When Linda returned home the events of the night partook even of a greater mystery. The front door was open, and she found plenty of evidence that Bruce had returned from his journey. In the center of the room lay his pack, a rifle slanting across it.
At first she did not notice the gun in particular. She supposed it was Bruce's weapon and that he had come in, dropped his luggage, and was at present somewhere in the house. It was true that one chair was upset, but except for an instant's start she gave no thought to it. She thought that he would probably go to the kitchen first for a bite to eat. He was not in this room, however, nor had the lamp been lighted.
Her next idea was that Bruce, tired out, had gone to bed. She went back softly to the front room, intending not to disturb him. Once more she noticed the upset chair. The longer she regarded it, the more of a puzzle it became. She moved over toward the pack and looked casually at the rifle. In an instant more it was in her hands.
She saw at once that it was not Bruce's gun. The action, make, and caliber were different. She was not a rifle-woman, and the little shooting she had done had been with a pistol; but even a layman could tell this much. Besides, it had certain peculiar notches on the stock that the gun Elmira had furnished Bruce did not have.
She stood a moment in thought. The problem offered no ray of light. She considered what Bruce's first action would have been, on returning to the house to find her absent. Possibly he had gone in search of her. She turned and went to the door of his bedroom.
She knocked on it softly. "Are you there, Bruce?" she called.
No answer returned to her. The rooms, in fact, were deeply silent. She tried the door and found it unlocked. The room had not been occupied.
Thoroughly alarmed, she went back into the front room and tried to decipher the mystery of the strange weapon. She couldn't conceive of any possibility whereby Bruce would exchange his father's trusted gun for this. Possibly it was an extra weapon that he had procured on his journey. And since no possible gain would come of her going out into the forests to seek him, she sat down to wait for his return. She knew that if she did start out he might easily return in her absence and be further alarmed.
The moments dragged by and her apprehension grew. She took the rifle in her hands and, slipping the lever part way back, looked to see if there were a cartridge in the barrel. She saw a glitter of brass, and it gave her a measure of assurance. She had a pistol in her own room—a weapon that Elmira had procured, years before, from a passing sportsman—and for a moment she considered getting it also. She understood its action better and would probably be more efficient with it if the need arose, but for certain never-to-be-forgotten reasons she wished to keep this weapon until the moment of utmost need.
Her whole stock of pistol cartridges consisted of six—completely filling the magazine of the pistol. Closely watched by the Turners, she had been unable to procure more. Many a dreadful night these six little cylinders of brass had been a tremendous consolation to her. They had been her sole defense, and she knew that in the final emergency she could use them to deadly effect.
Linda was a girl who had always looked her situations in the face. She was not one to flinch from the truth and with false optimism disbelieve it. She had the courage of many generations of frontiersmen and woodsmen, and she had their vision too. She knew these mountain realms; better still she understood the dark passions of Simon and his followers, and this little half-pound of steel and wood with its brass shells might mean, in the dreadful last moment of despair, deliverance from them. It might mean escape for herself when all other ways were cut off. In this wild land, far from the reaches of law and without allies except for a decrepit old woman, the pistol and its deadly loads had been her greatest solace.
But she relied on the rifle now. And sitting in the shadow, she kept watch over the moonlit ridge.
The hours passed, and the clouds were starting up from the horizon when she thought she saw Bruce returning. A tall form came swinging toward her, over the little trail that led between the tree trunks. She peered intently. And in one instant more she knew that the approaching figure was not Bruce, but the man she most feared of anyone on earth, Simon Turner.
She knew him by his great form, his swinging stride. Her thoughts came clear and true. It was obvious that his was no mission of stealth. He was coming boldly, freely, not furtively; and he must have known that he presented a perfect rifle target from the windows. Nevertheless, it is well to be prepared for emergencies. If life in the mountains teaches anything, it teaches that. She took the rifle and laid it behind a little desk, out of sight. Then she went to the door.
"I want to come in, Linda," Simon told her.
"I told you long ago you couldn't come to this house," Linda answered through the panels. "I want you to go away."
Simon laughed softly. "You'd better let me in. I've brought word of the child you took to raise. You know who I mean."
Yes, Linda knew. "Do you mean Bruce?" she asked. "I let Dave in to-night on the same pretext. Don't expect me to be caught twice by the same lie."
"Dave? Where is Dave?" The fact was that the whereabouts of his brother had suddenly become considerable of a mystery to Simon. All the way from the pasture where he had left his clan he had been having black pictures of Dave. He had thought about him and Linda out in the darkness together, and his heart had seemed to smolder and burn with jealousy in his breast. It had been a great relief to him to find her in the house.
"I wonder—where he is by now," Linda answered in a strange voice. "No one in this world can answer that question, Simon. Tell me what you want."
She opened the door. She couldn't bear to show fear of this man. And she knew that an appearance of courage, at least, was the wisest course.
"No matter about him now. I want to talk to you on business. If I had meant rough measures, I wouldn't have come alone."
"No," Linda scorned. "You would have brought your whole murdering band with you. The Turners believe in overwhelming numbers."
The words stung him but he smiled grimly into her face. "I've come in peace, Linda," he said, more gently. "I've come to give you a last chance to make friends."
He walked past her into the room. He straightened the chair that had been upset, smiling strangely the while, and sat down in it.
"Then tell me what you have to tell me," she said. "I'm in a hurry to go to bed—and this really isn't the hour for calls."
He looked a long time into her face. She found it hard to hold her own gaze. Many things could be doubted about this man, but his power and his courage were not among them. The smile died from his lips, the lines deepened on his face. She realized as never before the tempestuous passions and unfathomable intensity of his nature.
"We've never been good friends," Simon went on slowly.
"We never could be," the girl answered. "We've stood for different things."
"At first my efforts to make friends were just—to win you over to our side. It didn't work—all it did was to waken other desires in me—desires that perhaps have come to mean more than the possession of the lands. You know what they are. You've always known—that any time you wished—you could come and rule my house."
She nodded. She knew that she had won, against her will, the strange, somber love of this mighty man. She had known it for months.
"As my wife—don't make any mistake about that. Linda, I'm a stern, hard man. I've never known how to woo. I don't know that I want to know how, the way it is done by weaker men. It has never been my way to ask for what I wanted. But sometimes it seems to me that if I'd been a little more gentle—not so masterful and so relentless—that I'd won you long ago."
