The Strength of the Pines Part 28

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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sion-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 pa.s.sion 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 doc.u.ment 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

x.x.xIII

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hands. Then the a.s.sailant 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.