Chapter X: Book THREE: The Coming of the Strength (2)

He stood shivering, but not from the cold that the storm had brought. "Come on," he ordered Young Bill. "I think we've downed him for good, but we've got to get that paper."

* * * * *

But Simon did not see all things clearly. He had little real knowledge of the little drama that had followed his shot from ambush.

Human nature is full of odd quirks and twists, and among other things, symptoms are misleading. There is an accepted way for men to act when they are struck with a rifle bullet. They are expected to reel, to throw their arms wide, and usually to cry out. The only trouble with these actions, as most men who have been in French battle-fields know very well, is that they do not usually happen in real life.

Bruce, with Linda's eyes upon him, took one rather long, troubled breath. And he did look somewhat puzzled. Then he looked down at his shoulder.

"I'm hit, Linda," he said in a quiet way. "I think just a scratch."

The tremendous shock of any kind of wound from a thirty-forty caliber bullet had not seemingly affected him outwardly at all. Linda's response was rather curious. Some hours were to pass before he completely understood. The truth was that the shock of that rifle bullet, ordinarily striking a blow of a half-ton, had cost him for the moment an ability to make any logical interpretation of events. The girl moved swiftly, yet without giving an impression of leaping, and stood very close and in front of him. In one lightning movement she had made of her own body a shield for his, in case the assassin in the covert should shoot again.

She was trained to mountain ways, and instantly she regained a perfect mastery of herself. Her arms went about and seized his shoulders. "Stagger," she whispered quickly. "Pretend to fall. It's the one chance to save you."

He dispelled the mists in his own brain and obeyed her. He swayed, and her arms went about him. Then he fell forward.

Her strong arms encircled his waist and with all her magnificent young strength she dragged him to the door. It was noticeable, however--to all eyes except Bruce's--that she kept her own body as much as she could between him and the ambush. In an instant they were in the darkened room. Bruce stood up, once more wholly master of himself.

"You're not hurt bad?" she asked quickly.

"No. Just a deep scratch in the arm muscle near the shoulder. Bullet just must have grazed me. But it's bleeding pretty bad."

"Then there's no time to be lost." Her hands in her eagerness went again to his shoulder. "Don't you see--he'll be here in a minute. We'll steal out the back door and try to ride down to the courts before they can overtake us--"

In one instant he had grasped the idea; and he laughed softly in the gloom. "I know. I'll snatch two blankets and the food. You get the horse."

She sprang out the kitchen door and he hurried into the bedrooms. He snatched two of the warmest blankets from the beds and hurled them over his shoulder. He hooked the camp ax on his belt, then hastened into the little kitchen. He took up the little sack containing a few pounds of jerked venison, spilled out a few pieces for Elmira, and carried it--with a few pounds of flour--out to meet Linda. The horse still stood saddled, and with deft hands they tied on their supplies and fastened the blankets in a long roll in front of the saddle.

"Get on," she whispered. "I'll get up behind you."

She spoke in the utter darkness; he felt her breath against his cheek. Then the lightning came dimly and showed him her face.

"No, Linda," he replied quietly. "You are going alone--"

She cut him off with a despairing cry. "Oh, please, Bruce--I won't. I'll stay here then--"

"Don't you see?" he demanded. "You can make it out without me. I'm wounded and bleeding, and can't tell how long I can keep up. We've only got one horse, and without me to weigh him down you can get down to the courts--"

"And leave you here to be murdered? Oh, don't waste the precious seconds any more. I won't go without you. I mean it. If you stay here, I do too. Believe me if you ever believed anything."

Once more the lightning revealed her face, and on it was the determination of a zealot. He knew that she spoke the truth. He climbed with some difficulty into the saddle. A moment more and she swung up behind him.

The entire operation had taken an astonishingly short period of time. Bruce had worked like mad, wholly disregarding his injured arm. The rain had already changed to snow, and the wet flakes beat in his face, but he did not heed them. Just beyond, Simon with ready rifle was creeping toward the house.

"Which way?" Bruce asked.

"The out-trail--around the mountain," she whispered. "Simon will overtake us on the other--he's got a magnificent horse. On the mountain trail we'll have a better chance to keep out of his sight."

She spoke hurriedly, yet conveyed her message with entire clearness. They knew what they had to face, these two. Simon and whoever of the clan was with him would lose no time in springing in pursuit. They each had a strong horse, they knew the trails, they carried long-range rifles and would open fire at the first glimpse of the fugitives. Bruce was wounded; slight as the injury was it would seriously handicap them in such a test as this. Their one chance was to keep to the remote trails, to lurk unseen in the thickets, and try to break through to safety. And they knew that only by the doubtful mercy of the forest gods could they ever succeed.

She took the reins and pulled out of the trail, then encircled a heavy wall of brush. She didn't wish to take the risk of Simon seeing their forms in the dimming lightning and opening fire so soon. Then she turned back into the trail and headed into the storm.