Linda looked up bravely into his face. "No, Simon. You could have never—never won me! Oh, can't you see—even in this awful place a woman wants something more than just brute strength and determination. Every woman prays to find strength in the man she loves—but it isn't the kind that you have, the kind that makes your men grovel before you, and makes me tremble when I'm talking to you. It's a big, calm strength—and I can't tell you what it is. It's something the pines have, maybe—strength not to yield to the passions, but to restrain, not to be afraid of, but to cling to—to stand upright and honorable and manly, and make a woman strong just to see it in the man she loves."
He listened gravely. Her cheeks blazed. It was a strange scene—the silent room, the implacable foes, the breathless suspense, the prophecy and inspiration in her tones.
"Perhaps I should have been more gentle," he admitted. "I might have forgotten—for a little while—this surging, irresistible impulse in my muscles—and tried just to woo you, gently and humbly. But it's too late now. I'm not a fool. I can't expect you to begin at the beginning. I can only go on in my own way—my hard, remorseless, ruthless way.
"It isn't every man who is brave enough to see what he wants and knock away all obstacles to get it," he went on. "Put that bravery to my credit. To pay no attention to methods, only to look forward to the result. That has been my creed. It is my creed now. Many less brave men would fear your hatred—but I don't fear it as long as I possess what I go after and a hope that I can get you over it. Many of my own brothers hate me, but yet I don't care as long as they do my will. No matter how much you scorn it, this bravery has always got me what I wanted, and it will get me what I want now."
The high color died in her face. She wondered if the final emergency had come at last.
"I've come to make a bargain. You can take it or you can refuse. On one side is the end of all this conflict, to be my wife, to have what you want—bought by the rich return from my thousands of acres. And I love you, Linda. You know that."
The man spoke the truth. His terrible, dark love was all over him—in his glowing eyes, in his drawn, deeply-lined face.
"In time, when you come around to my way of thinking, you'll love me. If you refuse—this last time—I've got to take other ways. On that side is defeat for you—as sure as day. The time is almost up when the title to those lands is secure. Bruce is in our hands—"
She got up, white-faced. "Bruce—?"
He arose too. "Yes! Did you think he could stand against us? I'll show him to you in the morning. To-night he's paying the price for ever daring to oppose my will."
She turned imploring eyes. He saw them, and perhaps—far distant—he saw the light of triumph too. A grim smile came to his lips.
"Simon," she cried. "Have mercy."
The word surprised him. It was the first time she had ever asked this man for mercy. "Then you surrender—?"
"Simon, listen to me," she begged. "Let him go—and I won't even try to fight you any more. I'll let you keep those lands and never try any more to make you give them up. You and your brothers can keep them forever, and we won't try to get revenge on you either. He and I will go away."
He gazed at her in deepening wonderment. For the moment, his mind refused to accept the truth. He only knew that since he had faced her before, some new, great strength had come to her,—that a power was in her life that would make her forego all the long dream of her days.
He had known perfectly the call of the blood in her. He had understood her hatred of the Turners, he could hate in the same way himself. He realized her love for her father's home and how she had dreamed of expelling its usurpers. Yet she was willing to renounce it all. The power that had come to her was one that he, a man whose code of life was no less cruel and remorseless than that of the Killer himself, could not understand.
"But why?" he demanded. "Why are you willing to do all this for him?"
"Why?" she echoed. Once more the luster was in her dark eyes. "I suppose it is because—I love him."
He looked at her with slowly darkening face. Passion welled within him. An oath dropped from his lips, blasphemous, more savage than any wilderness voice. Then he raised his arm and struck her tender flesh.
He struck her breast. The brutality of the man stood forth at last. No picture that all the dreadful dramas of the wild could portray was more terrible than this. The girl cried out, reeled and fell fainting from the pain, and with smoldering eyes he gazed at her unmoved. Then he turned out of the door.
But the curtain of this drama in the mountain home had not yet rung down. Half-unconscious, she listened to his steps. He was out in the moonlight, vanishing among the trees. Strange fancies swept her, all in the smallest fraction of an instant, and a voice spoke clearly. With all the strength of her will she dispelled the mists of dawning unconsciousness that the pain had wrought and crept swiftly to the little desk placed against the wall. Her hand fumbled in the shadow behind it and brought out a glittering rifle. Then she crept to the open doorway.
Lying on the floor, she raised the weapon to her shoulder. Her thumb pressed back, strong and unfaltering, against the hammer; and she heard it click as it sprung into place. Then she looked along the barrel until she saw the swinging form of Simon through the sights.
There was no remorse in that cold gaze of hers. The wings of death hovered over the man, ready to swoop down. Her fingers curled tighter about the trigger. One ounce more pressure, and Simon's trail of wickedness and bloodshed would have come to an end at last. But at that instant her eyes widened with the dawn of an idea.
She knew this man. She knew the hatred that was upon him. And she realized, as if by an inspiration from on High, that before he went to his house and to sleep he would go once more into the presence of Bruce, confined somewhere among these ridges and suffering the punishment of having opposed his will. Simon would want one look to see how his plan was getting on; perhaps he would want to utter one taunting word. And Linda saw her chance.
She started to creep out of the door. Then she turned back, crawled until she was no longer revealed in the silhouette of the lighted doorway, and got swiftly to her feet. She dropped the rifle and darted into her own room. There she procured a weapon that she trusted more, her little pistol, loaded with six cartridges.
If she had understood the real nature of the danger that Bruce faced she would have retained the rifle. It shot with many times the smashing power of the little gun, and at long range was many times as accurate, but even it would have seemed an ineffective defense against such an enemy as was even now creeping toward Bruce's body. But she knew that in a crisis, against such of the Turners as she thought she might have to face, it would serve her much better than the more awkward, heavier weapon. Besides, she knew how to wield it, and all her life she had kept it for just such an emergency.
The pain of the blow was quite gone now, except for a strange sickness that had encompassed her. But she was never colder of nerve and surer of muscle. Cunningly she lay down again before she crept through the door, so that if Simon chanced to look about he would fail to see that she followed him. She crept to the thickets, then stood up. Three hundred yards down the slope she could see Simon's dimming figure in the moonlight, and swiftly she sped after him.
The shadow that Bruce saw at the edge of the forest could not be mistaken as to identity. The hopes that he had held before—that this stalking figure might be that of a deer or an elk—could no longer be entertained. Men as a rule do not love the wild and wailing sobs of a coyote, as he looks down upon a camp fire from the ridge above. Sleep does not come easily when a gaunt wolf walks in a slow, inquisitive circle about the pallet, scarcely a leaf rustling beneath his feet. And a few times, in the history of the frontier, men have had queer tinglings and creepings in the scalp when they have happened to glance over their shoulders and see the eyes of a great, tawny puma, glowing an odd blue in the firelight. Yet Bruce would have had any one of these, or all three together, in preference to the Killer.
