Chapter II: Book ONE: The Call of the Blood (2)

Once, at a distance, Bruce caught a glimpse of a pair of peculiar, little, sawed-off, plump-breasted ducks that wagged their tails, as if in signals, in a still place above a dam. He made a wide circle, intending to wheel back to the creekside for a closer inspection of the singular flirtation of those bobbing, fan-like tails. He rather thought he could outwit these little people, at least. But when he turned back to the water's edge they were nowhere to be seen.

If he had had more experience with the creatures of the wild he could have explained this mysterious disappearance. These little ducks--"ruddies" the sportsmen call them--have advantages other than an extra joint in their tails. One of them seems to be a total and unprincipled indifference to the available supply of oxygen. When they wish to go out of sight they simply duck beneath the water and stay apparently as long as they desire. Of course they have to come up some time--but usually it is just the tip of a bill--like the top of a river-bottom weed, thrust above the surface. Bruce gaped in amazement, but he chuckled again when he discovered his birds farther up the creek, just as far distant from him as ever.

The sun rose higher, and he began to feel its power. But it was a kindly heat. The temperature was much higher than was commonly met in the summers of the city, but there was little moisture in the air to make it oppressive. The sweat came out on his bronze face, but he never felt better in his life. There was but one great need, and that was breakfast.

A man of his physique feels hunger quickly. The sensation increased in intensity, and the suitcase grew correspondingly heavy. And all at once he stopped short in the road. The impulse along his nerves to his leg muscles was checked, like an electric current at the closing of a switch, and an instinct of unknown origin struggled for expression within him.

In an instant he had it. He didn't know whence it came. It was nothing he had read or that any one had told him. It seemed to be rather the result of some experience in his own immediate life, an occurrence of so long ago that he had forgotten it. He suddenly knew where he could find his breakfast. There was no need of toiling farther on an empty stomach in this verdant season of the year. He set his suitcase down, and with the confidence of a man who hears the dinner call in his own home, he struck off into the thickets beside the creek bed. Instinct--and really, after all, instinct is nothing but memory--led his steps true.

He glanced here and there, not even wondering at the singular fact that he did not know exactly what manner of food he was seeking. In a moment he came to a growth of thorn-covered bushes, a thicket that only the she-bear knew how to penetrate. But it was enough for Bruce just to stand at its edges. The bushes were bent down with a load of delicious berries.

He wasn't in the least surprised. He had known that he would find them. Always, at this season of the year, the woods were rich with them; one only had to slip quickly through the back door--while the mother's eye was elsewhere--to find enough of them not only to pack the stomach full but to stain and discolor most of the face. It seemed a familiar thing to be plucking the juicy berries and cramming them into his mouth, impervious as the old she-bear to the remonstrance of the thorns. But it seemed to him that he reached them easier than he expected. Either the bushes were not so tall as he remembered them, or--since his first knowledge of them--his own stature had increased.

When he had eaten the last berry he could possibly hold, he went to the creek to drink. He lay down beside a still pool, and the water was cold to his lips. Then he rose at the sound of an approaching motor car behind him.

The driver--evidently a cattleman--stopped his car and looked at Bruce with some curiosity. He marked the perfectly fitting suit of dark flannel, the trim, expensive shoes that were already dust-stained, the silken shirt on which a juicy berry had been crushed. "Howdy," the man said after the western fashion. He was evidently simply feeling companionable and was looking for a moment's chat. It is a desire that often becomes very urgent and most real after enough lonely days in the wilderness.

"How do you do," Bruce replied. "How far to Martin's store?"

The man filled his pipe with great care before he answered. "Jump in the car," he replied at last, "and I'll show you. I'm going up that way myself."

VI

Martin's was a typical little mountain store, containing a small sample of almost everything under the sun and built at the forks in the road. The ranchman let Bruce off at the store; then turned up the right-hand road that led to certain bunch-grass lands to the east. Bruce entered slowly, and the little group of loungers gazed at him with frank curiosity.

Only one of them was of a type sufficiently distinguished so that Bruce's own curiosity was aroused. This was a huge, dark man who stood alone almost at the rear of the building,--a veritable giant with savage, bloodhound lips and deep-sunken eyes. There was a quality in his posture that attracted Bruce's attention at once. No one could look at him and doubt that he was a power in these mountain realms. He seemed perfectly secure in his great strength and wholly cognizant of the hate and fear, and at the same time, the strange sort of admiration with which the others regarded him.

He was dressed much as the other mountain men who had assembled in the store. He wore a flannel shirt over his gorilla chest, and corduroy trousers stuffed into high, many-seamed riding boots. A dark felt hat was crushed on to his huge head. But there was an aloofness about the man; and Bruce realized at once he had taken no part in the friendly gossip that had been interrupted by his entrance.