* * * * *

Simon had clear enough memory of the rifle fire that Linda had opened upon the clan to wish to approach the house with care. It would be wholly typical of the girl to lay her lover on his bed, then go back to the window to wait for a sight of his assassin. She could look straight along a rifle barrel! A few moments were lost as Young Bill and himself encircled the thickets, keeping out of the gleam of the smoldering tree. Its light was almost gone; it hissed and glowed in the wet snow.

They crept up from the shadow, and holding their rifles ready, opened the door. They were somewhat surprised to find it unlocked. The truth was it had been left thus by design; Linda did not wish them to encircle the house to the rear door and discover Bruce and herself in the act of departure. The room was in darkness, and the two intruders rather expected to find Bruce's body on the threshold.

These were mountain men; and they had been in rifle duels before. They had the sure instincts of the beasts of prey in the hills without, and among other things they knew it wasn't wise to stand long in an open doorway with the firelight of the ruined pine behind them. They slipped quickly into the darkness.

Then they stopped and listened. The room was deeply silent. They couldn't hear the sound that both of them had so confidently expected,--the faint breathing of a dying man. Simon struck a match. The room was quite deserted.

"What's up?" Bill demanded.

Simon turned toward him with a scowl, and the match flickered and burned out in his fingers. "Keep your rifle ready. He may be hiding somewhere--still able to shoot."

They stole to the door of Linda's room and listened. Then they threw it wide.

One of their foes was in this room--an implacable foe whose eyes were glittering and strange in the matchlight. But it was neither Bruce nor Linda. It was old Elmira, cold and sinister as a rattler in its lair. Simon cursed her and hurried on.

At that instant both men began to move swiftly. Holding his rifle like a club, Simon swung through into, Bruce's room, lighted another match, then darted into the kitchen. In the dim matchlight the truth went home to him.

He turned, eyes glittering. "They've gone--on Dave's horse," he said. "Thank God they've only got one horse between 'em and can't go fast. You ride like hell up the trail toward the store--they might have gone that way. Keep close watch and shoot when you can make 'em out."

"You mean--" Bill's eyes widened.

"Mean! I mean do as I say. Shoot by sound, if you can't see them, and don't lose another second or I'll shoot you too. Aim for the man if a chance offers--but shoot, anyway. Don't stop hunting till you find them--they'll duck off in the brush sure. If they get through, everything is lost. I'll take the trail around the mountain."

They raced to their horses, untied them, and mounted swiftly. The darkness swallowed them at once.

XXXI

In the depth of gloom even the wild folk--usually keeping so close a watch on those that move on the shadowed trails--did not see Linda and Bruce ride past. The darkness is usually their time of dominance, but to-night most of them had yielded to the storm and the snow. They hovered in their coverts. What movement there was among them was mostly toward the foothills; for the message had gone forth over the wilderness that the cold had come to stay. The little gnawing folk, emerging for another night's work at filling their larders with food, crept down into the scarcely less impenetrable darkness of their underground burrows. Even the bears, whose furry coats were impervious to any ordinary cold, felt the beginnings of the cold-trance creeping over them. They were remembering the security and warmth of their last winter's dens, and they began to long for them again.

The horse walked slowly, head close to the ground. The girl made no effort to guide him. The lightning had all but ceased; and in an instant it had become apparent that only by trusting to the animal's instinct could the trail be kept at all; almost at once all sense of direction was lost to them. The snow and the darkness obscured the outline of the ridges against the sky; the trail was wholly invisible beneath them.

After the first hundred yards, they had no way of knowing that the horse was actually on the trail. While animals in the light of day cannot see nearly so far or interpret nearly so clearly as human beings, they usually seem to make their way much better at night. Many a frontiersman has been saved from death by realization of this fact; and, bewildered by the ridges, has permitted his dog to lead him into camp. But nature has never devised a creature that can see in the utter darkness, and the gloom that enfolded them now seemed simply unfathomable. Bruce found it increasingly hard to believe that the horse's eyes could make out any kind of dim pathway in the pine needles. The feeling grew on him and on Linda as well that they were lost and aimlessly wandering in the storm.

Of all the sensations that the wilderness can afford, there are few more dreadful to the spirit than this. It is never pleasant to lose one's bearings,--and in the night and the cold and miles from any friendly habitation it is particularly hard to bear. Bruce felt the age-old menace of the wilderness as never before. It always seemed to be crouching, waiting to take a man at a disadvantage; and like the gods that first make mad those whom they would destroy, it doesn't quite play fair. He understood now certain wilderness tragedies of which he had heard: how tenderfeet--lost among the ridges--had broken into a wild run that had ended nowhere except in exhaustion and death.

Bruce himself felt a wild desire to lash his horse into a gallop, but he forced it back with all his powers of will. His calmer, saner self explained that folly with entire clearness. It would mean panic for the horse, and then a quick and certain death either at the foot of a precipice or from a blow from a low-hanging limb. The horse seemed to be feeling its way, rather than seeing.

They were strange, lonely figures in the darkness; and for a long time they rode almost in silence. Then Bruce felt the girl's breath as she whispered.