The reason was extremely simple. No words have ever been capable of expressing the depths of cowardice of which a coyote is capable. He will whine and weep about a camp, like a soul lost between two worlds, but if he is in his right mind he would have each one of his gray hairs plucked out, one by one, rather than attack a man. The cunning breed to which he belongs has found out that it doesn't pay. The wolf is sometimes disquietingly brave when he is fortified by his pack brethren in the winter, but in such a season as this he is particularly careful to keep out of the sight of man. And the Tawny One himself, white-fanged and long-clawed and powerful as he is, never gets farther than certain dreadful, speculative dreams.
But none of these things was true of the Killer. He had already shown his scorn of men. His very stride showed that he feared no living creature that shared the forest with him. In fact, he considered himself the forest master. The bear is never a particularly timid animal, and whatever timidity the Killer possessed was as utterly gone as yesterday's daylight.
Bruce watched him with unwinking eyes. The shadow wavered ever so slightly, as the Killer turned his head this way and that. But except to follow it with his eyes, Bruce made no motion. The inner guardians of a man's life—voices that are more to be relied upon than the promptings of any conscious knowledge—had already told him what to do. These monitors had the wisdom of the pines themselves, and they had revealed to him his one hope. It was just to lie still, without a twitch of a muscle. It might be that the Killer would fail to discern his outline. Bruce had no conscious knowledge, as yet, that it is movement rather than form to which the eyes of the wild creatures are most receptive. But he acted upon that fact now as if by instinct. He was not lying in quite the exact spot where the Killer had left his dead the preceding night, and possibly his outline was not enough like it to attract the grizzly's attention. Besides, in the intermittent light, it was wholly possible that the grizzly would try to find the remains of his feast by smell alone; and if this were lacking, and Bruce made no movements to attract his attention, he might wander away in search of other game.
For the first time in his life, Bruce knew Fear as it really was. It is a knowledge that few dwellers in cities can possibly have; and so few times has it really been experienced in these days of civilization that men have mostly forgotten what it is like. If they experience it at all, it is usually only in a dream that arises from the germ-plasm,—a nightmare to paralyze the muscles and chill the heart and freeze a man in his bed. The moon was strange and white as it slipped in and out of the clouds, and the forest, mysterious as Death itself, lightened and darkened alternately with a strange effect of unreality; but for all that, Bruce could not make himself believe that this was just a dream. The dreadful reality remained that the Killer, whose name and works he knew, was even now investigating him from the shadows one hundred feet away.
The fear that came to him was that of the young world,—fear without recompense, direct and primitive fear that grew on him like a sickness. It was the fear that the deer knew as they crept down their dusky trails at night; it was the fear of darkness and silence and pain and heaven knows what cruelty that would be visited upon him by those terrible, rending fangs and claws. It was the fear that can be heard in the pack song in the dreadful winter season, and that can be felt in strange overtones, in the sobbing wail of despair that the coyote utters in the half-darkness. He had been afraid for his life every moment he was in the hands of the Turners. He knew that if he survived this night, he would have to face death again. He had no hopes of deliverance altogether. But the Turners were men, and they worked with knife blade and bullet, not rending fang and claw. He could face men bravely; but it was hard to keep a strong heart in the face of this ancient fear of beasts.
The Killer seemed disturbed and moved slowly along the edge of the moonlight. Bruce could trace his movements by the irregularity in the line of shadows. He seemed to be moving more cautiously than ever, now. Bruce could not hear the slightest sound.
For an instant Bruce had an exultant hope that the bear would continue on down the edge of the forest and leave him; and his heart stood still as the great beast paused, sniffing. But some smell in the air seemed to reach him, and he came stealing back.
In reality, the Killer was puzzled. He had come to this place straight through the forest with the expectation that food—flesh to tear with his fangs—would be waiting for him. Perhaps he had no actual memory of killing the calf the night before. Possibly it was only instinct, not conscious intelligence, that brought him back to what was left of his feast the preceding night. And now, as he waited at the border of the darkness, he knew that a strange change had taken place. And the Killer did not like strangeness.
The smell that he had expected had dimmed to such an extent that it promoted no muscular impulse. Perhaps it was only obliterated by a stranger smell,—one that was vaguely familiar and wakened a slow, brooding anger in his great beast's heart.
He was not timid; yet he retained some of his natural caution and remained in the gloom while he made his investigations. Probably it was a hunting instinct alone. He crept slowly up and down the border of moonlight, and his anger seemed to grow and deepen within him. He felt dimly that he had been cheated out of his meal. And once before he had been similarly cheated; but there had been singular triumph at the end of that experience.
All at once a movement, far across the pasture, caught his attention. Remote as it was, he identified the tall form at once; it was just such a creature as he had blasted with one blow a day or two before. But it dimmed quickly in the darkness. It seemed only that some one had come, taken one glance at the drama at the edge of the forest, and had departed. Bruce himself had not seen the figure; and perhaps it was the mercy of Fate—not usually merciful—that he did not. He might have been caused to hope again, only to know a deeper despair when the man left him without giving aid. For the tall form had been that of Simon coming, as Linda had anticipated, for a moment's inspection of his handiwork. And seeing that it was good, he had departed again.
The grizzly watched him go, then turned back to his questioning regard of the strange, dark figure that lay so prone in the grass in front. The darkness dropped over him as the moon went behind a heavy patch of cloud.
And in that moment of darkness, the Killer understood. He remembered now. Possibly the upright form of Simon had suggested it to him; possibly the wind had only blown straighter and thus permitted him to identify the troubling smells. All at once a memory flashed over him,—of a scene in a distant glen, and similar tall figures that tried to drive him from his food. He had charged then, struck once, and one of the forms had lain very still. He remembered the pungent, maddening odor that had reached him after his blow had gone home. Most clearly of all, he remembered how his fangs had struck and sunk.
He knew this strange shadow now. It was just another of that tall breed he had learned to hate, and it was simply lying prone as his foe had done after the charge beside Little River. In fact, the still-lying form recalled the other occasion with particular vividness. The excitement that he had felt before returned to him now; he remembered his disappointment when the whistling bullets from the hillside above had driven him from his dead. But there were no whistling bullets now. Except for them, there would have been further rapture beside that stream; but he might have it now.
