He arose too. "Yes! Did you think he could stand against us? I'll show
him to you in the morning. To-night he's paying the price for ever
daring to oppose my will."
She turned imploring eyes. He saw them, and perhaps--far distant--he saw
the light of triumph too. A grim smile came to his lips.
"Simon," she cried. "Have mercy."
The word surprised him. It was the first time she had ever asked this
man for mercy. "Then you surrender--?"
"Simon, listen to me," she begged. "Let him go--and I won't even try to
fight you any more. I'll let you keep those lands and never try any more
to make you give them up. You and your brothers can keep them forever,
and we won't try to get revenge on you either. He and I will go away."
He gazed at her in deepening wonderment. For the moment, his mind
refused to accept the truth. He only knew that since he had faced her
before, some new, great strength had come to her,--that a power was in
her life that would make her forego all the long dream of her days.
He had known perfectly the call of the blood in her. He had understood
her hatred of the Turners, he could hate in the same way himself. He
realized her love for her father's home and how she had dreamed of
expelling its usurpers. Yet she was willing to renounce it all. The
power that had come to her was one that he, a man whose code of life was
no less cruel and remorseless than that of the Killer himself, could not
understand.
"But why?" he demanded. "Why are you willing to do all this for him?"
"Why?" she echoed. Once more the luster was in her dark eyes. "I suppose
it is because--I love him."
He looked at her with slowly darkening face. Passion welled within him.
An oath dropped from his lips, blasphemous, more savage than any
wilderness voice. Then he raised his arm and struck her tender flesh.
He struck her breast. The brutality of the man stood forth at last. No
picture that all the dreadful dramas of the wild could portray was more
terrible than this. The girl cried out, reeled and fell fainting from
the pain, and with smoldering eyes he gazed at her unmoved. Then he
turned out of the door.
But the curtain of this drama in the mountain home had not yet rung
down. Half-unconscious, she listened to his steps. He was out in the
moonlight, vanishing among the trees. Strange fancies swept her, all in
the smallest fraction of an instant, and a voice spoke clearly. With all
the strength of her will she dispelled the mists of dawning
unconsciousness that the pain had wrought and crept swiftly to the
little desk placed against the wall. Her hand fumbled in the shadow
behind it and brought out a glittering rifle. Then she crept to the open
doorway.
Lying on the floor, she raised the weapon to her shoulder. Her thumb
pressed back, strong and unfaltering, against the hammer; and she heard
it click as it sprung into place. Then she looked along the barrel until
she saw the swinging form of Simon through the sights.
There was no remorse in that cold gaze of hers. The wings of death
hovered over the man, ready to swoop down. Her fingers curled tighter
about the trigger. One ounce more pressure, and Simon's trail of
wickedness and bloodshed would have come to an end at last. But at that
instant her eyes widened with the dawn of an idea.
She knew this man. She knew the hatred that was upon him. And she
realized, as if by an inspiration from on High, that before he went to
his house and to sleep he would go once more into the presence of Bruce,
confined somewhere among these ridges and suffering the punishment of
having opposed his will. Simon would want one look to see how his plan
was getting on; perhaps he would want to utter one taunting word. And
Linda saw her chance.
She started to creep out of the door. Then she turned back, crawled
until she was no longer revealed in the silhouette of the lighted
doorway, and got swiftly to her feet. She dropped the rifle and darted
into her own room. There she procured a weapon that she trusted more,
her little pistol, loaded with six cartridges.
If she had understood the real nature of the danger that Bruce faced she
would have retained the rifle. It shot with many times the smashing
power of the little gun, and at long range was many times as accurate,
but even it would have seemed an ineffective defense against such an
enemy as was even now creeping toward Bruce's body. But she knew that in
a crisis, against such of the Turners as she thought she might have to
face, it would serve her much better than the more awkward, heavier
weapon. Besides, she knew how to wield it, and all her life she had kept
it for just such an emergency.
The pain of the blow was quite gone now, except for a strange sickness
that had encompassed her. But she was never colder of nerve and surer
of muscle. Cunningly she lay down again before she crept through the
door, so that if Simon chanced to look about he would fail to see that
she followed him. She crept to the thickets, then stood up. Three
hundred yards down the slope she could see Simon's dimming figure in the
moonlight, and swiftly she sped after him.