"Bruce," she said. "Let's be brave and look this matter in the face. Do you think we've got a chance?"

He rode a long time before he answered. He groped desperately for a word that might bring her cheer, but it was hard to find. The cold seemed to deepen about them, the remorseless snow beat into his face.

"Linda," he replied, "it is one of the mercies of this world for men always to think that they've got a chance. Maybe it's only a cruelty in our case."

"I think I ought to tell you something else. I haven't the least way of knowing whether we are on the right trail."

"I knew that long ago. Whether we are on any trail at all."

"I've just been thinking. I don't know how many forks it has. We might have already got on a wrong one. Perhaps the horse is turned about and is heading back home--toward Simon's stables."

She spoke dully, and he thrust his arm back to her. "Linda, try to be brave," he urged. "We can only take a chance."

The horse plodded a few more steps. "Brave! To think that it is _you_ that has to encourage _me_--instead of my trying to keep up your spirits. I will try to be brave, Bruce. And if we don't live through the night, my last remembrance will be of your bravery--how you, injured and weak from loss of blood, still remembered to give a cheery word to me."

"I'm not badly injured," he told her gently. "And there are certain things that have come clear to me lately. One of them is that except for you--throwing your own precious body between--I wouldn't be here at all."

The feeling that they had lost the trail grew upon them. More than once the stirrup struck the bark of a tree and often the thickets gave way beneath them. Once they halted to adjust the blankets on the saddle, and they listened for any sounds that might indicate that Simon was overtaking them. But all they heard was the soft rustle of the leaves under the wind-blown snow.

"Linda," he asked suddenly. "Does it seem to you to be awfully cold?"

She waited a long time before she spoke. This was not the hour to make quick answers. On any decision might rest their success or failure.

"I believe I can stand it--awhile longer," she answered at last.

"But I don't think we'd better try to. It's getting cold. Every hour it's colder, and I seem to be getting weaker. It isn't a real wound, Linda--but it seems to have knocked some of my vitality out of me, and I'm dreadfully in need of rest. I think we'd better try to make a camp."

"And go on by morning light?"

"Yes."

"But Simon might overtake us then."

"We must stay out of sight of the trail. But somehow--I can't help but hope he won't try to follow us on such a night as this."

He drew up the horse, and they sat in the beat of the snow. "Don't make any mistake about that, Bruce," she told him. "Remember, that unless he overtakes us before we come into the protection of the courts, his whole fight is lost. It doesn't alone mean loss of the estate--for which he would risk his life just as he has a dozen times. It means defeat--a thing that would come hard to Simon. Besides, he's got a fire within him that will keep him warm."

"You mean--hatred?"

"Hatred. Nothing else."

"But in spite of it we must make camp. We'll get off the trail--if we're still on it--and try to slip through to-morrow. You see what's going to happen if we keep on going this way?"

"I know that I feel a queer dread--and hopelessness--"

"And that dread and hopelessness are just as much danger signals as the sound of Simon's horse behind us. It means that the cold and the snow and the fear are getting the better of us. Linda, it's a race with death. Don't misunderstand me or disbelieve me. It isn't Simon alone now. It's the cold and the snow and the fear. The thing to do is to make camp, keep as warm as we can in our blankets, and push on in the morning. It's two full days' ride, going fast, the best we can go--and God knows what will happen before the end."

"Then turn off the trail, Bruce," the girl told him.

"I don't know that we're even on the trail."

"Turn off, anyway. As long as we stay together--it doesn't matter."

She spoke very quietly. Then he felt a strange thing. A warmth which even that growing, terrible cold could not transcend swept over him. For her arms had crept out under his arms and encircled his great breast, then pressed with all her gentle strength.

No word of encouragement, no cheery expression of hope could have meant so much. Not defeat, not even the long darkness of death itself could appall him now. All that he had given and suffered and endured, all the mighty effort that he had made had in an instant been shown in its true light, a thing worth while, a sacrifice atoned for and redeemed.

They headed off into the thickets, blindly, letting the horse choose the way. They felt him turn to avoid some object in his path--evidently a fallen tree--and they mounted a slight ridge or rise. Then they felt the wet touch of fir branches against their cheeks.

Bruce stopped the horse and both dismounted. Both of them knew that under the drooping limbs of the tree they would find, at least until the snows deepened, comparative shelter from the storm. Here, rolled in their blankets, they might pass the remainder of the night hours.

Bruce tied the horse, and the girl unrolled the blankets. But she did not lay them together to make a rude bed,--and the dictates of conventionality had nothing whatever to do with it. If one jot more warmth could have been achieved by it, these two would have lain side by side through the night hours between the same blankets. She knew, however, that more warmth could be achieved if each of them took a blanket and rolled up in it; thus they would get two thicknesses instead of one and no openings to admit the freezing air. When this was done they lay side by side, economizing the last atom of warmth.

The night hours were dreary and long. The rain beat into the limbs above them, and sometimes it sifted through. At the first gray of dawn Bruce opened his eyes.

