XXVI

Fall was at hand at Trail's End. One night, and the summer was still a

joyous spirit in the land, birds nested, skies were blue, soft winds

wandered here and there through the forest. One morning, and a startling

change had come upon the wilderness world. The spirit of autumn had come

with golden wings.

The wild creatures, up and about at their pursuits long before dawn,

were the first to see the change. A buck deer--a noble creature with six

points on his spreading horns--got the first inkling of it when he

stopped at a spring to drink. It was true that an hour before he had

noticed a curious crispness and a new stir in the air, but he had been

so busy keeping out of the ambushes of the Tawny One that he had not

noticed it. The air had been chill in his nostrils, but thanks to a

heavy growth of hair that--with mysterious foresight--had begun to come

upon his body, it gave him no discomfort. But it was a puzzling and

significant thing that the water he bent to drink had been transformed

to something hard and white and burning cold to the tip of his nose.

It was the first real freeze. True, for the past few nights there had

been a measure of tinkling, cobweb frost on the ground in wet places,

but even the tender-skinned birds--always most watchful of signs of this

kind--had disregarded it. But there was no disregarding this half-inch

of blue ice that had covered the spring. The buck deer struck it angrily

with his front hoofs, broke through and drank; then went snorting up the

hill.

His anger was in itself a significant thing. In the long, easy-going

summer days, Blacktail had almost forgotten what anger was like. He had

been content to roam over the ridges, cropping the leaves and grass,

avoiding danger and growing fat. But all at once this kind of existence

had palled on him. He felt that he wanted only one thing--not food or

drink or safety--but a good, slashing, hooking, hoof-carving battle with

another buck of his own species. An unwonted crossness had come upon

him, and his soft eyes burned with a blue fire. He remembered the does,

too--with a sudden leap of his blood--and wondered where they were

keeping themselves. Being only a beast he did not know that this new

belligerent spirit was just as much a sign of fall as the soft blush

that was coming on the leaves. The simple fact was that fall means the

beginning of the rut--the wild mating days when the bucks battle among

themselves and choose their harems of does.

He had rather liked his appearance as he saw himself in the water of the

spring. The last of the velvet had been rubbed from his horns, and the

twelve tines (six on each horn) were as hard and almost as sharp as so

many bayonet points. As the morning dawned, the change in the face of

nature became ever more manifest. The leaves of the shrubbery began to

change in color. The wind out of the north had a keener, more biting

quality, and the birds were having some sort of exciting debate in the

tree tops.

The birds are always a scurried, nervous, rather rattle-brained outfit,

and seem wholly incapable of making a decision about anything without

hours of argument and discussion. Their days are simply filled with one

excitement after another, and they tell more scandal in an hour than the

old ladies in a resort manage in the entire summer. This slow

transformation in the color of the leaves, not to mention the chill of

the frost through their scanty feathers, had created a sensation from

one end of birdland to another. And there was only one thing to do about

it. That was to wait until the darkness closed down again, then start

away toward the path of the sun in search of their winter resorts in the

south.

The Little People in the forest of ferns beneath were not such gay

birds, and they did not have such high-flown ideas as these feathered

folk in the branches. They didn't talk such foolishness and small talk

from dawn to dark. They didn't wear gay clothes that weren't a particle

of good to them in cold weather. You can imagine them as being good,

substantial, middle-class people, much more sober-minded, tending

strictly to business and working hard, and among other things they saw

no need of flitting down to southern resorts for the cold season. These

people--being mostly ground squirrels and gophers and chipmunks and

rabbits--had not been fitted by nature for wide travel and had made all

arrangements for a pleasant winter at home. You could almost see a smile

on the fat face of a plump old gopher when he came out and found the

frost upon the ground; for he knew that for months past he had been

putting away stores for just this season. In the snows that would follow

he would simply retire into the farthest recesses of his burrow and let

the winds whistle vainly above him.

The larger creatures, however, were less complacent. The wolves--if

animals have any powers of foresight whatever--knew that only hard days,

not luscious nuts and roots, were in store for them. There would be many

days of hunger once the snow came over the land. The black bear saw the

signs and began a desperate effort to lay up as many extra pounds of fat

as possible before the snows broke. Ashur's appetite was always as much

with him as his bobbed-off excuse for a tail, and as he was more or less

indifferent to a fair supply of dirt, he always managed to put away

considerable food in a rather astonishingly short period of time; and

now he tried to eat all the faster in view of the hungry days to come.

He would have need of the extra flesh. The time was coming when all

sources of food would be cut off by the snows, and he would have to seek

the security of hibernation. He had already chosen an underground abode

for himself and there he could doze away in the cold-trance through the

winter months, subsisting on the supplies of fat that he had stored next

to his furry hide.

The greatest of all the bears, the Killer, knew that some such fate

awaited him also. But he looked forward to it with wretched spirit. He

was master of the forest, and perhaps he did not like to yield even to

the spirit of winter. His savagery grew upon him every day, and his

dislike for men had turned to a veritable hatred. But he had found them

out. When he crossed their trails again, he would not wait to stalk.

They were apt to slip away from him in this case and sting him

unmercifully with bullets. The thing to do was charge quickly and strike

with all his power.

The three minor wounds he had received--two from pistol bullets and one

from Bruce's rifle--had not lessened his strength at all. They did,

however, serve to keep his blood-heat at the explosive stage most of the

day and night.

