror was upon him. It was in his wild eyes and his moonlit face; it
+was in the desperation and frenzy of his struggles. And the two women
+saw it and smiled into each other's eyes.
+
+Slowly his efforts ceased. He lay still in the pine needles. He turned
+his head, first toward Linda, then to the inscrutable, dark face of the
+old woman. As understanding came to him, the cold drops emerged upon his
+swarthy skin.
+
+"Good God!" he asked. "What are you going to do?"
+
+"I'm going back," Linda answered. "You had some other purpose in
+bringing me out here--or you wouldn't have brought Elmira, too. I'm
+going back to wait for Bruce."
+
+"And you and I will linger here," Elmira told him. "We have many things
+to say to each other. We have many things to do. About my Abner--there
+are many things you'll want to hear of him."
+
+The last vestige of the man's spirit broke beneath the words. Abner had
+been old Elmira's son,--a youth who had laughed often, and the one hope
+of the old woman's declining years. And he had fallen before Dave's
+ambush in a half-forgotten fight of long years before.
+
+The man shivered in his bonds. Linda turned to go. The silence of the
+wilderness deepened about them. "Oh, Linda, Linda," the man called.
+"Don't leave me. Don't leave me here with her!" he pleaded.
+"Please--please don't leave me in this devil's power. Make her let me
+go."
+
+But Linda didn't seem to hear. The brush crackled and rustled; and the
+two--this dark-hearted man and the avenger--were left together.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The homeward journey over the ridges had meant only pleasure to Bruce.
+Every hour of it had brought a deeper and more intimate knowledge of the
+wilderness. The days had been full of little, nerve-tingling adventures,
+and the nights full of peace. And beyond all these, there was the hope
+of seeing Linda again at the end of the trail.
+
+Thoughts of her hardly ever left him throughout the long tramp. She had
+more than fulfilled every expectation. It was true that he had found no
+one of his own kin, as he had hoped; but the fact opened up new
+possibilities that would have been otherwise forbidden.
+
+It was strange how he remembered her kiss. He had known other kisses in
+his days--being a purely rational and healthy young man--but there had
+been nothing of immortality about them. Their warmth had died quickly,
+and they had been forgotten. They were just delights of moonlight nights
+and nothing more. But he would wake up from his dreams at night to feel
+Linda's kiss still upon his lips. To recall it brought a strange
+tenderness,--a softening of all the hard outlines of his picture of
+life. It changed his viewpoint; it brought him a knowledge of a joy and
+a gentleness that could exist even in this stern world of wilderness and
+pines. With her face lingering before his eyes, the ridges themselves
+seemed less stern and forbidding; there were softer messages in the
+wind's breath; the drama of the wild that went on about him seemed less
+remorseless and cruel.
+
+He remembered the touch of her hands. They had been so cool, so gentle.
+He remembered the changing lights in her dark eyes. Life had opened up
+new vistas to him. Instead of a stern battleground, he began to realize
+that it had a softer, gentler, kinder side,--a place where there could
+be love as well as hatred, peace as well as battle, cheery homes and
+firesides and pleasant ways and laughter instead of cold ways and lonely
+trails and empty hearts and grim thoughts. Perhaps, if all went well,
+tranquillity might come to him after all. Perhaps he might even know the
+tranquil spirit of the pines.
+
+These were mating days. It was true that the rutting season had not, in
+reality, commenced. The wolf pack had not yet gathered, and would not
+until after the heavy frosts. But the bucks had begun to rub the velvet
+from their horns so that they would be hard and sharp for the fights to
+come. And these would be savage battles--with death at the end of many
+of them. But perhaps the joys that would follow--the roving, mating days
+with the does--would more than make up for their pain. The trim females
+were seen less often with their fawns; and they seemed strangely
+restless and tremulous, perhaps wondering what fortune the fall would
+have for them in the way of a mate.
+
+The thought gave Bruce pleasure. He could picture the deer herd in the
+fall,--the proud buck in the lead, ready to fight all contenders, his
+harem of does, and what fawns and young bucks he permitted to follow
+him. They would make stealing journeys down to the foothills to avoid
+the snow, and all manner of pleasures would be theirs in the gentler
+temperatures of the lowlands. They would know crisp dawns and breathless
+nights, long runnings into the valleys, and to the does the realization
+of motherhood when the spring broke.
+
+But aside from his contemplations of Linda, the long tramp had many
+delights for him. He rejoiced in every manifestation of the wild life
+about him, whether it was a bushy-tailed old gray squirrel, watching him
+from a tree limb, a magpie trying its best to insult him, or the
+fleeting glimpse of a deer in the coverts. Once he saw the black form of
+Ashur the bear, mumbling and grunting as he searched under rotten logs
+for grubs. But he didn't see the Killer again. He didn't particularly
+care to do so.
+
+He kept his rifle ready during the day for game, but he shot only what
+he needed. He did not attempt to kill the deer. He knew that he would
+have no opportunity to care for the meat. But he did, occasionally,
+shoot the head off a cock-grouse at close range, and no chef of Paris
+could offer a more tempting dish than its flesh, rolled in flour and
+served up, fried brown, in bacon grease. It was mostly white meat,
+exceedingly tender, yet with the zest of wild game. But he dined on
+bacon exclusively one night because, after many misses at grouse, he
+declined to take the life of a gray squirrel that had perched in an oak
+tree above the trail. Someway, it seemed to be getting too much pleasure
+out of life for him to blast it with a rifle shot. A squirrel has only a
+few ounces of flesh, and the woods without them would be dull and inane
+indeed. Besides, they were bright-eyed, companionable people--dwellers
+of the wilderness even as Bruce--and their personality had already
+endeared itself to him.
+
+Once he startled a fawn almost out of its wits when he came upon it
+suddenly in a bend in the trail, and he shouted with delight as it
+bounded awkwardly away. Once a porcupine rattled its quills at him and
+tried to seem very ferocious. But it was all the most palpable of
+bluffs, for Urson, while particularly adept at defense, has no powers of
+offense whatever. He cannot move quickly. He can't shoot his spines, as
+the story-books say. He can only sit on the ground and erect them into a
+sort of suit of armor to repel attack. But Bruce knew enough not to
+attempt to stroke the creature. If he had done so, he would have spent
+the remainder of the season pulling out spines from the soft flesh of
+his hand.
+
+Urson was a patient, stupid, guileless creature, and he and Bruce had a
+strange communion together as they stood face to face on the trail.
+"You've got the right idea," Bruce told him. "To erect a wall around you
+and let 'em yell outside without giving them a thought. To stand firm,
+not to take part. You're a true son of the pines, Urson. Now let me
+past."
+
+But the idea was furthest from Urson's mind. He sat firm on the trail,
+hunched into a spiny ball. Instead of killing him with his rifle butt,
+as Dave would have done, Bruce laughed good-naturedly and went around
+him.
+
+Both days of the journey home he wakened sharply at dawn. The cool,
+morning hours were the best for travel. He would follow down the narrow,
+brown trail,--now through a heavy covert that rustled as the wild
+creatures sped from his path, now up a long ridge, now down into a
+still, dark glen, and sometimes into a strange, bleak place where the
+forest fire had swept. Every foot was a delight to him.
+
+He was of naturally strong physique, and although the days fatigued him
+unmercifully, he always wakened refreshed in the dawn. At noon he would
+stop to lunch, eating a few pieces of jerkey and frying a single
+flapjack in his skillet. He learned how to effect it quickly, first
+letting his fire burn down to coals. And usually, during the noon rest,
+he would practice with his rifle.
+
+He knew that if he were to fight the Turners, skill with a rifle was an
+absolute necessity; such skill as would have felled the grizzly with one
+shot instead of administering merely a flesh wound, accuracy to take off
+the head of a grouse at fifty yards; and at the same time, an ability to
+swing and aim the weapon in the shortest possible space of time. The
+only thing that retarded him was the realization that he must not waste
+too many cartridges. Elmira had brought him only a small supply.
+
+He would walk all afternoon--going somewhat easier and resting more
+often than in the morning; and these were the times that he appreciated
+a fragment of jerked venison. He would halt just before nightfall and
+make his camp.
+
+The first work was usually to strip a young fir tree of its young,
+slender branches. These, according to Linda's instructions, were laid on
+the ground, their stalks overlapping, and in a remarkably few minutes he
+could construct a bed as comfortable as a hair mattress. It was true
+that the work always came at an hour when most of all he wanted food and
+rest, but he knew that a restless night means quick fatigue the next
+day. Then he would clean his game and build his fire and cook his
+evening meal. Simple food had never tasted so good to him before. Bacon
+grease was his only flavor, but it had a zest that all the sauces and
+dressings of France could not approach. The jerkey was crisp and nutty;
+his flapjacks went directly to the spot where he desired them to go.
+
+But the best hour of all was after his meal, as he sat in the growing
+shadows with his pipe. It was always an hour of calm. The little,
+breathless noises of the wild people in the thickets; the gophers, to
+whose half blind eyes--used to the darkness of their underground
+passages--the firelight was almost blinding; the chipmunks, and even the
+larger creatures came clearest to him then and told him more. But they
+didn't frighten him. Ordinarily, he knew, the forest creatures of the
+Southern Oregon mountains mean and do no harm to lonely campers.
+Nevertheless, he kept fairly accurate track of his rifle. He had enough
+memory of the charge of the Killer to wish to do that. And he thought
+with some pleasure that he had a reserve arsenal,--Dave's thirty-thirty
+with five shells in its magazine.
+
+At this hour he felt the spirit of the pines as never before. He knew
+their great, brooding sorrow, their infinite wisdom, their inexpressible
+aloofness with which they kept watch over the wilderness. The smoke
+would drift about him in soothing clouds; the glow of the coals was red
+and warm over him. He could think then. Life revealed some of its lesser
+mysteries to him. And he began to glimpse the distant gleam of even
+greater truths, and sometimes it seemed to him that he could almost
+catch and hold them. Always it was some message that the pines were
+trying to tell him,--partly in words they made when their limbs rubbed
+together, partly in the nature of a great allegory of which their dark,
+impassive forms were the symbols. If he could only see clearly! But it
+seemed to him that passion blinded his eyes.
+
+"They talk only to the stars," Linda had said once of the pines. But he
+had no illusions about this talk of theirs. It was greater, more fraught
+with wisdom, than anything men might say together below them. He could
+imagine them telling high secrets that he himself could discern but
+dimly and could hardly understand. More and more he realized that the
+pines, like the stars, were living symbols of great powers who lived
+above the world, powers that would speak to men if they would but listen
+long and patiently enough, and in whose creed lay happiness.
+
+When the pipe was out he would go to his fragrant bed. The night hours
+would pass in a breath. And he would rise and go on in the crisp dawns.
+
+The last afternoon he traveled hard. He wanted to reach Linda's house
+before nightfall. But the trail was too long for that. The twilight
+fell, to find him still a weary two miles distant. And the way was quite
+dark when he plunged into the south pasture of the Ross estates.
+
+Half an hour later he was beneath the Sentinel Pine. He wondered why
+Linda was not waiting beneath it; in his fancy, he thought of it as
+being the ordained place for her. But perhaps she had merely failed to
+hear his footsteps. He called into the open door.
+
+"Linda," he said. "I've come back."
+
+No answer reached him. The words rang through the silent rooms and
+echoed back to him. He walked over the threshold.
+
+A chair in the front room was turned over. His heart leaped at the sight
+of it. "Linda," he called in alarm, "where are you? It's Bruce."
+
+He stood an instant listening, a great fear creeping over him. He called
+once more, first to Linda and then to the old woman. Then he leaped
+through the doorway.
+
+The kitchen was similarly deserted. From there he went to Linda's room.
+Her coat and hat lay on the bed, but there was no Linda to stretch her
+arms to him. He started to go out the way he had come, but went instead
+to his own room. A sheet of note-paper lay on the bed.
+
+It had been scrawled hurriedly; but although he had never received a
+written word from Linda he did not doubt but that it was her hand:
+
+     The Turners are coming--I caught a glimpse of them on the
+     ridge. There is no use of my trying to resist, so I'll wait for
+     them in the front room and maybe they won't find this note.
+     They will take me to Simon's house, and I know from its
+     structure that they will lock me in an interior room in the
+     East wing. Use the window on that side nearest the North
+     corner. My one hope is that you will come at once to save me.
+
+Bruce's eyes leaped over the page; then thrust it into his pocket. He
+slipped through the rear door of the house, into the shadows.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+As Bruce hurried up the hill toward the Ross estates, he made a swift
+calculation of the rifle shells in his pocket. The gun held six. He had
+perhaps fifteen others in his pockets, and he hadn't stopped to
+replenish them from the supply Elmira had brought. He hadn't brought
+Dave's rifle with him, but had left it with the remainder of his pack.
+He knew that the lighter he traveled the greater would be his chance of
+success.
+
+The note had explained the situation perfectly. Obviously the girl had
+written when the clan was closing about the house, and finding her in
+the front room, there had been no occasion to search the other rooms and
+thus discover it. The girl had kept her head even in that moment of
+crisis. A wave of admiration for her passed over him.
+
+And the little action had set an example for him. He knew that only
+rigid self-control and cool-headed strategy could achieve the thing he
+had set out to do. There must be no false motions, no missteps. He must
+put out of his mind all thought of what dreadful fate might have already
+come upon the girl; such fancies would cost him his grip upon his own
+faculties and lose him the power of clear thinking. His impulse was to
+storm the door, to pour his lead through the lighted windows; but such
+things could never take Linda out of Simon's hands. Only stealth and
+caution, not blind courage and frenzy, could serve her now. Such blind
+killing as his heart prompted had to wait for another time.
+
+Nevertheless, the stock of his rifle felt good in his hands. Perhaps
+there would be a running fight after he got the girl out of the house,
+and then his cartridges would be needed. There might even be a moment of
+close work with what guards the Turners had set over her. But the heavy
+stock, used like a club, would be most use to him then.
+
+He knew only the general direction of the Ross house where Simon lived.
+Linda had told him it rested upon the crest of a small hill, beyond a
+ridge of timber. The moonlight showed him a well-beaten trail, and he
+strode swiftly along it. For once, he gave no heed to the stirring
+forest life about him. When a dead log had fallen across his path, he
+swung over it and hastened on.
+
+He had a vague sense of familiarity with this winding trail. Perhaps he
+had toddled down it as a baby, perhaps his mother had carried him along
+it on a neighborly visit to the Rosses. He went over the hill and pushed
+his way to the edge of the timber. All at once the moon showed him the
+house.
+
+He couldn't mistake it, even at this distance. And to Bruce it had a
+singular effect of unreality. The mountain men did not ordinarily build
+homes of such dimensions. They were usually merely log cabins of two or
+three lower rooms and a garret to be reached with a ladder; or else, on
+the rough mountain highways, crude dwellings of unpainted frame. The
+ancestral home of the Rosses, however, had fully a dozen rooms, and it
+loomed to an incredible size in the mystery of the moonlight. He saw
+quaint gabled roofs and far-spreading wings. And it seemed more like a
+house of enchantment, a structure raised by the rubbing of a magic lamp,
+than the work of carpenters and masons.
+
+Probably its wild surroundings had a great deal to do with this effect.
+There were no roads leading to Trail's End. Material could not be
+carried over its winding trails except on pack animals. He had a
+realization of tremendous difficulties that had been conquered by
+tireless effort, of long months of unending toil, of exhaustless
+patience, and at the end,--a dream come true. All of its lumber had to
+be hewed from the forests about. Its stone had been quarried from the
+rock cliffs and hauled with infinite labor over the steep trails.
+
+He understood now why the Turners had coveted it. It seemed the acme of
+luxury to them. And more clearly than ever he understood why the Rosses
+had died, sooner than relinquish it, and why its usurpation by the
+Turners had left such a debt of hatred to Linda. It was such a house as
+men dream about, a place to bequeath to their children and to perpetuate
+their names. Built like a rock, it would stand through the decades, to
+pass from one generation to another,--an enduring monument to the strong
+thews of the men who had builded it. All men know that the love of home
+is one of the few great impulses that has made toward civilization, but
+by the same token it has been the cause of many wars. It was never an
+instinct of a nomadic people, and possibly in these latter days--days
+of apartments and flats and hotels--its hold is less. Perhaps the day is
+coming when this love will die in the land, but with it will die the
+strength to repel the heathen from our walls, and the land will not be
+worth living in, anyway. But it was not dead to the mountain people. No
+really primitive emotion ever is.
+
+Perhaps, after all, it is a question of the age-old longing for
+immortality, and therefore it must have its seat in a place higher than
+this world of death. Men know that when they walk no longer under the
+sun and the moon it is good to have certain monuments to keep their name
+alive, whether it be blocks of granite at the grave-head, or sons living
+in an ancestral home. The Rosses had known this instinct very well. As
+all men who are strong-thewed and of real natural virtue, they had known
+pride of race and name, and it had been a task worth while to build this
+stately house on their far-lying acres. They had given their fiber to it
+freely; no man who beheld the structure could doubt that fact. They had
+simply consecrated their lives to it; their one Work by which they could
+show to all who came after that by their own hands they had earned their
+right to live.
+
+They had been workers, these men; and there is no higher degree. But
+their achievements had been stolen from their hands. Bruce felt the real
+significance of his undertaking as never before.
+
+He saw the broad lands lying under the moon. There were hundreds of
+acres in alfalfa and clover to furnish hay for the winter feeding.
+There were wide, green pastures, ensilvered by the moon; and fields of
+corn laid out in even rows. The old appeal of the soil, an instinct that
+no person of Anglo-Saxon descent can ever completely escape, swept
+through him. They were worth fighting for, these fertile acres. The wind
+brought up the sweet breath of ripening hay.
+
+Not for nothing have a hundred generations of Anglo-Saxon people been
+tillers of the soil. They had left a love of it to Bruce. In a single
+flash of thought, even as he hastened toward the house where he supposed
+Linda was held prisoner, the ancient joy returned to him. He knew what
+it would be like to feel the earth's pulse through the handles of a
+plow, to behold the first start of green things in the spring and the
+golden ripening in fall; to watch the flocks through the breathless
+nights and the herds feeding on the distant hills.
+
+Bruce looked over the ground. He knew enough not to continue the trail
+farther. The space in front was bathed in moonlight, and he would make
+the best kind of target to any rifle-man watching from the windows of
+the house. He turned through the coverts, seeking the shadow of the
+forests at one side.
+
+By going in a quartering direction he was able to approach within two
+hundred yards of the house without emerging into the moonlight. At that
+point the real difficulty of the stalk began. He hovered in the shadows,
+then slipped one hundred feet farther to the trunk of a great oak tree.
+
+He could see the house much more plainly now. True, it had suffered
+neglect in the past twenty years; it needed painting and many of its
+windows were broken, but it was a magnificent old mansion even yet. It
+stood lost in its dreams in the moonlight; and if, as old stories say,
+houses have memories, this old structure was remembering certain tragic
+dramas that had waged within and about it in a long-ago day. Bruce
+rejoiced to see that there were no lights in the east wing of the house;
+the window that Linda had indicated in the note was just a black square
+on the moonlit wall.
+
+There was a neglected garden close to this wing of the house. Bruce
+could make out rose bushes, grown to brambles, tall, rank weeds, and
+heavy clumps of vines. If he could reach this spot in safety he could
+approach within a few feet of the house and still remain in cover. He
+went flat; then slowly crawled toward it.
+
+Once a light sprang up in a window near the front, and he pressed close
+to the earth. But in a moment it went away. He crept on. He didn't know
+when a watchman in one of the dark windows would discern his creeping
+figure. But he did know perfectly just what manner of greeting he might
+expect in this event. There would be a single little spurt of fire in
+the darkness, so small that probably his eyes would quite fail to catch
+it. If they did discern it, there would be no time for a message to be
+recorded in his brain. It would mean a swift and certain end of all
+messages. The Turners would lose no time in emptying their rifles at
+him, and there wouldn't be the slightest doubt about their hitting the
+mark. All the clan were expert shots and the range was close.
+
+The house was deeply silent. He felt a growing sense of awe. In a moment
+more, he slipped into the shadows of the neglected rose gardens.
+
+He lay quiet an instant, resting. He didn't wish to risk the success of
+his expedition by fatiguing himself now. He wanted his full strength and
+breath for any crisis that he should meet in the room where Linda was
+confined.
+
+Many times, he knew, skulking figures had been concealed in this garden.
+Probably the Turners, in the days of the blood-feud, had often waited in
+its shadows for a sight of some one of their enemies in a lighted
+window. Old ghosts dwelt in it; he could see their shadows waver out of
+the corner of his eyes. Or perhaps it was only the shadow of the
+brambles, blown by the wind.
+
+Once his heart leaped into his throat at a sharp crack of brush beside
+him; and he could scarcely restrain a muscular jerk that might have
+revealed his position. But when he turned his head he could see nothing
+but the coverts and the moon above them. A garden snake, or perhaps a
+blind mole, had made the sound.
+
+Four minutes later he was within one dozen feet of the designated
+window. There was a stretch of moonlight between, but he passed it
+quickly. And now he stood in bold relief against the moonlit house-wall.
+
+He was in perfectly plain sight of any one on the hill behind. Possibly
+his distant form might have been discerned from the window of one of the
+lesser houses occupied by Simon's kin. But he was too close to the wall
+to be visible from the windows of Simon's house, except by a deliberate
+scrutiny. And the window slipped up noiselessly in his hands.
+
+He was considerably surprised. He had expected this window to be locked.
+Some way, he felt less hopeful of success. He recalled in his mind the
+directions that Linda had left, wondering if he had come to the wrong
+window. But there was no chance of a mistake in this regard; it was the
+northernmost window in the east wing. However, she had said that she
+would be confined in an interior room, and possibly the Turners had seen
+no need of barriers other than its locked door. Probably they had not
+even anticipated that Bruce would attempt a rescue.
+
+He leaped lightly upward and slipped silently into the room. Except for
+the moonlit square on the floor it was quite in darkness. It seemed to
+him that even in the night hours over a camp fire he had never known
+such silence as this that pressed about him now.