His dreams had been troubled and strange, but the reality to which he wakened gave him no sense of relief. The first knowledge that he had was that the snow had continued to sift down throughout the night, that it had already laid a white mantle over the wilderness, and the whirling flakes still cut off all view of the familiar landmarks by which he might get his bearings.

He had this knowledge before he was actually cognizant of the cold. And then its first realization came to him in a strange heaviness and dullness in his body, and an almost irresistible desire to sleep.

He fought a little battle, lying there under the snow-covered limbs of the fir tree. Because it was one in which no blows were exchanged, no shots fired, and no muscles called into action, it was no less a battle, trying and stern. It was a fight waged in his own spirit, and it seemed to rend him in twain.

The whole issue was clear in his mind at once. The cold had deepened in these hours of dawn, and he was slowly, steadily freezing to death. Even now the blood flowed less swiftly in his veins. Death itself, in the moment, had lost all horror for him; rather it was a thing of peace, of ease. All he had to do was to lie still. Just close his eyes,--and soft shadows would drop over him.

They would drop over Linda too. She lay still beside him; perhaps they had already fallen. The war he had waged so long and so relentlessly would end in blissful calm. Outside there was only snow and cold and wracking limbs and pain, only further conflict with tireless enemies, only struggle to tear his agonized body to pieces; and the bitterness of defeat in the end. He saw his chances plain as he lay beneath that gray sky. Even now, perhaps, Simon was upon them. Only two little rifle shells remained with which to combat him, and he doubted that his wounded arm would hold the rifle steady. There were weary, innumerable miles between them and any shelter, and only the terrible, trackless forest lay between.

Why not lie still and let the curtains fall? This was an easy, tranquil passing, and heaven alone knew what dreadful mode of egress would be his if he rose to battle further. All the argument seemed on one side.

But high and bright above all this burned the indomitable flame of his spirit. Even as the thoughts came to him it mounted higher, it propelled its essence of strength through his veins, it brought new steel to his muscles. To rise, to fight, to struggle on! Never to yield until the Power above decreed! To stand firm, even as the pines themselves. The dominant greatness that Linda had found in this man rose in him, and he set his muscles like iron.

He struggled to rise. He shook off the mists of the frost in his brain. He seemed to come to life. Quickly he knelt by Linda and shook her shoulders in his hands. She opened her eyes.

"Get up, Linda," he said gently. "We have to go on."

She started to object, but a message in his eyes kept her from it. His own spirit went into her. He helped her to her feet.

"Help me roll the blankets," he commanded, "and take out enough food for breakfast. We can't stop to eat it here. I think we're in sight of the main trail; whether we can find it--in the snow--I don't know." She understood; usually the absence of vegetation on a well-worn trail makes a shallow covering of snow appear more level and smooth and thus possible to follow.

"I'm afraid the snow's already too deep," he continued, "but we can go on in a general direction for a while at least--unless the snow gets worse so I can't even guess the position of the sun. We must get farther into the thickets before we stop to eat."

They were strange figures in the snow flurries as they went to work to roll the blankets into a compact bundle. The food she had taken from their stores for breakfast he thrust into the pocket of his coat; the rest, with the blankets, she tied swiftly on the horse. They unfastened the animal and for a moment she stood holding the reins while Bruce crept back on the hillside to look for the trail.

The snow swept round them, and they felt the lowering menace of the cold. And at that instant those dread spirits that rule the wilderness, jealous then and jealous still of the intrusion of man, dealt them a final, deadly blow.

Its weapon was just a sound--a loud crash in a distant thicket--and a pungent message on the wind that their human senses were too blunt to receive. Bruce saw the full dreadfulness of the blow and was powerless to save. The horse suddenly snorted loudly, then reared up. He saw as in a tragic, dream the girl struggle to hold him; he saw her pulled down into the snow and the rein jerked from her hand. Then the animal plunged, wheeled, and raced at top speed away into the snow flurries. Some Terror that as yet they could not name had broken their control of him and in an instant taken from them this one last hope of safety.

XXXII

Bruce walked over to Linda, waiting in the snow on her knees. It was not an intentional posture. She had been jerked down by the plunging horse, and she had not yet completely risen. But the sight of her slight figure, her raised white face, her clasped hands, and the remorseless snow of the wilderness about her moved Bruce to his depths. He saw her but dimly in the snow flurries, and she looked as if she were in an attitude of prayer.

He came rather slowly, and he even smiled a little. And she gave him a wan, strange, little smile in return.

"We're down to cases at last," he said, with a rather startling quietness of tone. "You see what it means?"

She nodded, then got to her feet.

"We can walk out, if we are let alone and given time; it isn't that we are obliged to have the horse. But our blankets are on its back, and this storm is steadily becoming a blizzard. And you see--_time_ is one thing that we don't have. No human being can stand this cold for long unprotected."

"And we can't keep going--keep warm by walking?"