The dark eyes were full upon Bruce's face. He felt them--just as if they had the power of actual physical impact--the instant that he was inside the door. Nor was it the ordinary look of careless speculation or friendly interest. Mountain men have not been taught it is not good manners to stare, but no traveler who falls swiftly into the spirit of the forest ordinarily resents their open inspection. But this look was different. It was such that no man, to whom self-respect is dear, could possibly disregard. It spoke clearly as words.

Bruce flushed, and his blood made a curious little leap. He slowly turned. His gaze moved until it rested full upon the man's eyes. It seemed to Bruce that the room grew instantly quiet. The merchant no longer tied up his bundles at the counter. The watching mountain men that he beheld out of the corners of his eyes all seemed to be standing in peculiar fixed attitudes, waiting for some sort of explosion. It took all of Bruce's strength to hold that gaze. The moment was charged with a mysterious suspense.

The stranger's face changed too. He did not flush, however. His lips curled ever so slightly, revealing an instant's glimpse of strong, rather well-kept teeth. His eyes were narrowing too; and they seemed to come to life with singular sparkles and glowings between the lids.

"Well?" he suddenly demanded. Every man in the room--except one--started. The one exception was Bruce himself. He was holding hard on his nerve control, and he only continued to stare coldly.

"Are you the merchant?" Bruce asked.

"No, I ain't," the other replied. "You usually look for the merchant behind the counter."

There was no smile on the faces of the waiting mountain men, usually to be expected when one of their number achieves repartee on a tenderfoot. Nevertheless, the tension was broken. Bruce turned to the merchant.

"I would like to have you tell me," he said quite clearly, "the way to Mrs. Ross's cabin."

The merchant seemed to wait a long time before replying. His eye stole to the giant's face, found the lips curled in a smile; then he flushed. "Take the left-hand road," he said with a trace of defiance in his tone. "It soon becomes a trail, but keep right on going up it. At the fork in the trail you'll find her cabin."

"How far is it, please?"

"Two hours' walk; you can make it easy by four o'clock."

"Thank you." His eyes glanced over the stock of goods and he selected a few edibles to give him strength for the walk. "I'll leave my suitcase here if I may," he said, "and will call for it later." He turned to go.

"Wait just a minute," a voice spoke behind him. It was a commanding tone--implying the expectation of obedience. Bruce half turned. "Simon wants to talk to you," the merchant explained.

"I'll walk with you a way and show you the road," Simon continued. The room seemed deathly quiet as the two men went out together.

They walked side by side until a turn of the road took them out of eye-range of the store. "This is the road," Simon said. "All you have to do is follow it. Cabins are not so many that you could mistake it. But the main thing is--whether or not you want to go."

Bruce had no misunderstanding about the man's meaning. It was simply a threat, nothing more nor less.

"I've come a long way to go to that cabin," he replied. "I'm not likely to turn off now."

"There's nothing worth seeing when you get there. Just an old hag--a wrinkled old dame that looks like a witch."

Bruce felt a deep and little understood resentment at the words. Yet since he had as yet established no relations with the woman, he had no grounds for silencing the man. "I'll have to decide that," he replied. "I'm going to see some one else, too."

"Some one named--Linda?"

"Yes. You seem quite interested."

They were standing face to face in the trail. For once Bruce was glad of his unusual height. He did not have to raise his eyes greatly to look squarely into Simon's. Both faces were flushed, both set; and the eyes of the older man brightened slowly.

"I am interested," Simon replied. "You're a tenderfoot. You're fresh from cities. You're going up there to learn things that won't be any pleasure to you. You're going into the real mountains--a man's land such as never was a place for tenderfeet. A good many things can happen up there. A good many things have happened up there. I warn you--go back!"

Bruce smiled, just the faint flicker of a smile, but Simon's eyes narrowed when he saw it. The dark face lost a little of its insolence. He knew men, this huge son of the wilderness, and he knew that no coward could smile in such a moment as this. He was accustomed to implicit obedience and was not used to seeing men smile when he uttered a threat. "I've come too far to go back," Bruce told him. "Nothing can turn me."

"Men have been turned before, on trails like this," Simon told him. "Don't misunderstand me. I advised you to go back before, and I usually don't take time or trouble to advise any one. Now I _tell_ you to go back. This is a man's land, and we don't want any tenderfeet here."

"The trail is open," Bruce returned. It was not his usual manner to speak in quite this way. He seemed at once to have fallen into the vernacular of the wilderness of which symbolic reference has such a part. Strange as the scene was to him, it was in some way familiar too. It was as if this meeting had been ordained long ago; that it was part of an inexorable destiny that the two should be talking together, face to face, on this winding mountain road. Memories--all vague, all unrecognized--thronged through him.

Many times, during the past years, he had wakened from curious dreams that in the light of day he had tried in vain to interpret. He was never able to connect them with any remembered experience. Now it was as if one of these dreams were coming true. There was the same silence about him, the dark forests beyond, the ridges stretching ever. There was some great foe that might any instant overwhelm him.