+
+He stood a moment, hardly breathing. But he decided it was not best to
+strike a match. There were no enemies here, or they certainly would have
+accosted him when he raised the window; and a match might reveal his
+presence to some one in an adjoining room. He rested his hand against
+the wall, then moved slowly around the room. He knew that by this
+course he would soon encounter the door that led into the interior
+rooms.
+
+In a moment he found it. He stood waiting. He turned the knob gently;
+then softly pulled. But the door was locked.
+
+There was no sound now but the loud beating of his own heart. He could
+no longer hear the voices of the wind outside the open window. He
+wondered whether, should he hurl all his magnificent strength against
+the panels, he could break the lock; and if he did so, whether he could
+escape with the girl before he was shot down. But his hand, wandering
+over the lock, encountered the key.
+
+It was easy, after all. He turned the key. The door opened beneath his
+hand.
+
+If there had been a single ray of light under the door or through the
+keyhole, his course would have been quite different. He would have
+opened the door suddenly in that case, hoping to take by surprise
+whosoever of the clan were guarding Linda. To open a door slowly into a
+room full of enemies is only to give them plenty of time to cock their
+rifles. But in this case the room was in darkness, and all that he need
+fear was making a sudden sound. The opening slowly widened. Then he
+slipped through and stood ten breathless seconds in silence.
+
+"Linda," he whispered. He waited a long time for an answer. Then he
+stole farther into the room.
+
+"Linda," he said again. "It's Bruce. Are you here?"
+
+And in that unfathomable silence he heard a sound--a sound so dim and
+small that it only reached the frontier of hearing. It was a strange,
+whispering, eerie sound, and it filled the room like the faintest,
+almost imperceptible gust of wind. But there was no doubting its
+reality. And after one more instant in which his heart stood still, he
+knew what it was: the sound of suppressed breathing. A living creature
+occupied this place of darkness with him, and was either half-gagged by
+a handkerchief over the face or was trying to conceal its presence by
+muffling its breathing. "Linda," he said again.
+
+There was a strange response to the calling of that name. He heard no
+whispered answer. Instead, the door he had just passed through shut
+softly behind him.
+
+For a fleeting instant he hoped that the wind had blown it shut. For it
+is always the way of youth to hope,--as long as any hope is left. His
+heart leaped and he whirled to face it. Then he heard the unmistakable
+sound of a bolt being slid into place.
+
+Some little space of time followed in silence. He struggled with growing
+horror, and time seemed limitless. Then a strong man laughed grimly in
+the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+As Bruce waited, his eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. He
+began to see the dim outlines of his fellow occupants of the
+room,--fully seven brawny men seated in chairs about the walls. "Let's
+hear you drop your rifle," one of them said.
+
+Bruce recognized the grim voice as Simon's,--heard on one occasion
+before. He let his rifle fall from his hands. He knew that only death
+would be the answer to any resistance to these men. Then Simon scratched
+a match, and without looking at him, bent to touch it to the wick of the
+lamp.
+
+The tiny flame sputtered and flickered, filling the room with dancing
+shadows. Bruce looked about him. It was the same long, white-walled room
+that Dave and Simon had conversed in, after Elmira had first dispatched
+her message by Barney Wegan. Bruce knew that he faced the Turner clan at
+last.
+
+Simon sat beside the fireplace, the lamp at his elbow. As the wick
+caught, the light brightened and steadied, and Bruce could see plainly.
+On each side of him, in chairs about the walls, sat Simon's brothers and
+his blood relations that shared the estate with him. They were huge,
+gaunt men, most of them dark-bearded and sallow-skinned, and all of
+them regarded him with the same gaze of speculative interest.
+
+Bruce did not flinch before their gaze. He stood erect as he could,
+instinctively defiant.
+
+"Our guest is rather early," Simon began. "Dave hasn't come yet, and
+Dave is the principal witness."
+
+A bearded man across the room answered him. "But I guess we ain't goin'
+to let the prisoner go for lack of evidence."
+
+The circle laughed then,--a harsh sound that was not greatly different
+from the laughter of the coyotes on the sagebrush hills. But they
+sobered when they saw that Simon hadn't laughed. His dark eyes were
+glowing.
+
+"You, by no chance, met him on the way home, did you?" he asked.
+
+"I wish I had," Bruce replied. "But I didn't."
+
+"I don't understand your eagerness. You didn't seem overly eager to meet
+us."
+
+Bruce smiled wanly. These wilderness men regarded him with fresh
+interest. Somehow, they hadn't counted on his smiling. It was almost as
+if he were of the wilderness breed himself, instead of the son of
+cities. "I'm here, am I not?" he said. "It isn't as if you came to my
+house first."
+
+He regarded the clansmen again. He _had_ missed Dave's crafty face in
+the circle.
+
+"Yes, you're here," Simon confirmed. "And I'm wondering if you remember
+what I told you just as you left Martin's store that day--that I gave no
+man two warnings."
+
+"I remember that," Bruce replied. "I saw no reason for listening to you.
+I don't see any reason now, and I wouldn't if it wasn't for that row of
+guns."
+
+Simon studied his pale face. "Perhaps you'll be sorry you didn't listen,
+before this night is over. And there are many hours yet in it.
+Bruce--you came up here to these mountains to open old wounds."
+
+"Simon, I came up here to right wrongs--and you know it. If old wounds
+are opened, I can't help it."
+
+"And to-night," Simon went on as if he had not been answered, "you have
+come unbidden into our house. It would be all the evidence the courts
+would need, Bruce--that you crept into our house in the dead of night.
+If anything happened to you here, no word could be raised against us.
+You were a brave man, Bruce."
+
+"So I can suppose you left the note?"
+
+The circle laughed again, but Simon silenced them with a gesture.
+"You're very keen," he said.
+
+"Then where is Linda?" Bruce's eyes hardened. "I am more interested in
+her whereabouts than in this talk with you."
+
+"The last seen of her, she was going up a hill with Dave. When Dave
+returns you can ask him."
+
+The bearded man opposite from Simon uttered a short syllable of a laugh.
+"And it don't look like he's going to return," he said. The knowing
+look on his face was deeply abhorrent to Bruce. Curiously, Simon's face
+flushed, and he whirled in his chair.
+
+"Do you mean anything in particular, Old Bill?" he demanded.
+
+"It looks to me like maybe Dave's forgot a lot of things you told him,
+and he and Linda are havin' a little sparkin' time together out in the
+brush."
+
+The idea seemed to please the clan. But Simon's eyes glowed, and Bruce
+himself felt the beginnings of a blind rage that might, unless he held
+hard upon it, hurl him against their remorseless weapons. "I don't want
+any more such talk out of you, Old Bill," Simon reproved him, "and we've
+talked enough, anyway." His keen eyes studied Bruce's flushed face. "One
+of you give our guest a chair and fix him up in it with a thong. We
+don't want him flying off the coop and getting shot until we're done
+talking to him."
+
+One of the clansmen pushed a chair forward with sudden force, striking
+Bruce in the knees and almost knocking him over. The circle leered, and
+he sat down in it with as much ease as possible. Then one of the men
+looped his arms to the arms of the chair with thongs of buckskin.
+Another thong was tied about his ankles. Then the clansmen went back to
+their chairs.
+
+"I really don't see the use of all these dramatics," Bruce said coldly.
+"And I don't particularly like veiled threats. At present I seem to be
+in your hands."
+
+"You don't seem to be," Simon answered with reddening eyes. "You are."
+
+"I have no intention of saying I'm sorry I didn't heed the threats you
+gave me before--and as to those I've heard to-night--they're not going
+to do you any good, either. It is true that you found me in the house
+you occupy in the dead of night--but it isn't your house to start with.
+What a man seizes by murder isn't his."
+
+"What a man holds with a hard fist and his rifle--in these
+mountains--_is_ his," Simon contradicted him.
+
+"Besides, you got me here with a trick," Bruce went on without heeding
+him. "So don't pretend that any wickedness you do to-night was justified
+by my coming. You'll have to answer for it just the same."
+
+Simon leaned forward in his chair. His dark eyes glowed in the
+lamplight. "I've heard such talk as that before," he said. "I expect
+your own father talked like that a few times himself."
+
+The words seemed to strike straight home to the gathered Turners. The
+moment was breathless, weighted with suspense. All of them seemed
+straining in their chairs.
+
+Bruce's head bowed, but the veins stood out beneath the short hair on
+his temples, and his lips trembled when he answered. "That was a greater
+wickedness than anything--_anything_ you can do to-night. And you'll
+have to answer for it all the more."
+
+He spoke the last sentence with a calm assurance. Though spoken softly,
+the words rang clear. But the answer of the evil-hearted man before him
+was only a laugh.
+
+"And there's one thing more I want to make clear," Bruce went on in the
+strong voice of a man who had conquered his terror. And it was not
+because he did not realize his danger. He was in the hands of the
+Turners, and he knew that Simon had spoken certain words that, if for no
+other reason than his reputation with his followers, he would have to
+make good. Bruce knew that no moment of his life was ever fraught with
+greater peril. But the fact itself that there were no doors of escape
+open to him, and he was face to face with his destiny, steadied him all
+the more.
+
+The boy that had been wakened in his bed at home by the ring of the
+'phone bell had wholly vanished now. A man of the wild places had come
+instead, stern and courageous and unflinching.
+
+"Everything is tolerable clear to us already," Simon said, "except your
+sentence."
+
+"I want you to know that I refuse to be impressed with this judicial
+attitude of you and your blackguard followers," Bruce went on. "This
+gathering of the group of you doesn't make any evil that you do any less
+wrong, or the payment you'll have to make any less sure. It lies wholly
+in your power to kill me while I'm sitting here, and I haven't much hope
+but that you'll do it. But let me tell you this. A reign of bloodshed
+and crime can go on only so long. You've been kings up here, and you
+think the law can't reach you. But it will--believe me, it will."
+
+"And this was the man who was going to begin the blood-feud--already
+hollering about the law," Simon said to his followers. He turned to
+Bruce. "It's plain that Dave isn't going to come. I'll have to be the
+chief witness myself, after all. However, Dave told me all that I needed
+to know. The first question I have to ask of you, Folger, is the
+whereabouts of that agreement between your late lamented father and the
+late lamented Matthew Ross, according to what the trapper Hudson told
+you a few days ago."
+
+Bruce was strong enough to laugh in his bonds. "Up to this time I have
+given you and your murderous crowd credit for at least natural
+intelligence," he replied, "but I see I was mistaken--or you wouldn't
+expect an answer to that question."
+
+"Do you mean you don't know its whereabouts?"
+
+"I won't give you the satisfaction of knowing whether I know or not. I
+just refuse to answer."
+
+"I trust the ropes are tight enough about your wrists."
+
+"Plenty tight, thank you. They are cutting the flesh so it bleeds."
+
+"How would you like them some tighter?"
+
+"Pull them till they cut my arms off, and you won't get a civil answer
+out of me. In fact--" and the man's eyes blazed--"I'm tired of talking
+to this outlaw crowd. And the sooner you do what you're going to do, the
+better it will suit me."
+
+"We'll come to that shortly enough. Disregarding that for a moment--we
+understand that you want to open up the blood-feud again. Is that true?"
+
+Bruce made no answer, only gazed without flinching into his questioner's
+face.
+
+"That was what my brother Dave led me to understand," Simon went on, "so
+we've decided to let you have your way. It's open--it's been open since
+you came here. You disregarded the warning I gave--and men don't
+disregard my warnings twice. You threatened Dave with your rifle. This
+is a different land than you're used to, Bruce, and we do things our own
+way. You've hunted for trouble and now you've found it. Your father
+before you thought he could stand against us--but he's been lying still
+a long time. The Rosses thought so too. And it is part of our code never
+to take back a threat--but always to make it good."
+
+Bruce still sat with lowered head, seemingly not listening. The clansmen
+gazed at him, and a new, more deadly spirit was in the room. None of
+them smiled now; the whole circle of faces was dark and intent, their
+eyes glittered through narrowed lids, their lips set. The air was
+charged with suspense. The moment of crisis was near.
+
+Sometimes the men glanced at their leader's face, and what they saw
+there filled them with a grim and terrible eagerness. Simon was
+beginning to run true to form. His dark passions were slowly mastering
+him. For a moment they all sat as if entranced in a communion of
+cruelty, and to Bruce they seemed like a colony of spotted rattlesnakes
+such as sometimes hold their communions of hatred on the sun-blasted
+cliffs.
+
+All at once Simon laughed,--a sharp, hoarse sound that had, in its
+overtones, a note of madness. Every man in the room started. They seemed
+to have forgotten Bruce. They looked at their leader with a curious
+expectancy. They seemed to know that that wild laugh betokened but one
+thing--the impact of some terrible sort of inspiration.
+
+As they watched, they saw the idea take hold of him. The huge face
+darkened. His eyes seemed to smolder as he studied his huge hands. They
+understood, these wilderness men. They had seen their leader in such
+sessions before. A strange and grim idea had come to him; already he was
+feasting on its possibilities. It seemed to heat his blood and blur his
+vision.
+
+"We've decided to be merciful, after all," he said slowly. But neither
+Bruce nor the clansmen misunderstood him or were deceived. They only
+knew that these words were simply part of a deadly jest that in a moment
+all would understand. "Instead of filling you full of thirty-thirty
+bullets, as better men than you have been filled and what we _ought_ to
+do--we're just going to let you lay out all night--in the pasture--with
+your feet tied and your hands behind your back."
+
+No one relaxed. They listened, staring, for what would follow.
+
+"You may get a bit cold before morning," Simon went on, "but you're
+warmly dressed, and a little frost won't hurt you. And I've got the
+place all picked out for you. And we're even going to move something
+that's laying there so it will be more pleasant."
+
+Again he paused. Bruce looked up.
+
+"The thing that's lying there is a dead yearling calf, half ate up. It
+was killed last night by the Killer--the old grizzly that maybe you've
+heard of before. Some of the boys were going to wait in trees to-night
+by the carcass and shoot the Killer when he comes back after another
+meal--something that likely won't happen until about midnight if he runs
+true to form. But it won't be necessary now. We're going to haul the
+carcass away--down wind where he won't smell it. And we're going to
+leave you there in its place to explain to him what became of it."
+
+Bruce felt their glowing eyes upon him. Exultation was creeping over the
+clan; once more their leader had done himself proud. It was such
+suggestions as this that kept them in awe of him.
+
+And they thought they understood. They supposed that the night would be
+of the utter depths of terror to the tenderfoot from the cities, that
+the bear would sniff and wander about him, and perchance the man's hair
+would be turned quite white by morning. But being mountain men, they
+thought that the actual danger of attack was not great. They supposed
+that the inborn fear of men that all animals possess would keep him at a
+distance. And, if by any unlikely chance the theft of the beef-carcass
+should throw him into such a rage that he would charge Bruce, no harm
+in particular would be done. The man was a Folger, an enemy of the clan,
+and after once the telltale ropes were removed, no one would ask
+questions about the mutilated, broken thing that would be found next
+morning in the pasture. The story would carry down to the settlements
+merely as a fresh atrocity of the Killer, the last and greatest of the
+grizzlies.
+
+But they had no realization of the full dreadfulness of the plan. They
+hadn't heard the more recent history of the Killer,--the facts that
+Simon had just learned from Dave. Strange and dark conjecturing occupied
+Simon's mind, and he knew--in a moment's thought--that something more
+than terror and indignity might be Bruce's fate. But his passion was
+ripe for what might come. The few significant facts that they did not
+know were merely that the Killer had already found men out, that he had
+learned in an instant's meeting with Hudson beside Little River that men
+were no longer to be feared, and worse, that he was raving and deadly
+from the pain of the wound that Bruce's bullet had inflicted.
+
+The circle of faces faded out for both of them as the eyes of Bruce and
+Simon met and clashed and battled in the silent room.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+"If Simon Turner isn't a coward," Bruce said slowly to the clan, "he
+will give me a chance to fight him now."
+
+The room was wholly silent, and the clan turned expectant eyes to their
+leader. Simon scowled, but he knew he had to make answer. His eyes crept
+over Bruce's powerful body. "There is no obligation on my part to answer
+any challenges by you," he said. "You are a prisoner. But if you think
+you can sleep better in the pasture because of it, I'll let you have
+your chance. Take off his ropes."
+
+A knife slashed at his bonds. Simon stood up, and Bruce sprang from his
+chair like a wild cat, aiming his hardened knuckles straight for the
+leering lips. He made the attack with astonishing swiftness and power,
+and his intention was to deliver at least one terrific blow before Simon
+could get his arms up to defend himself. He had given the huge clan
+leader credit for tremendous physical strength, but he didn't think that
+the heavy body could move with real agility. But the great muscles
+seemed to snap into tension, the head ducked to one side, and his own
+huge fists struck out.
+
+If Bruce's blow had gone straight home where it had been aimed, Simon
+would have had nothing more to say for a few moments at least. When man
+was built of clay, Nature saw fit to leave him with certain
+imperfections lest he should think himself a god, and a weak spot in the
+region of the chin is one of them. The jaw bones carry the impact of a
+hard blow to certain nerve centers near the temples, and restful sleep
+comes quickly. There are never any ill effects, unless further damage is
+inflicted while unconsciousness is upon him. In spite of the fact that
+Simon got quickly into a position of defense, that first blow still had
+a fair chance of bringing the fight to an abrupt end. But still another
+consideration remained.
+
+Bruce's muscles had refused to respond. The leap had been powerful and
+swift yet wholly inaccurate. And the reason was just that his wrists and
+ankles had been numbed by the tight thongs by which they had been
+confined. Simon met the leap with a short, powerful blow into Bruce's
+face; and he reeled backward. The arms of the clansmen alone kept him
+from falling.
+
+The blow seemed to daze Bruce; and at first his only realization was
+that the room suddenly rang with harsh and grating laughter. Then
+Simon's words broke through it. "Put back the thongs," he ordered, "and
+go get your horses."
+
+Bruce was dimly aware of the falling of a silence, and then the arms of
+strong men half carrying him to the door. But he couldn't see plainly at
+first. The group stood in the shadow of the building; the moon was
+behind. He knew that the clan had brought their horses and were waiting
+for Simon's command. They loosened the ropes from about his ankles, and
+two of the clansmen swung him on to the back of a horse. Then they
+passed a rope under the horse's belly and tied his ankles anew.
+
+Simon gave a command, and the strange file started. The night air
+dispelled the mists in Bruce's brain, and full realization of all things
+came to him again. One of the men--he recognized him as Young Bill--led
+the horse on which he rode. Two of the clansmen rode in front, grim,
+silent, incredibly tall figures in the moonlight. The remainder rode
+immediately behind. Simon himself, bowed in his saddle, kept a little to
+one side. Their shadows were long and grotesque on the soft grass of the
+meadows, and the only sound was the soft footfall of their mounts.
+
+A full mile distant across the lush fields the cavalcade halted about a
+grotesque shadow in the grass. Bruce didn't have to look at it twice to
+know what it was: the half-devoured body of the yearling calf that had
+been the Killer's prey the night before. From thence on, their
+operations became as outlandish occurrences in a dream. They seemed to
+know just what to do. They took him from the saddle and bound his feet
+again; then laid him in the fragrant grass. They searched his pockets,
+taking the forged note that had led to his downfall. "It saves me a
+trip," Simon commented. He saw two of them lift the torn body of the
+animal on to the back of one of the horses, and he watched dully as the
+horse plunged and wheeled under the unfamiliar weight. He thought for an
+instant that it would step upon his own prone body, but he didn't
+flinch. Simon spoke in the silence, but his words seemed to come from
+far away.
+
+"Quiet that horse or kill him," he said softly. "You can't drag the
+carcass with your rope--the Killer would trace it if you did and maybe
+spoil the evening for Bruce."
+
+Strong arms sawed at the bits, and the horse quieted, trembling. For a
+moment Bruce saw their white moonlit faces as they stared down at him.
+
+"What about a gag?" one of them asked.
+
+"No. Let him shout if he likes. There is no one to hear him here."
+
+Then the tall men swung on their horses and headed back across the
+fields. Bruce watched them dully. Their forms grew constantly more dim,
+the sense of utter isolation increased. Then he saw the file pause, and
+it seemed to him that words, too faint for him to understand, reached
+him across the moonlit spaces. Then one of the party turned off toward
+the ridge.
+
+He guessed that it was Simon. He thought the man was riding toward
+Linda's home.
+
+He watched until the shadows had hidden them all. Then, straining
+upward, he tested his bonds. He tugged with the full strength of his
+arms, but there was not the play of an inch between his wrists. The
+Turners had done their work well. Not the slightest chance of escape lay
+in this quarter.
+
+He wrenched himself to one side, then looked about him. The fields
+stretched even and distant on one side, but he saw that the dark forest
+was but fifty yards away on the other. He listened; and the little
+night sounds reached him clearly. They had been sounds to rejoice in
+before,--impulses to delightful fancies of a fawn stealing through the
+thickets, or some of the Little People in their scurried, tremulous
+business of the night hours. But lying helpless at the edge of the
+forest, they were nothing to rejoice in now. He tried to shut his ears
+to them.
+
+He rolled again to his back and tried to find peace for his spirit in
+the stars. There were millions of them. They were larger and more bright
+than any time he had ever seen them. They stood in their high places,
+wholly indifferent and impassive to all the strife and confusion of the
+world below them; and Bruce wished that he could partake of their spirit
+enough so that he could rise above the fear and bitterness that had
+begun to oppress him. But only the pines could talk to them. Only the
+tall trees, stretching upward toward them, could reach into their
+mysterious calm.
+
+His eyes discerned a thin filament of cloud that had swept up from
+behind the ridges, and the sight recalled him to his own position with
+added force. The moonlight, soft as it was, had been a tremendous relief
+to him. At least, it would have enabled him to keep watch, and now he
+dreaded the fall of utter darkness more than he had ever dreaded
+anything in his life. It was an ancient instinct, coming straight from
+the young days of the world when nightfall brought the hunting creatures
+to the mouth of the cave, but he had never really experienced it before.
+If the clouds spread, the moon that was his last remaining solace would
+be obscured.