His answer was to take out his knife and put the point of the steel to his thumb nail. His eyes strained, then looked up. "A little way," he answered, "but we can't keep our main directions. The sun doesn't even cast a shadow on my nail to show us which is west. We could keep up a while, perhaps, but there is no end to this wilderness and at noon or to-night--the result would be the same."

"And it means--the end?"

"If I can't catch the horse. I'm going now. If we can regain the blankets--by getting in rifle range of the horse--we might make some sort of shelter in the snow and last out until we can see our way and get our bearings. You don't know of any shelter--any cave or cabin where we might build a fire?"

"No. There are some in the hills, but we can't see our way to find them."

"I know. I should have thought of that. And you see, we can't build a fire here--everything is wet, and the snow is beginning to whirl so we couldn't keep it going. If we should stagger on all day in this storm and this snow, we couldn't endure the night." He smiled again. "And I want you to climb a tree--and stay there--until I come back."

She looked at him dully. "What's the use, Bruce? You won't come back. You'll chase the thing until you die--I know you. You don't know when to give up. And if you want to come back--you couldn't find the way. I'm going with you."

"No." Once more she started to disobey, but the grave displeasure in his eyes restrained her. "It's going to take all my strength to fight through that snow--I must go fast--and maybe life and death will have to depend on your strength at the end of the trail. You must save it--the little you have left. I can find my way back to you by following my own tracks--the snow won't fill them up so soon. And since I must take the rifle--to shoot the horse if I can't catch him--you must climb a tree. You know why."

"Partly to hide from Simon if he comes this way. And partly--"

"Because there's some danger in that thicket beyond!" he interrupted her. "The horse's terror was real--besides, you heard the sound. It might be only a puma. But it might be--the Killer. Swing your arms and struggle all you can to keep the blood flowing. I won't be gone long."

He started to go, and she ran after him with outstretched arms. "Oh, Bruce," she cried, "come back soon--soon. Don't leave me to die alone. I'm not strong enough for that--"

He whirled, took two paces back, and his arms went about her. He had forgotten his injury long since. He kissed her cool lips and smiled into her eyes. Then at once the flurries hid him.

The girl climbed up into the branches of a fir tree. In the thicket beyond a great gray form tacked back and forth, trying to locate a scent that a second before he had caught but dimly and had lost. It was the Killer, and his temper was lost long ago in the whirling snow. His anger was upon him, partly from the discomfort of the storm, partly from the constant, gnawing pain of three bullet wounds in his powerful body. Besides, he realized the presence of his old and greatest enemy,--those tall, slight forms that had crossed him so many times, that had stung him with their bullets, and whose weakness he had learned.

The wind was variable, and all at once he caught the scent plain. He lurched forward, crashed again through the brush, and walked out into the snow-swept open. Linda saw his vague outline, and at first she hung perfectly motionless, hoping to escape his gaze. She had been told many times that grizzlies cannot climb, yet she had no desire to see him raging below her, reaching, possibly trying to shake her from the limbs. Her muscles were stiff and inactive from the cold, and she doubted her ability to hold on. Besides, in that dread moment she found it hard to believe that the Killer would not be able to swing into the lower limbs, high enough to strike her down.

He didn't seem to see her. His eyes were lowered; besides, it was never the grizzly way to search the branches of a tree. The wind blew the message that he might have read clearly in the opposite direction. She saw him walk slowly across the snow, head lowered, a huge gray ghost in the snow flurries not one hundred feet distant. Then she saw him pause, with lowered head.

In the little second before the truth came to her, the bear had already turned. Bruce's tracks were somewhat dimmed by the snow, but the Killer interpreted them truly. She saw too late that he had crossed them, read their message, and now had turned into the clouds of snow to trace them down.

For an instant she gazed at him in speechless horror; and already the flurries had almost obscured his gray figure. Desperately she tried to call his attention from the tracks. She called, then she rustled the branches as loudly as she could. But the noise of the wind obscured what sound she made, and the bear was already too absorbed in the hunt to turn and see her. As always, in the nearing presence of a foe, his rage grew upon him.

Sobbing, Linda swung down from the tree. She had no conscious plan of aid to her lover. She only had a blind instinct to seek him, to try to warn him of his danger, and at least to be with him at the death. The great tracks of the Killer, seemingly almost as long as her own arm, made a plain trail for her to follow. She too struck off into the storm-swept canyon.

And the forest gods who dwell somewhere in the region where the pine tops taper into the sky, and who pull the strings that drop and raise the curtain and work the puppets that are the players of the wilderness dramas, saw a chance for a great and tragic jest in this strange chase over the snow. The destinies of Bruce, Linda, and the Killer were already converging on this trail that all three followed,--the path that the runaway horse made in the snow. Only one of the great forces of the war that had been waged at Trail's End was lacking, and now he came also.

Simon Turner had ridden late into the night and from before dawn; with remorseless fury he had goaded on his exhausted horse, he had driven him with unpitying strength through coverts, over great rocks, down into rocky canyons in search of Bruce and Linda, and now, as the dawn broke, he thought that he had found them. He had suddenly come upon the tracks of Bruce's horse in the snow.