"I guess you heard me," Simon said; "I told you to go back."

"And I hope you heard me too. I'm going on. I haven't any more time to give you."

"And I'm not going to take any more, either. But let me make one thing plain. No man, told to go back by me, ever has a chance to be told again. This ain't your cities--up here. There ain't any policeman on every corner. The woods are big, and all kinds of things can happen in them--and be swallowed up--as I swallow these leaves in my hand."

His great arm reached out with incredible power and seized a handful of leaves off a near-by shrub. It seemed to Bruce that they crushed like fruit and stained the dark skin.

"What is done up here isn't put in the newspapers down below. We're mountain men; we've lived up here as long as men have lived in the West. We have our own way of doing things, and our own law. Think once more about going back."

"I've already decided. I'm going on."

Once more they stood, eyes meeting eyes on the trail, and Simon's face was darkening with passion. Bruce knew that his hands were clenching, and his own muscles bunched and made ready to resist any kind of attack.

But Simon didn't strike. He laughed instead,--a single deep note of utter and depthless scorn. Then he drew back and let Bruce pass on up the road.

VII

Bruce couldn't mistake the cabin. At the end of the trail he found it,--a little shack of unpainted boards with a single door and a single window.

He stood a moment in the sunlight. His shadow was already long behind him, and the mountains had that curious deep blue of late afternoon. The pine needles were soft under his feet; the later-afternoon silence was over the land. He could not guess what was his destiny behind that rude door. It was a moment long waited; for one of the few times in his life he was trembling with excitement. He felt as if a key, long lost, was turning in the doorway of understanding.

He walked nearer and tapped with his knuckles on the door.

If the forests have one all-pervading quality it is silence. Of course the most silent time is at night, but just before sunset, when most of the forest creatures are in their mid-afternoon sleep, any noise is a rare thing. What sound there is carries far and seems rather out of place. Bruce could picture the whole of the little drama that followed his knock by just the faint sounds--inaudible in a less silent land--that reached him from behind the door. At first it was just a start; then a short exclamation in the hollow, half-whispering voice of old, old age. A moment more of silence--as if a slow-moving, aged brain were trying to conjecture who stood outside--then the creaking of a chair as some one rose. The last sounds were of a strange hobbling toward him,--a rustle of shoes half dragged on the floor and the intermittent tapping of a cane.

The face that showed so dimly in the shadowed room looked just as Bruce had expected,--wrinkled past belief, lean and hawk-nosed from age. The hand that rested on the cane was like a bird's claw, the skin blue and hard and dry. There were a few strands of hair drawn back over her lean head, but all its color had faded out long ago. She stood bowed over her cane.

Yet in that first instant Bruce had an inexplicable impression of being in the presence of a power. He did not have the wave of pity with which one usually greets the decrepit. And at first he didn't know why. But soon he grew accustomed to the shadows and he could see the woman's eyes. Then he understood.

They were set deep behind grizzled brows, but they glowed like coals. There was no other word. They were not the eyes of one whom time is about to conquer. Her bodily strength was gone; any personal beauty that she might have had was ashes long and long ago, but some great fire burned in her yet. As far as bodily appearance went the grave should have claimed her long since; but a dauntless spirit had sustained her. For, as all men know, the power of the spirit has never yet been measured.

She blinked in the light. "Who is it?" she croaked.

Bruce did not answer. He had not prepared a reply for this question. But it was not needed. The woman leaned forward, and a vivid light began to dawn in her dark, furrowed face.

Even to Bruce, already succumbed to this atmosphere of mystery into which his adventure had led him, that dawning light was the single most startling phenomenon he had ever beheld. It is very easy to imagine a radiance upon the face. But in reality, most all facial expression is simply a change in the contour of lines. But this was not a case of imagination now. The witchlike face seemed to gleam with a white flame. And Bruce knew that his coming was the answer to the prayer of a whole lifetime. It was a thought to sober him. No small passion, no weak desire, no prayer that time or despair could silence could effect such a light as this.

"Bruce," he said simply. It did not even occur to him to use the surname of Duncan. It was a name of a time and sphere already forgotten. "I don't know what my real last name is."

"Bruce--Bruce," the woman whispered. She stretched a palsied hand to him as if it would feel his flesh to reassure her of its reality. The wild light in her eyes pierced him, burning like chemical rays, and a great flood of feeling yet unknown and unrecognized swept over him. He saw her snags of teeth as her dry lips half-opened. He saw the exultation in her wrinkled, lifted face. "Oh, praises to His Everlasting Name!" she cried. "Oh, Glory--Glory to on High!"

And this was not blasphemy. The words came from the heart. No matter how terrible the passion from which they sprang, whether it was such evil as would cast her to hell, such a cry as this could not go unheard. The strength seemed to go out of her as water flows. She rocked on her cane, and Bruce, thinking she was about to fall, seized her shoulders. "At last--at last," she cried. "You've come at last."

