As Bruce hurried up the hill toward the Ross estates, he made a swift
calculation of the rifle shells in his pocket. The gun held six. He had
perhaps fifteen others in his pockets, and he hadn't stopped to
replenish them from the supply Elmira had brought. He hadn't brought
Dave's rifle with him, but had left it with the remainder of his pack.
He knew that the lighter he traveled the greater would be his chance of
success.
The note had explained the situation perfectly. Obviously the girl had
written when the clan was closing about the house, and finding her in
the front room, there had been no occasion to search the other rooms and
thus discover it. The girl had kept her head even in that moment of
crisis. A wave of admiration for her passed over him.
And the little action had set an example for him. He knew that only
rigid self-control and cool-headed strategy could achieve the thing he
had set out to do. There must be no false motions, no missteps. He must
put out of his mind all thought of what dreadful fate might have already
come upon the girl; such fancies would cost him his grip upon his own
faculties and lose him the power of clear thinking. His impulse was to
storm the door, to pour his lead through the lighted windows; but such
things could never take Linda out of Simon's hands. Only stealth and
caution, not blind courage and frenzy, could serve her now. Such blind
killing as his heart prompted had to wait for another time.
Nevertheless, the stock of his rifle felt good in his hands. Perhaps
there would be a running fight after he got the girl out of the house,
and then his cartridges would be needed. There might even be a moment of
close work with what guards the Turners had set over her. But the heavy
stock, used like a club, would be most use to him then.
He knew only the general direction of the Ross house where Simon lived.
Linda had told him it rested upon the crest of a small hill, beyond a
ridge of timber. The moonlight showed him a well-beaten trail, and he
strode swiftly along it. For once, he gave no heed to the stirring
forest life about him. When a dead log had fallen across his path, he
swung over it and hastened on.
He had a vague sense of familiarity with this winding trail. Perhaps he
had toddled down it as a baby, perhaps his mother had carried him along
it on a neighborly visit to the Rosses. He went over the hill and pushed
his way to the edge of the timber. All at once the moon showed him the
house.
He couldn't mistake it, even at this distance. And to Bruce it had a
singular effect of unreality. The mountain men did not ordinarily build
homes of such dimensions. They were usually merely log cabins of two or
three lower rooms and a garret to be reached with a ladder; or else, on
the rough mountain highways, crude dwellings of unpainted frame. The
ancestral home of the Rosses, however, had fully a dozen rooms, and it
loomed to an incredible size in the mystery of the moonlight. He saw
quaint gabled roofs and far-spreading wings. And it seemed more like a
house of enchantment, a structure raised by the rubbing of a magic lamp,
than the work of carpenters and masons.
Probably its wild surroundings had a great deal to do with this effect.
There were no roads leading to Trail's End. Material could not be
carried over its winding trails except on pack animals. He had a
realization of tremendous difficulties that had been conquered by
tireless effort, of long months of unending toil, of exhaustless
patience, and at the end,--a dream come true. All of its lumber had to
be hewed from the forests about. Its stone had been quarried from the
rock cliffs and hauled with infinite labor over the steep trails.
He understood now why the Turners had coveted it. It seemed the acme of
luxury to them. And more clearly than ever he understood why the Rosses
had died, sooner than relinquish it, and why its usurpation by the
Turners had left such a debt of hatred to Linda. It was such a house as
men dream about, a place to bequeath to their children and to perpetuate
their names. Built like a rock, it would stand through the decades, to
pass from one generation to another,--an enduring monument to the strong
thews of the men who had builded it. All men know that the love of home
is one of the few great impulses that has made toward civilization, but
by the same token it has been the cause of many wars. It was never an
instinct of a nomadic people, and possibly in these latter days--days
of apartments and flats and hotels--its hold is less. Perhaps the day is
coming when this love will die in the land, but with it will die the
strength to repel the heathen from our walls, and the land will not be
worth living in, anyway. But it was not dead to the mountain people. No
really primitive emotion ever is.