If he had encountered them farther back, when the animal had been running wildly, he might have guessed the truth and rejoiced. No man would attempt to ride a horse at a gallop through that trailless stretch. But at the point he found the tracks most of the horse's terror had been spent, and it was walking leisurely, sometimes lowering its head to crop the shrubbery. The trail was comparatively fresh too; or else the fast-falling snow would have already obscured it. He thought that his hour of triumph was near.

But it had come none too soon. And Simon--out of passion-filled eyes--looked and saw that it would likely bring death with it.

He realized his position fully. The storm was steadily developing into one of those terrible mountain blizzards in which, without shelter, no human being might live. He was far from his home, he had no blankets, and he could not find his way. Yet he would not have turned back if he could.

In all the manifold mysteries of the wilderness there was no stranger thing than this: that in the face of his passion Simon had forgotten and ignored even that deepest instinct, self-preservation. Nothing mattered any more except his hatred. No desire was left except its expression.

The securing of the document by which Bruce could take the great estates from him was only a trifle now. He believed wholly within his own soul that the wilderness--without his aid--would do his work of hatred for him; and that by no conceivable circumstances could Bruce and Linda find shelter from the blizzard and live through the day. He could find their bodies in the spring if he by any chance escaped himself, and take the Ross-Folger agreement from them. But it was not enough. He wanted also to do the work of destruction.

Even his own death--if it were only delayed until his vengeance was wreaked--could not matter now. In all the ancient strife and fury and ceaseless war of the wild through which he had come, there was no passion to equal this. The Killer was content to let the wolf kill the fawn for him. The cougar will turn from its warm, newly slain prey, in which its white fangs have already dipped, at the sight of some great danger in the thickets. But Simon could not turn. Death lowered its wings upon him as well as upon his enemy, yet the fire in his heart and the fury in his brain shut out all thought of it.

He sprang off his horse better to examine the tracks, and then stood, half bent over, in the snow.

* * * * *

Bruce Folger headed swiftly up the trail that his runaway horse had made. It was, he thought, his last effort, and he gave his full strength to it. Weakened as he was by the cold and the wound, he could not have made headway at all except for the fact that the wind was behind him.

The snow ever fell faster, in larger flakes, and the track dimmed before his eyes. It was a losing game. Terrified not only by the beast that had stirred in the thicket but by the ever-increasing wind as well, the animal would not linger to be overtaken. Bruce had not ridden it enough to have tamed it, and his plan was to attempt to shoot the creature on sight, rather than try to catch it. They could not go forward, anyway, as long as the blizzard lasted. Which way was east and which was west he could no longer guess. And with the blankets they might make some sort of shelter and keep life in their bodies until the snow ceased and they could find their way.

The cold was deepening, the storm was increasing in fury. Bruce's bones ached, his wounded arm felt numb and strange, the frost was getting into his lungs. The wind's breath was ever keener, its whistle was louder in the pines. There was no hope of the storm decreasing, rather it was steadily growing worse. And Bruce had some pre-knowledge--an inheritance, perhaps, from frontier ancestors--of the real nature of the mountain blizzard such as was descending on him now. It was a losing fight. All the optimism of youth and the spirit of the angels could not deny this fact.

The tracks grew more dim, and he began to be afraid that the falling flakes would obscure his own footprints so that he could not find his way back to Linda. And he knew, beyond all other knowledge, that he wanted her with him when the shadows dropped down for good and all. He couldn't face them bravely alone. He wanted her arms about him; the flight would be easier then.

"Oh, what's the use?" he suddenly said to the wind. "Why not give up and go back?"

He halted in the trail and started to turn. But at that instant a banner of wind swept down into his face, and the eddy of snow in front of him was brushed from his gaze. Just for the space of a breath the canyon for a hundred feet distant was partially cleared of the blinding streamers of snow. And he uttered a long gasp when he saw, thirty yards distant and at the farthest reaches of his sight, the figure of a saddled horse.

His gun leaped to his shoulder, yet his eagerness did not cost him his self-control. He gazed quietly along the sights until he saw the animal's shoulder between them. His finger pressed back against the trigger.

The horse rocked down, seemingly instantly killed, and the snow swept in between. Bruce cried out in triumph. Then he broke into a run and sped through the flurries toward his dead.

But it came about that there was other business for Bruce than the recovery of his blankets that he had supposed would be tied to the saddle. The snow was thick between, and he was within twenty feet of the animal's body before he glimpsed it clearly again. And he felt the first wave of wonder, the first promptings of the thought that the horse he had shot down was not his, but one that he had never seen before.

But there was no time for the thought to go fully home. Some one cried out--a strange, half-snarl of hatred and triumph that was almost lacking in all human quality--and a man's body leaped toward him from the thicket before which the horse had fallen. It was Simon, and Bruce had mistaken his horse for the one he had ridden.

