THE STRENGTH 
 OF THE PJ 
 
 
EX LIBRIS 
 
THE STRENGTH OF THE PINES 
 
He marked the little space of gray squarely between the 
 two reddening eyes. FRONTISPIECE. See page 305. 
 
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. 8. A. 
 
TO 
 
 LILLE BARTOO MARSHALL 
 
 DEAR COMRADE AND GUIDE 
 WHO GAVE ME LIFE 
 
 ^385 
 
 irroo 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 
 PAGE" 
 
 THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 1 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 THE BLOOD ATONEMENT 87 
 
 BOOK THREE 
 
 THE COMING OF THE STRENGTH . . 
 
THE STRENGTH OF 
 THE PINES 
 
 BOOK ONE, 
 THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 
 
 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 wakeful- 
 ness; instantly he was fully aroused, in complete 
 control of allhis faculties. And this is not espe- 
 cially common to men bred in the security of civili- 
 zation. 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 posi- 
 tion 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 some- 
 what strange in him. The trim, hard muscles were 
 all cocked and primed for anything they should be 
 told to do. 
 
2 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 mut- 
 tered, as he slipped on his dressing gown. 
 
 He had no doubts whatever concerning the na- 
 ture 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 dol- 
 lars 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 
 did n'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 neces- 
 
The Call of the Blood 3 
 
 sary 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 an- 
 swered. " 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 an- 
 swered 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 did n't know 
 of your loss. This is Barney Barney Wegan 
 and I just got in from the West. Have n't had a 
 bit of news for months. Accept my earnest sym- 
 pathies " 
 
 "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? " 
 
4 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 '11 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 care- 
 ful 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 star- 
 tling potentialities. They were quite clear now, 
 wide-awake and cool, yet they had a strange depth 
 of expression and shadow that might mean, some- 
 where beneath the bland and cool exterior, a capac- 
 ity 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 '11 think I 'm crazy, for routing you out 
 at this time of night, Bruce," he began. " And 
 
The Call of the Blood 5 
 
 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 '11 know I 'm up a 
 wrong tree. I don't mean to be personal - 
 
 " He was n'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 '11 begin at the be- 
 ginning. You know I was way back on the Oregon 
 frontier back in the Cascades?" 
 
 " I did n'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." 
 
6 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " 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 did n'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 
 
The Call of the Blood 7 
 
 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 '11 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 Dun- 
 cans 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 did n'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. 4 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 
 could n'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 
 would n't, or could n't she was a trifle vague on 
 that point dispatch a letter. Something is up, 
 
8 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 Bruce, and I don't know what. But she said 
 for you to come back and find Linda." 
 
 Bruce suddenly leaned forward. If Barney had 
 been surprised by the developments in the mountain 
 cabin, he was more surprised now. The brown face 
 had suddenly grown quite white. 
 
 " What else did she say? " Bruce asked. He 
 spoke slowly with evident difficulty. 
 
 Barney answered with the same slowness each 
 word distinct. " For you to come and she made 
 me swear to tell you on the first train. That 
 there was no time to lose." The man's voice broke 
 and changed. "Isn't that queer, Bruce?" 
 
 Bruce slowly stiffened; the only sign of emotion 
 was one that even Barney's eyes, trained to the dim- 
 ness of the wilderness, failed to see. It was just an 
 ever-tightening clasp of his hands over the chair 
 arms until the blue veins stood out. There was 
 nothing else about him to indicate that the dead had 
 spoken to him, that one of the great dreams of 
 his life was coming true. He spoke rather pain- 
 fully. " Did did you get the idea that the old 
 woman was Linda? " 
 
 " I did n't get that idea," Barney answered. 
 " She spoke of Linda as she might of a young girl." 
 
 " And how do you get there? " 
 
 " Buy a ticket for Deer Creek, in Southern Ore- 
 gon." There was no need for Bruce to write the 
 name. It was branded, ineffaceably, in his con- 
 sciousness. ' Then take up the long road of the 
 Divide, clear to a little store Martin's, they call 
 it fifty miles back. Then ask directions from 
 
The Call of the Blood 9 
 
 there. Ask, she told me to tell you, for Mrs. 
 Ross." 
 
 Bruce leaped up and turned swiftly through the 
 door. Barney called a question to his vanishing 
 figure. Just for an instant Bruce turned, his 
 dark eyes glowing beneath his straight brows. 
 
 " I 'm 'phoning asking for reservations on the 
 first train West," he answered. 
 
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 entertain- 
 ing. 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 In- 
 dians; but those had been adventures of imagina- 
 tion cnly. 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 finan- 
 cial 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 1 1 
 
 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 go- 
 ing to bed earlier that evening. He had no plans, 
 he did n'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 fila- 
 ments would rush together, catch hold of a frag- 
 ment 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 
 
i 2 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 in half-tone, and then quite gone. Yet he never 
 gave up trying. He never quit longing for just 
 one second of vivid rerr ^mbrance. 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 com- 
 pletely puzzled them out. The nurse had n't meant 
 such fires as swept through the far-spread ever- 
 green 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 in- 
 sanity. 
 
 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 could n't possibly account 
 
The Call of the Blood 1 3 
 
 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 him- 
 self ; 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 could n't be sure that was n'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 irreg- 
 ular. 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 acquaint- 
 ances of his. He knew them only through books, 
 as he knew many other things that stirred Hs imag- 
 
14 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 ination. 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 was n't exactly chiv- 
 alry either, rather just an inability to feel resent- 
 ment. Besides, there were always tears and repent- 
 ance 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 some- 
 times called her ; but no one else could call her any- 
 thing 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 pic- 
 tures. 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 was n't half watching 
 what he was doing he drew something quite dif- 
 ferent. 
 
The Call of the Blood 15 
 
 Perhaps he would n't have looked at it twice, if 
 the teacher had n'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 
 could n'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 mis- 
 taken. 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 
 
1 6 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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. Adop- 
 tion, 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 na- 
 ture. It came out the very first moment he was in 
 
The Call of the Blood 17 
 
 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 wild- 
 cat screaming and sobbing and trying to get at 
 him again. I did n'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 noth- 
 ing flickering or dim about the memory of this oc- 
 casion. 
 
 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 superin- 
 tendent 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 sup- 
 pose he '11 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 se- 
 cret 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 
 
1 8 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 an infant girl when he was about four. I sup- 
 pose she was his mother and she did n't wait to 
 talk to me. The nurse said that she wore outland- 
 ish clothes and had plainly had a hard time." 
 " But she did n'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 '11 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 af- 
 forded 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. 
 
The Call of the Blood 19 
 
 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 un- 
 der no liberal interpretation of the word could it be 
 called a home. There was nothing homelike in it to 
 little Bruce. It was n't that there was actual 
 cruelty to contend with. Bruce had never known 
 that. But there was utter indifference which per- 
 haps 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 as- 
 semblage 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 
 
2O The Strength of the Pines 
 
 whether some one had come by in a closed car and 
 carried her off as she played on the lawns, the super- 
 intendent 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 hun- 
 dred 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. 
 
Ill 
 
 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 did n't care. The fact that 
 he had no business plans for the future and no finan- 
 cial 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 west- 
 ern journey of his did not even occur to him. He 
 would not be missed at his athletic club. He had 
 
22 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 scarcely any real friends, and none of his acquaint- 
 ances 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 trav- 
 eled 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 for- 
 ests. Men cannot walk beneath them and be un- 
 aware of them. They are incredibly large and 
 
The Call of the Blood 23 
 
 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 hunt- 
 ing 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 
 
24 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 un- 
 mistakable measure of cruelty and savagery 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 25 
 
 visit had Leen 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 par- 
 ent, 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 in- 
 terpret 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 
 
26 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 
 had n'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 '11 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 27 
 
 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 is n'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 up- 
 right 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 r 
 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 infinitesi- 
 mal 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 sol- 
 itude. 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 fac- 
 ing the track. It was evidently the waiting room 
 
The Call of the Blood 29 
 
 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 puls- 
 ing 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 sen- 
 sations scarcely more tangible than its silver 
 light came over him. The moment had a qual- 
 ity 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 
 
30 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 had n't 
 made out its meaning. He only knew it was some- 
 thing 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 3 1 
 
 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 try- 
 ing 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 
 
32 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 ex- 
 citement, 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! " 
 
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, curi- 
 ous 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 did n'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. 
 
34 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 af- 
 forded him glimpses of really striking beauty. 
 Sometimes it was just a shimmer of its waters be- 
 neath 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 35 
 
 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 occa- 
 sioned. 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 joy- 
 ous 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, 
 
36 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 shimmering silver. The waters broke on the rocks 
 with opalescent spray ; the whole coloring was sug- 
 gestive 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 be- 
 cause the sun had risen at last above the mountain 
 range and was shining down. 
 