+
+He watched with growing horror the slow extension of the clouds. One by
+one the stars slipped beneath them. They drew slowly up to the moon and
+for a long minute seemed to hover. They were not heavy clouds, however,
+and in their thinner patches the stars looked dimly through. Finally the
+moon swept under them.
+
+The shadow fell around Bruce. For the first time he knew the age-old
+terror of the darkness. Dreadful memories arose within him,--vague
+things that had their font in the labyrinthal depths of the germ-plasm.
+It is a knowledge that no man, with the weapons of the twentieth century
+in his hands and in the glow of that great symbol of domain, the camp
+fire, can really possess; but here, bound hand and foot in the darkness,
+full understanding came to Bruce. He no longer knew himself as one of a
+dominant breed, master of all the wild things in the world. He was
+simply a living creature in a grim and unconquered world, alone and
+helpless in the terror of the darkness.
+
+The moonlight alternately grew and died as the moon passed in and out of
+the heavier cloud patches. Winds must have been blowing in the high
+lanes of the air, but there was no breath of them where Bruce lay. The
+forests were silent, and the little rustlings and stirrings that reached
+him from time to time only seemed to accentuate the quiet.
+
+He speculated on how many hours had passed. He wondered if he could dare
+to hope that midnight had already gone by and, through some divergence
+from wilderness customs, the grizzly had failed to return to his feast.
+It seemed endless hours since he had reentered the empty rooms of
+Linda's home. A wave of hope crept through the whole hydraulic system of
+his veins. And then, as a sudden sound reached him from the forests at
+one side, that bright wave of hope turned black, receded, and left only
+despair.
+
+He heard the sound but dimly. In fact, except for his straining with
+every nerve alert, he might not have heard it at all. Nevertheless,
+distance alone had dimmed it; it had been a large sound to start with.
+So far had it come that only a scratch on the eardrums was left of it;
+but there was no chance to misunderstand it. It cracked out to him
+through the unfathomable silence, and all the elements by which he might
+recognize it were distinct. It was the noise of a heavy thicket being
+broken down and parted before an enormous body.
+
+He waited, scarcely breathing, trying to tell himself he had been
+mistaken. But a wiser, calmer self deep within him would not accept the
+lie. He listened, straining. Then he heard the sound again.
+
+Whoever came toward him had passed the heavy brush by now. The sounds
+that reached him were just faint and intermittent whispers,--first of a
+twig cracking beneath a heavy foot, then the rattle of two pebbles
+knocked together. Long moments of utter silence would ensue between, in
+which he could hear the steady drum of his heart in his breast and the
+long roll of his blood in his veins. The shadows grew and deepened and
+faded and grew again, as the moon passed from cloud to cloud.
+
+The limbs of a young fir tree rustled and whispered as something brushed
+against them. Leaves flicked together, and once a heavy limb popped like
+a distant small-calibered rifle as a great weight broke it in two. Then,
+as if the gods of the wilderness were using all their ingenuity to
+torture him, the silence closed down deeper than ever before.
+
+It lasted so long that he began to hope again. Perhaps the sounds had
+been made by a deer stealing on its way to feed in the pastures. Yet he
+knew the step had been too heavy for anything but the largest deer, and
+their way was to encircle a thicket rather than crash through it. The
+deer make it their business always to go with silence in these hours
+when the beasts of prey are abroad, and usually a beetle in the leaves
+makes more noise than they. It might have been the step of one of the
+small, black bears--a harmless and friendly wilderness dweller. Yet the
+impression lingered and strengthened that only some great hunter, a
+beast who feared neither other beasts nor men, had been steadily coming
+toward him through the forest. In the long silence that ensued Bruce
+began to hope that the animal had turned off.
+
+At that instant the moon slipped under a particularly heavy fragment of
+cloud, and deep darkness settled over him. Even his white face was no
+longer discernible in the dusk. He lay scarcely breathing, trying to
+fight down his growing terror.
+
+This silence could mean but one of two things. One of them was that the
+creature who had made the sounds had turned off on one of the many
+intersecting game trails that wind through the forest. This was his
+hope. The alternative was one of despair. It was simply that the
+creature had detected his presence and was stalking him in silence
+through the shadows.
+
+He thought that the light would never come. He strained again at his
+ropes. The dark cloud swept on; and the moonlight, silver and bright,
+broke over the scene.
+
+The forest stood once more in sharp silhouette against the sky. The moon
+stood high above the tapering tops of the pines. He studied with
+straining eyes the dark fringe of shadows one hundred feet distant. And
+at first he could see only the irregularities cast by the young trees,
+the firs between which lay the brush coverts.
+
+Then he detected a strange variation in the dark border of shadows. It
+held his gaze, and its outlines slowly strengthened. So still it stood,
+so seemingly a natural shadow that some irregularly shaped tree had
+cast, that his eyes refused to recognize it. But in an instant more he
+knew the truth.
+
+The shadow was that of a great beast that had stalked him clear to the
+border of the moonlight. The Killer had come for his dead.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+When Linda returned home the events of the night partook even of a
+greater mystery. The front door was open, and she found plenty of
+evidence that Bruce had returned from his journey. In the center of the
+room lay his pack, a rifle slanting across it.
+
+At first she did not notice the gun in particular. She supposed it was
+Bruce's weapon and that he had come in, dropped his luggage, and was at
+present somewhere in the house. It was true that one chair was upset,
+but except for an instant's start she gave no thought to it. She thought
+that he would probably go to the kitchen first for a bite to eat. He was
+not in this room, however, nor had the lamp been lighted.
+
+Her next idea was that Bruce, tired out, had gone to bed. She went back
+softly to the front room, intending not to disturb him. Once more she
+noticed the upset chair. The longer she regarded it, the more of a
+puzzle it became. She moved over toward the pack and looked casually at
+the rifle. In an instant more it was in her hands.
+
+She saw at once that it was not Bruce's gun. The action, make, and
+caliber were different. She was not a rifle-woman, and the little
+shooting she had done had been with a pistol; but even a layman could
+tell this much. Besides, it had certain peculiar notches on the stock
+that the gun Elmira had furnished Bruce did not have.
+
+She stood a moment in thought. The problem offered no ray of light. She
+considered what Bruce's first action would have been, on returning to
+the house to find her absent. Possibly he had gone in search of her. She
+turned and went to the door of his bedroom.
+
+She knocked on it softly. "Are you there, Bruce?" she called.
+
+No answer returned to her. The rooms, in fact, were deeply silent. She
+tried the door and found it unlocked. The room had not been occupied.
+
+Thoroughly alarmed, she went back into the front room and tried to
+decipher the mystery of the strange weapon. She couldn't conceive of any
+possibility whereby Bruce would exchange his father's trusted gun for
+this. Possibly it was an extra weapon that he had procured on his
+journey. And since no possible gain would come of her going out into the
+forests to seek him, she sat down to wait for his return. She knew that
+if she did start out he might easily return in her absence and be
+further alarmed.
+
+The moments dragged by and her apprehension grew. She took the rifle in
+her hands and, slipping the lever part way back, looked to see if there
+were a cartridge in the barrel. She saw a glitter of brass, and it gave
+her a measure of assurance. She had a pistol in her own room--a weapon
+that Elmira had procured, years before, from a passing sportsman--and
+for a moment she considered getting it also. She understood its action
+better and would probably be more efficient with it if the need arose,
+but for certain never-to-be-forgotten reasons she wished to keep this
+weapon until the moment of utmost need.
+
+Her whole stock of pistol cartridges consisted of six--completely
+filling the magazine of the pistol. Closely watched by the Turners, she
+had been unable to procure more. Many a dreadful night these six little
+cylinders of brass had been a tremendous consolation to her. They had
+been her sole defense, and she knew that in the final emergency she
+could use them to deadly effect.
+
+Linda was a girl who had always looked her situations in the face. She
+was not one to flinch from the truth and with false optimism disbelieve
+it. She had the courage of many generations of frontiersmen and
+woodsmen, and she had their vision too. She knew these mountain realms;
+better still she understood the dark passions of Simon and his
+followers, and this little half-pound of steel and wood with its brass
+shells might mean, in the dreadful last moment of despair, deliverance
+from them. It might mean escape for herself when all other ways were cut
+off. In this wild land, far from the reaches of law and without allies
+except for a decrepit old woman, the pistol and its deadly loads had
+been her greatest solace.
+
+But she relied on the rifle now. And sitting in the shadow, she kept
+watch over the moonlit ridge.
+
+The hours passed, and the clouds were starting up from the horizon when
+she thought she saw Bruce returning. A tall form came swinging toward
+her, over the little trail that led between the tree trunks. She peered
+intently. And in one instant more she knew that the approaching figure
+was not Bruce, but the man she most feared of anyone on earth, Simon
+Turner.
+
+She knew him by his great form, his swinging stride. Her thoughts came
+clear and true. It was obvious that his was no mission of stealth. He
+was coming boldly, freely, not furtively; and he must have known that he
+presented a perfect rifle target from the windows. Nevertheless, it is
+well to be prepared for emergencies. If life in the mountains teaches
+anything, it teaches that. She took the rifle and laid it behind a
+little desk, out of sight. Then she went to the door.
+
+"I want to come in, Linda," Simon told her.
+
+"I told you long ago you couldn't come to this house," Linda answered
+through the panels. "I want you to go away."
+
+Simon laughed softly. "You'd better let me in. I've brought word of the
+child you took to raise. You know who I mean."
+
+Yes, Linda knew. "Do you mean Bruce?" she asked. "I let Dave in to-night
+on the same pretext. Don't expect me to be caught twice by the same
+lie."
+
+"Dave? Where is Dave?" The fact was that the whereabouts of his brother
+had suddenly become considerable of a mystery to Simon. All the way
+from the pasture where he had left his clan he had been having black
+pictures of Dave. He had thought about him and Linda out in the darkness
+together, and his heart had seemed to smolder and burn with jealousy in
+his breast. It had been a great relief to him to find her in the house.
+
+"I wonder--where he is by now," Linda answered in a strange voice. "No
+one in this world can answer that question, Simon. Tell me what you
+want."
+
+She opened the door. She couldn't bear to show fear of this man. And she
+knew that an appearance of courage, at least, was the wisest course.
+
+"No matter about him now. I want to talk to you on business. If I had
+meant rough measures, I wouldn't have come alone."
+
+"No," Linda scorned. "You would have brought your whole murdering band
+with you. The Turners believe in overwhelming numbers."
+
+The words stung him but he smiled grimly into her face. "I've come in
+peace, Linda," he said, more gently. "I've come to give you a last
+chance to make friends."
+
+He walked past her into the room. He straightened the chair that had
+been upset, smiling strangely the while, and sat down in it.
+
+"Then tell me what you have to tell me," she said. "I'm in a hurry to go
+to bed--and this really isn't the hour for calls."
+
+He looked a long time into her face. She found it hard to hold her own
+gaze. Many things could be doubted about this man, but his power and
+his courage were not among them. The smile died from his lips, the
+lines deepened on his face. She realized as never before the tempestuous
+passions and unfathomable intensity of his nature.
+
+"We've never been good friends," Simon went on slowly.
+
+"We never could be," the girl answered. "We've stood for different
+things."
+
+"At first my efforts to make friends were just--to win you over to our
+side. It didn't work--all it did was to waken other desires in
+me--desires that perhaps have come to mean more than the possession of
+the lands. You know what they are. You've always known--that any time
+you wished--you could come and rule my house."
+
+She nodded. She knew that she had won, against her will, the strange,
+somber love of this mighty man. She had known it for months.
+
+"As my wife--don't make any mistake about that. Linda, I'm a stern, hard
+man. I've never known how to woo. I don't know that I want to know how,
+the way it is done by weaker men. It has never been my way to ask for
+what I wanted. But sometimes it seems to me that if I'd been a little
+more gentle--not so masterful and so relentless--that I'd won you long
+ago."
+
+Linda looked up bravely into his face. "No, Simon. You could have
+never--never won me! Oh, can't you see--even in this awful place a woman
+wants something more than just brute strength and determination. Every
+woman prays to find strength in the man she loves--but it isn't the
+kind that you have, the kind that makes your men grovel before you, and
+makes me tremble when I'm talking to you. It's a big, calm
+strength--and I can't tell you what it is. It's something the pines
+have, maybe--strength not to yield to the passions, but to restrain, not
+to be afraid of, but to cling to--to stand upright and honorable and
+manly, and make a woman strong just to see it in the man she loves."
+
+He listened gravely. Her cheeks blazed. It was a strange scene--the
+silent room, the implacable foes, the breathless suspense, the prophecy
+and inspiration in her tones.
+
+"Perhaps I should have been more gentle," he admitted. "I might have
+forgotten--for a little while--this surging, irresistible impulse in my
+muscles--and tried just to woo you, gently and humbly. But it's too late
+now. I'm not a fool. I can't expect you to begin at the beginning. I can
+only go on in my own way--my hard, remorseless, ruthless way.
+
+"It isn't every man who is brave enough to see what he wants and knock
+away all obstacles to get it," he went on. "Put that bravery to my
+credit. To pay no attention to methods, only to look forward to the
+result. That has been my creed. It is my creed now. Many less brave men
+would fear your hatred--but I don't fear it as long as I possess what I
+go after and a hope that I can get you over it. Many of my own brothers
+hate me, but yet I don't care as long as they do my will. No matter how
+much you scorn it, this bravery has always got me what I wanted, and it
+will get me what I want now."
+
+The high color died in her face. She wondered if the final emergency had
+come at last.
+
+"I've come to make a bargain. You can take it or you can refuse. On one
+side is the end of all this conflict, to be my wife, to have what you
+want--bought by the rich return from my thousands of acres. And I love
+you, Linda. You know that."
+
+The man spoke the truth. His terrible, dark love was all over him--in
+his glowing eyes, in his drawn, deeply-lined face.
+
+"In time, when you come around to my way of thinking, you'll love me. If
+you refuse--this last time--I've got to take other ways. On that side is
+defeat for you--as sure as day. The time is almost up when the title to
+those lands is secure. Bruce is in our hands--"
+
+She got up, white-faced. "Bruce--?"
+
+He arose too. "Yes! Did you think he could stand against us? I'll show
+him to you in the morning. To-night he's paying the price for ever
+daring to oppose my will."
+
+She turned imploring eyes. He saw them, and perhaps--far distant--he saw
+the light of triumph too. A grim smile came to his lips.
+
+"Simon," she cried. "Have mercy."
+
+The word surprised him. It was the first time she had ever asked this
+man for mercy. "Then you surrender--?"
+
+"Simon, listen to me," she begged. "Let him go--and I won't even try to
+fight you any more. I'll let you keep those lands and never try any more
+to make you give them up. You and your brothers can keep them forever,
+and we won't try to get revenge on you either. He and I will go away."
+
+He gazed at her in deepening wonderment. For the moment, his mind
+refused to accept the truth. He only knew that since he had faced her
+before, some new, great strength had come to her,--that a power was in
+her life that would make her forego all the long dream of her days.
+
+He had known perfectly the call of the blood in her. He had understood
+her hatred of the Turners, he could hate in the same way himself. He
+realized her love for her father's home and how she had dreamed of
+expelling its usurpers. Yet she was willing to renounce it all. The
+power that had come to her was one that he, a man whose code of life was
+no less cruel and remorseless than that of the Killer himself, could not
+understand.
+
+"But why?" he demanded. "Why are you willing to do all this for him?"
+
+"Why?" she echoed. Once more the luster was in her dark eyes. "I suppose
+it is because--I love him."
+
+He looked at her with slowly darkening face. Passion welled within him.
+An oath dropped from his lips, blasphemous, more savage than any
+wilderness voice. Then he raised his arm and struck her tender flesh.
+
+He struck her breast. The brutality of the man stood forth at last. No
+picture that all the dreadful dramas of the wild could portray was more
+terrible than this. The girl cried out, reeled and fell fainting from
+the pain, and with smoldering eyes he gazed at her unmoved. Then he
+turned out of the door.
+
+But the curtain of this drama in the mountain home had not yet rung
+down. Half-unconscious, she listened to his steps. He was out in the
+moonlight, vanishing among the trees. Strange fancies swept her, all in
+the smallest fraction of an instant, and a voice spoke clearly. With all
+the strength of her will she dispelled the mists of dawning
+unconsciousness that the pain had wrought and crept swiftly to the
+little desk placed against the wall. Her hand fumbled in the shadow
+behind it and brought out a glittering rifle. Then she crept to the open
+doorway.
+
+Lying on the floor, she raised the weapon to her shoulder. Her thumb
+pressed back, strong and unfaltering, against the hammer; and she heard
+it click as it sprung into place. Then she looked along the barrel until
+she saw the swinging form of Simon through the sights.
+
+There was no remorse in that cold gaze of hers. The wings of death
+hovered over the man, ready to swoop down. Her fingers curled tighter
+about the trigger. One ounce more pressure, and Simon's trail of
+wickedness and bloodshed would have come to an end at last. But at that
+instant her eyes widened with the dawn of an idea.
+
+She knew this man. She knew the hatred that was upon him. And she
+realized, as if by an inspiration from on High, that before he went to
+his house and to sleep he would go once more into the presence of Bruce,
+confined somewhere among these ridges and suffering the punishment of
+having opposed his will. Simon would want one look to see how his plan
+was getting on; perhaps he would want to utter one taunting word. And
+Linda saw her chance.
+
+She started to creep out of the door. Then she turned back, crawled
+until she was no longer revealed in the silhouette of the lighted
+doorway, and got swiftly to her feet. She dropped the rifle and darted
+into her own room. There she procured a weapon that she trusted more,
+her little pistol, loaded with six cartridges.
+
+If she had understood the real nature of the danger that Bruce faced she
+would have retained the rifle. It shot with many times the smashing
+power of the little gun, and at long range was many times as accurate,
+but even it would have seemed an ineffective defense against such an
+enemy as was even now creeping toward Bruce's body. But she knew that in
+a crisis, against such of the Turners as she thought she might have to
+face, it would serve her much better than the more awkward, heavier
+weapon. Besides, she knew how to wield it, and all her life she had kept
+it for just such an emergency.
+
+The pain of the blow was quite gone now, except for a strange sickness
+that had encompassed her. But she was never colder of nerve and surer
+of muscle. Cunningly she lay down again before she crept through the
+door, so that if Simon chanced to look about he would fail to see that
+she followed him. She crept to the thickets, then stood up. Three
+hundred yards down the slope she could see Simon's dimming figure in the
+moonlight, and swiftly she sped after him.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+The shadow that Bruce saw at the edge of the forest could not be
+mistaken as to identity. The hopes that he had held before--that this
+stalking figure might be that of a deer or an elk--could no longer be
+entertained. Men as a rule do not love the wild and wailing sobs of a
+coyote, as he looks down upon a camp fire from the ridge above. Sleep
+does not come easily when a gaunt wolf walks in a slow, inquisitive
+circle about the pallet, scarcely a leaf rustling beneath his feet. And
+a few times, in the history of the frontier, men have had queer
+tinglings and creepings in the scalp when they have happened to glance
+over their shoulders and see the eyes of a great, tawny puma, glowing an
+odd blue in the firelight. Yet Bruce would have had any one of these, or
+all three together, in preference to the Killer.
+
+The reason was extremely simple. No words have ever been capable of
+expressing the depths of cowardice of which a coyote is capable. He will
+whine and weep about a camp, like a soul lost between two worlds, but if
+he is in his right mind he would have each one of his gray hairs plucked
+out, one by one, rather than attack a man. The cunning breed to which he
+belongs has found out that it doesn't pay. The wolf is sometimes
+disquietingly brave when he is fortified by his pack brethren in the
+winter, but in such a season as this he is particularly careful to keep
+out of the sight of man. And the Tawny One himself, white-fanged and
+long-clawed and powerful as he is, never gets farther than certain
+dreadful, speculative dreams.
+
+But none of these things was true of the Killer. He had already shown
+his scorn of men. His very stride showed that he feared no living
+creature that shared the forest with him. In fact, he considered himself
+the forest master. The bear is never a particularly timid animal, and
+whatever timidity the Killer possessed was as utterly gone as
+yesterday's daylight.
+
+Bruce watched him with unwinking eyes. The shadow wavered ever so
+slightly, as the Killer turned his head this way and that. But except to
+follow it with his eyes, Bruce made no motion. The inner guardians of a
+man's life--voices that are more to be relied upon than the promptings
+of any conscious knowledge--had already told him what to do. These
+monitors had the wisdom of the pines themselves, and they had revealed
+to him his one hope. It was just to lie still, without a twitch of a
+muscle. It might be that the Killer would fail to discern his outline.
+Bruce had no conscious knowledge, as yet, that it is movement rather
+than form to which the eyes of the wild creatures are most receptive.
+But he acted upon that fact now as if by instinct. He was not lying in
+quite the exact spot where the Killer had left his dead the preceding
+night, and possibly his outline was not enough like it to attract the
+grizzly's attention. Besides, in the intermittent light, it was wholly
+possible that the grizzly would try to find the remains of his feast by
+smell alone; and if this were lacking, and Bruce made no movements to
+attract his attention, he might wander away in search of other game.
+
+For the first time in his life, Bruce knew Fear as it really was. It is
+a knowledge that few dwellers in cities can possibly have; and so few
+times has it really been experienced in these days of civilization that
+men have mostly forgotten what it is like. If they experience it at all,
+it is usually only in a dream that arises from the germ-plasm,--a
+nightmare to paralyze the muscles and chill the heart and freeze a man
+in his bed. The moon was strange and white as it slipped in and out of
+the clouds, and the forest, mysterious as Death itself, lightened and
+darkened alternately with a strange effect of unreality; but for all
+that, Bruce could not make himself believe that this was just a dream.
+The dreadful reality remained that the Killer, whose name and works he
+knew, was even now investigating him from the shadows one hundred feet
+away.
+
+The fear that came to him was that of the young world,--fear without
+recompense, direct and primitive fear that grew on him like a sickness.