His fangs had sunk home just once, before, and his blood leaped as he recalled the passion he had felt. The old hunting madness came back to him. It was the fair game, this that lay so still in the grass, just as the body of the calf had been and just as the warm body of Hudson in the distant glen.
The wound at his side gave him a twinge of pain. It served to make his memories all the clearer. The lurid lights grew in his eyes. Rage swept over him.
But he didn't charge blindly. He retained enough of his hunting caution to know that to stalk was the proper course. It was true that there was no shrubbery to hide him, yet in his time he had made successful stalks in the open, even upon deer. He moved farther out from the edge of the forest.
At that instant the moon came out and revealed him, all too vividly, to Bruce. The Killer's great gray figure in the silver light was creeping toward him across the silvered grass.
When Linda left her house, her first realization was the need of caution. It would not do to let Simon see her. And she knew that only her long training in the hills, her practice in climbing the winding trails, would enable her to keep pace with the fast-walking man without being seen.
In her concern for Bruce, she had completely forgotten the events of the earlier part of the evening. Wild and stirring though they were, they now seemed to her as incidents of remote years, nothing to be remembered in this hour of crisis. But she remembered them vividly when, two hundred yards from the house, she saw two strange figures coming toward her between the moonlit tree trunks.
There was very little of reality about either. The foremost figure was bent and strange, but she knew that it could be no one but Elmira. The second, however—half-obscured behind her—offered no interpretation of outline at all at first. But at the turn of the trail she saw both figures in vivid profile. Elmira was coming homeward, bent over her cane, and she led a saddled horse by its bridle rein.
Still keeping Simon in sight, Linda ran swiftly toward her. She didn't understand the deep awe that stole over her,—an emotion that even her fear for Bruce could not transcend. There was a quality in Elmira's face and posture that she had never seen before. It was as if she were walking in her sleep, she came with such a strange heaviness and languor, her cane creeping through the pine needles of the trail in front. She did not seem to be aware of Linda's approach until the girl was only ten feet distant. Then she looked up, and Linda saw the moonlight on her face.
She saw something else too, but she didn't know what it was. Her own eyes widened. The thin lips were drooping, the eyes looked as if she were asleep. The face was a strange net of wrinkles in the soft light. Terrible emotions had but recently died and left their ashes upon it. But Linda knew that this was no time to stop and wonder and ask questions.
"Give me the horse," she commanded. "I'm going to help Bruce."
"You can have it," Elmira answered in an unfamiliar voice. "It's the horse that—that Dave Turner rode here—and he won't want him any more."
Linda took the rein, passed it over the horse's head, and started to swing into the saddle. Then she turned with a gasp as the woman slipped something into her hand.
Linda looked down and saw it was the hilt of the knife that Elmira had carried with her when the two women had gone with Dave into the woods. The blade glittered; but Linda was afraid to look at it closely. "You might need that, too," the old woman said. "It may be wet—I can't remember. But take it, anyway."
Linda hardly heard. She thrust the blade into the leather of the saddle, then swung on her horse. Once more she sought Simon's figure. Far away she saw it, just as it vanished into the heavy timber on top of the hill.
She rode swiftly until she began to fear that he might hear the hoof beat of her mount; then she drew up to a walk. And when she had crested the hill and had followed down its long slope into the glen, the moon went under the clouds for the first time.
She lost sight of Simon at once. Seemingly her effort to save Bruce had come to nothing, after all.
But she didn't turn back. There were light patches in the sky, and the moon might shine forth again.
She followed down the trail toward the cleared lands that the Turners cultivated. She went to their very edge. It was a rather high point, so she waited here for the moon to emerge again. Never, it seemed to her, had it moved so slowly. But all at once its light flowed forth over the land.
Her eyes searched the distant spaces, but she could catch no glimpse of Simon between the trees. Evidently he no longer walked in the direction of the house. Then she looked out over the tilled lands.
Almost a quarter of a mile away she saw the flicker of a miniature shadow. Only the vivid quality of the moonlight, against which any shadow was clear-cut and sharp, enabled her to discern it at all. It was Simon, and evidently his business had taken him into the meadows. Feeling that she was on the right track at last, she urged her horse forward again, keeping to the shadow of the timber at first.
Simon walked almost parallel to the dark fringe for nearly a mile; then turned off into the tilled lands. She rode opposite him and reined in the horse to watch.
When the distance had almost obscured him, she saw him stop. He waited a long time, then turned back. The moon went in and out of the clouds. Then, trusting to the distance to conceal her, Linda rode slowly out into the clearing.
Simon reëntered the timber, his inspection seemingly done, and Linda still rode in the general direction he had gone. The darkness fell again, and for the space of perhaps five minutes all the surroundings were obscured. A curious sense of impending events came over her as she headed on toward the distant wall of forest beyond.
Then, the clouds slowly dimming under the moon, the light grew with almost imperceptible encroachments. At first it was only bright enough to show her own dim shadow on the grass. The utter gloom that was over the fields lessened and drew away like receding curtains; her vision reached ever farther, the shadows grew more clearly outlined and distinct. Then the moon rolled forth into a wholly open patch of sky—a white sphere with a sprinkling of vivid stars around it—and the silver radiance poured down.
It was like the breaking of dawn. The fields stretched to incredible distances about her. The forest beyond emerged in distinct outline; she could see every irregularity in the plain. And in one instant's glance she knew that she had found Bruce.
His situation went home to her in one sweep of the eyes. Bruce was not alone. Even now a great, towering figure was creeping toward him from the forest. Linda cried out, and with the long strap of her rein lashed her horse into the fastest pace it knew.
Bruce did not hear her come. He lay in the soft grass, waiting for death. A great calm had come upon him; a strange, quiet strength that the pines themselves might have lent to him; and he made no cry. In this dreadful last moment of despair the worst of his terror had gone and left his thoughts singularly clear. And but one desire was left to him: that the Killer might be merciful and end his frail existence with one blow.
It was not a great deal to ask for; but he knew perfectly that only by the mercy of the forest gods could it come to pass. They are usually not so kind to the dying; and it is not the wild-animal way to take pains to kill at the first blow. Yet his eyes held straight. The Killer crept slowly toward him; more and more of his vast body was revealed above the tall heads of the grass. And now all that Bruce knew was a great wonder,—a strange expectancy and awe of what the opening gates of darkness would reveal.