 At first Bruce could hardly believe that just sun- 
 light could effect such a transformation. For no 
 other reason than that he could n'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 
 tin. 5 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. 
 
The Call of the Blood 37 
 
 It was strange that he had such a sense of famil- 
 iarity with trout. True, he had heard Barney We- 
 gan 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 mar- 
 supials of Australia. But it was n'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 
 
38 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 are usually habitants of the lower lakes and marshes, 
 not rippling mountain streams. He did n'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 tribu- 
 taries. Mallards do not have to have aeroplanes 
 to cover distance quickly. They are the very mas- 
 ters 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 bob- 
 bing, fanlike 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 39 
 
 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 tempera- 
 ture was much higher than was commonly met in 
 the summers of the city, but there was little mois- 
 ture 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 elec- 
 tric current at the closing of a switch, and an in- 
 stinct of unknown origin struggled for expression 
 within him. 
 
 In an instant he had it. He did n't know whence 
 it came. It was nothing he had read or that any 
 one had told him. It seemed to be rather the re- 
 sult 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 break- 
 fast. 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 
 
40 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment he came to a growth of thorn-covered bushes, 
 a thicket that only the she-bear knew how to pene- 
 trate. 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, imper- 
 vious 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 pos- 
 sibly 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 approach- 
 ing motor car behind him. 
 
The Call of the Blood 41 
 
 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 feel- 
 ing 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 wil- 
 derness. 
 
 " 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 '11 show you. I 'm going up that way my- 
 self." 
 
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 dis- 
 tinguished so that Brace's own curiosity was 
 aroused. This was a huge, dark man who stood 
 alone almost at the rear of the building, a veri- 
 table 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 se- 
 cure 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 flan- 
 nel shirt over his gorilla chest, and corduroy trou- 
 sers stuffed into high, many-seamed riding boots. 
 A dark felt hat was crushed on to his huge head. 
 
The Call of the Blood 43 
 
 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 en- 
 trance. 
 
 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 
 lisregard. It spoke clearly as words. 
 
 Bruce flushed^and his blood made 
 
 "He slowly turned. ' His^gazemoved unti 
 , ; it rested full upon the man's eyes. It seemed to 
 Bruce that the room grew instantly quiet. The 
 merchant no longejJtiedr-Tip-4iis bundles at the 
 counter. The watching mountamih^uthat he be- 
 held out of the corners of his eyes all seem 
 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, re- 
 vealing 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. 
 
44 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " Well? " he suddenly demanded. Every man 
 in the room except one started. The one ex- 
 ception 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 '11 
 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 '11 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 expec- 
 
The Call of the Blood 45 
 
 tation of obedience. Bruce half turned. " Simon 
 wants to talk to you," the merchant explained. 
 
 " I '11 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 fol- 
 low it. Cabins are not so many that you could mis- 
 take 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 resent- 
 ment at the words. Yet since he had as yet estab- 
 lished no relations with the woman, he had no 
 grounds for silencing the man. " I '11 have to de- 
 cide 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. 
 
46 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " I am interested," Simon replied. " You 're a 
 tenderfoot. You 're fresh from cities. You 're go- 
 ing up there to learn things that won't be any pleas- 
 ure to you. You 're going into the real mountains 
 a man's land such as never was a place for tender- 
 feet. 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 tender feet 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 47 
 
 road. Memories all vague, all unrecognized 
 thronged through him. 
 
 Many times, during the past years, he had wak- 
 ened 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 have n'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 is n't put in the news- 
 papers 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." 
 
48 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 "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 
 
 BKUCE could n'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-after- 
 noon 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 crea- 
 tures 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. 
 
50 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 A moment more of silence as if a slow-moving, 
 aged brain were trying to conjecture who stood out- 
 side 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, wrin- 
 kled 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 under- 
 stood. 
 
 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 meas- 
 ured. 
 
The Call of the Blood 5 1 
 
 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 atmos- 
 phere of mystery into which his adventure had led 
 him, that dawning light was the single most star- 
 tling 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, 
 
52 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 lie knew with a knowledge unimpeach- 
 able 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 won- 
 dering awe. 
 
The Call of the Blood 53 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 55 
 
 knows solitude, his thoughts come clear, superficial- 
 ities 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, care- 
 free, 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 sur- 
 mounted 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 sharp- 
 ened 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 be- 
 cause of his expectations. 
 
 He began to catch glimpses of the smaller forest 
 
56 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 creatures, the Little People that are such a de- 
 light 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, rest- 
 less, ever- frightened little folk, and heaven alone 
 knows what damage they may do to the roots of a 
 tree. But Bruce was n'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 realiz- 
 ing 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 wilder- 
 ness 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 pleas- 
 ant 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 Call of the Blood 57 
 
 the evergreen forest. This was no land for weak- 
 lings. 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 did n't know their breeds, yet he 
 felt that they were old friends. They were rather 
 large birds, mostly of the families of jays and mag- 
 pies. 
 
 The hours passed. The trail grew dimmer. Now 
 it was just a brown serpent in the pine needles, coil- 
 ing 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 
 
58 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 an- 
 other huge abrasion in the mud that puzzled him 
 still more. 
 
 At first he could n't believe that it was a track. 
 
The Call of the Blood 59 
 
 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 night- 
 fall, 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 
 
60 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 explana- 
 tion 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 mys- 
 tery. The jays no longer gossiped in the shrubs. 
 They had been silenced by the same awe that had 
 
The Call of the Blood 61 
 
 come over Bruce. And now the man began to dis- 
 cern, here and there through the forest, queer rus- 
 tlings 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 gath- 
 ering gloom of the forest. He was awed and mys- 
 tified 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 impa- 
 tience must be spent before he could reach Trail's 
 End. The stars began to push through the darken- 
 ing 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. Some- 
 
62 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 thing beside it caught his attention, and instinctively 
 he followed it with his eyes until it ended in an in- 
 credible 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 fig- 
 ure 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 under- 
 stand the eternal watch that it kept over this moun- 
 tain 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 recur- 
 rence 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. True, it had 
 peculiar red lights when the firelight shone 
 
The Call of the Blood 63 
 
 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 whis- 
 per; 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 vital- 
 ity. 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 ex- 
 
6 4 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 pression 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. In- 
 deed there was no need for loud tones. The whole 
 wilderness world was heavy with silence, and a 
 whisper carried far. Besides, Bruce was just be- 
 side 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 shad- 
 ows 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 to- 
 gether in the orphanage, I did n't even know it. It 
 has taken me a long time since to learn all the de- 
 tails ; 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 
 
66 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 to reach you. Of course, I did n't try openly except 
 at first the first years after I came here, and be- 
 fore 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 j ust 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 un- 
 derstood 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 
 had n'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- 
 
The Call of the Blood 67 
 
 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 did n't un- 
 derstand why you did n't answer my letters. I un- 
 derstand 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 communi- 
 cation 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 would n't 
 use it at first. Oh, Bruce I would n'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 
 
68 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 would n'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 was n'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 any- 
 thing 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 emo- 
 tions. 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 69 
 
 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 '11 
 understand then and you '11 shake in your shoes." 
 
 The words grated upon him, yet he did n't resent 
 them. " I Ve seen Simon," he told her. 
 
 She glanced toward him quickly, and it was en- 
 tirely plain that the quiet tone in his voice had sur- 
 prised her. Perhaps the faintest flicker of admira- 
 tion 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, ap- 
 pealing. " 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 did n'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 
 
70 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 is! It is no companion of theirs, down in the city. 
 Perhaps they see it once in a while but it is n'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 under- 
 stand 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 had n'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 '11 get down to cases here, Bruce or else 
 you '11 run away. These men said they 'd do worse 
 things to me than kill me and I did n'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 '11 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 is n't a land of gentleness. Up here 
 
The Call of the Blood 71 
 
 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 could n'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 ex- 
 pected to die that night. I was n't going to be alive 
 when the clan came. The only reason I did n'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 did n'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! " 
 
72 The Strength of the Piaes 
 
 She stretched her arms to the forests. Bruce un- 
 derstood 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 could n'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 val- 
 ley, where a stream flows. There is not much tilla- 
 ble 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 is n'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 ac- 
 quired 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. 
 
The Call of the Blood 73 
 
 They don't matter anyway only the results re- 
 main. 
 
 " These Ross men were frontiersmen of the first 
 order. They were virtuous men too trusting 
 every one, and oh! what strength they had I 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. An- 
 other family headed by the father of the man I 
 call Simon migrated here from the mountain dis- 
 tricts 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 did n't know it existed. A killer is a man that 
 has killed other men. It is n'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 
 
74 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 man, newly married. And he had a son after a 
 while. 
 