She gripped herself, as if trying to find renewed strength. "Go at once," she said, "to the end of the Pine-needle Trail. It leads from behind the cabin."

He tried to emerge from the dreamlike mists that had enveloped him. "How far is it?" he asked her steadily.

"To the end of Pine-needle Trail," she rocked again, clutched for one of his brown hands, and pressed it between hers.

Then she raised it to her dry lips. Bruce could not keep her from it. And after an instant more he did not attempt to draw it from her embrace. In the darkness of that mountain cabin, in the shadow of the eternal pines, he knew that some great drama of human life and love and hatred was behind the action; and he knew with a knowledge unimpeachable that it would be only insolence for him to try further to resist it. Its meaning went too deep for him to see; but it filled him with a great and wondering awe.

Then he turned away, up the Pine-needle Trail. Clear until the deeper forest closed around him her voice still followed him,--a strange croaking in the afternoon silence. "At last," he heard her crying. "At last, at last."

VIII

In almost a moment, Duncan was out of the thickets and into the big timber, for really the first time. In his journey up the mountain road and on the trail that led to the old woman's cabin, he had been many times in the shade of the tall evergreens, but always there had been some little intrusion of civilization, some hint of the works of man that had kept him from the full sense of the majesty of the wild. At first it had been the gleaming railroad tracks, and then a road that had been built with blasting and shovels. To get the full effect of the forest one must be able to behold wide-stretching vistas, and that had been impossible heretofore because of the brush thickets. But this was the virgin forest. As far as he could see there was nothing but the great pines climbing up the long slope of the ridge. He caught glimpses of them in the vales at either side, and their dark tops made a curious background at the very extremity of his vision. They stood straight and aloof, and they were very old.

He fell into their spirit at once. The half-understood emotions that had flooded him in the cabin below died within him. The great calm that is, after all, the all-pervading quality of the big pines came over him. It is always this way. A man knows solitude, his thoughts come clear, superficialities are left behind in the lands of men. Bruce was rather tremulous and exultant as he crept softly up the trail.

It was the last lap of his journey. At the end of the trail he would find--Linda! And it seemed quite fitting that she would be waiting there, where the trail began, in the wildest heart of the pine woods. He was quite himself once more,--carefree, delighting in all the little manifestations of the wild life that began to stir about him.

No experience of his existence had ever yielded the same pleasure as that long walk up the trail. Every curve about the shoulder of a hill, every still glen into which he dipped, every ridge that he surmounted wakened curious memories within him and stirred him in little secret ways under the skin. His delight grew upon him. It was a dream coming true. Always, it seemed to him, he had carried in his mind a picture of this very land, a sort of dream place that was a reality at last. He had known just how it would be. The wind made the same noise in the tree tops that he expected. Yet it was such a little sound that it could never be heard in a city at all. His senses had already been sharpened by the silence and the calm.

He had always known how the pine shadows would fall across the carpet of needles. The trees themselves were the same grave companions that he had expected, but his delight was all the more because of his expectations.

He began to catch glimpses of the smaller forest creatures,--the Little People that are such a delight to all real lovers of the wilderness. Sometimes it was a chipmunk, trusting to his striped skin--blending perfectly with the light and shadow--to keep him out of sight. These are quivering, restless, ever-frightened little folk, and heaven alone knows what damage they may do to the roots of a tree. But Bruce wasn't in the mood to think of forest conservation to-day. He had left a number of his notions in the city where he had acquired them,--and this little, bright-eyed rodent in the tree roots had almost the same right to the forests that he had himself. Before, he had a measure of the same arrogance with which most men--realizing the dominance of their breed--regard the lesser people of the wild; but something of a disastrous nature had happened to it. He spoke gayly to the chipmunk and passed on.

As the trail climbed higher, the sense of wilderness became more pronounced. Even the trees seemed larger and more majestic, and the glimpses of the wild people were more frequent. The birds stopped their rattle-brained conversation and stared at him with frank curiosity. The grouse let him get closer before they took to cover.

Of course the bird life was not nearly so varied as in the pretty groves of the Middle West. Most birds are gentle people, requiring an easy and pleasant environment, and these stern, stark mountains were no place for them. Only the hardier creatures could flourish here. Their songs would have been out of place in the great silences and solemnity of the evergreen forest. This was no land for weaklings. Bruce knew that as well as he knew that his legs were under him. The few birds he saw were mostly of the hardier varieties,--hale-fellows-well-met and cheerful members of the lower strata in bird society. "Good old roughnecks," he said to them, with an intuitive understanding.

That was just the name for them,--a word that is just beginning to appear in dictionaries. They were rough in manner and rough in speech, and they pretended to be rougher than they were. Yet Bruce liked them. He exulted in the easy freedom of their ways. Creatures have to be rough to exist in and love such wilderness as this. Life gets down to a matter of cold metal,--some brass but mostly iron! He rather imagined that they could be fairly capable thieves if occasion arose, making off with the edibles he had bought without a twitch of a feather. They squawked and scolded at him, after their curiosity was satisfied. They said the most shocking things they could think of and seemed to rejoice in it. He didn't know their breeds, yet he felt that they were old friends. They were rather large birds, mostly of the families of jays and magpies.

