The Strength of the Pines Part 1

The Strength of the Pines.

by Edison Marshall.

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 c.o.c.ked 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 eggsh.e.l.l 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sions.

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 embarra.s.sment 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 n.o.blest 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 s.p.a.ces 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.