 " The newcomers called it a feud. But it was n'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- 
 
The Call of the Blood 75 
 
 feud, and did n'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 con- 
 nection by marriage was still alive. Simon's 
 clan had n'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 had n'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 pre- 
 tended 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 did n'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, 
 
76 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 even for Simon's people. But he did n't know. He 
 had n't foreseen to what lengths they would go." 
 
 Bruce leaned forward. " So they killed Mat- 
 thew Folger? " he asked. 
 
 He did n'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 agree- 
 ment drawn up in black and white and to be 
 kept hidden for twenty-one years. In this agree- 
 ment, 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 Fol- 
 ger heard of it, before the dawn, he came to my 
 father's house and carried me away. Before an- 
 other night was done he was killed too." 
 
The Call of the Blood 77 
 
 The perspiration leaped out on Brace'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 prob- 
 ability 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. " Fol- 
 ger'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 did n'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 had n'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 dread- 
 
78 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 ful land of bloodshed and to hide them so that they 
 could never come back. And she did n'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 at- 
 tempt 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 
 
The Call of the Blood 79 
 
 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 obvi- 
 ously 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 op- 
 portunity to contest the clan's claim to the land. 
 If he could get the matter into court, he would 
 surely win. 
 
8o The Strength of the Pines 
 
 * 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 Oc- 
 tober thirtieth when their twenty years of undis- 
 puted 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." 
 
The Call of the Blood 8 1 
 
 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 pound- 
 ing 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 be- 
 come 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? Are n't you a man? Have n'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? Have n't you 
 anything to avenge? I thought you were a moun- 
 tain man that all your years in cities could n'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 
 
The Call of the Blood 83 
 
 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 peace- 
 ful 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 pas- 
 sion 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 or- 
 phanage 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 baby- 
 hood. The name now recalled it again; the truth 
 stood clear at last. It was the key to all the mys- 
 tery of his life ; it stirred him more than all of Linda's 
 words. In an instant all the tragedy of his baby- 
 hood was recalled, the hushed talk between his 
 parents, the oaths, the flames in their eyes, and 
 
84 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 finally the body he had found lying so still be- 
 neath the pines. It was always the Turners, the 
 dread name that had filled his baby days with 
 horror. He had n'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. 
 
 6 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. 
 
The Call of the Blood 85 
 
 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 hol- 
 low 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 breech- 
 loader 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 ex- 
 plained, " 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 
 does n't is curious in itself. In most ways Ashur 
 has more intelligence than all the others put to- 
 gether; but he is also the most indifferent. He 
 is not a hunter; and he does n't care who owns any- 
 
88 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 thing 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 superior- 
 ity 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 con- 
 quered 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 preemi- 
 nence 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. Per- 
 haps 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 Blood Atonement 89 
 
 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 some- 
 thing not to speak of lightly) without passing one. 
 There is nothing but forest, forest that stretches 
 without boundaries, forest to which a great moun- 
 tain 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 cov- 
 erts. But he behaves somewhat differently at night. 
 He does n'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 un- 
 pleasant twitching of the skin of his back. And 
 
go The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 win- 
 dow he watched the dawn come out. And he fan- 
 cied 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 crea- 
 tures such as the birds began to waken. Prob- 
 ably 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 un- 
 known to him, the pine had come often into his 
 dreams. He had thought that its limbs rubbed to- 
 gether and made words, but of the words them- 
 selves 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 un- 
 explainable 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 twilight- 
 
The Blood Atonement 91 
 
 land 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 ques- 
 tion 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 
 
92 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 un- 
 counted years it had stood aloft, above all the mad- 
 ness and bloodshed and passion that are the eternal 
 qualities of the wilderness, somber, stately, unut- 
 terably 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 innu- 
 merable 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 genera- 
 tion 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 93 
 
 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 other- 
 wise. 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 mon- 
 arch 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 wis- 
 dom had not yet come to him, so he could n'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 
 bloodlust 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 morn- 
 ing," 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 un- 
 disputed 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 does n't begin until 
 the fifth of the following month." 
 
 1 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 must n'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, es- 
 pecially if that secret agreement should show up. 
 
The Blood Atonement 95 
 
 It is n't just enough to have vengeance. That 
 would n'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 wit- 
 nessed that secret agreement between your father 
 and mine." 
 
 it "\7- 5> 
 
 i es. 
 
 " 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 could n'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 '11 start right away. Can you tell me how to 
 find the trail? " 
 
 " I can only tell you to go straight north. Use 
 
96 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 your watch as a compass in the daytime and the 
 North Star at night." 
 
 " I did n'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 hope- 
 ful. 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 '11 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 97 
 
 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 is n'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 
 
98 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 that lunging head is one of the swiftest things in 
 the whole swift-moving animal world. And it is n'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 astonish- 
 ingly short period of time she improvised a pair of 
 leathern puttees, fastening with a strap, that an- 
 swered 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 would n't come to his lips. 
 
 He felt curious conjecturings and wonderment 
 arising within him. He could n'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 
 
The Blood Atonement 99 
 
 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 
 f<5r 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 '11 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 '11 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 had n't noticed these lips in par- 
 ticular 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 '11 be careful. And this reminds me of some- 
 thing." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 ' That for all the time I Ve been away and for 
 all the time I 'm going to be away now I have n't 
 
ioo The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 de- 
 liberate in his motions ; but all at once his delibera- 
 tion fell away from him. There seemed to be no in- 
 terlude 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, fie 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; per- 
 haps 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 
 
 f 
 
 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 does n'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 buz- 
 zards. 
 
 It is n'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 be- 
 
102 'The Strength of the Pines 
 
 fore 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. Some- 
 time 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 eve- 
 ning, 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 rap- 
 ine ; and it did n't, unfortunately, have a particularly 
 happy ending. Mother Nature herself, sometimes 
 kind but usually cruel, was the producer; she fur- 
 nished the theater, even the spotted costume by which 
 
The Blood Atonement 103 
 
 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 buz- 
 zards were about the only ones to benefit. They 
 were the real heroes of the play after all. Every- 
 thing 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 pre- 
 tense. 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 astound- 
 ing 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 al- 
 
104 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 most 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 ordi- 
 narily 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 com- 
 bined with his relatives in winter is scarcely to be 
 feared. Yet he had been careful to surround him- 
 self 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 indi- 
 cate 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 sleep- 
 ing 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 could n'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 pis- 
 tol shot would miss. 
 
 Yet there was no chance of the buzzards, at pres- 
 ent spectators in the clouds and waiting for the final 
 act, to become bored. Particularly the lesser ani- 
 
The Blood Atonement 105 
 
 mals 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 could n'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 de- 
 tect his serpent-like form; yet it is a brave man who 
 will say what a buzzard can and cannot see. Any- 
 thing that can remain in the air as they do, seem- 
 ingly 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 is n't a glutton in his feeding, and often is 
 content with just a sip of blood from the throat. 
 
io6 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 That leaves something warm and still for the buz- 
 zard's beak. 
 
 A long, spotted gopher snake slipped through the 
 dead grass on the ground beneath. He did n'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 chip- 
 munk, 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 did n'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 evi- 
 dent that the chipmunk did not see Limber-spine at 
 present. Otherwise he would n't have been enjoy- 
 ing 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 Tier throat. 
 
 An old raccoon wakened from his place on a 
 high limb, stretched himself, scratched at his fur, 
 
The Blood Atonement 107 
 
 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 rela- 
 tion 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 spot- 
 ted 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 lis- 
 ten 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 
 
io8 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 say- 
 ing among themselves. The effect was instantane- 
 ous. 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 crea- 
 ture bleated in terror, then darted away; and the 
 coyote snarled once in the general direction of the 
 
The Blood Atonement 109 
 
 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 after- 
 noon 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 con- 
 versation. 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 auto- 
 mobiles. 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 en- 
 vironment so favorable to them. Game was in abun- 
 dance, 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 be- 
 come sadly addled after many tellings; but if the 
 words of certain old men could be believed, the 
 Southern Oregon grizzly occasionally, in the bounti- 
 ful fall days, attained a weight of two thousand 
 pounds. No doubt whatever remains that thou- 
 sand-pound bears were fairly numerous. They 
 
The Blood Atonement in 
 
 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 de- 
 veloped 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 Ore- 
 gon woods. By the same token, they could take a 
 full-grown steer and carry it off as a woman car- 
 ries her baby. 
 