The hours passed. The trail grew dimmer. Now it was just a brown serpent in the pine needles, coiling this way and that,--but he loved every foot of it. It dipped down to a little stream, of which the blasting sun of summer had made only a succession of shallow pools. Yet the water was cold to his lips. And he knew that little brook trout--waiting until the fall rains should make a torrent of their tiny stream and thus deliver them--were gazing at him while he drank.

The trail followed the creek a distance, and at last he found the spring that was its source. It was only a small spring, lost in a bed of deep, green ferns. He sat down to rest and to eat part of his lunch. The little wind had died, leaving a profound silence.

By a queer pounding of his blood Bruce knew that he was in the high altitudes. He had already come six miles from the cabin. The hour was about six-thirty; in two hours more it would be too dark to make his way at all.

He examined the mud about the spring, and there was plenty of evidence that the forest creatures had passed that way. Here was a little triangle where a buck had stepped, and farther away he found two pairs of deer tracks,--evidently those of a doe with fawn. A wolf had stopped to cool his heated tongue in the waters, possibly in the middle of some terrible hunt in the twilight hours.

There was a curious round track, as if of a giant cat, a little way distant in the brown earth. It told a story plainly. A cougar--one of those great felines that is perhaps better called puma--had had an ambush there a few nights before. Bruce wondered what wilderness tragedy had transpired when the deer came to drink. Then he found another huge abrasion in the mud that puzzled him still more.

At first he couldn't believe that it was a track. The reason was simply that the size of the thing was incredible,--as if some one had laid a flour sack in the mud and taken it up again. He did not think of any of the modern-day forest creatures as being of such proportions. It was very stale and had been almost obliterated by many days of sun. Perhaps he had been mistaken in thinking it an imprint of a living creature. He went to his knees to examine it.

But in one instant he knew that he had not been mistaken. It was a track not greatly different from that of an enormous human foot; and the separate toes were entirely distinct. It was a bear track, of course, but one of such size that the general run of little black bears that inhabited the hills could almost use it for a den of hibernation!

His thought went back to his talk with Barney Wegan; and he remembered that the man had spoken of a great, last grizzly that the mountaineers had named "The Killer." No other animal but the great grizzly bear himself could have made such a track as this. Bruce wondered if the beast had yet been killed.

He got up and went on,--farther toward Trail's End. He walked more swiftly now, for he hoped to reach the end of Pine-needle Trail before nightfall, but he had no intention of halting in case night came upon him before he reached it. He had waited too long already to find Linda.

The land seemed ever more familiar. A high peak thrust a white head above a distant ridge, and it appealed to him almost like the face of an old friend. Sometime--long and long ago--he had gazed often at a white peak of a mountain thrust above a pine-covered ridge.

Another hour ended the day's sunlight. The shadows fell quickly, but it was a long time yet until darkness. He yet might make the trail-end. He gave no thought to fatigue. In the first place, he had stood up remarkably well under the day's tramp for no other reason than that he had always made a point of keeping in the best of physical condition. Besides, there was something more potent than mere physical strength to sustain him now. It was the realization of the nearing end of the trail,--a knowledge of tremendous revelations that would come to him in a few hours more.

Already great truths were taking shape in his brain; he only needed a single sentence of explanation to connect them all together. He began to feel a growing excitement and impatience.

For the first time he began to notice a strange breathlessness in the air. He paused, just for an instant, his face lifted to the wind. He did not realize that all his senses were at razor edge, trying to interpret the messages that the wind brought. He felt that the forest was wakening. A new stir and impulse had come in the growing shadows. All at once he understood. It was the hunting hour.

Yet even this seemed familiar. Always, it seemed to him, he had known this same strange thrill at the fall of darkness, the same sense of deepening mystery. The jays no longer gossiped in the shrubs. They had been silenced by the same awe that had come over Bruce. And now the man began to discern, here and there through the forest, queer rustlings of the foliage that meant the passing through of some of the great beasts of prey.

Once two deer flashed by him,--just a streak that vanished quickly. The dusk deepened. The further trees were dimming. The sky turned green, then gray. The distant mountains were enfolded in gloom. Bruce headed on--faster, up the trail.

The heaviness in his limbs had changed to an actual ache, but he gave no thought to it. He was enthralled by the change that was on the forest,--a whipping-back of a thousand-thousand years to a young and savage world. There was the sense of vast and tragic events all in keeping with the gathering gloom of the forest. He was awed and mystified as never before.

It was quite dark now, and he could barely see the trail. For the first time he began to despair, feeling that another night of overpowering impatience must be spent before he could reach Trail's End. The stars began to push through the darkening sky. Then, fainter than the gleam of a firefly, he saw the faint light of a far distant camp fire.

