Chapter VIII: Book TWO: The Blood Atonement (5)

The Killer's charge had come a few seconds too late. For a moment he raced behind them in insane fury, but only his savage growl leaped through the darkness fast enough to catch up with them. And the distance slowly widened.

The Killer had been cheated again; and by the same token Simon's oath had been proved untrue. For once the remorseless strength of which he boasted had been worsted by a greater strength; and love, not hate, was the power that gave it. For once a girl's courage--a courage greater than that with which he obeyed the dictates of his cruel will--had cost him his victory. The war that he and his outlaw band had begun so long ago had not yet been won.

Indeed, if Simon could have seen what the moon saw as it peered out from behind the clouds, he would have known that one of the debts of blood incurred so many years ago had even now been paid. Far away on a distant hillside there was one who gave no heed to the fast hoof beats of the speeding horse. It was Dave Turner, and his trail of lust and wickedness was ended at last. He lay with lifted face, and there were curious dark stains on the pine needles.

It was the first blood since the reopening of the feud. And the pines, those tall, dark sentinels of the wilderness, seemed to look down upon him in passionless contemplation, as if they wondered at the stumbling ways of men. Their branches rubbed together and made words as the wind swept through them, but no man may say what those words were.