 It couldn't be endured. The cattlemen had be- 
 gun 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, per- 
 haps, fled farther and farther up the Cascades, find- 
 ing refuges in the Canadian mountains. Others 
 traveled east, locating at last in the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, 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 tick- 
 lish business. He was apt suddenly to loom up, 
 like a gray cliff, at any turn in the trail, and his dis- 
 
H2 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 position 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 unex- 
 pected 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 en- 
 countered 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 descend- 
 ant 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 Septem- 
 ber 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 
 did n'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 cov- 
 ert and dash away; but he only made one short, an- 
 
The Blood Atonement 113 
 
 gry 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 consider- 
 ing his weight for a short distance he can keep 
 pace with a running horse but a deer is light it- 
 self. He littered 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 grow- 
 ing 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 insignifi- 
 cant cousins, the black bears, could not possibly 
 have, for the sole reason that they are berry-eat- 
 ers, 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 crea- 
 tures 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 
 
ii4 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 the gray figure that had broken a twig on the trail 
 beside him slipped quickly away. 
 
 He skirted the thicket, knowing that no success- 
 ful stalk could be made where he had to force his 
 way through dry brush. He moved slowly, cau- 
 tiously 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 pro- 
 nounced. A thrill and fever came in the air, mys- 
 tery in the deepening shadows, and brighter lights 
 into the eyes of the hunting folk. The dusk deep- 
 ened 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, b^ew 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 115 
 
 them. They were plainly the soft footfall of some 
 member of the deer tribe, yet they were too pro- 
 nounced 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 fore- 
 arm 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 walk- 
 ing 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 dim- 
 mest 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. Per- 
 haps 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 
 could n'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 
 
1 1 6 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 under- 
 stood. 
 
 A pungent smell reached him from below, evi- 
 dently 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 de- 
 tected 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 real- 
 ized the proximity of man. But his reaction was 
 entirely different. To the grizzly it was an annoy- 
 ing 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, spoil- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 quiet 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 117 
 
 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 suc- 
 cess. 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 in- 
 structions concerning his embassy to Hudson. 
 They were given in the gre^house that Simon oc- 
 cupied, in the same room, ligmedT)y 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 re%son is that 
 he '11 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 
 did n't look straight up. " And that 's what the 
 hundred is for? " he asked. 
 
 "Of course. Get the old man's word that he '11 
 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." 
 
 1 You think - Dave's eyes wandered about 
 the room, " you think that 's the best way? " 
 
 " I would n't be tellin' you to do it if I did n't 
 think so." Simon laughed, a sudden, grim syl- 
 
The Blood Atonement 119 
 
 lable. " 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 '11 keep quiet for the hundred let him have it in 
 peace." 
 
 Dave had n'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 dark- 
 ness of the second day out. The trapper was cook- 
 ing his simple meal, a blue grouse frying in his 
 skillec, coffee boiling, and flapjack batter ready for 
 the moment, the grouse was done. He was kneel- 
 ing 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 
 
I2O The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 ad- 
 verse 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 beer* 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 hun- 
 dred dollars of the clan's money in his own pocket 
 had been prohibited until further notice. 
 
The Blood Atonement 121 
 
 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 trap- 
 per ; 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 sil- 
 houette of the fire glow and a half -ounce of pres- 
 sure 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 in- 
 jections of morphine on prescription, finds himself 
 
122 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 had n't known how 
 easy it had been to learn. He did n'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 re- 
 strain 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 tender- 
 feet in the valley are going to act there is n't the 
 same feeling about blood-feuds that there used to 
 be. Go easy, Dave. Sound this Hudson out. If 
 he '11 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 astonish- 
 
The Blood Atonement 123 
 
 ment. 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 for- 
 gotten 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 was n'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. 
 
124 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " I know all about that agreement," Dave con- 
 fessed. 
 
 " You do, eh? So do I. I ain't likely to for- 
 get." 
 
 Dave studied him closely. ' What good is it go- 
 ing 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 be- 
 tween them and the Rosses is past and done al- 
 though 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 did n't 
 in the least assume that these friendly words meant 
 that he could go back to the ranches with the hun- 
 dred dollars still in his pocket. It meant merely 
 that Hudson was open to reason and it would n'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." 
 
The Blood Atonement 125 
 
 ' Then maybe fifty or seventy-five dollars, with- 
 out bothering to set the traps, wouldn't come in so 
 bad." 
 
 " It would n't come in bad, but it does n'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 fire- 
 light. " 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 would n'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 '11 remember. Of course you want me, in case 
 I 'm ever subpoenaed, to recall signing the deed it- 
 self." 
 
 " Yes, we 'd want you to testify to that." 
 
 " Of course. If there had n't been any kind of a 
 deed, Folger could n'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 agree- 
 ment, 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? " 
 
126 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 The only response, at first, was the slightest, al- 
 most 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 be- 
 half. But he saw that such a story, coming from 
 the apparently honest old trapper, might have a 
 profound effect upon Bruce. Dave understood hu- 
 man 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 relin- 
 quish 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 prftbability 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 '11 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 '11 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 did n'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 ap- 
 proaching toward him up the trail. He started to 
 stretch his great muscles, intending to leave his am- 
 bush. 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 leap- 
 ing range without detecting him. But he hadn't 
 
128 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 the slightest doubt about the fawn. They were in- 
 nocent 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 evi- 
 dently 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 did n'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 un- 
 successful 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 sur- 
 prised as the other. The fawn turned with a fright- 
 ened 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 could n't think 
 about anything; he had been cheated too many 
 times. His first impulse was one of tremendous 
 
The Blood Atonement 129 
 
 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 short- 
 ened 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 
 
130 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 its pursuit. Everything had turned out quite well 
 for him, after all. A wolf is ever so much more fill- 
 ing 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 '11 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 prep- 
 aration 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 pre- 
 paring 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 Blood Atonement 131 
 
 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-bar- 
 reled, twenty-two caliber rifle that was slung on the 
 trapper's back. " It does n't look like it would kill 
 a mosquito." 
 
 " A killer gun," Hudson explained. " For pol- 
 ishin' 'em off when they are alive in the traps. Of 
 course, it would n'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 would n'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 be- 
 yond redemption. 
 
 But instead of the joy of killing a cowering, ter- 
 ror-stricken animal, helpless in the trap, the wilder- 
 ness had made other plans for Hudson and Dave. 
 
132 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 They hastened about the impenetrable wall of brush, 
 and in one glance they knew that more urgent busi- 
 ness 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 mo- 
 tionless, the two men staring, the grizzly half -lean- 
 ing 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 in- 
 credible speed, and charged. 
 
The Blood Atonement 133 
 
 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 impres- 
 sion 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 break- 
 ing that deadly charge lay in the thirty-thirty deer 
 rifle in Dave's arms ; but the craven who he.ld it did 
 not even fire. He was standing just below the out- 
 stretched 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 de- 
 stroyed. The blood-lust was upon him; there 
 
134 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 would have been no mercy to the dying creature 
 in the pine needles. Yet it transpired that Hud- 
 son'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 peace- 
 ful, 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 prac- 
 ticed 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 mor- 
 tally wounded trapper in the pine needles. 
 
 He whirled about, growling furiously and biting 
 at the wound. Then he stood still, turning his gaze 
 
136 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 an- 
 other glimpse of the creature ; then ran down to aid 
 Hudson. But in driving the bear from the trap- 
 per'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 perplex- 
 ity 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 con- 
 
The Blood Atonement 137 
 
 cerning 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 did n't even wait to shoot." 
 
 " Of course he would n'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 ex- 
 planation. And he won it at last, an interlude of 
 half a dozen breaths. "Who are you? " he whis- 
 pered. 
 
 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." 
 
138 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " 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." 
 
The Blood Atonement 139 
 
 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 '11 
 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 had n'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 ; 
 
140 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 and all at once a conclusion came to him. He de- 
 cided 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 did n't 
 stop the bear with my rifle," he said hurriedly. " I 
 had Hudson bribed you would n't have found out 
 something that you did find out if he had n't lain 
 here dying. You would n'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 flst, 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 Si- 
 mon'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, super- 
 vising 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, trem- 
 bling, 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 pun- 
 ishment. Dave thought for a moment his brother 
 
142 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 crea- 
 ture'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 dread- 
 ful 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 
 was n'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 curi- 
 ously 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 143 
 
 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 had n'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 suUenly. " You 
 don't have to hear it. But I 'm telling you it 's of 
 real importance this time and sometime you '11 
 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 in- 
 spection 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 suffi- 
 cient 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 did n't know for certain that he saw it now. 
 But there was alarm unmistakable and sur- 
 prise too. 
 
144 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " 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 imagina- 
 tion 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 re- 
 mained for any of them. His own face grew anx- 
 ious. 
 
 " 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." 
 
 1 Wait a minute. I did n'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." 
 
The Blood Atonement 145 
 
 Simon smiled mirthlessly. " The news is begin- 
 ning to sound like the rest of yours." 
 