The Killer moved with dreadful slowness and deliberation. He was no longer afraid. It was just as it had been before,—a warm figure lying still and helpless for his own terrible pleasure. A few more steps and he would be near enough to see plainly; then—after the grizzly habit—to fling into the charge. It was his own way of hunting,—to stalk within a few score of feet, then to make a furious, resistless rush. He paused, his muscles setting. And then the meadows suddenly rang with the undulations of his snarl.
Almost unconscious, Bruce did not understand what had caused this utterance. But strangely, the bear had lifted his head and was staring straight over him. For the first time Bruce heard the wild beat of hoofs on the turf behind him.
He didn't have time to turn and look. There was no opportunity even for a flood of renewed hope. Events followed upon one another with startling rapidity. The sharp, unmistakable crack of a pistol leaped through the dusk, and a bullet sung over his body. And then a wild-riding figure swept up to him.
It was Linda, firing as she came. How she had been able to control her horse and ride him into that scene of peril no words may reveal. Perhaps, running wildly beneath the lash, his starting eyes did not discern or interpret the gray figure scarcely a score of yards distant from Bruce; and it is true the grizzly's pungent smell—a thing to terrify much more and to be interpreted more clearly than any kind of dim form in the moonlight—was blown in the opposite direction. Perhaps the lashing strap recalled the terrible punishment the horse had undergone earlier that evening at the hands of Simon and no room was left for any lesser terror. But most likely of all, just as in the case of brave soldiers riding their horses into battle, the girl's own strength and courage went into him. Always it has been the same; the steed partook of its rider's own spirit.
The bear reared up, snarling with wrath, but for a moment it dared not charge. The sudden appearance of the girl and the horse held him momentarily at bay. The girl swung to the ground in one leap, fired again, thrust her arm through the loop of the bridle rein, then knelt at Bruce's side. The white blade that she carried in her left hand slashed at his bonds.
The horse, plunging, seemed to jerk her body back and forth, and endless seconds seemed to go by before the last of the thongs was severed. In reality the whole rescue was unbelievably swift. The man helped her all he could. "Up—up into the saddle," she commanded. The grizzly growled again, advancing remorselessly toward them, and twice more she fired. Two of the bullets went home in his great body, but their weight and shocking power were too slight to affect him. He went down once more on all fours, preparing to charge.
Bruce, in spite of the fact that his limbs had been nearly paralyzed by the tight bonds, managed to grasp the saddlehorn. In the strength of new-born hope he pulled himself half up on it, and he felt Linda's strong arms behind him pushing up. The horse plunged in deadly fear; and the Killer leaped toward them. Once more the pistol cracked. Then the horse broke and ran in a frenzy of terror.
Bruce was full in the saddle by then, and even at the first leap his arm swept out to the girl on the ground beside him. He swung her towards him, and at the same time her hands caught at the arching back of the saddle. Never had her fine young strength been put to a greater test than when she tried to pull herself up on the speeding animal's back. For the first fifty feet she was half-dragged, but slowly—with Bruce's help—she pulled herself up to a position of security.
The Killer's charge had come a few seconds too late. For a moment he raced behind them in insane fury, but only his savage growl leaped through the darkness fast enough to catch up with them. And the distance slowly widened.
The Killer had been cheated again; and by the same token Simon's oath had been proved untrue. For once the remorseless strength of which he boasted had been worsted by a greater strength; and love, not hate, was the power that gave it. For once a girl's courage—a courage greater than that with which he obeyed the dictates of his cruel will—had cost him his victory. The war that he and his outlaw band had begun so long ago had not yet been won.
Indeed, if Simon could have seen what the moon saw as it peered out from behind the clouds, he would have known that one of the debts of blood incurred so many years ago had even now been paid. Far away on a distant hillside there was one who gave no heed to the fast hoof beats of the speeding horse. It was Dave Turner, and his trail of lust and wickedness was ended at last. He lay with lifted face, and there were curious dark stains on the pine needles.
It was the first blood since the reopening of the feud. And the pines, those tall, dark sentinels of the wilderness, seemed to look down upon him in passionless contemplation, as if they wondered at the stumbling ways of men. Their branches rubbed together and made words as the wind swept through them, but no man may say what those words were.
Fall was at hand at Trail's End. One night, and the summer was still a joyous spirit in the land, birds nested, skies were blue, soft winds wandered here and there through the forest. One morning, and a startling change had come upon the wilderness world. The spirit of autumn had come with golden wings.
The wild creatures, up and about at their pursuits long before dawn, were the first to see the change. A buck deer—a noble creature with six points on his spreading horns—got the first inkling of it when he stopped at a spring to drink. It was true that an hour before he had noticed a curious crispness and a new stir in the air, but he had been so busy keeping out of the ambushes of the Tawny One that he had not noticed it. The air had been chill in his nostrils, but thanks to a heavy growth of hair that—with mysterious foresight—had begun to come upon his body, it gave him no discomfort. But it was a puzzling and significant thing that the water he bent to drink had been transformed to something hard and white and burning cold to the tip of his nose.
It was the first real freeze. True, for the past few nights there had been a measure of tinkling, cobweb frost on the ground in wet places, but even the tender-skinned birds—always most watchful of signs of this kind—had disregarded it. But there was no disregarding this half-inch of blue ice that had covered the spring. The buck deer struck it angrily with his front hoofs, broke through and drank; then went snorting up the hill.
His anger was in itself a significant thing. In the long, easy-going summer days, Blacktail had almost forgotten what anger was like. He had been content to roam over the ridges, cropping the leaves and grass, avoiding danger and growing fat. But all at once this kind of existence had palled on him. He felt that he wanted only one thing—not food or drink or safety—but a good, slashing, hooking, hoof-carving battle with another buck of his own species. An unwonted crossness had come upon him, and his soft eyes burned with a blue fire. He remembered the does, too—with a sudden leap of his blood—and wondered where they were keeping themselves. Being only a beast he did not know that this new belligerent spirit was just as much a sign of fall as the soft blush that was coming on the leaves. The simple fact was that fall means the beginning of the rut—the wild mating days when the bucks battle among themselves and choose their harems of does.
He had rather liked his appearance as he saw himself in the water of the spring. The last of the velvet had been rubbed from his horns, and the twelve tines (six on each horn) were as hard and almost as sharp as so many bayonet points. As the morning dawned, the change in the face of nature became ever more manifest. The leaves of the shrubbery began to change in color. The wind out of the north had a keener, more biting quality, and the birds were having some sort of exciting debate in the tree tops.