Perhaps, after all, it is a question of the age-old longing for
immortality, and therefore it must have its seat in a place higher than
this world of death. Men know that when they walk no longer under the
sun and the moon it is good to have certain monuments to keep their name
alive, whether it be blocks of granite at the grave-head, or sons living
in an ancestral home. The Rosses had known this instinct very well. As
all men who are strong-thewed and of real natural virtue, they had known
pride of race and name, and it had been a task worth while to build this
stately house on their far-lying acres. They had given their fiber to it
freely; no man who beheld the structure could doubt that fact. They had
simply consecrated their lives to it; their one Work by which they could
show to all who came after that by their own hands they had earned their
right to live.
They had been workers, these men; and there is no higher degree. But
their achievements had been stolen from their hands. Bruce felt the real
significance of his undertaking as never before.
He saw the broad lands lying under the moon. There were hundreds of
acres in alfalfa and clover to furnish hay for the winter feeding.
There were wide, green pastures, ensilvered by the moon; and fields of
corn laid out in even rows. The old appeal of the soil, an instinct that
no person of Anglo-Saxon descent can ever completely escape, swept
through him. They were worth fighting for, these fertile acres. The wind
brought up the sweet breath of ripening hay.
Not for nothing have a hundred generations of Anglo-Saxon people been
tillers of the soil. They had left a love of it to Bruce. In a single
flash of thought, even as he hastened toward the house where he supposed
Linda was held prisoner, the ancient joy returned to him. He knew what
it would be like to feel the earth's pulse through the handles of a
plow, to behold the first start of green things in the spring and the
golden ripening in fall; to watch the flocks through the breathless
nights and the herds feeding on the distant hills.
Bruce looked over the ground. He knew enough not to continue the trail
farther. The space in front was bathed in moonlight, and he would make
the best kind of target to any rifle-man watching from the windows of
the house. He turned through the coverts, seeking the shadow of the
forests at one side.
By going in a quartering direction he was able to approach within two
hundred yards of the house without emerging into the moonlight. At that
point the real difficulty of the stalk began. He hovered in the shadows,
then slipped one hundred feet farther to the trunk of a great oak tree.
He could see the house much more plainly now. True, it had suffered
neglect in the past twenty years; it needed painting and many of its
windows were broken, but it was a magnificent old mansion even yet. It
stood lost in its dreams in the moonlight; and if, as old stories say,
houses have memories, this old structure was remembering certain tragic
dramas that had waged within and about it in a long-ago day. Bruce
rejoiced to see that there were no lights in the east wing of the house;
the window that Linda had indicated in the note was just a black square
on the moonlit wall.
There was a neglected garden close to this wing of the house. Bruce
could make out rose bushes, grown to brambles, tall, rank weeds, and
heavy clumps of vines. If he could reach this spot in safety he could
approach within a few feet of the house and still remain in cover. He
went flat; then slowly crawled toward it.
Once a light sprang up in a window near the front, and he pressed close
to the earth. But in a moment it went away. He crept on. He didn't know
when a watchman in one of the dark windows would discern his creeping
figure. But he did know perfectly just what manner of greeting he might
expect in this event. There would be a single little spurt of fire in
the darkness, so small that probably his eyes would quite fail to catch
it. If they did discern it, there would be no time for a message to be
recorded in his brain. It would mean a swift and certain end of all
messages. The Turners would lose no time in emptying their rifles at
him, and there wouldn't be the slightest doubt about their hitting the
mark. All the clan were expert shots and the range was close.
The house was deeply silent. He felt a growing sense of awe. In a moment
more, he slipped into the shadows of the neglected rose gardens.
He lay quiet an instant, resting. He didn't wish to risk the success of
his expedition by fatiguing himself now. He wanted his full strength and
breath for any crisis that he should meet in the room where Linda was
confined.
Many times, he knew, skulking figures had been concealed in this garden.