+It was the fear that the deer knew as they crept down their dusky trails
+at night; it was the fear of darkness and silence and pain and heaven
+knows what cruelty that would be visited upon him by those terrible,
+rending fangs and claws. It was the fear that can be heard in the pack
+song in the dreadful winter season, and that can be felt in strange
+overtones, in the sobbing wail of despair that the coyote utters in the
+half-darkness. He had been afraid for his life every moment he was in
+the hands of the Turners. He knew that if he survived this night, he
+would have to face death again. He had no hopes of deliverance
+altogether. But the Turners were men, and they worked with knife blade
+and bullet, not rending fang and claw. He could face men bravely; but it
+was hard to keep a strong heart in the face of this ancient fear of
+beasts.
+
+The Killer seemed disturbed and moved slowly along the edge of the
+moonlight. Bruce could trace his movements by the irregularity in the
+line of shadows. He seemed to be moving more cautiously than ever, now.
+Bruce could not hear the slightest sound.
+
+For an instant Bruce had an exultant hope that the bear would continue
+on down the edge of the forest and leave him; and his heart stood still
+as the great beast paused, sniffing. But some smell in the air seemed to
+reach him, and he came stealing back.
+
+In reality, the Killer was puzzled. He had come to this place straight
+through the forest with the expectation that food--flesh to tear with
+his fangs--would be waiting for him. Perhaps he had no actual memory of
+killing the calf the night before. Possibly it was only instinct, not
+conscious intelligence, that brought him back to what was left of his
+feast the preceding night. And now, as he waited at the border of the
+darkness, he knew that a strange change had taken place. And the Killer
+did not like strangeness.
+
+The smell that he had expected had dimmed to such an extent that it
+promoted no muscular impulse. Perhaps it was only obliterated by a
+stranger smell,--one that was vaguely familiar and wakened a slow,
+brooding anger in his great beast's heart.
+
+He was not timid; yet he retained some of his natural caution and
+remained in the gloom while he made his investigations. Probably it was
+a hunting instinct alone. He crept slowly up and down the border of
+moonlight, and his anger seemed to grow and deepen within him. He felt
+dimly that he had been cheated out of his meal. And once before he had
+been similarly cheated; but there had been singular triumph at the end
+of that experience.
+
+All at once a movement, far across the pasture, caught his attention.
+Remote as it was, he identified the tall form at once; it was just such
+a creature as he had blasted with one blow a day or two before. But it
+dimmed quickly in the darkness. It seemed only that some one had come,
+taken one glance at the drama at the edge of the forest, and had
+departed. Bruce himself had not seen the figure; and perhaps it was the
+mercy of Fate--not usually merciful--that he did not. He might have been
+caused to hope again, only to know a deeper despair when the man left
+him without giving aid. For the tall form had been that of Simon coming,
+as Linda had anticipated, for a moment's inspection of his handiwork.
+And seeing that it was good, he had departed again.
+
+The grizzly watched him go, then turned back to his questioning regard
+of the strange, dark figure that lay so prone in the grass in front. The
+darkness dropped over him as the moon went behind a heavy patch of
+cloud.
+
+And in that moment of darkness, the Killer understood. He remembered
+now. Possibly the upright form of Simon had suggested it to him;
+possibly the wind had only blown straighter and thus permitted him to
+identify the troubling smells. All at once a memory flashed over
+him,--of a scene in a distant glen, and similar tall figures that tried
+to drive him from his food. He had charged then, struck once, and one of
+the forms had lain very still. He remembered the pungent, maddening odor
+that had reached him after his blow had gone home. Most clearly of all,
+he remembered how his fangs had struck and sunk.
+
+He knew this strange shadow now. It was just another of that tall breed
+he had learned to hate, and it was simply lying prone as his foe had
+done after the charge beside Little River. In fact, the still-lying form
+recalled the other occasion with particular vividness. The excitement
+that he had felt before returned to him now; he remembered his
+disappointment when the whistling bullets from the hillside above had
+driven him from his dead. But there were no whistling bullets now.
+Except for them, there would have been further rapture beside that
+stream; but he might have it now.
+
+His fangs had sunk home just once, before, and his blood leaped as he
+recalled the passion he had felt. The old hunting madness came back to
+him. It was the fair game, this that lay so still in the grass, just as
+the body of the calf had been and just as the warm body of Hudson in the
+distant glen.
+
+The wound at his side gave him a twinge of pain. It served to make his
+memories all the clearer. The lurid lights grew in his eyes. Rage swept
+over him.
+
+But he didn't charge blindly. He retained enough of his hunting caution
+to know that to stalk was the proper course. It was true that there was
+no shrubbery to hide him, yet in his time he had made successful stalks
+in the open, even upon deer. He moved farther out from the edge of the
+forest.
+
+At that instant the moon came out and revealed him, all too vividly, to
+Bruce. The Killer's great gray figure in the silver light was creeping
+toward him across the silvered grass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Linda left her house, her first realization was the need of
+caution. It would not do to let Simon see her. And she knew that only
+her long training in the hills, her practice in climbing the winding
+trails, would enable her to keep pace with the fast-walking man without
+being seen.
+
+In her concern for Bruce, she had completely forgotten the events of the
+earlier part of the evening. Wild and stirring though they were, they
+now seemed to her as incidents of remote years, nothing to be
+remembered in this hour of crisis. But she remembered them vividly when,
+two hundred yards from the house, she saw two strange figures coming
+toward her between the moonlit tree trunks.
+
+There was very little of reality about either. The foremost figure was
+bent and strange, but she knew that it could be no one but Elmira. The
+second, however--half-obscured behind her--offered no interpretation of
+outline at all at first. But at the turn of the trail she saw both
+figures in vivid profile. Elmira was coming homeward, bent over her
+cane, and she led a saddled horse by its bridle rein.
+
+Still keeping Simon in sight, Linda ran swiftly toward her. She didn't
+understand the deep awe that stole over her,--an emotion that even her
+fear for Bruce could not transcend. There was a quality in Elmira's face
+and posture that she had never seen before. It was as if she were
+walking in her sleep, she came with such a strange heaviness and
+languor, her cane creeping through the pine needles of the trail in
+front. She did not seem to be aware of Linda's approach until the girl
+was only ten feet distant. Then she looked up, and Linda saw the
+moonlight on her face.
+
+She saw something else too, but she didn't know what it was. Her own
+eyes widened. The thin lips were drooping, the eyes looked as if she
+were asleep. The face was a strange net of wrinkles in the soft light.
+Terrible emotions had but recently died and left their ashes upon it.
+But Linda knew that this was no time to stop and wonder and ask
+questions.
+
+"Give me the horse," she commanded. "I'm going to help Bruce."
+
+"You can have it," Elmira answered in an unfamiliar voice. "It's the
+horse that--that Dave Turner rode here--and he won't want him any more."
+
+Linda took the rein, passed it over the horse's head, and started to
+swing into the saddle. Then she turned with a gasp as the woman slipped
+something into her hand.
+
+Linda looked down and saw it was the hilt of the knife that Elmira had
+carried with her when the two women had gone with Dave into the woods.
+The blade glittered; but Linda was afraid to look at it closely. "You
+might need that, too," the old woman said. "It may be wet--I can't
+remember. But take it, anyway."
+
+Linda hardly heard. She thrust the blade into the leather of the saddle,
+then swung on her horse. Once more she sought Simon's figure. Far away
+she saw it, just as it vanished into the heavy timber on top of the
+hill.
+
+She rode swiftly until she began to fear that he might hear the hoof
+beat of her mount; then she drew up to a walk. And when she had crested
+the hill and had followed down its long slope into the glen, the moon
+went under the clouds for the first time.
+
+She lost sight of Simon at once. Seemingly her effort to save Bruce had
+come to nothing, after all.
+
+But she didn't turn back. There were light patches in the sky, and the
+moon might shine forth again.
+
+She followed down the trail toward the cleared lands that the Turners
+cultivated. She went to their very edge. It was a rather high point, so
+she waited here for the moon to emerge again. Never, it seemed to her,
+had it moved so slowly. But all at once its light flowed forth over the
+land.
+
+Her eyes searched the distant spaces, but she could catch no glimpse of
+Simon between the trees. Evidently he no longer walked in the direction
+of the house. Then she looked out over the tilled lands.
+
+Almost a quarter of a mile away she saw the flicker of a miniature
+shadow. Only the vivid quality of the moonlight, against which any
+shadow was clear-cut and sharp, enabled her to discern it at all. It was
+Simon, and evidently his business had taken him into the meadows.
+Feeling that she was on the right track at last, she urged her horse
+forward again, keeping to the shadow of the timber at first.
+
+Simon walked almost parallel to the dark fringe for nearly a mile; then
+turned off into the tilled lands. She rode opposite him and reined in
+the horse to watch.
+
+When the distance had almost obscured him, she saw him stop. He waited a
+long time, then turned back. The moon went in and out of the clouds.
+Then, trusting to the distance to conceal her, Linda rode slowly out
+into the clearing.
+
+Simon reentered the timber, his inspection seemingly done, and Linda
+still rode in the general direction he had gone. The darkness fell
+again, and for the space of perhaps five minutes all the surroundings
+were obscured. A curious sense of impending events came over her as she
+headed on toward the distant wall of forest beyond.
+
+Then, the clouds slowly dimming under the moon, the light grew with
+almost imperceptible encroachments. At first it was only bright enough
+to show her own dim shadow on the grass. The utter gloom that was over
+the fields lessened and drew away like receding curtains; her vision
+reached ever farther, the shadows grew more clearly outlined and
+distinct. Then the moon rolled forth into a wholly open patch of sky--a
+white sphere with a sprinkling of vivid stars around it--and the silver
+radiance poured down.
+
+It was like the breaking of dawn. The fields stretched to incredible
+distances about her. The forest beyond emerged in distinct outline; she
+could see every irregularity in the plain. And in one instant's glance
+she knew that she had found Bruce.
+
+His situation went home to her in one sweep of the eyes. Bruce was not
+alone. Even now a great, towering figure was creeping toward him from
+the forest. Linda cried out, and with the long strap of her rein lashed
+her horse into the fastest pace it knew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruce did not hear her come. He lay in the soft grass, waiting for
+death. A great calm had come upon him; a strange, quiet strength that
+the pines themselves might have lent to him; and he made no cry. In this
+dreadful last moment of despair the worst of his terror had gone and
+left his thoughts singularly clear. And but one desire was left to him:
+that the Killer might be merciful and end his frail existence with one
+blow.
+
+It was not a great deal to ask for; but he knew perfectly that only by
+the mercy of the forest gods could it come to pass. They are usually not
+so kind to the dying; and it is not the wild-animal way to take pains to
+kill at the first blow. Yet his eyes held straight. The Killer crept
+slowly toward him; more and more of his vast body was revealed above the
+tall heads of the grass. And now all that Bruce knew was a great
+wonder,--a strange expectancy and awe of what the opening gates of
+darkness would reveal.
+
+The Killer moved with dreadful slowness and deliberation. He was no
+longer afraid. It was just as it had been before,--a warm figure lying
+still and helpless for his own terrible pleasure. A few more steps and
+he would be near enough to see plainly; then--after the grizzly
+habit--to fling into the charge. It was his own way of hunting,--to
+stalk within a few score of feet, then to make a furious, resistless
+rush. He paused, his muscles setting. And then the meadows suddenly rang
+with the undulations of his snarl.
+
+Almost unconscious, Bruce did not understand what had caused this
+utterance. But strangely, the bear had lifted his head and was staring
+straight over him. For the first time Bruce heard the wild beat of
+hoofs on the turf behind him.
+
+He didn't have time to turn and look. There was no opportunity even for
+a flood of renewed hope. Events followed upon one another with startling
+rapidity. The sharp, unmistakable crack of a pistol leaped through the
+dusk, and a bullet sung over his body. And then a wild-riding figure
+swept up to him.
+
+It was Linda, firing as she came. How she had been able to control her
+horse and ride him into that scene of peril no words may reveal.
+Perhaps, running wildly beneath the lash, his starting eyes did not
+discern or interpret the gray figure scarcely a score of yards distant
+from Bruce; and it is true the grizzly's pungent smell--a thing to
+terrify much more and to be interpreted more clearly than any kind of
+dim form in the moonlight--was blown in the opposite direction. Perhaps
+the lashing strap recalled the terrible punishment the horse had
+undergone earlier that evening at the hands of Simon and no room was
+left for any lesser terror. But most likely of all, just as in the case
+of brave soldiers riding their horses into battle, the girl's own
+strength and courage went into him. Always it has been the same; the
+steed partook of its rider's own spirit.
+
+The bear reared up, snarling with wrath, but for a moment it dared not
+charge. The sudden appearance of the girl and the horse held him
+momentarily at bay. The girl swung to the ground in one leap, fired
+again, thrust her arm through the loop of the bridle rein, then knelt
+at Bruce's side. The white blade that she carried in her left hand
+slashed at his bonds.
+
+The horse, plunging, seemed to jerk her body back and forth, and endless
+seconds seemed to go by before the last of the thongs was severed. In
+reality the whole rescue was unbelievably swift. The man helped her all
+he could. "Up--up into the saddle," she commanded. The grizzly growled
+again, advancing remorselessly toward them, and twice more she fired.
+Two of the bullets went home in his great body, but their weight and
+shocking power were too slight to affect him. He went down once more on
+all fours, preparing to charge.
+
+Bruce, in spite of the fact that his limbs had been nearly paralyzed by
+the tight bonds, managed to grasp the saddlehorn. In the strength of
+new-born hope he pulled himself half up on it, and he felt Linda's
+strong arms behind him pushing up. The horse plunged in deadly fear; and
+the Killer leaped toward them. Once more the pistol cracked. Then the
+horse broke and ran in a frenzy of terror.
+
+Bruce was full in the saddle by then, and even at the first leap his arm
+swept out to the girl on the ground beside him. He swung her towards
+him, and at the same time her hands caught at the arching back of the
+saddle. Never had her fine young strength been put to a greater test
+than when she tried to pull herself up on the speeding animal's back.
+For the first fifty feet she was half-dragged, but slowly--with Bruce's
+help--she pulled herself up to a position of security.
+
+The Killer's charge had come a few seconds too late. For a moment he
+raced behind them in insane fury, but only his savage growl leaped
+through the darkness fast enough to catch up with them. And the distance
+slowly widened.
+
+The Killer had been cheated again; and by the same token Simon's oath
+had been proved untrue. For once the remorseless strength of which he
+boasted had been worsted by a greater strength; and love, not hate, was
+the power that gave it. For once a girl's courage--a courage greater
+than that with which he obeyed the dictates of his cruel will--had cost
+him his victory. The war that he and his outlaw band had begun so long
+ago had not yet been won.
+
+Indeed, if Simon could have seen what the moon saw as it peered out from
+behind the clouds, he would have known that one of the debts of blood
+incurred so many years ago had even now been paid. Far away on a distant
+hillside there was one who gave no heed to the fast hoof beats of the
+speeding horse. It was Dave Turner, and his trail of lust and wickedness
+was ended at last. He lay with lifted face, and there were curious dark
+stains on the pine needles.
+
+It was the first blood since the reopening of the feud. And the pines,
+those tall, dark sentinels of the wilderness, seemed to look down upon
+him in passionless contemplation, as if they wondered at the stumbling
+ways of men. Their branches rubbed together and made words as the wind
+swept through them, but no man may say what those words were.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+THE COMING OF THE STRENGTH
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Fall was at hand at Trail's End. One night, and the summer was still a
+joyous spirit in the land, birds nested, skies were blue, soft winds
+wandered here and there through the forest. One morning, and a startling
+change had come upon the wilderness world. The spirit of autumn had come
+with golden wings.
+
+The wild creatures, up and about at their pursuits long before dawn,
+were the first to see the change. A buck deer--a noble creature with six
+points on his spreading horns--got the first inkling of it when he
+stopped at a spring to drink. It was true that an hour before he had
+noticed a curious crispness and a new stir in the air, but he had been
+so busy keeping out of the ambushes of the Tawny One that he had not
+noticed it. The air had been chill in his nostrils, but thanks to a
+heavy growth of hair that--with mysterious foresight--had begun to come
+upon his body, it gave him no discomfort. But it was a puzzling and
+significant thing that the water he bent to drink had been transformed
+to something hard and white and burning cold to the tip of his nose.
+
+It was the first real freeze. True, for the past few nights there had
+been a measure of tinkling, cobweb frost on the ground in wet places,
+but even the tender-skinned birds--always most watchful of signs of this
+kind--had disregarded it. But there was no disregarding this half-inch
+of blue ice that had covered the spring. The buck deer struck it angrily
+with his front hoofs, broke through and drank; then went snorting up the
+hill.
+
+His anger was in itself a significant thing. In the long, easy-going
+summer days, Blacktail had almost forgotten what anger was like. He had
+been content to roam over the ridges, cropping the leaves and grass,
+avoiding danger and growing fat. But all at once this kind of existence
+had palled on him. He felt that he wanted only one thing--not food or
+drink or safety--but a good, slashing, hooking, hoof-carving battle with
+another buck of his own species. An unwonted crossness had come upon
+him, and his soft eyes burned with a blue fire. He remembered the does,
+too--with a sudden leap of his blood--and wondered where they were
+keeping themselves. Being only a beast he did not know that this new
+belligerent spirit was just as much a sign of fall as the soft blush
+that was coming on the leaves. The simple fact was that fall means the
+beginning of the rut--the wild mating days when the bucks battle among
+themselves and choose their harems of does.
+
+He had rather liked his appearance as he saw himself in the water of the
+spring. The last of the velvet had been rubbed from his horns, and the
+twelve tines (six on each horn) were as hard and almost as sharp as so
+many bayonet points. As the morning dawned, the change in the face of
+nature became ever more manifest. The leaves of the shrubbery began to
+change in color. The wind out of the north had a keener, more biting
+quality, and the birds were having some sort of exciting debate in the
+tree tops.
+
+The birds are always a scurried, nervous, rather rattle-brained outfit,
+and seem wholly incapable of making a decision about anything without
+hours of argument and discussion. Their days are simply filled with one
+excitement after another, and they tell more scandal in an hour than the
+old ladies in a resort manage in the entire summer. This slow
+transformation in the color of the leaves, not to mention the chill of
+the frost through their scanty feathers, had created a sensation from
+one end of birdland to another. And there was only one thing to do about
+it. That was to wait until the darkness closed down again, then start
+away toward the path of the sun in search of their winter resorts in the
+south.
+
+The Little People in the forest of ferns beneath were not such gay
+birds, and they did not have such high-flown ideas as these feathered
+folk in the branches. They didn't talk such foolishness and small talk
+from dawn to dark. They didn't wear gay clothes that weren't a particle
+of good to them in cold weather. You can imagine them as being good,
+substantial, middle-class people, much more sober-minded, tending
+strictly to business and working hard, and among other things they saw
+no need of flitting down to southern resorts for the cold season. These
+people--being mostly ground squirrels and gophers and chipmunks and
+rabbits--had not been fitted by nature for wide travel and had made all
+arrangements for a pleasant winter at home. You could almost see a smile
+on the fat face of a plump old gopher when he came out and found the
+frost upon the ground; for he knew that for months past he had been
+putting away stores for just this season. In the snows that would follow
+he would simply retire into the farthest recesses of his burrow and let
+the winds whistle vainly above him.
+
+The larger creatures, however, were less complacent. The wolves--if
+animals have any powers of foresight whatever--knew that only hard days,
+not luscious nuts and roots, were in store for them. There would be many
+days of hunger once the snow came over the land. The black bear saw the
+signs and began a desperate effort to lay up as many extra pounds of fat
+as possible before the snows broke. Ashur's appetite was always as much
+with him as his bobbed-off excuse for a tail, and as he was more or less
+indifferent to a fair supply of dirt, he always managed to put away
+considerable food in a rather astonishingly short period of time; and
+now he tried to eat all the faster in view of the hungry days to come.
+He would have need of the extra flesh. The time was coming when all
+sources of food would be cut off by the snows, and he would have to seek
+the security of hibernation. He had already chosen an underground abode
+for himself and there he could doze away in the cold-trance through the
+winter months, subsisting on the supplies of fat that he had stored next
+to his furry hide.
+
+The greatest of all the bears, the Killer, knew that some such fate
+awaited him also. But he looked forward to it with wretched spirit. He
+was master of the forest, and perhaps he did not like to yield even to
+the spirit of winter. His savagery grew upon him every day, and his
+dislike for men had turned to a veritable hatred. But he had found them
+out. When he crossed their trails again, he would not wait to stalk.
+They were apt to slip away from him in this case and sting him
+unmercifully with bullets. The thing to do was charge quickly and strike
+with all his power.
+
+The three minor wounds he had received--two from pistol bullets and one
+from Bruce's rifle--had not lessened his strength at all. They did,
+however, serve to keep his blood-heat at the explosive stage most of the
+day and night.
+
+The flowers and the grasses were dying; the moths that paid calls on the
+flowers had laid their eggs and had perished, and winter lurked--ready
+to pounce forth--just beyond the distant mountains. There is nothing so
+thoroughly unreliable as the mountain autumn. It may linger in
+entrancing golds and browns month after month, until it is almost time
+for spring to come again; and again it may make one short bow and usher
+in the winter. To Bruce and Linda, in the old Folger home in Trail's
+End, these fall days offered the last hope of success in their war
+against the Turners.
+
+The adventure in the pasture with the Killer had handicapped them to an
+unlooked-for degree. Bruce's muscles had been severely strained by the
+bonds; several days had elapsed before he regained their full use. Linda
+was a mountain girl, hardy as a deer, yet her nerves had suffered a
+greater shock by the experience than either of them had guessed. The
+wild ride, the fear and the stress, and most of all the base blow that
+Simon had dealt her had been too much even for her strong constitution;
+and she had been obliged to go to bed for a few days of rest. Old Elmira
+worked about the house the same as ever, but strange, new lights were in
+her eyes. For reasons that went down to the roots of things, neither
+Bruce nor Linda questioned her as to her scene with Dave Turner in the
+coverts; and what thoughts dwelt in her aged mind neither of them could
+guess.