The birds are always a scurried, nervous, rather rattle-brained outfit, and seem wholly incapable of making a decision about anything without hours of argument and discussion. Their days are simply filled with one excitement after another, and they tell more scandal in an hour than the old ladies in a resort manage in the entire summer. This slow transformation in the color of the leaves, not to mention the chill of the frost through their scanty feathers, had created a sensation from one end of birdland to another. And there was only one thing to do about it. That was to wait until the darkness closed down again, then start away toward the path of the sun in search of their winter resorts in the south.
The Little People in the forest of ferns beneath were not such gay birds, and they did not have such high-flown ideas as these feathered folk in the branches. They didn't talk such foolishness and small talk from dawn to dark. They didn't wear gay clothes that weren't a particle of good to them in cold weather. You can imagine them as being good, substantial, middle-class people, much more sober-minded, tending strictly to business and working hard, and among other things they saw no need of flitting down to southern resorts for the cold season. These people—being mostly ground squirrels and gophers and chipmunks and rabbits—had not been fitted by nature for wide travel and had made all arrangements for a pleasant winter at home. You could almost see a smile on the fat face of a plump old gopher when he came out and found the frost upon the ground; for he knew that for months past he had been putting away stores for just this season. In the snows that would follow he would simply retire into the farthest recesses of his burrow and let the winds whistle vainly above him.
The larger creatures, however, were less complacent. The wolves—if animals have any powers of foresight whatever—knew that only hard days, not luscious nuts and roots, were in store for them. There would be many days of hunger once the snow came over the land. The black bear saw the signs and began a desperate effort to lay up as many extra pounds of fat as possible before the snows broke. Ashur's appetite was always as much with him as his bobbed-off excuse for a tail, and as he was more or less indifferent to a fair supply of dirt, he always managed to put away considerable food in a rather astonishingly short period of time; and now he tried to eat all the faster in view of the hungry days to come. He would have need of the extra flesh. The time was coming when all sources of food would be cut off by the snows, and he would have to seek the security of hibernation. He had already chosen an underground abode for himself and there he could doze away in the cold-trance through the winter months, subsisting on the supplies of fat that he had stored next to his furry hide.
The greatest of all the bears, the Killer, knew that some such fate awaited him also. But he looked forward to it with wretched spirit. He was master of the forest, and perhaps he did not like to yield even to the spirit of winter. His savagery grew upon him every day, and his dislike for men had turned to a veritable hatred. But he had found them out. When he crossed their trails again, he would not wait to stalk. They were apt to slip away from him in this case and sting him unmercifully with bullets. The thing to do was charge quickly and strike with all his power.
The three minor wounds he had received—two from pistol bullets and one from Bruce's rifle—had not lessened his strength at all. They did, however, serve to keep his blood-heat at the explosive stage most of the day and night.
The flowers and the grasses were dying; the moths that paid calls on the flowers had laid their eggs and had perished, and winter lurked—ready to pounce forth—just beyond the distant mountains. There is nothing so thoroughly unreliable as the mountain autumn. It may linger in entrancing golds and browns month after month, until it is almost time for spring to come again; and again it may make one short bow and usher in the winter. To Bruce and Linda, in the old Folger home in Trail's End, these fall days offered the last hope of success in their war against the Turners.
The adventure in the pasture with the Killer had handicapped them to an unlooked-for degree. Bruce's muscles had been severely strained by the bonds; several days had elapsed before he regained their full use. Linda was a mountain girl, hardy as a deer, yet her nerves had suffered a greater shock by the experience than either of them had guessed. The wild ride, the fear and the stress, and most of all the base blow that Simon had dealt her had been too much even for her strong constitution; and she had been obliged to go to bed for a few days of rest. Old Elmira worked about the house the same as ever, but strange, new lights were in her eyes. For reasons that went down to the roots of things, neither Bruce nor Linda questioned her as to her scene with Dave Turner in the coverts; and what thoughts dwelt in her aged mind neither of them could guess.
The truth was that in these short weeks of trial and danger whatever dreadful events had come to pass in that meeting were worth neither thought nor words. Both Bruce and Linda were down to essentials. It is a descent that most human beings—some time in their lives—find they are able to make; and there was no room for sentimentality or hysteria in this grim household. The ideas, the softnesses, the laws of the valleys were far away from them; they were face to face with realities. Their code had become the basic code of life: to kill for self-protection without mercy or remorse.
They did not know when the Turners would attack. It was the dark of the moon, and the men would be able to approach the house without presenting themselves as targets for Bruce's rifle. The danger was not a thing on which to conjecture and forget; it was an ever-present reality. Never they stepped out of the door, never they crossed a lighted window, never a pane rattled in the wind but that the wings of Death might have been hovering over them. The days were passing, the date when the chance for victory would utterly vanish was almost at hand, and they were haunted by the ghastly fact that their whole defense lay in a single thirty-thirty rifle and five cartridges. Bruce's own gun had been taken from him in Simon's house; Linda had emptied her pistol at the Killer.
"We've got to get more shells," Bruce told Linda. "The Turners won't be such fools as to wait until we have the moon again to attack. I can't understand why they haven't already come. Of course, they don't know the condition of our ammunition supply, but it doesn't seem to me that that alone would have held them off. They are sure to come soon, and you know what we could do with five cartridges, don't you?"
"I know." She looked up into his earnest face. "We could die—that's all."
"Yes—like rabbits. Without hurting them at all. I wouldn't mind dying so much, if I did plenty of damage first. It's death for me, anyway, I suppose—and no one but a fool can see it otherwise. There are simply too many against us. But I do want to make some payment first."
Her hand fumbled and groped for his. Her eyes pled to him,—more than any words. "And you mean you've given up hope?" she asked.
He smiled down at her,—a grave, strange little smile that moved her in secret ways. "Not given up hope, Linda," he said gently. They were standing at the door and the sunlight—coming low from the South—was on his face. "I've never had any hope to give up—just realization of what lay ahead of us. I'm looking it all in the face now, just as I did at first."
"And what you see—makes you afraid?"
Yet she need not have asked that question. His face gave an unmistakable answer: that this man had conquered fear in the terrible night with the Killer. "Not afraid, Linda," he explained, "only seeing things as they really are. There are too many against us. If we had that great estate behind us, with all its wealth, we might have a chance; if we had an arsenal of rifles with thousands of cartridges, we might make a stand against them. But we are three—two women and one man—and one rifle between us all. Five little shells to be expended in five seconds. They are seven or eight, each man armed, each man a rifle-shot. They are certain to attack within a day or two—before we have the moon again. In less than two weeks we can no longer contest their title to the estate. A little month or two more and we will be snowed in—with no chance to get out at all."
