The homeward journey over the ridges had meant only pleasure to Bruce.
Every hour of it had brought a deeper and more intimate knowledge of the
wilderness. The days had been full of little, nerve-tingling adventures,
and the nights full of peace. And beyond all these, there was the hope
of seeing Linda again at the end of the trail.
Thoughts of her hardly ever left him throughout the long tramp. She had
more than fulfilled every expectation. It was true that he had found no
one of his own kin, as he had hoped; but the fact opened up new
possibilities that would have been otherwise forbidden.
It was strange how he remembered her kiss. He had known other kisses in
his days--being a purely rational and healthy young man--but there had
been nothing of immortality about them. Their warmth had died quickly,
and they had been forgotten. They were just delights of moonlight nights
and nothing more. But he would wake up from his dreams at night to feel
Linda's kiss still upon his lips. To recall it brought a strange
tenderness,--a softening of all the hard outlines of his picture of
life. It changed his viewpoint; it brought him a knowledge of a joy and
a gentleness that could exist even in this stern world of wilderness and
pines. With her face lingering before his eyes, the ridges themselves
seemed less stern and forbidding; there were softer messages in the
wind's breath; the drama of the wild that went on about him seemed less
remorseless and cruel.
He remembered the touch of her hands. They had been so cool, so gentle.
He remembered the changing lights in her dark eyes. Life had opened up
new vistas to him. Instead of a stern battleground, he began to realize
that it had a softer, gentler, kinder side,--a place where there could
be love as well as hatred, peace as well as battle, cheery homes and
firesides and pleasant ways and laughter instead of cold ways and lonely
trails and empty hearts and grim thoughts. Perhaps, if all went well,
tranquillity might come to him after all. Perhaps he might even know the
tranquil spirit of the pines.
These were mating days. It was true that the rutting season had not, in
reality, commenced. The wolf pack had not yet gathered, and would not
until after the heavy frosts. But the bucks had begun to rub the velvet
from their horns so that they would be hard and sharp for the fights to
come. And these would be savage battles--with death at the end of many
of them. But perhaps the joys that would follow--the roving, mating days
with the does--would more than make up for their pain. The trim females
were seen less often with their fawns; and they seemed strangely
restless and tremulous, perhaps wondering what fortune the fall would
have for them in the way of a mate.
The thought gave Bruce pleasure. He could picture the deer herd in the
fall,--the proud buck in the lead, ready to fight all contenders, his
harem of does, and what fawns and young bucks he permitted to follow
him. They would make stealing journeys down to the foothills to avoid
the snow, and all manner of pleasures would be theirs in the gentler
temperatures of the lowlands. They would know crisp dawns and breathless
nights, long runnings into the valleys, and to the does the realization
of motherhood when the spring broke.
But aside from his contemplations of Linda, the long tramp had many
delights for him. He rejoiced in every manifestation of the wild life
about him, whether it was a bushy-tailed old gray squirrel, watching him
from a tree limb, a magpie trying its best to insult him, or the
fleeting glimpse of a deer in the coverts. Once he saw the black form of
Ashur the bear, mumbling and grunting as he searched under rotten logs
for grubs. But he didn't see the Killer again. He didn't particularly
care to do so.
He kept his rifle ready during the day for game, but he shot only what
he needed. He did not attempt to kill the deer. He knew that he would
have no opportunity to care for the meat. But he did, occasionally,
shoot the head off a cock-grouse at close range, and no chef of Paris
could offer a more tempting dish than its flesh, rolled in flour and
served up, fried brown, in bacon grease. It was mostly white meat,
exceedingly tender, yet with the zest of wild game. But he dined on
bacon exclusively one night because, after many misses at grouse, he
declined to take the life of a gray squirrel that had perched in an oak
tree above the trail. Someway, it seemed to be getting too much pleasure
out of life for him to blast it with a rifle shot. A squirrel has only a
few ounces of flesh, and the woods without them would be dull and inane
indeed. Besides, they were bright-eyed, companionable people--dwellers
of the wilderness even as Bruce--and their personality had already
endeared itself to him.
Once he startled a fawn almost out of its wits when he came upon it
suddenly in a bend in the trail, and he shouted with delight as it
bounded awkwardly away. Once a porcupine rattled its quills at him and
tried to seem very ferocious. But it was all the most palpable of
bluffs, for Urson, while particularly adept at defense, has no powers of
offense whatever. He cannot move quickly. He can't shoot his spines, as
the story-books say. He can only sit on the ground and erect them into a
sort of suit of armor to repel attack. But Bruce knew enough not to
attempt to stroke the creature. If he had done so, he would have spent
the remainder of the season pulling out spines from the soft flesh of
his hand.
Urson was a patient, stupid, guileless creature, and he and Bruce had a
strange communion together as they stood face to face on the trail.
"You've got the right idea," Bruce told him. "To erect a wall around you
and let 'em yell outside without giving them a thought. To stand firm,
not to take part. You're a true son of the pines, Urson. Now let me
past."
But the idea was furthest from Urson's mind. He sat firm on the trail,
hunched into a spiny ball. Instead of killing him with his rifle butt,
as Dave would have done, Bruce laughed good-naturedly and went around
him.
