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