 " Old Hudson is dead," Dave went on. " And 
 don't look at me I did n'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 could n'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 did n't do him particular credit. "I I 
 threw the damn thing away. Wish I had n'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 could n'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 did n't you get that information away 
 from Bruce with your gun? " 
 
 " Did n't I tell you the thing was jammed? If 
 it had n't of been for that, I 'd done something more 
 than find out where it is. I 'd stopped this non- 
 sense once and for all, and let a hole through that 
 
146 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 tenderfoot big enough to see through. Then 
 Miere 'd never be any more trouble. It 's the thing 
 to do now." 
 
 Simon looked at his brother's face with some won- 
 der. More crafty and cunning, Dave was like the 
 coyote in that he did n'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 could n't 
 mistake the fact ; he saw it plain in the glowing eyes, 
 the clenched hands, the drawn lips. Dave was re- 
 membering 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 am- 
 bush." 
 
 " 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 147 
 
 pay old debts, I 'm telling you. We 're not secure, 
 and you know it. The law does n't forget, and it 
 does n'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 for- 
 gotten 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 mat- 
 ter 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 
 
148 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 windows some time? Old Elmira and Linda have 
 set him on, and he 's hot for it." 
 
 :t 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 would n'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 grow- 
 ing 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 '11 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 '11 go to the courts 
 first." 
 
The Blood Atonement 149 
 
 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 
 would n'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 '11 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 or- 
 ders 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 '11 use more direct measures. I '11 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." 
 
150 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 
 Ms 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 West- 
 ern 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: bath- 
 ing the tree tops in silver, laying wonderful cobweb 
 tapestries between the trunks, upsetting the whole 
 perspective as to distance and contour. Dave 
 did n't have long to wait. At the end fcf 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 pre- 
 vious night the gray forest king had made an ex- 
 cursion into Simon's pastures and had killed a year- 
 ling calf ; in all probability he would return to-night 
 to finish his feast. In fact, this night would in all 
 
152 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 was n'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 mo- 
 ment 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 ani- 
 mal 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 moun- 
 tains 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. 
 
The Blood Atonement 153 
 
 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 did n'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 forgot- 
 ten that he stood outside. His visit was the last 
 thing that either of them expected except, per- 
 haps, 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 
 
154 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 had wandered steep and unknown trails for un- 
 counted 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 la- 
 tent 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 si- 
 lence; but the voice reassured him. " I '11 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 be- 
 hind. 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 155 
 
 in fear of his brother Simon. The mighty leader of 
 the clan had set a barrier around her as far as per- 
 sonal attentions went, and his reasons were ob- 
 vious. 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 fould 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 teach- 
 ing 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 bat- 
 
156 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 tered, whimpering, ineffective thing in the moon- 
 light 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 Hud- 
 son, 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 re- 
 membered, with singular steadfastness, the pistol 
 she had concealed in her own room. 
 
 "I '11 show you. If you want to get him in 
 you 'd better bring the old hag with you. It '11 take 
 two of you to carry him." 
 
 " I '11 come," the old woman said from across the 
 shadowed room. She spoke with a curious breath- 
 lessness. " I '11 go at once." 
 
 TJie 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 under- 
 stood 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 to- 
 
The Blood Atonement 157 
 
 ward 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 trans- 
 ferred from her breast to her sleeve. It was slender 
 and of steel, and it caught the moonlight on its shin- 
 ing 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 
 
158 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 go- 
 ing back," she told him. 
 
 ' Wait. I '11 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 op- 
 pose 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 dis- 
 cerned that cry in time he would have hurled Linda 
 from his arms to leap into a position of defense. 
 
The Blood Atonement 159 
 
 The desire for women in men goes down to the roots 
 of the world, but self-preservation is a deeper in- 
 stinct still. 
 
 But he did n'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 gro- 
 tesquely 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 strug- 
 gled 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 handker- 
 chief he wore about his neck. They worked almost 
 in silence, with incredible rapidity and deftness. 
 
 The man was waking now, stirring in his uncon- 
 sciousness, and swiftly the old woman cut the buck- 
 skin 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 al- 
 most 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 dis- 
 tant voice. " Leave Dave Turner to me." 
 
160 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 go- 
 ing to do? " 
 
 " I 'm going back," Linda answered. " You had 
 some other purpose in bringing me out here or 
 you would n't have brought Elmira, too. I 'm go- 
 ing back to wait for Bruce." 
 
The Blood Atonement 161 
 
 " 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 '11 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 forgot- 
 ten. 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. 
 
The Blood Atonement 163 
 
 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 battle- 
 ground, 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. Per- 
 haps 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 un- 
 til 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 trem- 
 ulous, perhaps wondering what fortune the fall 
 would have for them in the way of a mate. 
 
164 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 per- 
 mitted 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 run- 
 nings into the valleys, and to the does the realiza- 
 tion of motherhood when the spring broke. 
 
 But aside from his contemplations of Linda, the 
 long tramp had many delights for him. He re- 
 joiced 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 
 did n't see the Killer again. He did n'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 at- 
 tempt 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 exclu- 
 
The Blood Atonement 165 
 
 sively one night because, after many misses at 
 grouse, he declined to take the life of a gray squir- 
 rel 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. Be- 
 sides, 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 awk- 
 wardly 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 of- 
 fense 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 re- 
 mainder 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 to- 
 gether 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 
 
1 66 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 to take part. You 're a true son of the pines, Ur- 
 son. 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 nar- 
 row, 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 al- 
 though the days fatigued him unmercifully, he al- 
 ways 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 eff ect 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 in- 
 stead of administering merely a flesh wound, accu- 
 racy 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 realiza- 
 
The Blood Atonement 167 
 
 tion that he must not waste too many cartridges. 
 Elrnira 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 frag- 
 ment 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, accord- 
 ing 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 al- 
 most blinding; the chipmunks, and even the larger 
 creatures came clearest to him then and told him 
 more. But they did n't frighten him. Ordinarily, 
 
1 68 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 he knew, the forest creatures of the Southern Ore- 
 gon 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 ar- 
 senal, 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 sor- 
 row, their infinite wisdom, their inexpressible aloof- 
 ness with which they kept watch over the wilder- 
 ness. The smoke would drift about him in sooth- 
 ing 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 real- 
 
The Blood Atonement 169 
 
 ized that the pines, like the stars, were living sym- 
 bols 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 fra- 
 grant 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 creep- 
 ing 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 
 
170 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 f 
 
 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 '11 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 in- 
 terior 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 had n'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 ad- 
 miration 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 mis- 
 steps. 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. 
 
172 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 Turn- 
 ers 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 tim- 
 ber. All at once the moon showed him the house. 
 
 He could n'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, how- 
 
The Blood Atonement 173 
 
 ever, 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 lead- 
 ing 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, 
 
174 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 and possibly in these latter days days of apart- 
 ments and flats and hotels its hold is less. Per- 
 haps 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 emo- 
 tion 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 
 suA and the moon it is good to have certain monu- 
 ments to keep their name alive, whether it be blocks 
 of granite at the grave-head, or sons living in an an- 
 cestral 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 signifi- 
 cance of his undertaking as never before. 
 
 He saw the broad lands lying under the moon. 
 There were hundreds of acres in alfalfa and clover 
 
The Blood Atonement 175 
 
 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 rifleman 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. 
 
176 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 moon- 
 light ; and if, as old stories say, houses have memo- 
 ries, 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 dis- 
 cern 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 177 
 
 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 did n'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 re- 
 strain 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 
 
178 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 ex- 
 pected 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 north- 
 ernmost 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 at- 
 tempt 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 179 
 
 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 won- 
 dered 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 sur- 
 prise 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 
 
i8o The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 breath- 
 ing. A living creature occupied this place of dark- 
 ness with him, and was either half -gagged by, a 
 handkerchief over the face or was trying to con- 
 ceal 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. In- 
 stead, 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 accus- 
 tomed 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 el- 
 bow. 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 
 
1 82 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 has n'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 did n't." 
 
 " I don't understand your eagerness. You 
 did n't seem overly eager to meet us." 
 
 Bruce smiled wanly. These wilderness men re- 
 garded 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 is n'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." 
 
The Blood Atonement 183 
 
 " I remember that," Bruce replied. " I saw no 
 reason for listening to you. I don't see any reason 
 now, and I would n't if it was n't for that row of 
 guns." 
 
 Simon studied his pale face. " Perhaps you '11 
 be sorry you did n'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 
 
184 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 on his face was deeply abhorrent to Bruce. Curi- 
 ously, 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 al- 
 most 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." 
 
The Blood Atonement 185 
 
 " You don't seem to be," Simon answered with 
 reddening eyes. " You are." 
 
 " I have no intention of saying I 'm sorry I 
 did n'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 is n't his." 
 