His heart bounded. He knew what was there. It was the end of the trail at last. And it guided him the rest of the way. When he reached the top of a little rise in the trail, the whole scene was laid out in mystery below him.

The fire had been built at the door of a mountain house,--a log structure of perhaps four rooms. The firelight played in its open doorway. Something beside it caught his attention, and instinctively he followed it with his eyes until it ended in an incredible region of the stars. It was a great pine tree, the largest he had ever seen,--seemingly a great sentinel over all the land.

But the sudden awe that came over him at the sight of it was cut short by the sight of a girl's figure in the firelight. He had an instant's sense that he had come to the wilderness's heart at last, that this tall tree was its symbol, that if he could understand the eternal watch that it kept over this mountain world, he would have an understanding of all things,--but all these thoughts were submerged in the realization that he had come back to Linda at last.

He had known how the mountains would seem. All that he had beheld to-day was just the recurrence of things beheld long ago. Nothing had seemed different from what he had expected; rather he had a sense that a lost world had been returned to him, and it was almost as if he had never been away. But the girl in the firelight did not answer in the least degree the picture he had carried of Linda.

He remembered her as a blond-headed little girl with irregular features and a rather unreasonable allowance of homeliness. All the way he had thought of her as a baby sister,--not as a woman in her flower. For a long second he gazed at her in speechless amazement.

Her hair was no longer blond. Time, it had peculiar red lights when the firelight shone through it; but he knew that by the light of day it would be deep brown. He remembered her as an awkward little thing that was hardly able to keep her feet under her. This tall girl had the wilderness grace,--which is the grace of a deer and only blind eyes cannot see it. He dimly knew that she wore a khaki-colored skirt and a simple blouse of white tied with a blue scarf. Her arms were bare in the fire's gleam. And there was a dark beauty about her face that simply could not be denied.

She came toward him, and her hands were open before her. And her lips trembled. Bruce could see them in the firelight.

It was a strange meeting. The firelight gave it a tone of unreality, and the whole forest world seemed to pause in its whispered business as if to watch. It was as if they had been brought face to face by the mandates of an inexorable destiny.

"So you've come," the girl said. The words were spoken unusually soft, scarcely above a whisper; but they were inexpressibly vivid to Bruce. In his lifetime he had heard many words that were just so many lifeless selections from a dictionary,--flat utterances with no overtones to give them vitality. He had heard voices in plenty that were merely the mechanical result of the vibration of vocal cords. But these words--not for their meaning but because of the quality of the voice that had spoken them--really lived. They told first of a boundless relief and joy at his coming. But more than that, in these deep vibrant tones was the expression of an unquenchable life and spirit. Every fiber of her body lived in the fullest sense; he knew this fact the instant that she spoke.

She smiled at him, ever so quietly. "Bwovaboo," she said, recalling the name by which she called him in her babyhood, "you've come to Linda."

IX

As the fire burned down to coals and the stars wheeled through the sky, Linda told her story. The two of them were seated in the soft grass in front of the cabin, and the moonlight was on Linda's face as she talked. She talked very low at first. Indeed there was no need for loud tones. The whole wilderness world was heavy with silence, and a whisper carried far. Besides, Bruce was just beside her, watching her with narrowed eyes, forgetful of everything except her story.

It was a perfect background for the savage tale that she had to tell. The long shadow of the giant pine tree fell over them. The fire made a little circle of red light, but the darkness ever encroached upon it. Just beyond the moonlight showed them silver-white patches between the trees, across which shadows sometimes wavered from the passing of the wild creatures.

"I've waited a long time to tell you this," she told him. "Of course, when we were babies together in the orphanage, I didn't even know it. It has taken me a long time since to learn all the details; most of them I got from my aunt, old Elmira, whom you talked to on the way out. Part of it I knew by intuition, and a little of it is still doubtful.

"You ought to know first how hard I have tried to reach you. Of course, I didn't try openly except at first--the first years after I came here, and before I was old enough to understand." She spoke the last word with a curious depth of feeling and a perceptible hardness about her lips and eyes. "I remembered just two things. That the man who had adopted you was Newton Duncan; one of the nurses at the asylum told me that. And I remembered the name of the city where he had taken you.

"You must understand the difficulties I worked under. There is no rural free delivery up here, you know, Bruce. Our mail is sent from and delivered to the little post-office at Martin's store--over fifteen miles from here. And some one member of a certain family that lives near here goes down every week to get the mail for the entire district.

"At first--and that was before I really understood--I wrote you many letters and gave them to one of this family to mail for me. I was just a child then, you must know, and I lived in the same house with these people. And queer letters they must have been."

For an instant a smile lingered at her lips, but it seemed to come hard. It was all too plain that she hadn't smiled many times in the past days. But for some unaccountable reason Bruce's heart leaped when he saw it. It had potentialities, that smile. It seemed to light her whole face. He was suddenly exultant at the thought that once he understood everything, he might bring about such changes that he could see it often.