XXXIII

Even in that instant crisis Bruce did not forget that he had as yet neglected to expel the empty cartridge from the barrel of his rifle and to throw in the other from the magazine. He tried to get the gun to his shoulder, working the lever at the same time. But Simon's leap was too fast for him. His strong hand seized the barrel of the gun and snatched it from his hands. Then the assailant threw it back, over his shoulder, and it fell softly in the snow. He waited, crouched.

The two men stood face to face at last. All things else were forgotten. The world they had known before--a world of sorrow and pleasures, of mountains and woods and homes--faded out and left no realities except each other's presence. All about them were the snow flurries that their eyes could not penetrate, and it was as if they were two lone contestants on an otherwise uninhabited sphere who had come to grips at last. The falling snow gave the whole picture a curious tone of unreality and dimness.

Bruce straightened, and his face was of iron. "Well, Simon," he said. "You've come."

The man's eyes burned red through the snow. "Of course I would. Did you think you could escape me?"

"It didn't much matter whether I escaped you or not," Bruce answered rather quietly. "Neither one of us is going to escape the storm and the cold. I suppose you know that."

"I know that _one_ of us is. Because one of us is going out--a more direct way--first. Which one that is doesn't much matter." His great hands clasped. "Bruce, when I snatched your gun right now I could have done more. I could have sprung a few feet farther and had you around the waist--taken by surprise. The fight would have been already over. I think I could have done more than that even--with my own rifle as you came up. It's laying there, just beside the horse."

But Bruce didn't turn his eyes to look at it. He was waiting for the attack.

"I could have snatched your life just as well, but I wanted to wait," Simon went on. "I wanted to say a few words first, and wanted to master you--not by surprise--but by superior strength alone."

It came into Brace's mind that he could tell Simon of the wound near his shoulder, how because of it no fight between them would be a fair test of superiority, yet the words didn't come to his lips. He could not ask mercy of this man, either directly or indirectly, any more than the pines asked mercy of the snows that covered them.

"You were right when you said there is no escaping from this storm," Simon went on. "But it doesn't much matter. It's the end of a long war, and what happens to the victor is neither here nor there. It seems all the more fitting that we should meet just as we have--at the very brink of death--and Death should be waiting at the end for the one of us who survives. It's so like this damned, terrible wilderness in which we live."

Bruce gazed in amazement. The dark and dreadful poetry of this man's nature was coming to the fore. The wind made a strange echo to his words,--a long, wild shriek as it swept over the heads of the pines.

"Then why are you waiting?" Bruce asked.

"So you can understand everything. But I guess that time is here. There is to be no mercy at the end of this fight, Bruce; I ask none and will give none. You have waged a war against me, you have escaped me many times, you have won the love of the woman I love--and this is to be my answer." His voice dropped a note and he spoke more quietly. "I'm going to kill you, Bruce."

"Then try it," Bruce answered steadily. "I'm in a hurry to go back to Linda."

Simon's smoldering wrath blazed up at the words. Both men seemed to spring at the same time. Their arms flailed, then interlocked; and they rocked a long time--back and forth in the snow.

They fought in silence. The flurries dropped over them, and the wind swept by in its frantic wandering. Bruce called upon his last ounce of reserve strength,--that mysterious force that always sweeps to a man's aid in a moment of crisis.

For the first time he had full realization of Simon's mighty strength. With all the power of his body he tried to wrench him off his feet, but it was like trying to tear a tree from the ground.

But surprise at the other's power was not confined to Bruce alone. Simon knew that he had an opponent worthy of the iron of his own muscles, and he put all his terrible might into the battle. He tried to reach Bruce's throat, but the man's strong shoulder held the arm against his side. Simon's great hand reached to pin Bruce's arm, and for the first time he discovered the location of his weakness.

He saw the color sweep from Bruce's face and water drops that were not melted snow come upon it. It was all the advantage needed between such evenly matched contestants. And Simon forgot his spoken word that he wished this fight to be a test of superiority alone. His fury swept over him like a flood and effaced all things else; and he centered his whole attack upon Bruce's wound.

In a moment he had him down, and he struck once into Bruce's white face with his terrible knuckles. The blow sent a strange sickness through the younger man's frame; and he tried vainly to struggle to his feet. "Fight! Fight on!" was the message his mind dispatched along his nerves to his tortured muscles, but for an instant they wholly refused to respond. They had endured too much. Total unconsciousness hovered above him, ready to descend.

Strangely, he seemed to know that Simon had crept from his body and was even now reaching some dreadful weapon that lay beside the dead form of the horse. In an instant he had it, and Bruce's eyes opened in time to see him swinging it aloft. It was his rifle, and Simon was aiming a murderous blow at him with its stock.

There was no chance to ward it off. No human skull could withstand its shattering impact. Bruce saw the man's dark face with the murder madness upon it, the blazing eyes, the lips drawn back. The muscles contracted to deal the blow.

But that war of life and death in the far reaches of Trail's End was not to end so soon. At that instant there was an amazing intervention.