"Perhaps before that," she told him.
"Yes. Perhaps before that."
They found a confirmation of this prophecy in the signs of fall without—the coloring leaves, the dying flowers, the new, cold breath of the wind. Only the pines remained unchanged; they were the same grave sentinels they always were.
"And you can forgive me?" Linda asked humbly.
"Forgive you?" The man turned to her in surprise. "What have you done that needs to be forgiven?"
"Oh, don't you see? To bring you here—out of your cities—to throw your life away. To enlist you in a fight that you can't hope to win. I've killed you, that's all I've done. Perhaps to-night—perhaps a few days later."
He nodded gravely.
"And I've already killed your smile," she went on, looking down. "You don't smile any more the way you used to. You're not the boy you were when you came. Oh, to think of it—that it's all been my work. To kill your youth, to lead you into this slaughter pen where nothing—nothing lives but death—and hatred—and unhappiness."
The tears leaped to her eyes. He caught her hands and pressed them between his until pain came into her fingers. "Listen, Linda," he commanded. She looked straight up at him. "Are you sorry I came?"
"More than I can tell you—for your sake."
"But when people look for the truth in this world, Linda, they don't take any one's sake into consideration. They balance all things and give them their true worth. Would you rather that you and I had never met—that I had never received Elmira's message—that you should live your life up here without ever hearing of me?"
She dropped her eyes. "It isn't fair—to ask me that—"
"Tell me the truth. Hasn't it been worth while? Even if we lose and die before this night is done, hasn't it all been worth while? Are you sorry you have seen me change? Isn't the change for the better—a man grown instead of a boy? One who looks straight and sees clear?"
He studied her face; and after a while he found his answer. It was not in the form of words at first. As a man might watch a miracle he watched a new light come into her dark eyes. All the gloom and sorrow of the wilderness without could not affect its quality. It was a light of joy, of exultation, of new-found strength.
"You hadn't ought to ask me that, Bruce," she said with a rather strained distinctness. "It has been like being born again. There aren't any words to tell you what it has meant to me. And don't think I haven't seen the change in you, too—the birth of a new strength that every day is greater, higher—until it is—almost more than I can understand. The old smiles are gone, but something else has taken their place—something much more dear to me—but what it is I can hardly tell you. Maybe it's something that the pines have."
But he hadn't wholly forgotten how to smile. His face lighted as remembrance came to him. "They are a different kind of smiles—that's all," he explained. "Perhaps there will be many of them in the days to come. Linda, I have no regrets. I've played the game. Whether it was Destiny that brought me here, or only chance, or perhaps—if we take just life and death into consideration—just misfortune, whatever it is I feel no resentment toward it. It has been the worthwhile adventure. In the first place, I love the woods. There's something else in them besides death and hatred and unhappiness. Besides, it seems to me that I can understand the whole world better than I used to. Maybe I can begin to see a big purpose and theme running through it all—but it's not yet clear enough to put into words. Certain things in this world are essentials, certain other ones are froth. And I see which things belong to one class and which to another so much more clearly than I did before. One of the things that matters is throwing one's whole life into whatever task he has set out to do—whether he fails or succeeds doesn't seem greatly to matter. The main thing, it appears to me, is that he has tried. To stand strong and kind of calm, and not be afraid—if I can always do it, Linda, it is all I ask for myself. Not to flinch now. Not to give up as long as I have the strength for another step. And to have you with me—all the way."
"Then you and I—take fresh heart?"
"We've never lost heart, Linda."
"Not to give up, but only be glad we've tried?"
"Yes. And keep on trying."
"With no regrets?"
"None—and maybe to borrow a little strength from the pines!"
This was their new pact. To stand firm and strong and unflinching, and never to yield as long as an ounce of strength remained. As if to seal it, her arms crept about his neck and her soft lips pressed his.
Toward the end of the afternoon Linda saddled the horse and rode down the trail toward Martin's store. She had considerable business to attend to. Among other things, she was going to buy thirty-thirty cartridges,—all that Martin had in stock. She had some hope of securing an extra gun or two with shells to match. The additional space in her pack was to be filled with provisions.
For she was faced with the unpleasant fact that her larder was nearly empty. The jerked venison was almost gone; only a little flour and a few canned things remained. She had space for only small supplies on the horse's back, and there would be no luxuries among them.—Their fare had been plain up to this time; but from now on it was to consist of only such things as were absolutely necessary to sustain life.
She rode unarmed. Without informing him of the fact, the rifle had been left for Bruce. She did not expect for herself a rifle shot from ambush—for the simple reason that Simon had bidden otherwise—and Bruce might be attacked at any moment.
She was dreaming dreams, that day. The talk with Bruce had given her fresh heart, and as she rode down the sunlit trail the future opened up entrancing vistas to her. Perhaps they yet could conquer, and that would mean reëstablishment on the far-flung lands of her father. Matthew Folger had possessed a fertile farm also, and its green pastures might still be utilized. It suddenly occurred to her that it would be of interest to turn off the main trail, take a little dim path up the ridge that she had discovered years before, and look over these lands. The hour was early; besides, Bruce would find her report of the greatest interest.
She jogged slowly along in the Western fashion,—which means something quite different from army fashion or sportsman fashion. Western riders do not post. Riding is not exercise to them; it is rest. They hang limp in the saddle, and all jar is taken up, as if by a spring, somewhere in the region of the floating ribs that only a physician can correctly designate. They never sit firm, these Western riders, and as a rule their riding is not a particularly graceful thing to watch. But they do not care greatly about grace as long as they may encompass their fifty miles a day and still be fresh enough for a country dance at night. There are many other differences in Western and Eastern riding, one of them being the way in which the horse is mounted. Another difference is the riding habit. Linda had no trim riding trousers, with tall glossy boots, red coat, and stock. It was rather doubtful whether she knew such things existed. She did, however, wear a trim riding skirt of khaki and a middie blouse washed spotlessly clean by her own hands; and no one would have missed the other things. It is an indisputable fact that she made a rather alluring picture—eyes bright and hair dark and strong arms bare to the elbow—as she came riding down the pine-needle trail.
She came to the opening of the dimmer trail and turned down it. She did not jog so easily now. The descent was more steep. She entered a still glen, and the color in her cheeks and the soft brown of her arms blended well with the new tints of the autumn leaves. Then she turned up a long ridge.