"They were just baby letters from--from Linda-Tinda to Bwovaboo--letters about the deer and the berries and the squirrels--and all the wild things that lived up here."

"Berries!" Bruce cried. "I had some on the way up." His tone wavered, and he seemed to be speaking far away. "I had some once--long ago."

"Yes. You will understand, soon. I didn't understand why you didn't answer my letters. I understand now, though. You never got them."

"No. I never got them. But there are several Duncans in my city. They might have gone astray."

"They went astray--but it was before they ever reached the post-office. They were never mailed, Bruce. I was to know why, later. Even then it was part of the plan that I should never get in communication with you again--that you would be lost to me forever.

"When I got older, I tried other tacks. I wrote to the asylum, enclosing a letter to you. But those letters were not mailed, either.

"Now we can skip a long time. I grew up. I knew everything at last and no longer lived with the family I mentioned before. I came here, to this old house--and made it decent to live in. I cut my own wood for my fuel except when one of the men tried to please me by cutting it for me. I wouldn't use it at first. Oh, Bruce--I wouldn't touch it!"

Her face was no longer lovely. It was drawn with terrible passions. But she quieted at once.

"At last I saw plainly that I was a little fool--that all they would do for me, the better off I was. At first, I almost starved to death because I wouldn't use the food that they sent me. I tried to grub it out of the hills. But I came to it at last. But, Bruce, there were many things I didn't come to. Since I learned the truth, I have never given one of them a smile except in scorn, not a word that wasn't a word of hate.

"You are a city man, Bruce. You are what I read about as a gentleman. You don't know what hate means. It doesn't live in the cities. But it lives up here. Believe me if you ever believed anything--that it lives up here. The most bitter and the blackest hate--from birth until death! It burns out the heart, Bruce. But I don't know that I can make you understand."

She paused, and Bruce looked away into the pine forest. He believed the girl. He knew that this grim land was the home of direct and primitive emotions. Such things as mercy and remorse were out of place in the game trails where the wolf pack hunted the deer.

"When they knew how I hated them," she went on, "they began to watch me. And once they knew that I fully understood the situation, I was no longer allowed to leave this little valley. There are only two trails, Bruce. One goes to Elmira's cabin on the way to the store. The other encircles the mountain. With all their numbers, it was easy to keep watch of those trails. And they told me what they would do if they found me trying to go past."

"You don't mean--they threatened you?"

She threw back her head and laughed, but the sound had no joy in it. "Threatened! If you think threats are common up here, you are a greener tenderfoot than I ever took you for. Bruce, the law up here is the law of force. The strongest wins. The weakest dies. Wait till you see Simon. You'll understand then--and you'll shake in your shoes."

The words grated upon him, yet he didn't resent them. "I've seen Simon," he told her.

She glanced toward him quickly, and it was entirely plain that the quiet tone in his voice had surprised her. Perhaps the faintest flicker of admiration came into her eyes.

"He tried to stop you, did he? Of course he would. And you came anyway. May Heaven bless you for it, Bruce!" She leaned toward him, appealing. "And forgive me what I said."

Bruce stared at her in amazement. He could hardly realize that this was the same voice that had been so torn with passion a moment before. In an instant all her hardness was gone, and the tenderness of a sweet and wholesome nature had taken its place. He felt a curious warmth stealing over him.

"They meant what they said, Bruce. Believe me, if those men can do no other thing, they can keep their word. They didn't just threaten death to me. I could have run the risk of that. Badly as I wanted to make them pay before I died, I would have gladly run that risk.

"You are amazed at the free way I speak of death. The girls you know, in the city, don't even know the word. They don't know what it means. They don't understand the sudden end of the light--the darkness--the cold--the awful fear that it is! It is no companion of theirs, down in the city. Perhaps they see it once in a while--but it isn't in their homes and in the air and on the trails, like it is here. It's a reality here, something to fight against every hour of every day. There are just three things to do in the mountains--to live and love and hate. There's no softness. There's no middle ground." She smiled grimly. "Let them live up here with me--those girls you know--and they'd understand what a reality Death is. They'd know it was something to think about and fight against. Self-preservation is an instinct that can be forgotten when you have a policeman at every corner. But it is ever present here.

"I've lived with death, and I've heard of it, and I've seen it all my life. If there hadn't been any other way, I would have seen it in the dramas of the wild creatures that go on around me all the time. You'll get down to cases here, Bruce--or else you'll run away. These men said they'd do worse things to me than kill me--and I didn't dare take the risk.

"But once or twice I was able to get word to old Elmira--the only ally I had left. She was of the true breed, Bruce. You'll call her a hag, but she's a woman to be reckoned with. She could hate too--worse than a she-rattlesnake hates the man that killed her mate--and hating is all that's kept her alive. You shrink when I say the word. Maybe you won't shrink when I'm done. Hating is a thing that gentlefolk don't do--but gentlefolk don't live up here. It isn't a land of gentleness. Up here there are just men and women, just male and female.