A great gray form came lunging out of the snow flurries. Their vision was limited to a few feet, and so fast the creature came, with such incredible, smashing power, that he was upon them in a breath. It was the Killer in the full glory of the charge; and he had caught up with them at last.

Bruce saw only his great figure looming just over him. Simon, with amazing agility, leaped to one side just in time, then battered down the rifle stock with all his strength. But the blow was not meant for Bruce. It struck where aimed,--the great gray shoulder of the grizzly.

Then, dimmed and half-obscured by the snow flurries, there began as strange a battle as the great pines above them had ever beheld. The Killer's rage was upon him, and the blow at the shoulder had arrested his charge for a moment only. Then he wheeled, a snarling, fighting monster with death for any living creature in the blow of his forearm, and lunged toward Simon again.

It was the Killer at his grandest. The little eyes blazed, the neck hair bristled, he struck with forearms and jaws--lashing, lunging, recoiling--all the terrible might and fury of the wilderness centered and personified in his mighty form. Simon had no chance to shoot his rifle. In the instant that he would raise it those great claws and fangs would be upon him. He swung it as a club, striking again and again, dodging the sledge-hammer blows and springing aside in the second of the Killer's lunges. He was fighting for his life, and no eye could bemean that effort.

Simon himself seemed exalted, and for once it appeared that the grizzly had found an opponent worthy of his might. It was all so fitting: that these two mighty powers, typifying all that is remorseless and terrible in the wild, should clash at last in the gathering fury of the storm. They were of one kind, and they seemed to understand each other. The lust and passion and fury of battle were upon them both.

The scene harked back to the young days of the world, when man and beast battled for dominance. Nothing had changed. The forest stood grave and silent, just the same. The elements warred against them from the clouds,--that ancient persecution of which the wolf pack sings on the ridge at night, that endless strife that has made of existence a travail and a scourge. Man and beast and storm--those three great foes were arrayed the same as ever. Time swung backward a thousand-thousand years.

The storm gathered in force. The full strength of the blizzard was upon them. The snow seemed to come from all directions in great clouds and flurries and streamers, and time after time it wholly hid the contestants from Bruce's eyes. At such times he could tell how the fight was going by sound alone,--the snarls of the Killer, the wild oaths of Simon, the impact of the descending rifle-butt. Bruce gave no thought to taking part. Both were enemies; his own strength seemed gone. The cold deepened; Bruce could feel it creeping into his blood, halting its flow, threatening the spark of life within him. The full light of day had come out upon the land.

Bruce knew the wilderness now. All its primitive passions were in play, all its mighty forces at grips. The storm seemed to be trying to extinguish these mortal lives; jealous of their intrusion, longing for the world it knew before living things came to dwell upon it, when its winds swept endlessly over an uninhabited earth, and its winter snows lay trackless and its rule was supreme. And beneath it, blind to the knowledge that in union alone lay strength to oppose its might--to oppose all those cruel forces that make a battleground of life--man and beast fought their battle to the death.

It seemed to go on forever. Linda came stealing out of the snow--following the grizzly's trail--and crept beside Bruce. She crouched beside him, and his arm went about her as if to shield her. She had heard the sounds of the battle from afar; she had thought that Bruce was the contestant, and her terror had left a deep pallor upon her face; yet now she gazed upon that frightful conflict with a strange and enduring calm. Both she and Bruce knew that there was but one sure conqueror, and that was Death. If the Killer survived the fight and through the mercy of the forest gods spared their lives, there remained the blizzard. They could conceive of no circumstances whereby further effort would be of the least avail. The horse on which was tied their scanty blankets was miles away by now; its tracks were obscured in the snow, and they could not find their way to any shelter that might be concealed among the ridges.

The scene grew in fury. The last burst of strength was upon Simon; in another moment he would be exhausted. The bear had suffered terrible punishment from the blows of the rifle stock. He recoiled once more, then lunged with unbelievable speed. His huge paw, with all his might behind it, struck the weapon from Simon's hand.

It shot through the air seemingly almost as fast as the bullets it had often propelled from its muzzle and struck the trunk of a tree. So hard it came that the lock was shattered; they heard the ring of metal. The bear rocked forward once more and struck again. And then all the sound that was left was the eerie complaint of the wind.

Simon lay still. The brave fight was over. His trial had ended fittingly,--in the grip of such powers as were typical of himself. But the bear did not leap upon him to tear his flesh. For an instant he stood like a statue in gray stone, head lowered, as if in a strange attitude of thought. The snow swept over him.

Linda and Bruce gazed at him in silent awe. Some way, they felt no fear. No room in their hearts was left for it after the tumult of that battle. The great grizzly uttered one deep note and half-turned about. His eyes rested upon the twain, but he did not seem to see them.

The fury was dead within him; this much was plain. The hair began to lie down at his shoulders. The terrible eyes lost their fire. Then he turned again and headed off slowly, deliberately, directly into the face of the storm.

XXXIV

The flurries almost immediately obscured the Killer's form, and Bruce turned his attention back to Linda. "It's the end," he said quietly. "Why not here--as well as anywhere else?"