The 'trail led through an old burn—a bleak, eerie place where the fire had swept down the forest, leaving only strange, black palings here and there—and she stopped in the middle of it to look down. The mountain world was laid out below her as clearly as in a relief map. Her eyes lighted as its beauty and its fearsomeness went home to her, and her keen eyes slowly swept over the surrounding hill tops. Then for a long moment she sat very still in the saddle.
A thousand feet distant, on the same ridge on which she rode, she caught sight of another horse. It held her gaze, and in an instant she discerned the rather startling fact that it was saddled, bridled, and apparently tied to a tree. Momentarily she thought that its rider was probably one of the Turners who was at present at work on the old Folger farm; yet she knew at once the tilled lands were still too far distant for that. She studied closely the maze of light and shadow of the underbrush and in a moment more distinguished the figure of the horseman.
It was one of the Turners,—but he was not working in the fields. He was standing near the animal's head, back to her, and his rifle lay in his arms. And then Linda understood.
He was simply guarding the trail down to Martin's store. Except for the fact that she had turned off the main trail by no possibility could she have seen him and escaped whatever fate he had for her.
She held hard on her faculties and tried to puzzle it out. She understood now why the Turners had not as yet made an attack upon them at their home. It wasn't the Turner way to wage open warfare. They were the wolves that struck from ambush, the rattlesnakes that lunged with poisoned fangs from beneath the rocks. There was some security for her in the Folger home, but none whatever here. There she had a strong man to fight for her, a loaded rifle, and under ordinary conditions the Turners could not hope to batter down the oaken door and overwhelm them without at least some loss of life. For all they knew, Bruce had a large stock of rifles and ammunition,—and the Turners did not look forward with pleasure to casualties in their ranks. The much simpler way was to watch the trail.
They had known that sooner or later one of them would attempt to ride down after either supplies or aid. Linda was a mountain girl and she knew the mountain methods of procedure; and she knew quite well what she would have had to expect if she had not discovered the ambush in time. She didn't think that the sentry would actually fire on her; he would merely shoot the horse from beneath her. It would be a simple feat by the least of the Turners,—for these gaunt men were marksmen if nothing else. It wouldn't be in accord with Simon's plan or desire to leave her body lying still on the trail. But the horse killed, flight would be impossible, and what would transpire thereafter she did not dare to think. She had not forgotten Simon's threat in regard to any attempt to go down into the settlements. She knew that it still held good.
Of course, if Bruce made the excursion, the sentry's target would be somewhat different. He would shoot him down as remorselessly as he would shatter a lynx from a tree top.
The truth was that Linda had guessed just right. "It's the easiest way," Simon had said. "They'll be trying to get out in a very few days. If the man—shoot straight and to kill! If Linda, plug the horse and bring her here behind the saddle."
Linda turned softly, then started back. She did not even give a second's thought to the folly of trying to break through. She watched the sentinel over her shoulder and saw him turn about. Far distant though he was, she could tell by the movement he made that he had discovered her.
She was almost four hundred yards away by then, and she lashed her horse into a gallop. The man cried to her to halt, a sound that came dim and strange through the burn, and then a bullet sent up a cloud of ashes a few feet to one side. But the range was too far even for the Turners, and she only urged her horse to a faster pace.
She flew down the narrow trail, turned into the main trail, and galloped wildly toward home. But the sentry did not follow her. He valued his precious life too much for that. He had no intention of offering himself as a target to Bruce's rifle as he neared the house. He headed back to report to Simon.
Young Bill—for such had been the identity of the sentry—found his chief in the large field not far distant from where Bruce had been confined. The man was supervising the harvest of the fall growth of alfalfa. The two men walked slowly away from the workers, toward the fringe of woods.
"It looks as if we'll have to adopt rough measures, after all," Young Bill began.
Simon turned with flushing face. "Do you mean you let him get past you—and missed him? Young Bill, if you've done that—"
"Won't you wait till I've told you how it happened? It wasn't Bruce; it was Linda. For some reason I can't dope out, she went up in the big burn back of me and saw me—when I was too far off to shoot her horse. Then she rode back like a witch. They'll not take that trail again."
"It means one of two things," Simon said after a pause. "One of them is to starve 'em out. It won't take long. Their supplies won't last forever. The other is to call the clan and attack—to-night."
"And that means loss of life."
"Not necessarily. I don't know how many guns they've got. If any of you were worth your salt, you'd find out those things. I wish Dave was here."
And Simon spoke the truth for once in his life: he did miss Dave. And it was not that there had been any love lost between them. But the truth was—although Simon never would have admitted it—the weaker man's cunning had been of the greatest aid to his chief. Simon needed it sorely now.
"And we can't wait till to-morrow night—because we've got the moon then," Young Bill added. "Just a new moon, but it will prevent a surprise attack. I suppose you still have hopes of Dave coming back?"
"I don't see why not. I'll venture to say now he's off on some good piece of business—doing something none of the rest of you have thought of. He'll come riding back one of these days with something actually accomplished. I see no reason for thinking that he's dead. Bruce hasn't had any chance at him that I know of. But if I thought he was—there'd be no more waiting. We'd tear down that nest to-night."
Simon spoke in his usual voice—with the same emphasis, the same undertones of passion. But the last words ended with a queer inflection. The truth was that he had slowly become aware that Young Bill was not giving him his full attention, but rather was gazing off—unfamiliar speculation in his eyes—toward the forests beyond.
Simon's impulse was to follow the gaze; yet he would not yield to it. "Well?" he demanded. "I'm not talking to amuse myself."
The younger man seemed to start. His eyes were half-closed; and there was a strange look of intentness about his facial lines when he turned back to Simon. "You haven't missed any stock?" he asked abruptly.
Simon's eyes widened. "No. Why?"
"Look there—over the forest." Young Bill pointed. Simon shielded his eyes from the sunset glare and studied the blue-green skyline above the fringe of pines. There were many grotesque, black birds wheeling on slow wings above the spot. Now and then they dropped down, out of sight behind the trees.
"Buzzards!" Simon exclaimed.
"Yes," Young Bill answered quietly. "You see, it isn't much over a mile from Folger's house—in the deep woods. There's something dead there, Simon. And I think we'd better look to see what it is."
"You think—" Then Simon hesitated and looked again with reddening eyes toward the gliding buzzards.
"I think—that maybe we're going to find Dave," Young Bill replied.