The flowers and the grasses were dying; the moths that paid calls on the

flowers had laid their eggs and had perished, and winter lurked--ready

to pounce forth--just beyond the distant mountains. There is nothing so

thoroughly unreliable as the mountain autumn. It may linger in

entrancing golds and browns month after month, until it is almost time

for spring to come again; and again it may make one short bow and usher

in the winter. To Bruce and Linda, in the old Folger home in Trail's

End, these fall days offered the last hope of success in their war

against the Turners.

The adventure in the pasture with the Killer had handicapped them to an

unlooked-for degree. Bruce's muscles had been severely strained by the

bonds; several days had elapsed before he regained their full use. Linda

was a mountain girl, hardy as a deer, yet her nerves had suffered a

greater shock by the experience than either of them had guessed. The

wild ride, the fear and the stress, and most of all the base blow that

Simon had dealt her had been too much even for her strong constitution;

and she had been obliged to go to bed for a few days of rest. Old Elmira

worked about the house the same as ever, but strange, new lights were in

her eyes. For reasons that went down to the roots of things, neither

Bruce nor Linda questioned her as to her scene with Dave Turner in the

coverts; and what thoughts dwelt in her aged mind neither of them could

guess.

The truth was that in these short weeks of trial and danger whatever

dreadful events had come to pass in that meeting were worth neither

thought nor words. Both Bruce and Linda were down to essentials. It is a

descent that most human beings--some time in their lives--find they are

able to make; and there was no room for sentimentality or hysteria in

this grim household. The ideas, the softnesses, the laws of the valleys

were far away from them; they were face to face with realities. Their

code had become the basic code of life: to kill for self-protection

without mercy or remorse.

They did not know when the Turners would attack. It was the dark of the

moon, and the men would be able to approach the house without presenting

themselves as targets for Bruce's rifle. The danger was not a thing on

which to conjecture and forget; it was an ever-present reality. Never

they stepped out of the door, never they crossed a lighted window, never

a pane rattled in the wind but that the wings of Death might have been

hovering over them. The days were passing, the date when the chance for

victory would utterly vanish was almost at hand, and they were haunted

by the ghastly fact that their whole defense lay in a single

thirty-thirty rifle and five cartridges. Bruce's own gun had been taken

from him in Simon's house; Linda had emptied her pistol at the Killer.

"We've got to get more shells," Bruce told Linda. "The Turners won't be

such fools as to wait until we have the moon again to attack. I can't

understand why they haven't already come. Of course, they don't know the

condition of our ammunition supply, but it doesn't seem to me that that

alone would have held them off. They are sure to come soon, and you know

what we could do with five cartridges, don't you?"

"I know." She looked up into his earnest face. "We could die--that's

all."

"Yes--like rabbits. Without hurting them at all. I wouldn't mind dying

so much, if I did plenty of damage first. It's death for me, anyway, I

suppose--and no one but a fool can see it otherwise. There are simply

too many against us. But I do want to make some payment first."

Her hand fumbled and groped for his. Her eyes pled to him,--more than

any words. "And you mean you've given up hope?" she asked.

He smiled down at her,--a grave, strange little smile that moved her in

secret ways. "Not given up hope, Linda," he said gently. They were

standing at the door and the sunlight--coming low from the South--was on

his face. "I've never had any hope to give up--just realization of what

lay ahead of us. I'm looking it all in the face now, just as I did at

first."

"And what you see--makes you afraid?"

Yet she need not have asked that question. His face gave an unmistakable

answer: that this man had conquered fear in the terrible night with the

Killer. "Not afraid, Linda," he explained, "only seeing things as they

really are. There are too many against us. If we had that great estate

behind us, with all its wealth, we might have a chance; if we had an

arsenal of rifles with thousands of cartridges, we might make a stand

against them. But we are three--two women and one man--and one rifle

between us all. Five little shells to be expended in five seconds. They

are seven or eight, each man armed, each man a rifle-shot. They are

certain to attack within a day or two--before we have the moon again. In

less than two weeks we can no longer contest their title to the estate.

A little month or two more and we will be snowed in--with no chance to

get out at all."

"Perhaps before that," she told him.

"Yes. Perhaps before that."

They found a confirmation of this prophecy in the signs of fall

without--the coloring leaves, the dying flowers, the new, cold breath of

the wind. Only the pines remained unchanged; they were the same grave

sentinels they always were.

"And you can forgive me?" Linda asked humbly.

"Forgive you?" The man turned to her in surprise. "What have you done

that needs to be forgiven?"

"Oh, don't you see? To bring you here--out of your cities--to throw your

life away. To enlist you in a fight that you can't hope to win. I've

killed you, that's all I've done. Perhaps to-night--perhaps a few days

later."

He nodded gravely.

"And I've already killed your smile," she went on, looking down. "You

don't smile any more the way you used to. You're not the boy you were

when you came. Oh, to think of it--that it's all been my work. To kill

your youth, to lead you into this slaughter pen where nothing--nothing

lives but death--and hatred--and unhappiness."

The tears leaped to her eyes. He caught her hands and pressed them

between his until pain came into her fingers. "Listen, Linda," he

commanded. She looked straight up at him. "Are you sorry I came?"

"More than I can tell you--for your sake."

"But when people look for the truth in this world, Linda, they don't

take any one's sake into consideration. They balance all things and give

them their true worth. Would you rather that you and I had never

met--that I had never received Elmira's message--that you should live

your life up here without ever hearing of me?"