The tone was knowing, edged with cruelty; and it had the desired effect.
The color swept from the girl's face. In a single fraction of an instant
it showed stark white in the candlelight.
There was an instant's sensation of terrible cold. But her voice was
hard and lifeless when she spoke.
"You mean you've killed him?" she asked simply.
"We ain't killed him. We've just been teaching him a lesson," Dave
explained. "Simon warned him not to come up--and we've had to talk to
him a little--with fists and heels."
Linda cried out then, one agonized syllable. She knew what fists and
heels could do in the fights between the mountain men. They are as much
weapons of torture as the claws and fangs of the Killer. She had an
instant's dread picture of this strong man of hers lying maimed and
broken, a battered, whimpering, ineffective thing in the moonlight of
some distant hillside. The vision brought knowledge to her. Even more
clearly than in the second of their kiss, before he had gone to see
Hudson, she realized what an immutable part of her he was. She gazed
with growing horror at Dave's leering face. "Where is he?" she asked.
She remembered, with singular steadfastness, the pistol she had
concealed in her own room.
"I'll show you. If you want to get him in you'd better bring the old hag
with you. It'll take two of you to carry him."
"I'll come," the old woman said from across the shadowed room. She spoke
with a curious breathlessness. "I'll go at once."
The door closed behind the three of them, and they went out into the
moonlit forest. Dave walked first. There was an unlooked-for eagerness
in his motions, but Linda thought that she understood it. It was wholly
characteristic of him that he should find a degenerate rapture in
showing these two women the terrible handiwork of the Turners. He
rejoiced in just this sort of cruelty. She had no suspicion that this
excursion was only a pretext to get the two women away from the house,
and that his eagerness arose from deeper causes. It was true that Dave
exulted in the work, and strangely the fact that it was part of the plot
against Bruce had been almost forgotten in the face of a greater
emotion. He was alone in the darkness with Linda--except of course for a
helpless old woman--and the command of Simon in regard to his attitude
toward her seemed suddenly dim and far away. He led them over a hill,
into the deeper forest.
He walked swiftly, eagerly; the two women could hardly keep pace with
him. He left the dim trail and skirted about the thickets. No cry for
help could carry from this lonely place. No watchman on a hill could see
what transpired in the heavy coverts.
So intent was he that he quite failed to observe a singular little
signal between old Elmira and Linda. The woman half turned about, giving
the girl an instant's glimpse of something that she transferred from her
breast to her sleeve. It was slender and of steel, and it caught the
moonlight on its shining surface.
The girl's eyes glittered when she beheld it. She nodded, scarcely
perceptibly, and the strange file plunged deeper into the shadows.
Fifteen minutes later Dave drew up to a halt in a little patch of
moonlight, surrounded by a wall of low trees and brush.
"There's more than one way to make a date for a walk with a pretty
girl," he said.
The girl stared coldly into his eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked.
The man laughed harshly. "I mean that Bruce ain't got back yet--he's
still on the other side of Little River, for all I know--"
"Then why did you bring us here?"
"Just to be sociable," Dave returned. "I'll tell you, Linda. I wanted to
talk to you. I ain't been in favor of a lot of things Simon's been
doing--to you and your people. I thought maybe you and I would like to
be--friends."
No one could mistake the emotion behind the strained tone, the peculiar
languor in the furtive eyes. The girl drew back, shuddering. "I'm going
back," she told him.
"Wait. I'll take you back soon. Let's have a kiss and make friends. The
old lady won't look--"
He laughed again, a hoarse sound that rang far through the silences. He
moved toward her, hands reaching. She backed away. Then she half-tripped
over an outstretched root.
The next instant she was in his arms, struggling against their steel.
She didn't waste words in pleading. A sob caught at her throat, and she
fought with all her strength against the drawn, nearing face. She had
forgotten Elmira; in this dreadful moment of terror and danger the old
woman's broken strength seemed too little to be of aid. And Dave thought
her as helpless to oppose him as the tall pines that watched from above
them.
His wild laughter obscured the single sound that she made, a strange cry
that seemed lacking in all human quality. Rather it was such a sound as
a puma utters as it leaps upon its prey. It was the articulation of a
whole life of hatred that had come to a crisis at last,--of deadly and
terrible triumph after a whole decade of waiting. If Dave had discerned
that cry in time he would have hurled Linda from his arms to leap into a
position of defense. The desire for women in men goes down to the roots
of the world, but self-preservation is a deeper instinct still.
But he didn't hear it in time. Elmira had not struck with her knife. The
distance was too far for that. But she swung her cane with all her
force. The blow caught the man at the temple, his arms fell away from
the girl's body, he staggered grotesquely in the carpet of pine needles.
Then he fell face downward.
"His belt, quick!" the woman cried. No longer was her voice that of
decrepit age. The girl struggled with herself, wrenched back her
self-control, and leaped to obey her aunt. They snatched the man's belt
from about his waist, and the women locked it swiftly about his ankles.
With strong, hard hands they drew his wrists back of him and tied them
tight with the long bandana handkerchief he wore about his neck. They
worked almost in silence, with incredible rapidity and deftness.
The man was waking now, stirring in his unconsciousness, and swiftly the
old woman cut the buckskin thongs from his tall logging boots. These
also she twisted about the wrists, knotting them again and again, and
pulling them so tight they were almost buried in the lean flesh. Then
they turned him face upward to the moon.
The two women stood an instant, breathing hard. "What now?" Linda asked.
And a shiver of awe went over her at the sight of the woman's face.
"Nothing more, Linda," she answered, in a distant voice. "Leave Dave
Turner to me."
It was a strange picture. Womanhood--the softness and tenderness which
men have learned to associate with the name--seemed fallen away from
Linda and Elmira. They were only avengers,--like the she-bear that
fights for her cubs or the she-wolf that guards the lair. There was no
more mercy in them than in the females of the lower species. The moon
flooded the place with silver, the pines were dark and impassive as ever
above them.
Dave wakened. They saw him stir. They watched him try to draw his arms
from behind him. It was just a faint, little-understanding pull at
first. Then he wrenched and tugged with all his strength, flopping
strangely in the dirt. The effort increased until it was some way
suggestive of an animal in the death struggle,--a fur bearer dying in
the trap.
Terror was upon him. It was in his wild eyes and his moonlit face; it
was in the desperation and frenzy of his struggles. And the two women
saw it and smiled into each other's eyes.
Slowly his efforts ceased. He lay still in the pine needles. He turned
his head, first toward Linda, then to the inscrutable, dark face of the
old woman. As understanding came to him, the cold drops emerged upon his
swarthy skin.
"Good God!" he asked. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going back," Linda answered. "You had some other purpose in
bringing me out here--or you wouldn't have brought Elmira, too. I'm
going back to wait for Bruce."
"And you and I will linger here," Elmira told him. "We have many things
to say to each other. We have many things to do. About my Abner--there
are many things you'll want to hear of him."
The last vestige of the man's spirit broke beneath the words. Abner had
been old Elmira's son,--a youth who had laughed often, and the one hope
of the old woman's declining years. And he had fallen before Dave's
ambush in a half-forgotten fight of long years before.
The man shivered in his bonds. Linda turned to go. The silence of the
wilderness deepened about them. "Oh, Linda, Linda," the man called.
"Don't leave me. Don't leave me here with her!" he pleaded.
"Please--please don't leave me in this devil's power. Make her let me
go."
But Linda didn't seem to hear. The brush crackled and rustled; and the
two--this dark-hearted man and the avenger--were left together.