I
Bruce was wakened by the sharp ring of his telephone bell. He heard its
first note; and its jingle seemed to continue endlessly. There was no
period of drowsiness between sleep and wakefulness; instantly he was
fully aroused, in complete control of all his faculties. And this is not
especially common to men bred in the security of civilization. Rather it
is a trait of the wild creatures; a little matter that is quite
necessary if they care at all about living. A deer, for instance, that
cannot leap out of a mid-afternoon nap, soar a fair ten feet in the air,
and come down with legs in the right position for running comes to a sad
end, rather soon, in a puma's claws. Frontiersmen learn the trait too;
but as Bruce was a dweller of cities it seemed somewhat strange in him.
The trim, hard muscles were all cocked and primed for anything they
should be told to do.
Then he grunted rebelliously and glanced at his watch beneath the
pillow. He had gone to bed early; it was just before midnight now. "I
wish they'd leave me alone at night, anyway," he muttered, as he slipped
on his dressing gown.
He had no doubts whatever concerning the nature of this call. There had
been one hundred like it during the previous month. His foster father
had recently died, his estate was being settled up, and Bruce had been
having a somewhat strenuous time with his creditors. He understood the
man's real financial situation at last; at his death the whole business
structure collapsed like the eggshell it was. Bruce had supposed that
most of the debts had been paid by now; he wondered, as he fumbled into
his bedroom slippers, whether the thousand or so dollars that were left
would cover the claim of the man who was now calling him to the
telephone. The fact that he was, at last, the penniless "beggar" that
Duncan had called him at their first meeting didn't matter one way or
another. For some years he had not hoped for help from his foster
parent. The collapse of the latter's business had put Bruce out of work,
but that was just a detail too. All he wanted now was to get things
straightened up and go away--where, he did not know or care.
"This is Mr. Duncan," he said coldly into the transmitter.
When he heard a voice come scratching over the wires, he felt sure that
he had guessed right. Quite often his foster father's creditors talked
in that same excited, hurried way. It was rather necessary to be hurried
and excited if a claim were to be met before the dwindling financial
resources were exhausted. But the words themselves, however--as soon as
they gave their interpretation in his brain--threw a different light on
the matter.
"How do you do, Mr. Duncan," the voice answered. "Pardon me if I got you
up. I want to talk to your son, Bruce."
Bruce emitted a little gasp of amazement. Whoever talked at the end of
the line obviously didn't know that the elder Duncan was dead. Bruce had
a moment of grim humor in which he mused that this voice would have done
rather well if it could arouse his foster father to answer it. "The
elder Mr. Duncan died last month," he answered simply. There was not the
slightest trace of emotion in his tone. No wayfarer on the street could
have been, as far as facts went, more of a stranger to him; there was no
sense of loss at his death and no cause for pretense now. "This is Bruce
speaking."
He heard the other gasp. "Old man, I'm sorry," his contrite voice came.
"I didn't know of your loss. This is Barney--Barney Wegan--and I just
got in from the West. Haven't had a bit of news for months. Accept my
earnest sympathies--"
"Barney! Of course." The delight grew on Bruce's face; for Barney Wegan,
a man whom he had met and learned to know on the gym floor of his club,
was quite near to being a real friend. "And what's up, Barney?"
The man's voice changed at once--went back to its same urgent, but
rather embarrassed tone. "You won't believe me if I tell you, so I won't
try to tell you over the 'phone. But I must come up--right away. May I?"
"Of course--"
"I'll jump in my car and be there in a minute."
Bruce hung up, slowly descended to his library, and flashed on the
lights.
For the first time he was revealed plainly. His was a familiar type; but
at the same time the best type too. He had the face and the body of an
athlete, a man who keeps himself fit; and there was nothing mawkish or
effeminate about him. His dark hair was clipped close about his temples,
and even two hours in bed had not disarranged its careful part. It is
true that men did look twice at Bruce's eyes, set in a brown, clean-cut
face, never knowing exactly why they did so. They had startling
potentialities. They were quite clear now, wide-awake and cool, yet they
had a strange depth of expression and shadow that might mean, somewhere
beneath the bland and cool exterior, a capacity for great emotions and
passions.