+
+The truth was that in these short weeks of trial and danger whatever
+dreadful events had come to pass in that meeting were worth neither
+thought nor words. Both Bruce and Linda were down to essentials. It is a
+descent that most human beings--some time in their lives--find they are
+able to make; and there was no room for sentimentality or hysteria in
+this grim household. The ideas, the softnesses, the laws of the valleys
+were far away from them; they were face to face with realities. Their
+code had become the basic code of life: to kill for self-protection
+without mercy or remorse.
+
+They did not know when the Turners would attack. It was the dark of the
+moon, and the men would be able to approach the house without presenting
+themselves as targets for Bruce's rifle. The danger was not a thing on
+which to conjecture and forget; it was an ever-present reality. Never
+they stepped out of the door, never they crossed a lighted window, never
+a pane rattled in the wind but that the wings of Death might have been
+hovering over them. The days were passing, the date when the chance for
+victory would utterly vanish was almost at hand, and they were haunted
+by the ghastly fact that their whole defense lay in a single
+thirty-thirty rifle and five cartridges. Bruce's own gun had been taken
+from him in Simon's house; Linda had emptied her pistol at the Killer.
+
+"We've got to get more shells," Bruce told Linda. "The Turners won't be
+such fools as to wait until we have the moon again to attack. I can't
+understand why they haven't already come. Of course, they don't know the
+condition of our ammunition supply, but it doesn't seem to me that that
+alone would have held them off. They are sure to come soon, and you know
+what we could do with five cartridges, don't you?"
+
+"I know." She looked up into his earnest face. "We could die--that's
+all."
+
+"Yes--like rabbits. Without hurting them at all. I wouldn't mind dying
+so much, if I did plenty of damage first. It's death for me, anyway, I
+suppose--and no one but a fool can see it otherwise. There are simply
+too many against us. But I do want to make some payment first."
+
+Her hand fumbled and groped for his. Her eyes pled to him,--more than
+any words. "And you mean you've given up hope?" she asked.
+
+He smiled down at her,--a grave, strange little smile that moved her in
+secret ways. "Not given up hope, Linda," he said gently. They were
+standing at the door and the sunlight--coming low from the South--was on
+his face. "I've never had any hope to give up--just realization of what
+lay ahead of us. I'm looking it all in the face now, just as I did at
+first."
+
+"And what you see--makes you afraid?"
+
+Yet she need not have asked that question. His face gave an unmistakable
+answer: that this man had conquered fear in the terrible night with the
+Killer. "Not afraid, Linda," he explained, "only seeing things as they
+really are. There are too many against us. If we had that great estate
+behind us, with all its wealth, we might have a chance; if we had an
+arsenal of rifles with thousands of cartridges, we might make a stand
+against them. But we are three--two women and one man--and one rifle
+between us all. Five little shells to be expended in five seconds. They
+are seven or eight, each man armed, each man a rifle-shot. They are
+certain to attack within a day or two--before we have the moon again. In
+less than two weeks we can no longer contest their title to the estate.
+A little month or two more and we will be snowed in--with no chance to
+get out at all."
+
+"Perhaps before that," she told him.
+
+"Yes. Perhaps before that."
+
+They found a confirmation of this prophecy in the signs of fall
+without--the coloring leaves, the dying flowers, the new, cold breath of
+the wind. Only the pines remained unchanged; they were the same grave
+sentinels they always were.
+
+"And you can forgive me?" Linda asked humbly.
+
+"Forgive you?" The man turned to her in surprise. "What have you done
+that needs to be forgiven?"
+
+"Oh, don't you see? To bring you here--out of your cities--to throw your
+life away. To enlist you in a fight that you can't hope to win. I've
+killed you, that's all I've done. Perhaps to-night--perhaps a few days
+later."
+
+He nodded gravely.
+
+"And I've already killed your smile," she went on, looking down. "You
+don't smile any more the way you used to. You're not the boy you were
+when you came. Oh, to think of it--that it's all been my work. To kill
+your youth, to lead you into this slaughter pen where nothing--nothing
+lives but death--and hatred--and unhappiness."
+
+The tears leaped to her eyes. He caught her hands and pressed them
+between his until pain came into her fingers. "Listen, Linda," he
+commanded. She looked straight up at him. "Are you sorry I came?"
+
+"More than I can tell you--for your sake."
+
+"But when people look for the truth in this world, Linda, they don't
+take any one's sake into consideration. They balance all things and give
+them their true worth. Would you rather that you and I had never
+met--that I had never received Elmira's message--that you should live
+your life up here without ever hearing of me?"
+
+She dropped her eyes. "It isn't fair--to ask me that--"
+
+"Tell me the truth. Hasn't it been worth while? Even if we lose and die
+before this night is done, hasn't it all been worth while? Are you sorry
+you have seen me change? Isn't the change for the better--a man grown
+instead of a boy? One who looks straight and sees clear?"
+
+He studied her face; and after a while he found his answer. It was not
+in the form of words at first. As a man might watch a miracle he watched
+a new light come into her dark eyes. All the gloom and sorrow of the
+wilderness without could not affect its quality. It was a light of joy,
+of exultation, of new-found strength.
+
+"You hadn't ought to ask me that, Bruce," she said with a rather
+strained distinctness. "It has been like being born again. There aren't
+any words to tell you what it has meant to me. And don't think I haven't
+seen the change in you, too--the birth of a new strength that every day
+is greater, higher--until it is--almost more than I can understand. The
+old smiles are gone, but something else has taken their place--something
+much more dear to me--but what it is I can hardly tell you. Maybe it's
+something that the pines have."
+
+But he hadn't wholly forgotten how to smile. His face lighted as
+remembrance came to him. "They are a different kind of smiles--that's
+all," he explained. "Perhaps there will be many of them in the days to
+come. Linda, I have no regrets. I've played the game. Whether it was
+Destiny that brought me here, or only chance, or perhaps--if we take
+just life and death into consideration--just misfortune, whatever it is
+I feel no resentment toward it. It has been the worthwhile adventure. In
+the first place, I love the woods. There's something else in them
+besides death and hatred and unhappiness. Besides, it seems to me that I
+can understand the whole world better than I used to. Maybe I can begin
+to see a big purpose and theme running through it all--but it's not yet
+clear enough to put into words. Certain things in this world are
+essentials, certain other ones are froth. And I see which things belong
+to one class and which to another so much more clearly than I did
+before. One of the things that matters is throwing one's whole life into
+whatever task he has set out to do--whether he fails or succeeds doesn't
+seem greatly to matter. The main thing, it appears to me, is that he has
+tried. To stand strong and kind of calm, and not be afraid--if I can
+always do it, Linda, it is all I ask for myself. Not to flinch now. Not
+to give up as long as I have the strength for another step. And to have
+you with me--all the way."
+
+"Then you and I--take fresh heart?"
+
+"We've never lost heart, Linda."
+
+"Not to give up, but only be glad we've tried?"
+
+"Yes. And keep on trying."
+
+"With no regrets?"
+
+"None--and maybe to borrow a little strength from the pines!"
+
+This was their new pact. To stand firm and strong and unflinching, and
+never to yield as long as an ounce of strength remained. As if to seal
+it, her arms crept about his neck and her soft lips pressed his.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Toward the end of the afternoon Linda saddled the horse and rode down
+the trail toward Martin's store. She had considerable business to attend
+to. Among other things, she was going to buy thirty-thirty
+cartridges,--all that Martin had in stock. She had some hope of securing
+an extra gun or two with shells to match. The additional space in her
+pack was to be filled with provisions.
+
+For she was faced with the unpleasant fact that her larder was nearly
+empty. The jerked venison was almost gone; only a little flour and a few
+canned things remained. She had space for only small supplies on the
+horse's back, and there would be no luxuries among them.--Their fare had
+been plain up to this time; but from now on it was to consist of only
+such things as were absolutely necessary to sustain life.
+
+She rode unarmed. Without informing him of the fact, the rifle had been
+left for Bruce. She did not expect for herself a rifle shot from
+ambush--for the simple reason that Simon had bidden otherwise--and Bruce
+might be attacked at any moment.
+
+She was dreaming dreams, that day. The talk with Bruce had given her
+fresh heart, and as she rode down the sunlit trail the future opened up
+entrancing vistas to her. Perhaps they yet could conquer, and that would
+mean reestablishment on the far-flung lands of her father. Matthew
+Folger had possessed a fertile farm also, and its green pastures might
+still be utilized. It suddenly occurred to her that it would be of
+interest to turn off the main trail, take a little dim path up the ridge
+that she had discovered years before, and look over these lands. The
+hour was early; besides, Bruce would find her report of the greatest
+interest.
+
+She jogged slowly along in the Western fashion,--which means something
+quite different from army fashion or sportsman fashion. Western riders
+do not post. Riding is not exercise to them; it is rest. They hang limp
+in the saddle, and all jar is taken up, as if by a spring, somewhere in
+the region of the floating ribs that only a physician can correctly
+designate. They never sit firm, these Western riders, and as a rule
+their riding is not a particularly graceful thing to watch. But they do
+not care greatly about grace as long as they may encompass their fifty
+miles a day and still be fresh enough for a country dance at night.
+There are many other differences in Western and Eastern riding, one of
+them being the way in which the horse is mounted. Another difference is
+the riding habit. Linda had no trim riding trousers, with tall glossy
+boots, red coat, and stock. It was rather doubtful whether she knew such
+things existed. She did, however, wear a trim riding skirt of khaki and
+a middie blouse washed spotlessly clean by her own hands; and no one
+would have missed the other things. It is an indisputable fact that she
+made a rather alluring picture--eyes bright and hair dark and strong
+arms bare to the elbow--as she came riding down the pine-needle trail.
+
+She came to the opening of the dimmer trail and turned down it. She did
+not jog so easily now. The descent was more steep. She entered a still
+glen, and the color in her cheeks and the soft brown of her arms blended
+well with the new tints of the autumn leaves. Then she turned up a long
+ridge.
+
+The 'trail led through an old burn--a bleak, eerie place where the fire
+had swept down the forest, leaving only strange, black palings here and
+there--and she stopped in the middle of it to look down. The mountain
+world was laid out below her as clearly as in a relief map. Her eyes
+lighted as its beauty and its fearsomeness went home to her, and her
+keen eyes slowly swept over the surrounding hill tops. Then for a long
+moment she sat very still in the saddle.
+
+A thousand feet distant, on the same ridge on which she rode, she caught
+sight of another horse. It held her gaze, and in an instant she
+discerned the rather startling fact that it was saddled, bridled, and
+apparently tied to a tree. Momentarily she thought that its rider was
+probably one of the Turners who was at present at work on the old Folger
+farm; yet she knew at once the tilled lands were still too far distant
+for that. She studied closely the maze of light and shadow of the
+underbrush and in a moment more distinguished the figure of the
+horseman.
+
+It was one of the Turners,--but he was not working in the fields. He was
+standing near the animal's head, back to her, and his rifle lay in his
+arms. And then Linda understood.
+
+He was simply guarding the trail down to Martin's store. Except for the
+fact that she had turned off the main trail by no possibility could she
+have seen him and escaped whatever fate he had for her.
+
+She held hard on her faculties and tried to puzzle it out. She
+understood now why the Turners had not as yet made an attack upon them
+at their home. It wasn't the Turner way to wage open warfare. They were
+the wolves that struck from ambush, the rattlesnakes that lunged with
+poisoned fangs from beneath the rocks. There was some security for her
+in the Folger home, but none whatever here. There she had a strong man
+to fight for her, a loaded rifle, and under ordinary conditions the
+Turners could not hope to batter down the oaken door and overwhelm them
+without at least some loss of life. For all they knew, Bruce had a large
+stock of rifles and ammunition,--and the Turners did not look forward
+with pleasure to casualties in their ranks. The much simpler way was to
+watch the trail.
+
+They had known that sooner or later one of them would attempt to ride
+down after either supplies or aid. Linda was a mountain girl and she
+knew the mountain methods of procedure; and she knew quite well what she
+would have had to expect if she had not discovered the ambush in time.
+She didn't think that the sentry would actually fire on her; he would
+merely shoot the horse from beneath her. It would be a simple feat by
+the least of the Turners,--for these gaunt men were marksmen if nothing
+else. It wouldn't be in accord with Simon's plan or desire to leave her
+body lying still on the trail. But the horse killed, flight would be
+impossible, and what would transpire thereafter she did not dare to
+think. She had not forgotten Simon's threat in regard to any attempt to
+go down into the settlements. She knew that it still held good.
+
+Of course, if Bruce made the excursion, the sentry's target would be
+somewhat different. He would shoot him down as remorselessly as he would
+shatter a lynx from a tree top.
+
+The truth was that Linda had guessed just right. "It's the easiest way,"
+Simon had said. "They'll be trying to get out in a very few days. If the
+man--shoot straight and to kill! If Linda, plug the horse and bring her
+here behind the saddle."
+
+Linda turned softly, then started back. She did not even give a second's
+thought to the folly of trying to break through. She watched the
+sentinel over her shoulder and saw him turn about. Far distant though he
+was, she could tell by the movement he made that he had discovered her.
+
+She was almost four hundred yards away by then, and she lashed her horse
+into a gallop. The man cried to her to halt, a sound that came dim and
+strange through the burn, and then a bullet sent up a cloud of ashes a
+few feet to one side. But the range was too far even for the Turners,
+and she only urged her horse to a faster pace.
+
+She flew down the narrow trail, turned into the main trail, and galloped
+wildly toward home. But the sentry did not follow her. He valued his
+precious life too much for that. He had no intention of offering himself
+as a target to Bruce's rifle as he neared the house. He headed back to
+report to Simon.
+
+Young Bill--for such had been the identity of the sentry--found his
+chief in the large field not far distant from where Bruce had been
+confined. The man was supervising the harvest of the fall growth of
+alfalfa. The two men walked slowly away from the workers, toward the
+fringe of woods.
+
+"It looks as if we'll have to adopt rough measures, after all," Young
+Bill began.
+
+Simon turned with flushing face. "Do you mean you let him get past
+you--and missed him? Young Bill, if you've done that--"
+
+"Won't you wait till I've told you how it happened? It wasn't Bruce; it
+was Linda. For some reason I can't dope out, she went up in the big burn
+back of me and saw me--when I was too far off to shoot her horse. Then
+she rode back like a witch. They'll not take that trail again."
+
+"It means one of two things," Simon said after a pause. "One of them is
+to starve 'em out. It won't take long. Their supplies won't last
+forever. The other is to call the clan and attack--to-night."
+
+"And that means loss of life."
+
+"Not necessarily. I don't know how many guns they've got. If any of you
+were worth your salt, you'd find out those things. I wish Dave was
+here."
+
+And Simon spoke the truth for once in his life: he did miss Dave. And it
+was not that there had been any love lost between them. But the truth
+was--although Simon never would have admitted it--the weaker man's
+cunning had been of the greatest aid to his chief. Simon needed it
+sorely now.
+
+"And we can't wait till to-morrow night--because we've got the moon
+then," Young Bill added. "Just a new moon, but it will prevent a
+surprise attack. I suppose you still have hopes of Dave coming back?"
+
+"I don't see why not. I'll venture to say now he's off on some good
+piece of business--doing something none of the rest of you have thought
+of. He'll come riding back one of these days with something actually
+accomplished. I see no reason for thinking that he's dead. Bruce hasn't
+had any chance at him that I know of. But if I thought he was--there'd
+be no more waiting. We'd tear down that nest to-night."
+
+Simon spoke in his usual voice--with the same emphasis, the same
+undertones of passion. But the last words ended with a queer inflection.
+The truth was that he had slowly become aware that Young Bill was not
+giving him his full attention, but rather was gazing off--unfamiliar
+speculation in his eyes--toward the forests beyond.
+
+Simon's impulse was to follow the gaze; yet he would not yield to it.
+"Well?" he demanded. "I'm not talking to amuse myself."
+
+The younger man seemed to start. His eyes were half-closed; and there
+was a strange look of intentness about his facial lines when he turned
+back to Simon. "You haven't missed any stock?" he asked abruptly.
+
+Simon's eyes widened. "No. Why?"
+
+"Look there--over the forest." Young Bill pointed. Simon shielded his
+eyes from the sunset glare and studied the blue-green skyline above the
+fringe of pines. There were many grotesque, black birds wheeling on slow
+wings above the spot. Now and then they dropped down, out of sight
+behind the trees.
+
+"Buzzards!" Simon exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," Young Bill answered quietly. "You see, it isn't much over a mile
+from Folger's house--in the deep woods. There's something dead there,
+Simon. And I think we'd better look to see what it is."
+
+"You think--" Then Simon hesitated and looked again with reddening eyes
+toward the gliding buzzards.
+
+"I think--that maybe we're going to find Dave," Young Bill replied.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The darkness of this October night fell before its time. The twilight at
+Trail's End is never long in duration, due to the simple fact that the
+mountains cut off the flood of light from the west after the setting of
+the sun, but to-night there seemed none at all. The reason was merely
+that heavy banks of clouds swept up from the southeast just after
+sunset.
+
+They came with rather startling rapidity and almost immediately
+completely filled the sky. Young Bill had many things on his mind as he
+rode beneath them, yet he found time to gaze at them with some
+curiosity. They were of singular greenish hue, and they hung so low that
+the tops of near-by mountains were obscured.
+
+The fact that there would be no moon to-night was no longer important.
+The clouds would have cut off any telltale light that might illumine the
+activities of the Turners. There would not be even the dim mist of
+starlight.
+
+Young Bill rode from house to house through the estate,--the homes
+occupied by Simon's brothers and cousins and their respective families.
+He knocked on each door and he only gave one little message. "Simon
+wants you at the house," he said, "and come heeled."
+
+He would turn to go, but always a singular quiet and breathlessness
+remained in the homes after his departure. There would be a curious
+exchange of glances and certain significant sounds. One of them was the
+metallic click of cartridges being slipped into the magazine of a rifle.
+Another was the buckling on of spurs, and perhaps the rattle of a pistol
+in its holster. Before the night fell in reality, the clan came
+riding--strange, tall figures in the half-darkness--straight for Simon's
+house.
+
+His horse was saddled too, and he met them in front of his door. And in
+a very few words he made all things plain to them.
+
+"We've found Dave," he told them simply. "Most of you already know it.
+We've decided there isn't any use of waiting any more. We're going to
+the Folger house to-night."
+
+The men stood silent, breathing hard. The clouds seemed to lower,
+menacingly, toward them. Simon spoke very quietly, yet his voice carried
+far. In their growing excitement they did not observe the reason, that a
+puzzling, deep calm had come over the whole wilderness world. Even in
+the quietest night there is usually a faint background of winds in the
+mountain realms--troubled breaths that whisper in the thickets and
+rustle the dead leaves--but to-night the heavy air had no breath of
+life.
+
+"To-night Bruce Folger is going to pay the price, just as I said." He
+spoke rather boastingly; perhaps more to impress his followers than from
+impulse. Indeed, the passion that he felt left no room for his usual
+arrogance. "Fire on sight. Bill and I will come from the rear, and we
+will be ready to push through the back door the minute you break through
+the front. The rest of you surround the house on three sides. And
+remember--no man is to touch Linda."
+
+They nodded grimly; then the file of horsemen started toward the ridge.
+Far distant they heard a sound such as had reached them often in summer
+but was unfamiliar in fall. It was the faint rumble of distant thunder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruce and Linda sat in the front room of the Folger house, quiet and
+watchful and unafraid. It was not that they did not realize their
+danger. They had simply taken all possible measures of defense; and they
+were waiting for what the night would bring forth.
+
+"I know they'll come to-night," Linda had said. "To-morrow night there
+will be a moon, and though it won't give much light, it will hurt their
+chances of success. Besides--they've found that their other plot--to
+kill you from ambush--isn't going to work."
+
+Bruce nodded and got up to examine the shutters. He wanted no ray of
+light to steal out into the growing darkness and make a target. It was a
+significant fact that the rifle did not occupy its usual place behind
+the desk. Bruce kept it in his hands as he made the inspection. Linda
+had her empty pistol, knowing that it might--in the mayhap of
+circumstance--be of aid in frightening an assailant. Old Elmira sat
+beside the fire, her stiff fingers busy at a piece of sewing.
+
+"You know--" Bruce said to her, "that we are expecting an attack
+to-night?"
+
+The woman nodded, but didn't miss a stitch. No gleam of interest came
+into her eyes. Bruce's gaze fell to her work basket, and something
+glittered from its depth. Evidently Elmira had regained her knife.
+
+He went back to his chair beside Linda, and the two sat listening. They
+had never known a more quiet night. They listened in vain for the little
+night sounds that usually come stealing, so hushed and tremulous, from
+the forest. The noises that always, like feeble ghosts, dwell in a house
+at night--the little explosions of a scraping board or a banging shutter
+or perhaps a mouse, scratching in the walls--were all lacking too. And
+they both started, ever so slightly, when they heard a distant rumble of
+thunder.
+
+"It's going to storm," Linda told him.
+
+"Yes. A thunderstorm--rather unusual in the fall, isn't it?"
+
+"Almost unknown. It's growing cold too."
+
+They waited a breathless minute, then the thunder spoke again. It was
+immeasurably nearer. It was as if it had leaped toward them, through the
+darkness, with incredible speed in the minute that had intervened. The
+last echo of the sound was not dead when they heard it a third time.
+
+The storm swept toward them and increased in fury. On a distant hillside
+the strange file that was the Turners halted, then gathered around
+Simon. Already the lightning made vivid, white gashes in the sky and
+illumined--for a breathless instant--the long sweep of the ridge above
+them. "We'll make good targets in the lightning," Old Bill said.
+
+"Ride on," Simon ordered. "You know a man can't find a target in the
+hundredth of a second of a lightning flash. We're not going to turn back
+now."
+
+They rode on. Far away they heard the whine and roar of wind, and in a
+moment it was upon them. The forest was no longer silent. The peal of
+the thunder was almost continuous.
+
+The breaking of the storm seemed to rock the Folger house on its
+foundation. Both Linda and Bruce leaped to their feet; but they felt a
+little tingle of awe when they saw that old Elmira still sat sewing. It
+was as if the calm that dwelt in the Sentinel Pine outside had come down
+to abide in her. No force that the world possessed could ever take it
+from her.