 " What a man holds with a hard fist and his 
 rifle in these mountains is his," Simon contra- 
 dicted 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 '11 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 be- 
 neath 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 '11 have to answer for it all the 
 
 more." 
 
 He spoke the last sentence with a calm assurance. 
 
1 86 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 
 liave 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 des- 
 tiny, steadied him all the more. 
 
 The boy that had been wakened in his bed at 
 3iome by the ring of the 'phone bell had wholly 
 vanished now. A man of the wild places had 
 come instead, stern and courageous and un- 
 flinching. 
 
 " Everything is tolerable clear to us already," 
 rSimon said, " except your sentence." 
 
 "I want you to know that I refuse to be im- 
 pressed with this judicial attitude of you and your 
 blackguard followers," Bruce went on. " This 
 gathering of the group of you does n't make any 
 evil that you do any less wrong, or the payment 
 you '11 have to make any less sure. It lies wholly in 
 your power to kill me while I 'm sitting here, and 
 I have n't much hope but that you '11 do it. But let 
 me tell you this. A reign of bloodshed and crime 
 go on only so long. You Ve been kings up 
 
The Blood Atonement 187 
 
 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 is n't going to come. I '11 
 have to be the chief witness myself, after all. How- 
 ever, 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 mur- 
 derous crowd credit for at least natural intelli- 
 gence," he replied, " but I see I was mistaken or 
 you would n't expect an answer to that question." 
 
 " Do you mean you don't know its where- 
 abouts? " 
 
 " 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? " 
 
 u 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." 
 
1 88 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " We '11 come to that shortly enough. Disre- 
 garding 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 flinch- 
 ing into his questioner's face. 
 
 " That was what my brother Dave led me to un- 
 derstand," 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 be- 
 fore you thought he could stand against us w but 
 he 's been lying still a long time. The R6sses 
 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 itad 
 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 mas- 
 tering him. For a moment they all sat as if en- 
 tranced in a communion of cruelty, and to Bruce 
 
The Blood Atonement 189 
 
 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 
 thei 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. 
 
 1 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 
 jeijjk that in a moment all would understand. " In- 
 stead 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 
 
i go The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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. Exul- 
 tation was creeping over the clan; once more their 
 leader had done himself proud. It was such sug- 
 gestions as this that kept them in awe of him. 
 
 And they thought they understood. They sup- 
 posed 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 per- 
 chance the man's hair would be turned quite white 
 fcy 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 dis- 
 tance. And, if by any unlikely chance the theft 
 of the beef-carcass should throw him into such a 
 
The Blood Atonement 191 
 
 rage that he would charge Bruce, no harm in par- 
 ticular 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 dreadful- 
 ness of the plan. They had n't heard the more re- 
 cent history of the Killer, the facts that Simom 
 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 is n'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 obliga- 
 tion 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 '11 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, aim- 
 ing his hardened knuckles straight for the leering 
 lips. He made the attack with astonishing swift- 
 ness 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 did n'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 
 
The Blood Atonement 193 
 
 man was built of clay, Nature saw fit to leave him 
 with certain imperfections lest he should think him- 
 self 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 posi- 
 tion 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 inac- 
 curate. 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 clans- 
 men 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 could n'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 
 
194 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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, in- 
 credibly tall figures in the moonlight. The remain- 
 der 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 cav- 
 alcade halted about a grotesque shadow in the grass. 
 Bruce did n'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 outland- 
 ish 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 fra- 
 grant 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 did n't flinch. 
 
The Blood Atonement 195 
 
 Simon spoke in the silence, but his words seemed to 
 come from far away. 
 
 " Quiet that horse or kill him," he said softly. 
 6 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 
 wiiite 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 moon- 
 lit spaces. Then one of the party turned off to- 
 ward 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 
 
196 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 scur- 
 ried, 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 op- 
 press 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 tremen- 
 dous 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 any- 
 thing in his life. It was an ancient instinct, com- 
 ing 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 experi- 
 enced it before. If the clouds spread, the moon 
 
The Blood Atonement 197 
 
 that was his last remaining solace would be ob- 
 scured. 
 
 He watched with growing horror the slow exten- 
 sion of the clouds. One by one the stars slipped be- 
 neath 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 do- 
 main, the camp fire, can really possess; but here, 
 bound hand and foot in the darkness, full under- 
 standing came to Bruce. He no longer knew him- 
 self 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 jlowing in the high lanes of 
 the air, but there was no breath of them where Bruce 
 lay. The forests were silent, and the little rus- 
 tlings 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 
 
198 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinct. It was the noise of a heavy thicket being 
 broken down and parted before an enormous body. 
 
 He waited, scarcely breathing, trying to tell him- 
 self 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 199 
 
 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 whis- 
 pered 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 wil- 
 derness 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 steal- 
 ing 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 usu- 
 ally 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 wil- 
 derness 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 partic- 
 ularly 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. 
 
200 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 inter- 
 secting game trails that wind through the forest. 
 This was his hope. The alternative was one of de- 
 spair. It was simply that the creature had de- 
 tected 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 strain- 
 ing eyes the dark fringe of shadows one hundred 
 feet distant. And at first he could see only the ir- 
 regularities cast by the young trees, the firs be- 
 tween which lay the brush coverts. 
 
 Then he detected a strange variation in the dark 
 border of shadows. It held his gaze, and its out- 
 lines slowly strengthened. So still it stood, so 
 seemingly a natural shadow that some irregularly 
 shaped tree had cast, that his eyes refused to recog- 
 nize 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 evi- 
 dence that Bruce had returned from his journey. 
 In the center of the room lay his pack, a rifle slant- 
 ing 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 pres- 
 ent 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 no- 
 ticed 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 
 
2O2 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 could tell this much. Besides, it had certain pecul- 
 iar 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 El- 
 
The Blood Atonement 203 
 
 mira had procured, years before, from a passing 
 sportsman and for a moment she considered get- 
 ting 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 pis- 
 tol. 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 tremen- 
 dous consolation to her. They had been her sole de- 
 fense, and she knew that in the final emergency 
 she could use them to deadly effect. 
 
 Linda was a girl who had always looked her sit- 
 uations 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 frontiers- 
 men and woodsmen, and she had their vision too. 
 She knew these mountain realms; better still she 
 understood the dark passions of Simon and his fol- 
 lowers, 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 de- 
 crepit 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. 
 
204 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 The hotirs 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 any 
 one on earth, Simon Turner. 
 
 She knew him by his great form, his swinging 
 stride. Her thoughts came dear and true. It 
 was obvicus 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 could n'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 be- 
 come considerable of a mystery to Simon. All the 
 
The Blood Atonement 205 
 
 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 an- 
 swered in a strange voice. " No one in this world 
 can answer that question, Simon. Tell me what 
 you want." 
 
 She opened the door. She could n't bear to show 
 fear of this man. And she knew that an appear- 
 ance 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 straight- 
 ened 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 is n'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 
 
206 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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. 
 
 1 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 did n'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 re- 
 lentless that I 'd won you long ago." 
 
 Linda looked up bravely into his face. " No, Si- 
 mon. 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 is n't the kind 
 
The Blood Atonement 207 
 
 that you have, the kind that makes your men grovel 
 before you, and makes me tremble when I 'm talk- 
 ing 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 pas- 
 sions, 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 im- 
 placable 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, remorse- 
 less, ruthless way. 
 
 " It is n'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 for- 
 ward 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 pos- 
 sess 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 
 
208 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 '11 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 '11 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 209 
 
 go and I won't even try to fight you any more. 
 I '11 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 wil- 
 derness voice. Then he raised his arm and struck 
 her tender flesh. 
 
 He struck her breast. The brutality of the man 
 
2io The Strength of the Pines 
 
 stood forth at last. No picture that all the dread- 
 ful 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 moon- 
 light, 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 un- 
 consciousness 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 211 
 
 was upon him. And she realized, as if by an in- 
 spiration 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 op- 
 posed 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 re- 
 vealed 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 Turn- 
 ers 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, ex- 
 cept for a strange sickness that had encompassed 
 her. But she was never colder of nerve and surer 
 
212 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 prefer- 
 ence 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 be- 
 tween 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 cun- 
 ning breed to which he belongs has found out that 
 it does n't pay. The wolf is sometimes disquiet- 
 
214 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 ingly 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 far- 
 ther 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 yester- 
 day'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 knowl- 
 edge, 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 preced- 
 ing night, and possibly his outline was not enough 
 
The Blood Atonement 215 
 
 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 night- 
 mare 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 un- 
 reality; but for all that, Bruce could not make him- 
 self believe that this was just a dream. The dread- 
 ful 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 prim- 
 itive 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 
 
216 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 de- 
 liverance 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 cau- 
 tiously 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 intelli- 
 gence, 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 217 
 
 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 im- 
 pulse. 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 hunt- 
 ing 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 be- 
 fore he had been similarly cheated; but there had 
 been singular triumph at the end of that experi- 
 ence. 
 