Both days of the journey home he wakened sharply at dawn. The cool,
morning hours were the best for travel. He would follow down the narrow,
brown trail,--now through a heavy covert that rustled as the wild
creatures sped from his path, now up a long ridge, now down into a
still, dark glen, and sometimes into a strange, bleak place where the
forest fire had swept. Every foot was a delight to him.
He was of naturally strong physique, and although the days fatigued him
unmercifully, he always wakened refreshed in the dawn. At noon he would
stop to lunch, eating a few pieces of jerkey and frying a single
flapjack in his skillet. He learned how to effect it quickly, first
letting his fire burn down to coals. And usually, during the noon rest,
he would practice with his rifle.
He knew that if he were to fight the Turners, skill with a rifle was an
absolute necessity; such skill as would have felled the grizzly with one
shot instead of administering merely a flesh wound, accuracy to take off
the head of a grouse at fifty yards; and at the same time, an ability to
swing and aim the weapon in the shortest possible space of time. The
only thing that retarded him was the realization that he must not waste
too many cartridges. Elmira had brought him only a small supply.
He would walk all afternoon--going somewhat easier and resting more
often than in the morning; and these were the times that he appreciated
a fragment of jerked venison. He would halt just before nightfall and
make his camp.
The first work was usually to strip a young fir tree of its young,
slender branches. These, according to Linda's instructions, were laid on
the ground, their stalks overlapping, and in a remarkably few minutes he
could construct a bed as comfortable as a hair mattress. It was true
that the work always came at an hour when most of all he wanted food and
rest, but he knew that a restless night means quick fatigue the next
day. Then he would clean his game and build his fire and cook his
evening meal. Simple food had never tasted so good to him before. Bacon
grease was his only flavor, but it had a zest that all the sauces and
dressings of France could not approach. The jerkey was crisp and nutty;
his flapjacks went directly to the spot where he desired them to go.
But the best hour of all was after his meal, as he sat in the growing
shadows with his pipe. It was always an hour of calm. The little,
breathless noises of the wild people in the thickets; the gophers, to
whose half blind eyes--used to the darkness of their underground
passages--the firelight was almost blinding; the chipmunks, and even the
larger creatures came clearest to him then and told him more. But they
didn't frighten him. Ordinarily, he knew, the forest creatures of the
Southern Oregon mountains mean and do no harm to lonely campers.
Nevertheless, he kept fairly accurate track of his rifle. He had enough
memory of the charge of the Killer to wish to do that. And he thought
with some pleasure that he had a reserve arsenal,--Dave's thirty-thirty
with five shells in its magazine.
At this hour he felt the spirit of the pines as never before. He knew
their great, brooding sorrow, their infinite wisdom, their inexpressible
aloofness with which they kept watch over the wilderness. The smoke
would drift about him in soothing clouds; the glow of the coals was red
and warm over him. He could think then. Life revealed some of its lesser
mysteries to him. And he began to glimpse the distant gleam of even
greater truths, and sometimes it seemed to him that he could almost
catch and hold them. Always it was some message that the pines were
trying to tell him,--partly in words they made when their limbs rubbed
together, partly in the nature of a great allegory of which their dark,
impassive forms were the symbols. If he could only see clearly! But it
seemed to him that passion blinded his eyes.
"They talk only to the stars," Linda had said once of the pines. But he
had no illusions about this talk of theirs. It was greater, more fraught
with wisdom, than anything men might say together below them. He could
imagine them telling high secrets that he himself could discern but
dimly and could hardly understand. More and more he realized that the
pines, like the stars, were living symbols of great powers who lived
above the world, powers that would speak to men if they would but listen
long and patiently enough, and in whose creed lay happiness.
When the pipe was out he would go to his fragrant bed. The night hours
would pass in a breath. And he would rise and go on in the crisp dawns.
The last afternoon he traveled hard. He wanted to reach Linda's house
before nightfall. But the trail was too long for that. The twilight
fell, to find him still a weary two miles distant. And the way was quite
dark when he plunged into the south pasture of the Ross estates.
Half an hour later he was beneath the Sentinel Pine. He wondered why
Linda was not waiting beneath it; in his fancy, he thought of it as
being the ordained place for her. But perhaps she had merely failed to
hear his footsteps. He called into the open door.
"Linda," he said. "I've come back."
No answer reached him. The words rang through the silent rooms and
echoed back to him. He walked over the threshold.
A chair in the front room was turned over. His heart leaped at the sight
of it. "Linda," he called in alarm, "where are you? It's Bruce."
He stood an instant listening, a great fear creeping over him. He called
once more, first to Linda and then to the old woman. Then he leaped
through the doorway.
The kitchen was similarly deserted. From there he went to Linda's room.
Her coat and hat lay on the bed, but there was no Linda to stretch her
arms to him. He started to go out the way he had come, but went instead
to his own room. A sheet of note-paper lay on the bed.
It had been scrawled hurriedly; but although he had never received a
written word from Linda he did not doubt but that it was her hand:
The Turners are coming--I caught a glimpse of them on the
ridge. There is no use of my trying to resist, so I'll wait for
them in the front room and maybe they won't find this note.
They will take me to Simon's house, and I know from its
structure that they will lock me in an interior room in the
East wing. Use the window on that side nearest the North
corner. My one hope is that you will come at once to save me.
Bruce's eyes leaped over the page; then thrust it into his pocket. He
slipped through the rear door of the house, into the shadows.