+
+They heard the rumble and creak of the trees as the wind smote them, and
+the flame of the lamp danced wildly, filling the room with flickering
+shadows. Bruce straightened, the lines of his face setting deep. He
+glanced once more at the rifle in his hands.
+
+"Linda," he said, "put out that fire. If there's going to be an attack,
+we'd have a better chance if the room were in darkness. We can shoot
+through the door then."
+
+She obeyed at once, knocking the burning sticks apart and drenching them
+with water. They hissed, and steamed, but the noise of the storm almost
+effaced the sound. "Now the light?" Linda asked.
+
+"Yes. See where you are and have everything ready."
+
+She took off the glass shade of the lamp, and the little gusts of wind
+that crept in the cracks of the windows immediately extinguished the
+flame. The darkness dropped down. Then Bruce opened the door.
+
+The whole wilderness world struggled in the grasp of the storm. The
+scene was such that no mortal memory could possibly forget. They saw it
+in great, vivid glimpses in the intermittent flashes of the lightning,
+and the world seemed no longer that which they had come to know. Chaos
+was upon it. They saw young trees whipping in the wind, their slender
+branches flailing the air. They saw the distant ridges in black and
+startling contrast against the lighted sky. The tall tops of the trees
+wagged back and forth in frenzied signals; their branches smote and
+rubbed together. And just without their door the Sentinel Pine stood
+with top lifted to the fury of the storm.
+
+A strange awe swept over Bruce. A moment later he was to behold a sight
+that for the moment would make him completely forget the existence of
+the great tree; but for an instant he poised at the brink of a profound
+and far-reaching discovery. There was a great lesson for him in that
+dark, towering figure that the lightning revealed. Even in the fury of
+the storm it still stood infinitely calm, watchful, strong as the
+mountains themselves. Its great limbs moved and spoke; its top swayed
+back and forth, yet still it held its high place as Sentinel of the
+Forest, passionless, patient, talking through the murk of clouds to the
+stars that burned beyond.
+
+"See," Linda said. "The Turners are coming."
+
+It was true. Bruce dropped his eyes. Even now the clan had spread out in
+a great wing and was bearing down upon the house. The lightning showed
+them in strange, vivid flashes. Bruce nodded slowly.
+
+"I see," he answered. "I'm ready."
+
+"Then shoot them, quick--when the lightning shows them," she whispered
+in his ear. "They're in range now." Her hand seized his arm. "What are
+you waiting for?"
+
+He turned to her sternly. "Have you forgotten we only have five shells?"
+he asked. "Go back to Elmira."
+
+Her eyes met his, and she tried to smile into them. "Forgive me,
+Bruce--it's hard--to be calm."
+
+But at once she understood why he was waiting. The flashes of lightning
+offered no opportunity for an accurate shot. Bruce meant to conserve his
+little supply of shells until the moment of utmost need. The clan drew
+nearer. They were riding slowly, with ready rifles. And ever the storm
+increased in fury. The thunder was so close that it no longer gave the
+impression of being merely sound. It was a veritable explosion just
+above their heads. The flashes came so near together that for an
+instant Bruce began to hope they would reveal the attackers clearly
+enough to give him a chance for a well-aimed shot. The first drops of
+rain fell one by one on the roof.
+
+His eyes sought for Simon's figure. To Simon he owed the greatest debt,
+and to lay Simon low might mean to dishearten the whole clan. But
+although the attackers were in fair range now, scarcely two hundred
+yards away, he could not identify him. They drew closer. He raised his
+gun, waiting for a chance to fire. And at that instant a resistless
+force hurled him to the floor.
+
+There was the sense of vast catastrophe, a great rocking and shuddering
+that was lost in billowing waves of sound; and then a frantic effort to
+recall his wandering faculties. A blinding light cut the darkness in
+twain; it smote his eyeballs as if with a physical blow; and summoning
+all his powers of will he sprang to his feet.
+
+There was only darkness at first; and he did not understand. But it was
+of scarcely less duration than the flash of lightning. A red flame
+suddenly leaped into the air, roared and grew and spread as if scattered
+by the wind itself. And Bruce's breath caught in a sob of wonder.
+
+The Sentinel Pine, that ancient friend and counselor that stood not over
+one hundred feet from the house, had been struck by a lightning bolt,
+its trunk had been cleft open as if by a giant's ax, and the flame was
+already springing through its balsam-laden branches.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Bruce stood as if entranced, gazing with awed face at the flaming tree.
+There was little danger of the house itself catching fire. The wind blew
+the flame in the opposite direction; besides, the rains were beating on
+the roof. The fire in the great tree itself, however, was too well
+started to be extinguished at once by any kind of rainfall; but it did
+burn with less fierceness.
+
+Dimly he felt the girl's hand grasping at his arm. Her fingers pressed
+until he felt pain. His eyes lowered to hers. The sight of that
+passion-drawn face--recalling in an instant the scene beside the camp
+fire his first night at Trail's End--called him to himself. "Shoot, you
+fool!" she stormed at him. "The tree's lighted up the whole countryside,
+and you can't miss. Shoot them before they run away."
+
+He glanced quickly out. The clan that had drawn within sixty yards of
+the house at the time the lightning struck had been thrown into
+confusion. Their horses had been knocked down by the force of the bolt
+and were fleeing, riderless, away. The men followed them, shouting,
+plainly revealed in the light from the burning tree. The great torch
+beside the house had completely turned the tables. And Linda spoke true;
+they offered the best of targets.
+
+Again the girl's eyes were lurid slits between the lids. Her lips were
+drawn, and her breathing was strange. He looked at her calmly.
+
+"No, Linda. I can't--"
+
+"You can't," she cried. "You coward--you traitor! Kill--kill--kill them
+while there's time."
+
+She saw the resolve in his face, and she snatched the rifle from his
+hands. She hurled it to her shoulder and three times fired blindly
+toward the retreating Turners.
+
+At that instant Bruce seemed to come to life. His thoughts had been
+clear ever since the tree had been struck; his vision was straighter and
+more far-reaching than ever in his life before, but now his muscles
+wakened too. He sprang toward the girl and snatched the rifle from her
+hand. She fought for it, and he held her with a strong arm.
+
+"Wait--wait, Linda," he said gently. "You've wasted three cartridges
+now. There are only two left. And we may need them some other time."
+
+He held her from him with his arm; and it was as if his strength flowed
+into her. Her blazing eyes sought his, and for a long second their wills
+battled. And then a deep wonder seemed to come over her.
+
+"What is it?" she breathed. "What have you found out?"
+
+She spoke in a strange and distant voice. Slowly the fire died in her
+eyes, the drawn features relaxed, her hands fell at her side. He drew
+her away from he lighted doorway, out of the range of any of the
+Turners that should turn to answer the rifle fire. The wind roared over
+the house and swept by in clamoring fury, the electric storm dimmed and
+lessened as it journeyed on.
+
+These two knew that if death spared them in all the long passage of
+their years, they could never forget that moment. The girl watched him
+breathlessly, oblivious to all things else. He seemed wholly unaware of
+her now. There was something aloof, impassive, infinitely calm about
+him, and a great, far-reaching understanding was in his eyes. Her own
+eyes suddenly filled with tears.
+
+"Linda, there's something come to me--and I don't know that I can make
+you understand. I can only call it strength--a new strength and a
+greater strength than I ever had before. It's something that the
+pine--that great tree that we just saw split open--has been trying to
+tell me for a long time. Oh, can't you see, Linda? There it stood,
+hundreds of years--so great, so tall, so wise--in a moment broken like a
+reed. It takes away my arrogance, Linda. It makes me see myself as I
+really am. And that means--_power_."
+
+His eyes blazed, and he caught her hands in his.
+
+"It was a symbol, Linda, not only of the wilderness, but of powers
+higher and greater than the wilderness. Powers that can look down, and
+not be swept away by passion, and not try to tear to pieces those who in
+their folly harm them. There's no room for such things as vengeance in
+this new strength. There's no room for murder, and malice, and hatred,
+and bloodshed."
+
+Linda understood. She knew that this new-found strength did not mean
+renunciation of her cause. It did not mean that he would give over his
+attempt to reinstate her as the owner of her father's estates. It only
+meant that the impulse of personal vengeance was dead within him. He
+knew now--the same as ever--that the duty of the men that dwell upon the
+earth is to do their allotted tasks, and without hatred and without
+passion to overcome the difficulties that stand in the way. She realized
+that if one of the Turners should leap through the door and attack her,
+Bruce would kill him without mercy or regret. She knew that he would
+make every effort to bring the offenders to the law. But the ability to
+shoot a fleeing enemy in the back, because of wrongs done long ago, was
+past.
+
+Bruce's vision had come to him. He knew that if vengeance had been the
+creed of the powers that ruled the world, the sphere would have been
+destroyed with fire long since. To stand firm and straight and
+unflinching; not to judge, not to condemn, not to resent; this was true
+strength. He began to see the whole race of men as so many leaves,
+buffeted by the winds of chance and circumstance; and was it for the oak
+leaf that the wind carried swift and high to hold in scorn the shrub
+leaf that the storm had already hurled to the dust?
+
+"I know," the girl said, her thoughts wandering afar. "Perhaps the name
+for it all is--tolerance."
+
+"Perhaps," he nodded. "And possibly it is only--worship!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Turners had gone. The dimming lightning revealed the entire
+attacking party half a mile distant and out of rifle range on the ridge;
+and Bruce and Linda stole together out into the storm. The green foliage
+of the tree had already burned away, but some of the upper branches
+still glowed against the dark sky. A fallen branch smoldered on the
+ground, hissing in the rain, and it lighted their way.
+
+Awed and mystified, Bruce halted before the ruin of the great tree. He
+had almost forgotten the stress of the moment just passed. It did not
+even occur to him that some of his enemies, unseen before, might still
+be lurking in the shadow, watching for a chance to harm. They stood a
+moment in silence. Then Bruce uttered one little gasp and stretched his
+arm into the hollow that the cleft in the trunk had revealed.
+
+The light from the burning branch behind him had shown him a small, dark
+object that had evidently been inserted in the hollow tree trunk through
+some little aperture that had either since been closed up or they had
+never observed. It was a leathern wallet, and Bruce opened it under
+Linda's startled gaze. He drew out a single white paper.
+
+He held it in the light, and his glance swept down its lines of faded
+ink. Then he looked up with brightening eyes.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"The secret agreement between your father and mine," he told her simply.
+"And we've won."
+
+He watched her eyes brighten. It seemed to him that nothing life had
+ever offered had given him the same pleasure. It was a moment of
+triumph. But before half of its long seconds were gone, it became a
+moment of despair.
+
+A rifle spoke from the coverts beyond,--one sharp, angry note that rose
+distinct and penetrating above the noise of the distant thunder. A
+little tongue of fire darted, like a snake's head, in the darkness. And
+the triumph on Bruce's face changed to a singular look of wonder.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+To Simon, the night had seemingly ended in triumph after all. It had
+looked dark for a while. The bolt of lightning, setting fire to the
+pine, had deranged all of his plans. His men had been thrown from their
+horses, the blazing pine tree had left them exposed to fire from the
+house, and they had not yet caught their mounts and rallied. Young Bill
+and himself, however, had tied their horses before the lightning had
+struck and had lingered in the thickets in front of the house for just
+such a chance as had been given them.
+
+He hadn't understood why Bruce had not opened fire on the fleeing
+Turners. He wondered if his enemy were out of ammunition. The tragedy of
+the Sentinel Pine had had no meaning for him; and he had held his rifle
+cocked and ready for the instant that Bruce had shown himself.
+
+Young Bill had heard his little exultant gasp when Linda and Bruce had
+come out into the firelight. Plainly they had kept track of all the
+attacking party that had been visible, and supposed that all their
+enemies had gone. He felt the movement of Simon's strong arms as he
+raised the rifle. Those arms were never steadier. In the darkness the
+younger man could not see his face, but his own fancy pictured it with
+entire clearness. The eyes were narrowed and red, the lines cut deep
+about the bloodhound lips, and mercy was as far from him as from the
+Killer who hunted on the distant ridge.
+
+But Simon didn't fire at once. The two were coming steadily toward him,
+and the nearer they were the better his chance of success in the
+unsteady light. He sat as breathless, as wholly free from telltale
+motion as a puma who waits in ambush for an approaching deer. He meant
+to take careful aim. It was his big chance, and he intended to make the
+most of it.
+
+The two had halted beside the ruined pine, but for a moment he held his
+fire. They stood rather close together; he wanted to wait until Bruce
+offered a clear target. And at that instant Bruce had drawn the leather
+wallet from the tree.
+
+Curiosity alone stayed Simon's finger as Bruce had opened it. He saw the
+gleam of the white paper in the dim light; and then he understood.
+
+Simon was a man of rigid, unwavering self-control; and his usual way was
+to look a long time between the sights before he fired. Yet the sight of
+that document--the missing Folger-Ross agreement on which had hung
+victory or defeat--sent a violent impulse through all his nervous
+system. For the first time in his memory his reflexes got away from him.
+
+It had meant too much; and his finger pressed back involuntarily against
+the trigger. He hadn't taken his usual deliberate aim, although he had
+seen Brace's figure clearly between the sights the instant before he had
+fired. Simon was a rifle-man, bred in the bone, and he had no reason to
+think that the hasty aim meant a complete miss. He did realize, however,
+the difficulties of night shooting--a realization that all men who have
+lingered after dusk in the duck blind experience sooner or later--and he
+looked up over his sights to see the result of his shot. His
+self-control had completely returned to him; and he was perfectly cold
+about the whole matter.
+
+From the first second he knew he hadn't completely missed. He raised his
+rifle to shoot again.
+
+But Bruce's body was no longer revealed. Linda stood in the way. It
+looked as if she had deliberately thrown her own body as a shield
+between.
+
+Simon spoke then,--a single, terrible oath of hatred and jealousy. But
+in a second more he saw his triumph. Bruce swayed, reeled, and fell in
+Linda's arms, and he saw her half-drag him into the house.
+
+He stood shivering, but not from the cold that the storm had brought.
+"Come on," he ordered Young Bill. "I think we've downed him for good,
+but we've got to get that paper."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Simon did not see all things clearly. He had little real knowledge
+of the little drama that had followed his shot from ambush.
+
+Human nature is full of odd quirks and twists, and among other things,
+symptoms are misleading. There is an accepted way for men to act when
+they are struck with a rifle bullet. They are expected to reel, to
+throw their arms wide, and usually to cry out. The only trouble with
+these actions, as most men who have been in French battle-fields know
+very well, is that they do not usually happen in real life.
+
+Bruce, with Linda's eyes upon him, took one rather long, troubled
+breath. And he did look somewhat puzzled. Then he looked down at his
+shoulder.
+
+"I'm hit, Linda," he said in a quiet way. "I think just a scratch."
+
+The tremendous shock of any kind of wound from a thirty-forty caliber
+bullet had not seemingly affected him outwardly at all. Linda's response
+was rather curious. Some hours were to pass before he completely
+understood. The truth was that the shock of that rifle bullet,
+ordinarily striking a blow of a half-ton, had cost him for the moment an
+ability to make any logical interpretation of events. The girl moved
+swiftly, yet without giving an impression of leaping, and stood very
+close and in front of him. In one lightning movement she had made of her
+own body a shield for his, in case the assassin in the covert should
+shoot again.
+
+She was trained to mountain ways, and instantly she regained a perfect
+mastery of herself. Her arms went about and seized his shoulders.
+"Stagger," she whispered quickly. "Pretend to fall. It's the one chance
+to save you."
+
+He dispelled the mists in his own brain and obeyed her. He swayed, and
+her arms went about him. Then he fell forward.
+
+Her strong arms encircled his waist and with all her magnificent young
+strength she dragged him to the door. It was noticeable, however--to all
+eyes except Bruce's--that she kept her own body as much as she could
+between him and the ambush. In an instant they were in the darkened
+room. Bruce stood up, once more wholly master of himself.
+
+"You're not hurt bad?" she asked quickly.
+
+"No. Just a deep scratch in the arm muscle near the shoulder. Bullet
+just must have grazed me. But it's bleeding pretty bad."
+
+"Then there's no time to be lost." Her hands in her eagerness went again
+to his shoulder. "Don't you see--he'll be here in a minute. We'll steal
+out the back door and try to ride down to the courts before they can
+overtake us--"
+
+In one instant he had grasped the idea; and he laughed softly in the
+gloom. "I know. I'll snatch two blankets and the food. You get the
+horse."
+
+She sprang out the kitchen door and he hurried into the bedrooms. He
+snatched two of the warmest blankets from the beds and hurled them over
+his shoulder. He hooked the camp ax on his belt, then hastened into the
+little kitchen. He took up the little sack containing a few pounds of
+jerked venison, spilled out a few pieces for Elmira, and carried
+it--with a few pounds of flour--out to meet Linda. The horse still stood
+saddled, and with deft hands they tied on their supplies and fastened
+the blankets in a long roll in front of the saddle.
+
+"Get on," she whispered. "I'll get up behind you."
+
+She spoke in the utter darkness; he felt her breath against his cheek.
+Then the lightning came dimly and showed him her face.
+
+"No, Linda," he replied quietly. "You are going alone--"
+
+She cut him off with a despairing cry. "Oh, please, Bruce--I won't. I'll
+stay here then--"
+
+"Don't you see?" he demanded. "You can make it out without me. I'm
+wounded and bleeding, and can't tell how long I can keep up. We've only
+got one horse, and without me to weigh him down you can get down to the
+courts--"
+
+"And leave you here to be murdered? Oh, don't waste the precious seconds
+any more. I won't go without you. I mean it. If you stay here, I do too.
+Believe me if you ever believed anything."
+
+Once more the lightning revealed her face, and on it was the
+determination of a zealot. He knew that she spoke the truth. He climbed
+with some difficulty into the saddle. A moment more and she swung up
+behind him.
+
+The entire operation had taken an astonishingly short period of time.
+Bruce had worked like mad, wholly disregarding his injured arm. The rain
+had already changed to snow, and the wet flakes beat in his face, but he
+did not heed them. Just beyond, Simon with ready rifle was creeping
+toward the house.
+
+"Which way?" Bruce asked.
+
+"The out-trail--around the mountain," she whispered. "Simon will
+overtake us on the other--he's got a magnificent horse. On the mountain
+trail we'll have a better chance to keep out of his sight."
+
+She spoke hurriedly, yet conveyed her message with entire clearness.
+They knew what they had to face, these two. Simon and whoever of the
+clan was with him would lose no time in springing in pursuit. They each
+had a strong horse, they knew the trails, they carried long-range rifles
+and would open fire at the first glimpse of the fugitives. Bruce was
+wounded; slight as the injury was it would seriously handicap them in
+such a test as this. Their one chance was to keep to the remote trails,
+to lurk unseen in the thickets, and try to break through to safety. And
+they knew that only by the doubtful mercy of the forest gods could they
+ever succeed.
+
+She took the reins and pulled out of the trail, then encircled a heavy
+wall of brush. She didn't wish to take the risk of Simon seeing their
+forms in the dimming lightning and opening fire so soon. Then she turned
+back into the trail and headed into the storm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Simon had clear enough memory of the rifle fire that Linda had opened
+upon the clan to wish to approach the house with care. It would be
+wholly typical of the girl to lay her lover on his bed, then go back to
+the window to wait for a sight of his assassin. She could look straight
+along a rifle barrel! A few moments were lost as Young Bill and himself
+encircled the thickets, keeping out of the gleam of the smoldering tree.
+Its light was almost gone; it hissed and glowed in the wet snow.
+
+They crept up from the shadow, and holding their rifles ready, opened
+the door. They were somewhat surprised to find it unlocked. The truth
+was it had been left thus by design; Linda did not wish them to encircle
+the house to the rear door and discover Bruce and herself in the act of
+departure. The room was in darkness, and the two intruders rather
+expected to find Bruce's body on the threshold.
+
+These were mountain men; and they had been in rifle duels before. They
+had the sure instincts of the beasts of prey in the hills without, and
+among other things they knew it wasn't wise to stand long in an open
+doorway with the firelight of the ruined pine behind them. They slipped
+quickly into the darkness.
+
+Then they stopped and listened. The room was deeply silent. They
+couldn't hear the sound that both of them had so confidently
+expected,--the faint breathing of a dying man. Simon struck a match. The
+room was quite deserted.
+
+"What's up?" Bill demanded.
+
+Simon turned toward him with a scowl, and the match flickered and burned
+out in his fingers. "Keep your rifle ready. He may be hiding
+somewhere--still able to shoot."
+
+They stole to the door of Linda's room and listened. Then they threw it
+wide.
+
+One of their foes was in this room--an implacable foe whose eyes were
+glittering and strange in the matchlight. But it was neither Bruce nor
+Linda. It was old Elmira, cold and sinister as a rattler in its lair.
+Simon cursed her and hurried on.
+
+At that instant both men began to move swiftly. Holding his rifle like a
+club, Simon swung through into, Bruce's room, lighted another match,
+then darted into the kitchen. In the dim matchlight the truth went home
+to him.
+
+He turned, eyes glittering. "They've gone--on Dave's horse," he said.
+"Thank God they've only got one horse between 'em and can't go fast. You
+ride like hell up the trail toward the store--they might have gone that
+way. Keep close watch and shoot when you can make 'em out."
+
+"You mean--" Bill's eyes widened.
+
+"Mean! I mean do as I say. Shoot by sound, if you can't see them, and
+don't lose another second or I'll shoot you too. Aim for the man if a
+chance offers--but shoot, anyway. Don't stop hunting till you find
+them--they'll duck off in the brush sure. If they get through,
+everything is lost. I'll take the trail around the mountain."
+
+They raced to their horses, untied them, and mounted swiftly. The
+darkness swallowed them at once.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+In the depth of gloom even the wild folk--usually keeping so close a
+watch on those that move on the shadowed trails--did not see Linda and
+Bruce ride past. The darkness is usually their time of dominance, but
+to-night most of them had yielded to the storm and the snow. They
+hovered in their coverts. What movement there was among them was mostly
+toward the foothills; for the message had gone forth over the wilderness
+that the cold had come to stay. The little gnawing folk, emerging for
+another night's work at filling their larders with food, crept down into
+the scarcely less impenetrable darkness of their underground burrows.