 All at once a movement, far across the pasture, 
 caught his attention. Remote as it was, he identi- 
 fied the tall form at once; it was just such a crea- 
 ture 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 giv- 
 ing aid. For the tall form had been that of Simon 
 coming, as Linda had anticipated, for a moment's 
 
2 1 8 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 dark- 
 ness dropped over him as the moon went behind a 
 heavy patch of cloud. 
 
 And in that moment of darkness, the Killer un- 
 derstood. He remembered now. Possibly the up- 
 right form of Simon had suggested it to him; pos- 
 sibly 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. 
 
The Blood Atonement 219 
 
 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 for- 
 gotten the events of the earlier part of the evening. 
 Wild and stirring though they were, they now 
 
22O The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 of- 
 fered 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 did n'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 did n'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 
 
The Blood Atonement 221 
 
 that this was no time to stop and wonder and ask 
 questions. 
 
 " Give me the horse," she commanded. " I 'nx 
 going to help Bruce." 
 
 " You can have it," Elmira answered in an un- 
 familiar 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 some- 
 thing 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. 
 
222 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 qual- 
 ity 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 for- 
 ward 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. 
 
The Blood Atonement 223 
 
 Simon reentered the timber, his inspection seem- 
 ingly done, and Linda still rode in the general di- 
 rection he had gone. The darkness fell again, and 
 for the space of perhaps five minutes all the sur- 
 roundings were obscured. A curious sense of im- 
 pending 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 en- 
 croachments. 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 out- 
 lined 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 in- 
 stant'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 
 
224 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 de- 
 liberation. 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 
 
The Blood Atonement 225 
 
 over him. For the first time Bruce heard the wild 
 beat of hoofs on the turf behind him. 
 
 He did n'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, run- 
 ning 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 lash- 
 ing 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 ap- 
 pearance of the girl and the horse held him momen- 
 tarily at bay. The girl swung to the ground in 
 one leap, fired again, thrust her arm through the 
 
226 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 shock- 
 ing 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 arch- 
 ing 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 her- 
 self up to a position of security. 
 
The Blood Atonement 227 
 
 The Killer's charge had come a few seconds too 
 late. For a moment he raced behind them in in- 
 sane 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 wilder- 
 ness world. The spirit of autumn had come with 
 golden wings. 
 
 The wild creatures, up and about at their pur- 
 suits 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 ink- 
 ling of it when he stopped at a spring to drink. It 
 was true that an hour before he had noticed a cu- 
 rious 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 
 
230 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 keep- 
 ing themselves. Being only a beast he did not 
 know that this new belligerent spirit was ,iust as 
 much a sign of fall as the soft blush that was com- 
 ing 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 231 
 
 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 did n't wear 
 gay clothes that were n't a particle of good to them 
 in cold weather. You can imagine them as be- 
 ing good, substantial, middle-class people, much 
 more sober-minded, tending strictly to business and 
 working hard, and among other things they saw no 
 
232 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 compla- 
 cent. 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 com- 
 ing when all sources of food would be cut off by the 
 snows, and he would have to seek the security of hi- 
 bernation. He had already chosen an underground 
 
The Coming of the Strength 233 
 
 abode for himself and there he could doze away in 
 the cold-trance through the winter months, subsist- 
 ing 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 sav- 
 agery 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 explo- 
 sive 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 al- 
 most 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 
 
234 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 consti- 
 tution ; 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 es- 
 sentials. 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. 
 
The Coming of the Strength 235 
 
 They did not know when the Turners would at- 
 tack. It was the dark of the moon, and the men 
 would be able to approach the house without pre- 
 senting 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 does n'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 would n'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 
 
236 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 stand- 
 ing 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 be- 
 hind us, with all its wealth, we might have a chance ; 
 if we had an arsenal of rifles with thousands of car- 
 tridges, 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 ex- 
 pended 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." 
 
The Coining of the Strength 237 
 
 " 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 sur- 
 prise. " What have you done that needs to be for- 
 given? " 
 
 " Oh, don't you see? To bring you here out 
 of your cities to throw your lif e away. To en- 
 list 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 noth- 
 ing lives but death and hatred and unhappi- 
 
 ness." 
 
 The tears leaped to her eyes. He caught her 
 hands and pressed them between his until pain 
 came into her fingers. " Listen, Linda," he com- 
 manded. She looked straight up at him. " Are 
 you sorry I came? " 
 
 " More than I can tell you for your sake." 
 
238 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " 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 is n't fair to ask 
 me that 
 
 " Tell me the truth. Has n'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? Is n'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 af- 
 fect its quality. It was a light of joy, of exulta- 
 tion, of new-found strength. 
 
 " You had n't ought to ask me that, Bruce," she 
 said with a rather strained distinctness. " It has 
 been like being born again. There are n'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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 239 
 
 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 re- 
 grets. 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 con- 
 sideration just misfortune, whatever it is I feel 
 no resentment toward it. It has been the worth- 
 while 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 be- 
 long 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 what- 
 ever 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." 
 
240 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " 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 other- 
 wise and Bruce might be attacked at any mo- 
 ment. 
 
 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 en- 
 
242 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 trancing 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 pas- 
 tures 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 243 
 
 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 surround- 
 ing 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 under- 
 brush and in a moment more distinguished the 
 figure of the horseman. 
 
244 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 Mar- 
 tin'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 was n'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 did n't 
 think that the sentry would actually fire on her; he 
 would merely shoot the horse from beneath her. 
 
The Coming of the Strength 245 
 
 It would be a simple feat by the least of the Turn- 
 ers, for these gaunt men were marksmen if noth- 
 ing 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 impos- 
 sible, 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 sen- 
 try'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 '11 
 
 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 try- 
 ing 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 move- 
 ment 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. 
 
246 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 pre- 
 cious 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 '11 have to adopt rough meas- 
 ures, 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 hap- 
 pened? 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 '11 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 for- 
 ever. 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 247 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 '11 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 '11 come riding back one of these days with 
 something actually accomplished. I see no reason 
 for thinking that he 's dead. Bruce has n'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 
 
248 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 have n'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 is n'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 glid- 
 ing 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 moun- 
 tains 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 al- 
 most immediately completely filled the sky. Young 
 Bill had many things on his mind as he rode be- 
 neath 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 broth- 
 ers 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." 
 
250 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 is n'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 
 
The Coining of the Strength 251 
 
 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 '11 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 shut- 
 ters. 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 may- 
 hap of circumstance be of aid in frightening an 
 
252 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 did n'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, is n't it?" 
 
 " Almost unknown. It 's growing cold too." 
 
 They waited a breathless minute, then the thun- 
 der 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 253 
 
 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 '11 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." 
 
254 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 w r as 
 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 con- 
 trast 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, 
 
The Coming of the Strength 255 
 
 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 forgot- 
 ten 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 in- 
 creased 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 
 
-256 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 al- 
 though 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 in- 
 stant 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 Brace's 
 breath caught in a sob of wonder. 
 
 The Sentinel Pine, that ancient friend and coun- 
 selor 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 
 
 BKUCE 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. " TJie tree 's lighted up the whole country- 
 side, 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 confu- 
 sion. 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. 
 
258 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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. 
 
 6 Wait wait, Linda," he said gently. 
 4 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 
 the lighted doorway, out of the range of any of the 
 
The Coming of the Strength 259 
 
 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 les- 
 sened as it journeyed on. 
 
 These two knew that if death spared them in all 
 the long passage of their years, they could never for- 
 get that moment. The girl watched him breath- 
 lessly, 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 wil- 
 derness, 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 mal- 
 ice, and hatred, and bloodshed." 
 
260 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 pas- 
 sion 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 offend- 
 ers 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 de- 
 stroyed with fire long since. To stand firm and 
 straight and unflinching; not to judge, not to con- 
 demn, 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 circum- 
 stance; 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 toler- 
 
 ance." 
 
The Coming of the Strength 261 
 
 " Perhaps," he nodded. " And possibly it is 
 only worship ! " 
 
 The Turners had gone. The dimming lightning 
 revealed the entire attacking party half a mile dis- 
 tant 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, watch- 
 ing 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 evi- 
 dently 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. 
 
262 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 ' 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 trag- 
 edy 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 fire- 
 light. Plainly they had kept track of all the at- 
 tacking party that had been visible, and supposed 
 that all their enemies had gone. He felt the move- 
 ment 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 
 
264 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 of- 
 fered 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-con- 
 trol; and his usual way was to look a long time be- 
 tween the sights before he fired. Yet the sight of 
 that document the missing Folger-Ross agree- 
 ment 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 had n't 
 taken his usual deliberate aim, although he had seen 
 Bruce's figure clearly between the sights the in- 
 
The Coming of the Strength 265 
 
 stant 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 real- 
 ization 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 com- 
 pletely 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 deliber- 
 ately 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 
 
266 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 be- 
 fore 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 im- 
 pression 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. " Stag- 
 ger," 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. 
 
