The Strength of the Pines Part 29

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 d.a.m.ned, 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 l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion 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-b.u.t.t. 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 pa.s.sions 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 G.o.ds spared their lives, there remained the blizzard. They could conceive of no circ.u.mstances 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 att.i.tude 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.

x.x.xIV

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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?"