+Even the bears, whose furry coats were impervious to any ordinary cold,
+felt the beginnings of the cold-trance creeping over them. They were
+remembering the security and warmth of their last winter's dens, and
+they began to long for them again.
+
+The horse walked slowly, head close to the ground. The girl made no
+effort to guide him. The lightning had all but ceased; and in an instant
+it had become apparent that only by trusting to the animal's instinct
+could the trail be kept at all; almost at once all sense of direction
+was lost to them. The snow and the darkness obscured the outline of the
+ridges against the sky; the trail was wholly invisible beneath them.
+
+After the first hundred yards, they had no way of knowing that the horse
+was actually on the trail. While animals in the light of day cannot see
+nearly so far or interpret nearly so clearly as human beings, they
+usually seem to make their way much better at night. Many a frontiersman
+has been saved from death by realization of this fact; and, bewildered
+by the ridges, has permitted his dog to lead him into camp. But nature
+has never devised a creature that can see in the utter darkness, and the
+gloom that enfolded them now seemed simply unfathomable. Bruce found it
+increasingly hard to believe that the horse's eyes could make out any
+kind of dim pathway in the pine needles. The feeling grew on him and on
+Linda as well that they were lost and aimlessly wandering in the storm.
+
+Of all the sensations that the wilderness can afford, there are few more
+dreadful to the spirit than this. It is never pleasant to lose one's
+bearings,--and in the night and the cold and miles from any friendly
+habitation it is particularly hard to bear. Bruce felt the age-old
+menace of the wilderness as never before. It always seemed to be
+crouching, waiting to take a man at a disadvantage; and like the gods
+that first make mad those whom they would destroy, it doesn't quite play
+fair. He understood now certain wilderness tragedies of which he had
+heard: how tenderfeet--lost among the ridges--had broken into a wild run
+that had ended nowhere except in exhaustion and death.
+
+Bruce himself felt a wild desire to lash his horse into a gallop, but
+he forced it back with all his powers of will. His calmer, saner self
+explained that folly with entire clearness. It would mean panic for the
+horse, and then a quick and certain death either at the foot of a
+precipice or from a blow from a low-hanging limb. The horse seemed to be
+feeling its way, rather than seeing.
+
+They were strange, lonely figures in the darkness; and for a long time
+they rode almost in silence. Then Bruce felt the girl's breath as she
+whispered.
+
+"Bruce," she said. "Let's be brave and look this matter in the face. Do
+you think we've got a chance?"
+
+He rode a long time before he answered. He groped desperately for a word
+that might bring her cheer, but it was hard to find. The cold seemed to
+deepen about them, the remorseless snow beat into his face.
+
+"Linda," he replied, "it is one of the mercies of this world for men
+always to think that they've got a chance. Maybe it's only a cruelty in
+our case."
+
+"I think I ought to tell you something else. I haven't the least way of
+knowing whether we are on the right trail."
+
+"I knew that long ago. Whether we are on any trail at all."
+
+"I've just been thinking. I don't know how many forks it has. We might
+have already got on a wrong one. Perhaps the horse is turned about and
+is heading back home--toward Simon's stables."
+
+She spoke dully, and he thrust his arm back to her. "Linda, try to be
+brave," he urged. "We can only take a chance."
+
+The horse plodded a few more steps. "Brave! To think that it is _you_
+that has to encourage _me_--instead of my trying to keep up your
+spirits. I will try to be brave, Bruce. And if we don't live through the
+night, my last remembrance will be of your bravery--how you, injured and
+weak from loss of blood, still remembered to give a cheery word to me."
+
+"I'm not badly injured," he told her gently. "And there are certain
+things that have come clear to me lately. One of them is that except for
+you--throwing your own precious body between--I wouldn't be here at
+all."
+
+The feeling that they had lost the trail grew upon them. More than once
+the stirrup struck the bark of a tree and often the thickets gave way
+beneath them. Once they halted to adjust the blankets on the saddle, and
+they listened for any sounds that might indicate that Simon was
+overtaking them. But all they heard was the soft rustle of the leaves
+under the wind-blown snow.
+
+"Linda," he asked suddenly. "Does it seem to you to be awfully cold?"
+
+She waited a long time before she spoke. This was not the hour to make
+quick answers. On any decision might rest their success or failure.
+
+"I believe I can stand it--awhile longer," she answered at last.
+
+"But I don't think we'd better try to. It's getting cold. Every hour
+it's colder, and I seem to be getting weaker. It isn't a real wound,
+Linda--but it seems to have knocked some of my vitality out of me, and
+I'm dreadfully in need of rest. I think we'd better try to make a camp."
+
+"And go on by morning light?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But Simon might overtake us then."
+
+"We must stay out of sight of the trail. But somehow--I can't help but
+hope he won't try to follow us on such a night as this."
+
+He drew up the horse, and they sat in the beat of the snow. "Don't make
+any mistake about that, Bruce," she told him. "Remember, that unless he
+overtakes us before we come into the protection of the courts, his whole
+fight is lost. It doesn't alone mean loss of the estate--for which he
+would risk his life just as he has a dozen times. It means defeat--a
+thing that would come hard to Simon. Besides, he's got a fire within him
+that will keep him warm."
+
+"You mean--hatred?"
+
+"Hatred. Nothing else."
+
+"But in spite of it we must make camp. We'll get off the trail--if we're
+still on it--and try to slip through to-morrow. You see what's going to
+happen if we keep on going this way?"
+
+"I know that I feel a queer dread--and hopelessness--"
+
+"And that dread and hopelessness are just as much danger signals as the
+sound of Simon's horse behind us. It means that the cold and the snow
+and the fear are getting the better of us. Linda, it's a race with
+death. Don't misunderstand me or disbelieve me. It isn't Simon alone
+now. It's the cold and the snow and the fear. The thing to do is to make
+camp, keep as warm as we can in our blankets, and push on in the
+morning. It's two full days' ride, going fast, the best we can go--and
+God knows what will happen before the end."
+
+"Then turn off the trail, Bruce," the girl told him.
+
+"I don't know that we're even on the trail."
+
+"Turn off, anyway. As long as we stay together--it doesn't matter."
+
+She spoke very quietly. Then he felt a strange thing. A warmth which
+even that growing, terrible cold could not transcend swept over him. For
+her arms had crept out under his arms and encircled his great breast,
+then pressed with all her gentle strength.
+
+No word of encouragement, no cheery expression of hope could have meant
+so much. Not defeat, not even the long darkness of death itself could
+appall him now. All that he had given and suffered and endured, all the
+mighty effort that he had made had in an instant been shown in its true
+light, a thing worth while, a sacrifice atoned for and redeemed.
+
+They headed off into the thickets, blindly, letting the horse choose the
+way. They felt him turn to avoid some object in his path--evidently a
+fallen tree--and they mounted a slight ridge or rise. Then they felt the
+wet touch of fir branches against their cheeks.
+
+Bruce stopped the horse and both dismounted. Both of them knew that
+under the drooping limbs of the tree they would find, at least until the
+snows deepened, comparative shelter from the storm. Here, rolled in
+their blankets, they might pass the remainder of the night hours.
+
+Bruce tied the horse, and the girl unrolled the blankets. But she did
+not lay them together to make a rude bed,--and the dictates of
+conventionality had nothing whatever to do with it. If one jot more
+warmth could have been achieved by it, these two would have lain side by
+side through the night hours between the same blankets. She knew,
+however, that more warmth could be achieved if each of them took a
+blanket and rolled up in it; thus they would get two thicknesses instead
+of one and no openings to admit the freezing air. When this was done
+they lay side by side, economizing the last atom of warmth.
+
+The night hours were dreary and long. The rain beat into the limbs above
+them, and sometimes it sifted through. At the first gray of dawn Bruce
+opened his eyes.
+
+His dreams had been troubled and strange, but the reality to which he
+wakened gave him no sense of relief. The first knowledge that he had was
+that the snow had continued to sift down throughout the night, that it
+had already laid a white mantle over the wilderness, and the whirling
+flakes still cut off all view of the familiar landmarks by which he
+might get his bearings.
+
+He had this knowledge before he was actually cognizant of the cold. And
+then its first realization came to him in a strange heaviness and
+dullness in his body, and an almost irresistible desire to sleep.
+
+He fought a little battle, lying there under the snow-covered limbs of
+the fir tree. Because it was one in which no blows were exchanged, no
+shots fired, and no muscles called into action, it was no less a battle,
+trying and stern. It was a fight waged in his own spirit, and it seemed
+to rend him in twain.
+
+The whole issue was clear in his mind at once. The cold had deepened in
+these hours of dawn, and he was slowly, steadily freezing to death. Even
+now the blood flowed less swiftly in his veins. Death itself, in the
+moment, had lost all horror for him; rather it was a thing of peace, of
+ease. All he had to do was to lie still. Just close his eyes,--and soft
+shadows would drop over him.
+
+They would drop over Linda too. She lay still beside him; perhaps they
+had already fallen. The war he had waged so long and so relentlessly
+would end in blissful calm. Outside there was only snow and cold and
+wracking limbs and pain, only further conflict with tireless enemies,
+only struggle to tear his agonized body to pieces; and the bitterness of
+defeat in the end. He saw his chances plain as he lay beneath that gray
+sky. Even now, perhaps, Simon was upon them. Only two little rifle
+shells remained with which to combat him, and he doubted that his
+wounded arm would hold the rifle steady. There were weary, innumerable
+miles between them and any shelter, and only the terrible, trackless
+forest lay between.
+
+Why not lie still and let the curtains fall? This was an easy, tranquil
+passing, and heaven alone knew what dreadful mode of egress would be his
+if he rose to battle further. All the argument seemed on one side.
+
+But high and bright above all this burned the indomitable flame of his
+spirit. Even as the thoughts came to him it mounted higher, it propelled
+its essence of strength through his veins, it brought new steel to his
+muscles. To rise, to fight, to struggle on! Never to yield until the
+Power above decreed! To stand firm, even as the pines themselves. The
+dominant greatness that Linda had found in this man rose in him, and he
+set his muscles like iron.
+
+He struggled to rise. He shook off the mists of the frost in his brain.
+He seemed to come to life. Quickly he knelt by Linda and shook her
+shoulders in his hands. She opened her eyes.
+
+"Get up, Linda," he said gently. "We have to go on."
+
+She started to object, but a message in his eyes kept her from it. His
+own spirit went into her. He helped her to her feet.
+
+"Help me roll the blankets," he commanded, "and take out enough food for
+breakfast. We can't stop to eat it here. I think we're in sight of the
+main trail; whether we can find it--in the snow--I don't know." She
+understood; usually the absence of vegetation on a well-worn trail makes
+a shallow covering of snow appear more level and smooth and thus
+possible to follow.
+
+"I'm afraid the snow's already too deep," he continued, "but we can go
+on in a general direction for a while at least--unless the snow gets
+worse so I can't even guess the position of the sun. We must get farther
+into the thickets before we stop to eat."
+
+They were strange figures in the snow flurries as they went to work to
+roll the blankets into a compact bundle. The food she had taken from
+their stores for breakfast he thrust into the pocket of his coat; the
+rest, with the blankets, she tied swiftly on the horse. They unfastened
+the animal and for a moment she stood holding the reins while Bruce
+crept back on the hillside to look for the trail.
+
+The snow swept round them, and they felt the lowering menace of the
+cold. And at that instant those dread spirits that rule the wilderness,
+jealous then and jealous still of the intrusion of man, dealt them a
+final, deadly blow.
+
+Its weapon was just a sound--a loud crash in a distant thicket--and a
+pungent message on the wind that their human senses were too blunt to
+receive. Bruce saw the full dreadfulness of the blow and was powerless
+to save. The horse suddenly snorted loudly, then reared up. He saw as in
+a tragic, dream the girl struggle to hold him; he saw her pulled down
+into the snow and the rein jerked from her hand. Then the animal
+plunged, wheeled, and raced at top speed away into the snow flurries.
+Some Terror that as yet they could not name had broken their control of
+him and in an instant taken from them this one last hope of safety.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Bruce walked over to Linda, waiting in the snow on her knees. It was not
+an intentional posture. She had been jerked down by the plunging horse,
+and she had not yet completely risen. But the sight of her slight
+figure, her raised white face, her clasped hands, and the remorseless
+snow of the wilderness about her moved Bruce to his depths. He saw her
+but dimly in the snow flurries, and she looked as if she were in an
+attitude of prayer.
+
+He came rather slowly, and he even smiled a little. And she gave him a
+wan, strange, little smile in return.
+
+"We're down to cases at last," he said, with a rather startling
+quietness of tone. "You see what it means?"
+
+She nodded, then got to her feet.
+
+"We can walk out, if we are let alone and given time; it isn't that we
+are obliged to have the horse. But our blankets are on its back, and
+this storm is steadily becoming a blizzard. And you see--_time_ is one
+thing that we don't have. No human being can stand this cold for long
+unprotected."
+
+"And we can't keep going--keep warm by walking?"
+
+His answer was to take out his knife and put the point of the steel to
+his thumb nail. His eyes strained, then looked up. "A little way," he
+answered, "but we can't keep our main directions. The sun doesn't even
+cast a shadow on my nail to show us which is west. We could keep up a
+while, perhaps, but there is no end to this wilderness and at noon or
+to-night--the result would be the same."
+
+"And it means--the end?"
+
+"If I can't catch the horse. I'm going now. If we can regain the
+blankets--by getting in rifle range of the horse--we might make some
+sort of shelter in the snow and last out until we can see our way and
+get our bearings. You don't know of any shelter--any cave or cabin where
+we might build a fire?"
+
+"No. There are some in the hills, but we can't see our way to find
+them."
+
+"I know. I should have thought of that. And you see, we can't build a
+fire here--everything is wet, and the snow is beginning to whirl so we
+couldn't keep it going. If we should stagger on all day in this storm
+and this snow, we couldn't endure the night." He smiled again. "And I
+want you to climb a tree--and stay there--until I come back."
+
+She looked at him dully. "What's the use, Bruce? You won't come back.
+You'll chase the thing until you die--I know you. You don't know when to
+give up. And if you want to come back--you couldn't find the way. I'm
+going with you."
+
+"No." Once more she started to disobey, but the grave displeasure in
+his eyes restrained her. "It's going to take all my strength to fight
+through that snow--I must go fast--and maybe life and death will have to
+depend on your strength at the end of the trail. You must save it--the
+little you have left. I can find my way back to you by following my own
+tracks--the snow won't fill them up so soon. And since I must take the
+rifle--to shoot the horse if I can't catch him--you must climb a tree.
+You know why."
+
+"Partly to hide from Simon if he comes this way. And partly--"
+
+"Because there's some danger in that thicket beyond!" he interrupted
+her. "The horse's terror was real--besides, you heard the sound. It
+might be only a puma. But it might be--the Killer. Swing your arms and
+struggle all you can to keep the blood flowing. I won't be gone long."
+
+He started to go, and she ran after him with outstretched arms. "Oh,
+Bruce," she cried, "come back soon--soon. Don't leave me to die alone.
+I'm not strong enough for that--"
+
+He whirled, took two paces back, and his arms went about her. He had
+forgotten his injury long since. He kissed her cool lips and smiled into
+her eyes. Then at once the flurries hid him.
+
+The girl climbed up into the branches of a fir tree. In the thicket
+beyond a great gray form tacked back and forth, trying to locate a scent
+that a second before he had caught but dimly and had lost. It was the
+Killer, and his temper was lost long ago in the whirling snow. His anger
+was upon him, partly from the discomfort of the storm, partly from the
+constant, gnawing pain of three bullet wounds in his powerful body.
+Besides, he realized the presence of his old and greatest enemy,--those
+tall, slight forms that had crossed him so many times, that had stung
+him with their bullets, and whose weakness he had learned.
+
+The wind was variable, and all at once he caught the scent plain. He
+lurched forward, crashed again through the brush, and walked out into
+the snow-swept open. Linda saw his vague outline, and at first she hung
+perfectly motionless, hoping to escape his gaze. She had been told many
+times that grizzlies cannot climb, yet she had no desire to see him
+raging below her, reaching, possibly trying to shake her from the limbs.
+Her muscles were stiff and inactive from the cold, and she doubted her
+ability to hold on. Besides, in that dread moment she found it hard to
+believe that the Killer would not be able to swing into the lower limbs,
+high enough to strike her down.
+
+He didn't seem to see her. His eyes were lowered; besides, it was never
+the grizzly way to search the branches of a tree. The wind blew the
+message that he might have read clearly in the opposite direction. She
+saw him walk slowly across the snow, head lowered, a huge gray ghost in
+the snow flurries not one hundred feet distant. Then she saw him pause,
+with lowered head.
+
+In the little second before the truth came to her, the bear had already
+turned. Bruce's tracks were somewhat dimmed by the snow, but the Killer
+interpreted them truly. She saw too late that he had crossed them, read
+their message, and now had turned into the clouds of snow to trace them
+down.
+
+For an instant she gazed at him in speechless horror; and already the
+flurries had almost obscured his gray figure. Desperately she tried to
+call his attention from the tracks. She called, then she rustled the
+branches as loudly as she could. But the noise of the wind obscured what
+sound she made, and the bear was already too absorbed in the hunt to
+turn and see her. As always, in the nearing presence of a foe, his rage
+grew upon him.
+
+Sobbing, Linda swung down from the tree. She had no conscious plan of
+aid to her lover. She only had a blind instinct to seek him, to try to
+warn him of his danger, and at least to be with him at the death. The
+great tracks of the Killer, seemingly almost as long as her own arm,
+made a plain trail for her to follow. She too struck off into the
+storm-swept canyon.
+
+And the forest gods who dwell somewhere in the region where the pine
+tops taper into the sky, and who pull the strings that drop and raise
+the curtain and work the puppets that are the players of the wilderness
+dramas, saw a chance for a great and tragic jest in this strange chase
+over the snow. The destinies of Bruce, Linda, and the Killer were
+already converging on this trail that all three followed,--the path that
+the runaway horse made in the snow. Only one of the great forces of the
+war that had been waged at Trail's End was lacking, and now he came
+also.
+
+Simon Turner had ridden late into the night and from before dawn; with
+remorseless fury he had goaded on his exhausted horse, he had driven him
+with unpitying strength through coverts, over great rocks, down into
+rocky canyons in search of Bruce and Linda, and now, as the dawn broke,
+he thought that he had found them. He had suddenly come upon the tracks
+of Bruce's horse in the snow.
+
+If he had encountered them farther back, when the animal had been
+running wildly, he might have guessed the truth and rejoiced. No man
+would attempt to ride a horse at a gallop through that trailless
+stretch. But at the point he found the tracks most of the horse's terror
+had been spent, and it was walking leisurely, sometimes lowering its
+head to crop the shrubbery. The trail was comparatively fresh too; or
+else the fast-falling snow would have already obscured it. He thought
+that his hour of triumph was near.
+
+But it had come none too soon. And Simon--out of passion-filled
+eyes--looked and saw that it would likely bring death with it.
+
+He realized his position fully. The storm was steadily developing into
+one of those terrible mountain blizzards in which, without shelter, no
+human being might live. He was far from his home, he had no blankets,
+and he could not find his way. Yet he would not have turned back if he
+could.
+
+In all the manifold mysteries of the wilderness there was no stranger
+thing than this: that in the face of his passion Simon had forgotten and
+ignored even that deepest instinct, self-preservation. Nothing mattered
+any more except his hatred. No desire was left except its expression.
+
+The securing of the document by which Bruce could take the great estates
+from him was only a trifle now. He believed wholly within his own soul
+that the wilderness--without his aid--would do his work of hatred for
+him; and that by no conceivable circumstances could Bruce and Linda find
+shelter from the blizzard and live through the day. He could find their
+bodies in the spring if he by any chance escaped himself, and take the
+Ross-Folger agreement from them. But it was not enough. He wanted also
+to do the work of destruction.
+
+Even his own death--if it were only delayed until his vengeance was
+wreaked--could not matter now. In all the ancient strife and fury and
+ceaseless war of the wild through which he had come, there was no
+passion to equal this. The Killer was content to let the wolf kill the
+fawn for him. The cougar will turn from its warm, newly slain prey, in
+which its white fangs have already dipped, at the sight of some great
+danger in the thickets. But Simon could not turn. Death lowered its
+wings upon him as well as upon his enemy, yet the fire in his heart and
+the fury in his brain shut out all thought of it.
+
+He sprang off his horse better to examine the tracks, and then stood,
+half bent over, in the snow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bruce Folger headed swiftly up the trail that his runaway horse had
+made. It was, he thought, his last effort, and he gave his full strength
+to it. Weakened as he was by the cold and the wound, he could not have
+made headway at all except for the fact that the wind was behind him.
+
+The snow ever fell faster, in larger flakes, and the track dimmed before
+his eyes. It was a losing game. Terrified not only by the beast that had
+stirred in the thicket but by the ever-increasing wind as well, the
+animal would not linger to be overtaken. Bruce had not ridden it enough
+to have tamed it, and his plan was to attempt to shoot the creature on
+sight, rather than try to catch it. They could not go forward, anyway,
+as long as the blizzard lasted. Which way was east and which was west he
+could no longer guess. And with the blankets they might make some sort
+of shelter and keep life in their bodies until the snow ceased and they
+could find their way.
+
+The cold was deepening, the storm was increasing in fury. Bruce's bones
+ached, his wounded arm felt numb and strange, the frost was getting into
+his lungs. The wind's breath was ever keener, its whistle was louder in
+the pines. There was no hope of the storm decreasing, rather it was
+steadily growing worse. And Bruce had some pre-knowledge--an
+inheritance, perhaps, from frontier ancestors--of the real nature of the
+mountain blizzard such as was descending on him now. It was a losing
+fight. All the optimism of youth and the spirit of the angels could not
+deny this fact.
+
+The tracks grew more dim, and he began to be afraid that the falling
+flakes would obscure his own footprints so that he could not find his
+way back to Linda. And he knew, beyond all other knowledge, that he
+wanted her with him when the shadows dropped down for good and all. He
+couldn't face them bravely alone. He wanted her arms about him; the
+flight would be easier then.