"This old woman tried to get in communication with every stranger that visited the hills. You see, Bruce, she couldn't write herself. And the one time I managed to get a written message down to her, telling her to give it to the first stranger to mail--one of my enemies got it away from her. I expected to die that night. I wasn't going to be alive when the clan came. The only reason I didn't was because Simon--the greatest of them all and the one I hate the most--kept his clan from coming. He had his own reasons.

"From then on she had to depend on word of mouth. Some of the men promised to send letters to Newton Duncan--but there was more than one Newton Duncan--as you say--and possibly if the letters were sent they went astray. But at last--just a few weeks ago--she found a man that knew you. And it is your story from now on."

They were still a little while. Bruce arose and threw more wood on the fire.

"It's only the beginning," he said.

"And you want me to tell you all?" she asked hesitantly.

"Of course. Why did I come here?"

"You won't believe me when I say that I'm almost sorry I sent for you." She spoke almost breathlessly. "I didn't know that it would be like this. That you would come with a smile on your face and a light in your eyes, looking for happiness. And instead of happiness--to find _all this_!"

She stretched her arms to the forests. Bruce understood her perfectly. She did not mean the woods in the literal sense. She meant the primal emotions that were their spirit.

She went on with lowered tones. "May Heaven forgive me if I have done wrong to bring you here," she told him. "To show you--all that I have to show--you who are a city man and a gentleman. But, Bruce, I couldn't fight alone any more. I had to have help.

"To know the rest, you've got to go back a whole generation. Bruce, have you heard of the terrible blood-feuds that the mountain families sometimes have?"

"Of course. Many times."

"These mountains of Trail's End have been the scene of as deadly a blood-feud as was ever known in the West. And for once, the wrong was all on one side.

"A few miles from here there is a wonderful valley, where a stream flows. There is not much tillable land in these mountains, Bruce, but there, along that little stream, there are almost five sections--three thousand acres--of as rich land as was ever plowed. And Bruce--the home means something in the mountains. It isn't just a place to live in, a place to leave with relief. I've tried to tell you that emotions are simple and direct up here, and love of home is one of them. That tract of land was acquired long ago by a family named Ross, and they got it through some kind of grant. I can't be definite as to the legal aspects of all this story. They don't matter anyway--only the results remain.

"These Ross men were frontiersmen of the first order. They were virtuous men too--trusting every one, and oh! what strength they had! With their own hands they cleared away the forest and put the land into rich pasture and hay and grain. They built a great house for the owner of the land, and lesser houses for his kinsfolk that helped him work it on shares. Then they raised cattle, letting them range on the hills and feeding them in winter. You see, the snow is heavy in winter, and unless the stock are fed many of them die. The Rosses raised great herds of cattle and had flocks of sheep too.

"It was then that dark days began to come. Another family--headed by the father of the man I call Simon--migrated here from the mountain districts of Oklahoma. But they were not so ignorant as many mountain people, and they were _killers_. Perhaps that's a word you don't know. Perhaps you didn't know it existed. A killer is a man that has killed other men. It isn't a hard thing to do at all, Bruce, after you are used to it. These people were used to it. And because they wanted these great lands--my own father's home--they began to kill the Rosses.

"At first they made no war on the Folgers. The Folgers, you must know, were good people too, honest to the last penny. They were connected, by marriage only, to the Ross family. They were on our side clear through. At the beginning of the feud the head of the Folger family was just a young man, newly married. And he had a son after a while.

"The newcomers called it a feud. But it wasn't a feud--it was simply murder. Oh, yes, we killed some of them. Folger and my father and all his kin united against them, making a great clan--but they were nothing in strength compared to the usurpers. Simon himself was just a boy when it began. But he grew to be the greatest power, the leader of the enemy clan before he was twenty-one.

"You must know, Bruce, that my own father held the land. But he was so generous that his brothers who helped him farm it hardly realized that possession was in his name. And father was a dead shot. It took a long time before they could kill him."

The coldness that had come over her words did not in the least hide her depth of feeling. She gazed moodily into the darkness and spoke almost in a monotone.

"But Simon--just a boy then--and Dave, his brother, and the others of them kept after us like so many wolves. There was no escape. The only thing we could do was to fight back--and that was the way we learned to hate. A man can hate, Bruce, when he is fighting for his home. He can learn it very well when he sees his brother fall dead, or his father--or a stray bullet hit his wife. A woman can learn it too, as old Elmira did, when she finds her son's body in the dead leaves. There was no law here to stop it. The little semblance of law that was in the valleys below regarded it as a blood-feud, and didn't bother itself about it. Besides--at first we were too proud to call for help. And after our numbers were few, the trails were watched--and those who tried to go down into the valleys--never got there.