Probably the Turners, in the days of the blood-feud, had often waited in
its shadows for a sight of some one of their enemies in a lighted
window. Old ghosts dwelt in it; he could see their shadows waver out of
the corner of his eyes. Or perhaps it was only the shadow of the
brambles, blown by the wind.
Once his heart leaped into his throat at a sharp crack of brush beside
him; and he could scarcely restrain a muscular jerk that might have
revealed his position. But when he turned his head he could see nothing
but the coverts and the moon above them. A garden snake, or perhaps a
blind mole, had made the sound.
Four minutes later he was within one dozen feet of the designated
window. There was a stretch of moonlight between, but he passed it
quickly. And now he stood in bold relief against the moonlit house-wall.
He was in perfectly plain sight of any one on the hill behind. Possibly
his distant form might have been discerned from the window of one of the
lesser houses occupied by Simon's kin. But he was too close to the wall
to be visible from the windows of Simon's house, except by a deliberate
scrutiny. And the window slipped up noiselessly in his hands.
He was considerably surprised. He had expected this window to be locked.
Some way, he felt less hopeful of success. He recalled in his mind the
directions that Linda had left, wondering if he had come to the wrong
window. But there was no chance of a mistake in this regard; it was the
northernmost window in the east wing. However, she had said that she
would be confined in an interior room, and possibly the Turners had seen
no need of barriers other than its locked door. Probably they had not
even anticipated that Bruce would attempt a rescue.
He leaped lightly upward and slipped silently into the room. Except for
the moonlit square on the floor it was quite in darkness. It seemed to
him that even in the night hours over a camp fire he had never known
such silence as this that pressed about him now.
He stood a moment, hardly breathing. But he decided it was not best to
strike a match. There were no enemies here, or they certainly would have
accosted him when he raised the window; and a match might reveal his
presence to some one in an adjoining room. He rested his hand against
the wall, then moved slowly around the room. He knew that by this
course he would soon encounter the door that led into the interior
rooms.
In a moment he found it. He stood waiting. He turned the knob gently;
then softly pulled. But the door was locked.
There was no sound now but the loud beating of his own heart. He could
no longer hear the voices of the wind outside the open window. He
wondered whether, should he hurl all his magnificent strength against
the panels, he could break the lock; and if he did so, whether he could
escape with the girl before he was shot down. But his hand, wandering
over the lock, encountered the key.
It was easy, after all. He turned the key. The door opened beneath his
hand.
If there had been a single ray of light under the door or through the
keyhole, his course would have been quite different. He would have
opened the door suddenly in that case, hoping to take by surprise
whosoever of the clan were guarding Linda. To open a door slowly into a
room full of enemies is only to give them plenty of time to cock their
rifles. But in this case the room was in darkness, and all that he need
fear was making a sudden sound. The opening slowly widened. Then he
slipped through and stood ten breathless seconds in silence.
"Linda," he whispered. He waited a long time for an answer. Then he
stole farther into the room.
"Linda," he said again. "It's Bruce. Are you here?"
And in that unfathomable silence he heard a sound--a sound so dim and
small that it only reached the frontier of hearing. It was a strange,
whispering, eerie sound, and it filled the room like the faintest,
almost imperceptible gust of wind. But there was no doubting its
reality. And after one more instant in which his heart stood still, he
knew what it was: the sound of suppressed breathing. A living creature
occupied this place of darkness with him, and was either half-gagged by
a handkerchief over the face or was trying to conceal its presence by
muffling its breathing. "Linda," he said again.
There was a strange response to the calling of that name. He heard no
whispered answer. Instead, the door he had just passed through shut
softly behind him.
For a fleeting instant he hoped that the wind had blown it shut. For it
is always the way of youth to hope,--as long as any hope is left. His
heart leaped and he whirled to face it. Then he heard the unmistakable
sound of a bolt being slid into place.
Some little space of time followed in silence. He struggled with growing
horror, and time seemed limitless. Then a strong man laughed grimly in
the darkness.