He had only a few minutes to wait; then Barney Wegan tapped at his door.
This man was bronzed by the sun, never more fit, never straighter and
taller and more lithe. He had just come from the far places. The
embarrassment that Bruce had detected in his voice was in his face and
manner too.
"You'll think I'm crazy, for routing you out at this time of night,
Bruce," he began. "And I'm going to get this matter off my chest as
soon as possible and let you go to bed. It's all batty, anyway. But I
was cautioned by all the devils of the deep to see you--the moment I
came here."
"Cigarettes on the smoking-stand," Bruce said steadily. "And tell away."
"But tell me something first. Was Duncan your real father? If he was,
I'll know I'm up a wrong tree. I don't mean to be personal--"
"He wasn't. I thought you knew it. My real father is something like
you--something of a mystery."
"I won't be a mystery long. He's not, eh--that's what the old hag said.
Excuse me, old man, for saying 'hag.' But she was one, if there is any
such. Lord knows who she is, or whether or not she's a relation of
yours. But I'll begin at the beginning. You know I was way back on the
Oregon frontier--back in the Cascades?"
"I didn't know," Bruce replied. "I knew you were somewhere in the wilds.
You always are. Go on."
"I was back there fishing for steelhead in a river they call the Rogue.
My boy, a steelhead is--but you don't want to hear that. You want to get
the story. But a steelhead, you ought to know, is a trout--a fish--and
the noblest fish that ever was! Oh, Heavens above! how they can strike!
But while way up on the upper waters I heard of a place called Trail's
End--a place where wise men do not go."
"And of course you went."
"Of course. The name sounds silly now, but it won't if you ever go
there. There are only a few families, Bruce, miles and miles apart, in
the whole region. And it's enormous--no one knows how big. Just ridge on
ridge. And I went back to kill a bear."
"But stop!" Bruce commanded. He lighted a cigarette. "I thought you were
against killing bears--any except the big boys up North."
"That's just it. I am against killing the little black fellows--they are
the only folk with any brains in the woods. But this, Bruce, was a real
bear,--a left-over from fifty years ago. There used to be grizzlies
through that country, you see, but everybody supposed that the last of
them had been shot. But evidently there was one family that still
remained--in the farthest recesses of Trail's End--and all at once the
biggest, meanest grizzly ever remembered showed up on the cattle ranges
of the plateau. With some others, I went to get him. 'The Killer', they
call him--and he certainly is death on live stock. I didn't get the
bear, but one day my guide stopped at a broken-down old cabin on the
hillside for a drink of water. I was four miles away in camp. The guide
came back and asked me if I was from this very city.
"I told him yes, and asked him why he wanted to know. He said that this
old woman sent word, secretly, to every stranger that ever came to fish
or hunt in the region of Trail's End, wanting to know if they came from
here. I was the first one that answered 'yes.' And the guide said that
she wanted me to come to her cabin and see her.
"I went--and I won't describe to you how she looked. I'll let you see
for yourself, if you care to follow out her instructions. And now the
strange part comes in. The old witch raised her arm, pointed her cane at
me, and asked me if I knew Newton Duncan.
"I told her there might be several Newton Duncans in a city this size.
You should have seen the pain grow on her face. 'After so long, after so
long!' she cried, in the queerest, sobbing way. She seemed to have
waited years to find some one from here, and when I came I didn't know
what she wanted. Then she took heart and began again.
"'This Newton Duncan had a son--a foster-son--named Bruce,' she told me.
And then I said I knew you.
"You can't imagine the change that came over her. I thought she'd die of
heart failure. The whole thing, Bruce--if you must know--gave me the
creeps. 'Tell him to come here,' she begged me. 'Don't lose a moment. As
soon as you get home, tell him to come here.'
"Of course I asked other questions, but I couldn't get much out of her.
One of 'em was why she hadn't written to Duncan. The answer was simple
enough--that she didn't know how to write. Those in the mountains that
could write wouldn't, or couldn't--she was a trifle vague on that
point--dispatch a letter. Something is up."