+
+"Oh, what's the use?" he suddenly said to the wind. "Why not give up and
+go back?"
+
+He halted in the trail and started to turn. But at that instant a banner
+of wind swept down into his face, and the eddy of snow in front of him
+was brushed from his gaze. Just for the space of a breath the canyon for
+a hundred feet distant was partially cleared of the blinding streamers
+of snow. And he uttered a long gasp when he saw, thirty yards distant
+and at the farthest reaches of his sight, the figure of a saddled horse.
+
+His gun leaped to his shoulder, yet his eagerness did not cost him his
+self-control. He gazed quietly along the sights until he saw the
+animal's shoulder between them. His finger pressed back against the
+trigger.
+
+The horse rocked down, seemingly instantly killed, and the snow swept in
+between. Bruce cried out in triumph. Then he broke into a run and sped
+through the flurries toward his dead.
+
+But it came about that there was other business for Bruce than the
+recovery of his blankets that he had supposed would be tied to the
+saddle. The snow was thick between, and he was within twenty feet of the
+animal's body before he glimpsed it clearly again. And he felt the first
+wave of wonder, the first promptings of the thought that the horse he
+had shot down was not his, but one that he had never seen before.
+
+But there was no time for the thought to go fully home. Some one cried
+out--a strange, half-snarl of hatred and triumph that was almost lacking
+in all human quality--and a man's body leaped toward him from the
+thicket before which the horse had fallen. It was Simon, and Bruce had
+mistaken his horse for the one he had ridden.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Even in that instant crisis Bruce did not forget that he had as yet
+neglected to expel the empty cartridge from the barrel of his rifle and
+to throw in the other from the magazine. He tried to get the gun to his
+shoulder, working the lever at the same time. But Simon's leap was too
+fast for him. His strong hand seized the barrel of the gun and snatched
+it from his hands. Then the assailant threw it back, over his shoulder,
+and it fell softly in the snow. He waited, crouched.
+
+The two men stood face to face at last. All things else were forgotten.
+The world they had known before--a world of sorrow and pleasures, of
+mountains and woods and homes--faded out and left no realities except
+each other's presence. All about them were the snow flurries that their
+eyes could not penetrate, and it was as if they were two lone
+contestants on an otherwise uninhabited sphere who had come to grips at
+last. The falling snow gave the whole picture a curious tone of
+unreality and dimness.
+
+Bruce straightened, and his face was of iron. "Well, Simon," he said.
+"You've come."
+
+The man's eyes burned red through the snow. "Of course I would. Did you
+think you could escape me?"
+
+"It didn't much matter whether I escaped you or not," Bruce answered
+rather quietly. "Neither one of us is going to escape the storm and the
+cold. I suppose you know that."
+
+"I know that _one_ of us is. Because one of us is going out--a more
+direct way--first. Which one that is doesn't much matter." His great
+hands clasped. "Bruce, when I snatched your gun right now I could have
+done more. I could have sprung a few feet farther and had you around the
+waist--taken by surprise. The fight would have been already over. I
+think I could have done more than that even--with my own rifle as you
+came up. It's laying there, just beside the horse."
+
+But Bruce didn't turn his eyes to look at it. He was waiting for the
+attack.
+
+"I could have snatched your life just as well, but I wanted to wait,"
+Simon went on. "I wanted to say a few words first, and wanted to master
+you--not by surprise--but by superior strength alone."
+
+It came into Brace's mind that he could tell Simon of the wound near his
+shoulder, how because of it no fight between them would be a fair test
+of superiority, yet the words didn't come to his lips. He could not ask
+mercy of this man, either directly or indirectly, any more than the
+pines asked mercy of the snows that covered them.
+
+"You were right when you said there is no escaping from this storm,"
+Simon went on. "But it doesn't much matter. It's the end of a long war,
+and what happens to the victor is neither here nor there. It seems all
+the more fitting that we should meet just as we have--at the very brink
+of death--and Death should be waiting at the end for the one of us who
+survives. It's so like this damned, terrible wilderness in which we
+live."
+
+Bruce gazed in amazement. The dark and dreadful poetry of this man's
+nature was coming to the fore. The wind made a strange echo to his
+words,--a long, wild shriek as it swept over the heads of the pines.
+
+"Then why are you waiting?" Bruce asked.
+
+"So you can understand everything. But I guess that time is here. There
+is to be no mercy at the end of this fight, Bruce; I ask none and will
+give none. You have waged a war against me, you have escaped me many
+times, you have won the love of the woman I love--and this is to be my
+answer." His voice dropped a note and he spoke more quietly. "I'm going
+to kill you, Bruce."
+
+"Then try it," Bruce answered steadily. "I'm in a hurry to go back to
+Linda."
+
+Simon's smoldering wrath blazed up at the words. Both men seemed to
+spring at the same time. Their arms flailed, then interlocked; and they
+rocked a long time--back and forth in the snow.
+
+They fought in silence. The flurries dropped over them, and the wind
+swept by in its frantic wandering. Bruce called upon his last ounce of
+reserve strength,--that mysterious force that always sweeps to a man's
+aid in a moment of crisis.
+
+For the first time he had full realization of Simon's mighty strength.
+With all the power of his body he tried to wrench him off his feet, but
+it was like trying to tear a tree from the ground.
+
+But surprise at the other's power was not confined to Bruce alone. Simon
+knew that he had an opponent worthy of the iron of his own muscles, and
+he put all his terrible might into the battle. He tried to reach Bruce's
+throat, but the man's strong shoulder held the arm against his side.
+Simon's great hand reached to pin Bruce's arm, and for the first time he
+discovered the location of his weakness.
+
+He saw the color sweep from Bruce's face and water drops that were not
+melted snow come upon it. It was all the advantage needed between such
+evenly matched contestants. And Simon forgot his spoken word that he
+wished this fight to be a test of superiority alone. His fury swept over
+him like a flood and effaced all things else; and he centered his whole
+attack upon Bruce's wound.
+
+In a moment he had him down, and he struck once into Bruce's white face
+with his terrible knuckles. The blow sent a strange sickness through the
+younger man's frame; and he tried vainly to struggle to his feet.
+"Fight! Fight on!" was the message his mind dispatched along his nerves
+to his tortured muscles, but for an instant they wholly refused to
+respond. They had endured too much. Total unconsciousness hovered above
+him, ready to descend.
+
+Strangely, he seemed to know that Simon had crept from his body and was
+even now reaching some dreadful weapon that lay beside the dead form of
+the horse. In an instant he had it, and Bruce's eyes opened in time to
+see him swinging it aloft. It was his rifle, and Simon was aiming a
+murderous blow at him with its stock.
+
+There was no chance to ward it off. No human skull could withstand its
+shattering impact. Bruce saw the man's dark face with the murder madness
+upon it, the blazing eyes, the lips drawn back. The muscles contracted
+to deal the blow.
+
+But that war of life and death in the far reaches of Trail's End was not
+to end so soon. At that instant there was an amazing intervention.
+
+A great gray form came lunging out of the snow flurries. Their vision
+was limited to a few feet, and so fast the creature came, with such
+incredible, smashing power, that he was upon them in a breath. It was
+the Killer in the full glory of the charge; and he had caught up with
+them at last.
+
+Bruce saw only his great figure looming just over him. Simon, with
+amazing agility, leaped to one side just in time, then battered down the
+rifle stock with all his strength. But the blow was not meant for Bruce.
+It struck where aimed,--the great gray shoulder of the grizzly.
+
+Then, dimmed and half-obscured by the snow flurries, there began as
+strange a battle as the great pines above them had ever beheld. The
+Killer's rage was upon him, and the blow at the shoulder had arrested
+his charge for a moment only. Then he wheeled, a snarling, fighting
+monster with death for any living creature in the blow of his forearm,
+and lunged toward Simon again.
+
+It was the Killer at his grandest. The little eyes blazed, the neck hair
+bristled, he struck with forearms and jaws--lashing, lunging,
+recoiling--all the terrible might and fury of the wilderness centered
+and personified in his mighty form. Simon had no chance to shoot his
+rifle. In the instant that he would raise it those great claws and fangs
+would be upon him. He swung it as a club, striking again and again,
+dodging the sledge-hammer blows and springing aside in the second of the
+Killer's lunges. He was fighting for his life, and no eye could bemean
+that effort.
+
+Simon himself seemed exalted, and for once it appeared that the grizzly
+had found an opponent worthy of his might. It was all so fitting: that
+these two mighty powers, typifying all that is remorseless and terrible
+in the wild, should clash at last in the gathering fury of the storm.
+They were of one kind, and they seemed to understand each other. The
+lust and passion and fury of battle were upon them both.
+
+The scene harked back to the young days of the world, when man and beast
+battled for dominance. Nothing had changed. The forest stood grave and
+silent, just the same. The elements warred against them from the
+clouds,--that ancient persecution of which the wolf pack sings on the
+ridge at night, that endless strife that has made of existence a travail
+and a scourge. Man and beast and storm--those three great foes were
+arrayed the same as ever. Time swung backward a thousand-thousand
+years.
+
+The storm gathered in force. The full strength of the blizzard was upon
+them. The snow seemed to come from all directions in great clouds and
+flurries and streamers, and time after time it wholly hid the
+contestants from Bruce's eyes. At such times he could tell how the fight
+was going by sound alone,--the snarls of the Killer, the wild oaths of
+Simon, the impact of the descending rifle-butt. Bruce gave no thought to
+taking part. Both were enemies; his own strength seemed gone. The cold
+deepened; Bruce could feel it creeping into his blood, halting its flow,
+threatening the spark of life within him. The full light of day had come
+out upon the land.
+
+Bruce knew the wilderness now. All its primitive passions were in play,
+all its mighty forces at grips. The storm seemed to be trying to
+extinguish these mortal lives; jealous of their intrusion, longing for
+the world it knew before living things came to dwell upon it, when its
+winds swept endlessly over an uninhabited earth, and its winter snows
+lay trackless and its rule was supreme. And beneath it, blind to the
+knowledge that in union alone lay strength to oppose its might--to
+oppose all those cruel forces that make a battleground of life--man and
+beast fought their battle to the death.
+
+It seemed to go on forever. Linda came stealing out of the
+snow--following the grizzly's trail--and crept beside Bruce. She
+crouched beside him, and his arm went about her as if to shield her.
+She had heard the sounds of the battle from afar; she had thought that
+Bruce was the contestant, and her terror had left a deep pallor upon her
+face; yet now she gazed upon that frightful conflict with a strange and
+enduring calm. Both she and Bruce knew that there was but one sure
+conqueror, and that was Death. If the Killer survived the fight and
+through the mercy of the forest gods spared their lives, there remained
+the blizzard. They could conceive of no circumstances whereby further
+effort would be of the least avail. The horse on which was tied their
+scanty blankets was miles away by now; its tracks were obscured in the
+snow, and they could not find their way to any shelter that might be
+concealed among the ridges.
+
+The scene grew in fury. The last burst of strength was upon Simon; in
+another moment he would be exhausted. The bear had suffered terrible
+punishment from the blows of the rifle stock. He recoiled once more,
+then lunged with unbelievable speed. His huge paw, with all his might
+behind it, struck the weapon from Simon's hand.
+
+It shot through the air seemingly almost as fast as the bullets it had
+often propelled from its muzzle and struck the trunk of a tree. So hard
+it came that the lock was shattered; they heard the ring of metal. The
+bear rocked forward once more and struck again. And then all the sound
+that was left was the eerie complaint of the wind.
+
+Simon lay still. The brave fight was over. His trial had ended
+fittingly,--in the grip of such powers as were typical of himself. But
+the bear did not leap upon him to tear his flesh. For an instant he
+stood like a statue in gray stone, head lowered, as if in a strange
+attitude of thought. The snow swept over him.
+
+Linda and Bruce gazed at him in silent awe. Some way, they felt no fear.
+No room in their hearts was left for it after the tumult of that battle.
+The great grizzly uttered one deep note and half-turned about. His eyes
+rested upon the twain, but he did not seem to see them.
+
+The fury was dead within him; this much was plain. The hair began to lie
+down at his shoulders. The terrible eyes lost their fire. Then he turned
+again and headed off slowly, deliberately, directly into the face of the
+storm.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The flurries almost immediately obscured the Killer's form, and Bruce
+turned his attention back to Linda. "It's the end," he said quietly.
+"Why not here--as well as anywhere else?"
+
+But before the question was finished, a strange note had come into his
+voice. It was as if his attention had been called from his words by
+something much more momentous. The truth was that it had been caught and
+held by a curious expression on the girl's face.
+
+Some great idea, partaking of the nature of inspiration, had come to
+her. He saw it in the growing light in her eyes, the deepening of the
+soft lines of her face. All at once she sprang to her feet.
+
+"Bruce!" she cried. "Perhaps there's a way yet. A long, long chance, but
+maybe a way yet. Get your rifle--Simon's is broken--and come with me."
+
+Without waiting for him to rise she struck off into the storm, following
+the huge footprints of the bear. The man struggled with himself,
+summoned all that was left of his reserve supply of strength, and leaped
+up. He snatched his rifle from the ground where Simon had thrown it, and
+in an instant was beside her. Her cheeks were blazing.
+
+"Maybe it just means further torture," she confessed to him, "but don't
+you want to make every effort we can to save ourselves? Don't you want
+to fight till the last breath?"
+
+She glanced up and saw her answer in the growing strength of his face.
+Then his words spoke too. "As long as the slightest chance remains," he
+replied.
+
+"And you'll forgive me if it comes to nothing?"
+
+He smiled, dimly. She took fresh heart when she saw he still had
+strength enough to smile. "You don't have to ask me that."
+
+"A moment ago an idea came to me--it came so straight and sure it was as
+if a voice told me," she explained hurriedly. She didn't look at him
+again. She kept her eyes intent upon the great footprints in the snow.
+To miss them for a second meant, in that world of whirling snow, to lose
+them forever. "It was after the bear had killed Simon and had gone away.
+He acted exactly as if he thought of something and went out to do
+it--exactly as if he had a destination in view. Didn't you see--his
+anger seemed to die in him and he started off in the _face of the
+storm_. I've watched the ways of animals too long not to know that he
+had something in view. It wasn't food; he would have attacked the body
+of the horse, or even Simon's body. If he had just been running away or
+wandering, he would have gone with the wind, not against it. He was
+weakened from the fight, perhaps dying--and I think--"
+
+He finished the sentence for her, breathlessly. "That he's going toward
+shelter."
+
+"Yes. You know, Bruce--the bears hibernate every year. They always seem
+to have places all chosen--usually caverns in the hillsides or under
+uprooted trees--and when the winter cuts off their supplies of food they
+go straight toward them. That's my one hope now--that the Killer has
+gone to some cave he knows about to hibernate until this storm is over.
+I think from the way he started off, so sure and so straight, that it's
+near. It would be dry and out of the storm, and if we could take it away
+from him we could make a fire that the snow wouldn't put out. It would
+mean life--and we could go on when the storm is over."
+
+"You remember--we have only one cartridge."
+
+"Yes, I know--I heard you fire. And it's only a thirty-thirty at that.
+It's a risk--as terrible a risk as we've yet run. But it's a chance."
+
+They talked no more. Instead, they walked as fast as they could into the
+face of the storm. It was a moment of respite. This new hope returned
+some measure of their strength to them. They walked much more swiftly
+than the bear, and they could tell by the appearance of the tracks that
+they were but a few yards behind him.
+
+"He won't smell us, the wind blowing as it does," Linda encouraged. "And
+he won't hear us either."
+
+Now the tracks were practically unspotted with the flakes. They strained
+into the flurries. Now they walked almost in silence, their footfall
+muffled in the snow.
+
+They soon became aware that they were mounting a low ridge. They left
+the underbrush and emerged into the open timber. And all at once Bruce,
+who now walked in front, paused with lifted hand, and pointed. Dim
+through the flurries they made out the outline of the bear. And Linda's
+inspiration had come true.
+
+There was a ledge of rocks just in front--a place such as the
+rattlesnakes had loved in the blasting sun of summer--and a black hole
+yawned in its side. The aperture had been almost covered with the snow,
+and they saw that the great creature was scooping away the remainder of
+the white drift with his paw. As they waited, the opening grew steadily
+wider, revealing the mouth of a little cavern in the face of the rock.
+
+"Shoot!" Linda whispered. "If he gets inside we won't be able to get him
+out."
+
+But Bruce shook his head, then stole nearer. She understood; he had only
+one cartridge, and he must not take the risk of wounding the animal. The
+fire had to be centered on a vital place.
+
+He walked steadily nearer until it seemed to Linda he would advance
+straight into reach of the terrible claws. He held the rifle firmly; his
+jaw was set, his face white, his eyes straight and strong with the
+strength of the pines themselves. He went as softly as he could--nearer,
+ever nearer--the rifle cocked and ready in his hands.
+
+The Killer turned his head and saw Bruce. Rage flamed again in his eyes.
+He half-turned about; then poised to charge.
+
+The gun moved swiftly, easily, to the man's shoulder, his chin dropped
+down, his straight eyes gazed along the barrel. In spite of his wound
+never had human arms held more steady than his did then. And he marked
+the little space of gray squarely between the two reddening eyes.
+
+The finger pressed back steadily against the trigger. The rifle cracked
+in the silence. And then there was a curious effect of tableau, a long
+second in which all three figures seemed to stand deathly still.
+
+The bear leaped forward, and it seemed wholly impossible to Linda that
+Bruce could swerve aside in time to avoid the blow. She cried out in
+horror as the great paws whipped down in the place where Bruce had
+stood. But the man had been prepared for this very recoil, and he had
+sprung aside just as the claws raked past.
+
+And the Killer would hunt no more in Trail's End. At the end of that
+leap he fell, his great body quivering strangely in the snow. The lead
+had gone straight home where it had been aimed, and the charge itself
+had been mostly muscular reflex. He lay still at last, a gray, mammoth
+figure that was majestic even in death.
+
+No more would the deer shudder with terror at the sound of his heavy
+step in the thicket. No more would the herds fly into stampede at the
+sight of his great shadow on the moonlit grass. The last of the Oregon
+grizzlies had gone the way of all his breed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Bruce and Linda, standing breathless and awed in the snow-flurries,
+his death imaged the passing of an old order--the last stand that the
+forces of the wild had made against conquering man. But there was pathos
+in it too. There was the symbol of mighty breeds humbled and destroyed.
+
+But the pines were left. Those eternal symbols of the wilderness--and of
+powers beyond the wilderness--still stood straight and grand and
+impassive above them. While these two lived, at least, they would still
+keep their watch over the wilderness, they would still stand erect and
+brave to the buffeting of the storm and snow, and in their shade dwelt
+strength and peace.
+
+The cavern that was revealed to them had a rock floor and had been
+hollowed out by running water in ages past. Bruce built a fire at its
+mouth of some of the long tree roots that extended down into it, and the
+life-giving warmth was a benediction. Already the drifting snow had
+begun to cover the aperture.
+
+"We can wait here until the blizzard is done," Bruce told Linda, as she
+sat beside him in the soft glow of the fire. "We have a little food, and
+we can cut more from the body of the grizzly when we need it. There's
+dead wood under the snow. And when the storm is over, we can get our
+bearings and walk out."
+
+She sat a long time without answering. "And after that?" she asked.
+
+He smiled. "No one knows. It's ten days before the thirtieth--the
+blizzards up here never last over three or four days. We've got plenty
+of time to get the document down to the courts. The law will deal with
+the rest of the Turners. We've won, Linda."
+
+His hands groped for hers, and he laid it against his lips. With her
+other hand she stroked his snow-wet hair. Her eyes were lustrous in the
+firelight.
+
+"And after that--after all that is settled? You will come back to the
+mountains?"
+
+"Could I ever leave them!" he exclaimed. "Of course, Linda. But I don't
+know what I can do up here--except maybe to establish my claim to my
+father's old farm. There's a hundred or so acres. I believe I'd like to
+feel the handles of a plow in my palms."
+
+"It was what you were made for, Bruce," she told him. "It's born in you.
+There's a hundred acres there--and three thousand--somewhere else.
+You've got new strength, Bruce. You could take hold and make them yield
+up their hay--and their crops--and fill all these hills with the herds."
+She stretched out her arms. Then all at once she dropped them almost as
+if in supplication. But her voice had regained the old merry tone he had
+learned to love when she spoke again. "Bruce, have I got to do all the
+asking?"
+
+His answer was to stretch his great arms and draw her into them. His
+laugh rang in the cavern.
+
+"Oh, my dearest!" he cried. The eyes lighted in his bronzed face. "I ask
+for everything--everything--bold that I am! And what I want worst--this
+minute--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"--Is just--a kiss."
+
+She gave it to him with all the tenderness of her soft lips. The snow
+sifted down outside. Again the pines spoke to one another, but the
+sadness seemed mostly gone from their soft voices.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+By EDISON MARSHALL
+
+
+THE VOICE OF THE PACK
+
+With frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton
+
+_Love story, adventure story, nature story--all three qualities combine
+in this tale of modern man and woman arrayed against the forces of
+age-old savagery._
+
+"'The Voice of the Pack' is clean, fine, raw, bold, primitive; and has a
+wonderfully haunting quality in the repeated wolf-note"--_Zane Grey._
+
+"Taken all around 'The Voice of the Pack' is the best of the stories
+about wild life that has come out in many, many moons."--_The Chicago
+Daily News._
+
+"As a story that mingles Adventure, Nature Study and Romance, 'The Voice
+of the Pack' is undeniably of the front rank. Mr. Marshall knows the
+wild places and the ways of the wild creatures that range them--and he
+knows how to write. The study of Dan Failing's development against a
+background of the wild life of the mountains, is an exceedingly clever
+piece of literary work."--_The Boston Herald._
+
+"An unusually good tale of the West, evidently written by a man who
+knows about the habits of the wolf-packs and cougars."--_The New York
+Times._
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 35378.txt or 35378.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/3/7/35378
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/35378.zip b/35378.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae79e78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35378.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11b5bc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #35378 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35378)