The Coming of the Strength 267 
 
 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 him- 
 self. 
 
 " 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 '11 be here in a minute. We '11 
 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 '11 
 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 warm- 
 est 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 veni- 
 son, 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. 
 
268 The Strength of the Pines 
 " Get on," she whispered. " I '11 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 go- 
 ing alone 
 
 She cut him off with a despairing cry. "Oh, 
 please, Bruce I won't. I '11 stay here then 
 
 "Don't you see?" he demanded. "You can 
 make it out without me. I 'm wounded and bleed- 
 ing, 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 whis- 
 
The Coming of the Strength 269 
 
 pered. " Simon will overtake us on the other 
 he 's got a magnificent horse. On the mountain 
 trail we '11 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 did n'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 as- 
 sassin. She could look straight along a rifle bar- 
 rel! A few moments were lost as Young Bill and 
 
270 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 thresh- 
 old. 
 
 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 was n'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 could n'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 some- 
 where still able to shoot." 
 
 They stole to the door of Linda's room and lis- 
 tened. Then they threw it wide. 
 
 One of their foes was in this room an imp lac- 
 
The Coming of the Strength 271 
 
 able 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 '11 shoot you too. Aim for the man if a chance 
 offers but shoot, anyway. Don't stop hunting 
 till you find them they '11 duck off in the brush 
 sure. If they get through, everything is lost. I '11 
 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 usu- 
 ally 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, emerg- 
 ing for another night's work at filling their larders 
 with food, crept down into the scarcely less impene- 
 trable 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 remember- 
 ing 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. 
 
The Coming of the Strength 273 
 
 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 de- 
 vised 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 af- 
 ford, 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 does n't quite play fair. He understood 
 now certain wilderness tragedies of which he had 
 heard : how tenderf eet 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 
 
274 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 dark- 
 ness ; 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 
 have n'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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 275 
 
 her. " Linda, try to be brave," he urged. " We 
 can only take a chance." 
 
 The horse plodded a few more steps. " Brave I 
 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 
 would n'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 tr* 
 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 
 
276 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 to be getting weaker. It is n'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 does n't alone 
 mean loss of the estate for which he would risk 
 his life just as he has a dozen times. It means de- 
 feat 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 '11 
 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 hope- 
 lessness " 
 
 "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, 
 
The Corning of the Strength 277 
 
 it 's a race with death. Don't misunderstand me or 
 disbelieve me. It is n'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 blan- 
 kets, 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 to- 
 gether it does n't matter." 
 
 She spoke very quietly. Then he felt a strange 
 thing. A warmth which even that growing, terri- 
 ble cold could not transcend swept over him. For 
 her arms had crept out under his arms and encir- 
 cled his great breast, then pressed with all her gen- 
 tle strength. 
 
 No word of encouragement, no cheery expres- 
 sion of hope could have meant so much. Not de- 
 feat, 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. 
 
278 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 Bruce stopped the horse and both dismounted. 
 Both of them knew that under the drooping limhs 
 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 convention- 
 ality 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 through- 
 out the night, that it had already laid a white man- 
 tle 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 279 
 
 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 fur- 
 ther 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 for- 
 est lay between. 
 
2 So The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 pro- 
 pelled 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. 
 
The Coming of the Strength 281 
 
 " 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 com- 
 pact 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 re- 
 ceive. 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 pos- 
 ture. 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 is n'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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 283 
 
 strained, then looked up. " ^ little way," he an- 
 swered, " but we can't keep our main directions. 
 The sun does n'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 
 could n't keep it going. If we should stagger on all 
 day in this storm and this snow, we could n't en- 
 dure 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 '11 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 could n't find the way. I 'm going 
 with you." 
 
 " No." Once more she started to disobey, but 
 
.284 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 fol- 
 lowing 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 out- 
 stretched 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 285 
 
 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 did n't seem to see her. His eyes were low- 
 ered ; 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 di- 
 rection. 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. Brace's tracks were 
 somewhat dimmed by the snow, but the Killer in- 
 
286 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 terpreted 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 hor- 
 ror; 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 fol- 
 lowed, 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. 
 
The Coming of the Strength 287 
 
 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 com- 
 paratively 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 hu- 
 man 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 ig- 
 nored even that deepest instinct, self-preservation. 
 
288 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 con- 
 ceivable 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 mat- 
 ter 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 low- 
 ered 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. 
 
The Coming of the Strength 289 
 
 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 increas- 
 ing 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-knowl- 
 edge an inheritance, perhaps, from frontier an- 
 cestors of the real nature of the mountain bliz- 
 zard 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 
 
290 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 Linda. And he knew, beyond all other knowledge, 
 that he wanted her with him when the shadows 
 dropped down for good and all. He could n'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 won- 
 der, the first promptings of the thought that the 
 
The Coming of the Strength 291 
 
 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 to- 
 ward him from the thicket before which the horse 
 had fallen. It was Simon, and Bruce had mis- 
 taken 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 un- 
 reality 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? " 
 
The Coming of the Strength 293 
 
 " It did n'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 did n'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 Bruce's mind that he could tell 
 Simon of the wound near his shoulder, how be- 
 cause of it no fight between them would be a fair 
 test of superiority, yet the words did n'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 es- 
 caping from this storm," Simon went on. " But it 
 does n't much matter. It 's the end of a long war, 
 and what happens to the victor is neither here nor 
 
294 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 re- 
 serve strength, that mysterious force that al- 
 ways sweeps to a man's aid in a moment of crisis. 
 
 For the first time he had full realization of Si- 
 
The Coming of the Strength 295 
 
 mon'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 con- 
 fined 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. Si- 
 mon'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 cen- 
 tered 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 
 
296 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 some dreadful weapon that lay beside the dead 
 form of the horse. In an instant he had it, and 
 Brace'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 in- 
 stant 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 in- 
 credible, 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 297 
 
 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 in- 
 stant 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-ham- 
 mer 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 re- 
 morseless 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 
 
298 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 primi- 
 tive passions were in play, all its mighty forces at 
 grips. The storm seemed to be trying to extin- 
 guish 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 end- 
 lessly 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 steal- 
 ing out of the snow following the grizzly's trail 
 and crept beside Bruce. She crouched beside 
 
The Coming of the Strength 299 
 
 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 ter- 
 rible punishment from the blows of the rifle stock. 
 He recoiled once more, then lunged with unbe- 
 lievable 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 
 
3 oo The Strength of the Pines 
 
 powers as were typical of himself. But the bear 
 did not leap upon him to tear his flesh. For an in- 
 stant he stood like a statue in gray stone, head low- 
 ered, 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 shoul- 
 ders. The terrible eyes lost their fire. Then he 
 turned agr.in 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 atten- 
 tion 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 in- 
 spiration, had come to her. He saw it in the grow- 
 ing 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 in- 
 stant was beside her. Her cheeks were blazing. 
 
 " Maybe it just means further torture," she con- 
 
302 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 fessed 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 grow- 
 ing strength of his face. Then his words spoke too. 
 " As long as the slightest chance remains," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 " And you 11 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 ex- 
 actly 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 was n't food ; he would 
 have attacked the body of the horse, or even Simon's 
 body. If he had just been running away or wan- 
 dering, he would have gone with the wind, not 
 against it. He was weakened from the fight, per- 
 haps dying and I think " 
 
 He finished the sentence for her, breathlessly. 
 " That he 's going toward shelter." 
 
The Coming of the Strength 303 
 
 " 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 
 would n'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 ter- 
 rible 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 mount- 
 ing a low ridge. They left the underbrush and 
 
304 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 in- 
 spiration had come true. 
 
 There was a ledge of rocks just in front a 
 place such as the rattlesnakes had loved in the blast- 
 ing 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 cav- 
 ern in the face of the rock. 
 
 "Shoot!" Linda whispered. "If he gets in- 
 side 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 
 
The Coming of the Strength 305 
 
 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 trig- 
 ger. 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 
 
306 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 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 de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 But the pines were left. Those eternal symbols 
 of the wilderness and of powers beyond the 
 wilderness still stood straight and grand and im- 
 passive 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 be- 
 fore the thirtieth the blizzards up here never last 
 over three or four days. We Ve got plenty of time 
 
The Coining of the Strength 307 
 
 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?" 
 
308 The Strength of the Pines 
 
 " 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 
 
Love story, adventure story, nature story all three qualities combine 
 
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