The darkness of this October night fell before its time. The twilight at
Trail's End is never long in duration, due to the simple fact that the
mountains cut off the flood of light from the west after the setting of
the sun, but to-night there seemed none at all. The reason was merely
that heavy banks of clouds swept up from the southeast just after
sunset.
They came with rather startling rapidity and almost immediately
completely filled the sky. Young Bill had many things on his mind as he
rode beneath them, yet he found time to gaze at them with some
curiosity. They were of singular greenish hue, and they hung so low that
the tops of near-by mountains were obscured.
The fact that there would be no moon to-night was no longer important.
The clouds would have cut off any telltale light that might illumine the
activities of the Turners. There would not be even the dim mist of
starlight.
Young Bill rode from house to house through the estate,--the homes
occupied by Simon's brothers and cousins and their respective families.
He knocked on each door and he only gave one little message. "Simon
wants you at the house," he said, "and come heeled."
He would turn to go, but always a singular quiet and breathlessness
remained in the homes after his departure. There would be a curious
exchange of glances and certain significant sounds. One of them was the
metallic click of cartridges being slipped into the magazine of a rifle.
Another was the buckling on of spurs, and perhaps the rattle of a pistol
in its holster. Before the night fell in reality, the clan came
riding--strange, tall figures in the half-darkness--straight for Simon's
house.
His horse was saddled too, and he met them in front of his door. And in
a very few words he made all things plain to them.
"We've found Dave," he told them simply. "Most of you already know it.
We've decided there isn't any use of waiting any more. We're going to
the Folger house to-night."
The men stood silent, breathing hard. The clouds seemed to lower,
menacingly, toward them. Simon spoke very quietly, yet his voice carried
far. In their growing excitement they did not observe the reason, that a
puzzling, deep calm had come over the whole wilderness world. Even in
the quietest night there is usually a faint background of winds in the
mountain realms--troubled breaths that whisper in the thickets and
rustle the dead leaves--but to-night the heavy air had no breath of
life.
"To-night Bruce Folger is going to pay the price, just as I said." He
spoke rather boastingly; perhaps more to impress his followers than from
impulse. Indeed, the passion that he felt left no room for his usual
arrogance. "Fire on sight. Bill and I will come from the rear, and we
will be ready to push through the back door the minute you break through
the front. The rest of you surround the house on three sides. And
remember--no man is to touch Linda."
They nodded grimly; then the file of horsemen started toward the ridge.
Far distant they heard a sound such as had reached them often in summer
but was unfamiliar in fall. It was the faint rumble of distant thunder.
* * * * *
Bruce and Linda sat in the front room of the Folger house, quiet and
watchful and unafraid. It was not that they did not realize their
danger. They had simply taken all possible measures of defense; and they
were waiting for what the night would bring forth.
"I know they'll come to-night," Linda had said. "To-morrow night there
will be a moon, and though it won't give much light, it will hurt their
chances of success. Besides--they've found that their other plot--to
kill you from ambush--isn't going to work."
Bruce nodded and got up to examine the shutters. He wanted no ray of
light to steal out into the growing darkness and make a target. It was a
significant fact that the rifle did not occupy its usual place behind
the desk. Bruce kept it in his hands as he made the inspection. Linda
had her empty pistol, knowing that it might--in the mayhap of
circumstance--be of aid in frightening an assailant. Old Elmira sat
beside the fire, her stiff fingers busy at a piece of sewing.
"You know--" Bruce said to her, "that we are expecting an attack
to-night?"
The woman nodded, but didn't miss a stitch. No gleam of interest came
into her eyes. Bruce's gaze fell to her work basket, and something
glittered from its depth. Evidently Elmira had regained her knife.
He went back to his chair beside Linda, and the two sat listening. They
had never known a more quiet night. They listened in vain for the little
night sounds that usually come stealing, so hushed and tremulous, from
the forest. The noises that always, like feeble ghosts, dwell in a house
at night--the little explosions of a scraping board or a banging shutter
or perhaps a mouse, scratching in the walls--were all lacking too. And
they both started, ever so slightly, when they heard a distant rumble of
thunder.
"It's going to storm," Linda told him.
"Yes. A thunderstorm--rather unusual in the fall, isn't it?"
"Almost unknown. It's growing cold too."
They waited a breathless minute, then the thunder spoke again. It was
immeasurably nearer. It was as if it had leaped toward them, through the
darkness, with incredible speed in the minute that had intervened. The
last echo of the sound was not dead when they heard it a third time.
The storm swept toward them and increased in fury. On a distant hillside
the strange file that was the Turners halted, then gathered around
Simon. Already the lightning made vivid, white gashes in the sky and
illumined--for a breathless instant--the long sweep of the ridge above
them. "We'll make good targets in the lightning," Old Bill said.
"Ride on," Simon ordered. "You know a man can't find a target in the
hundredth of a second of a lightning flash. We're not going to turn back
now."
They rode on. Far away they heard the whine and roar of wind, and in a
moment it was upon them. The forest was no longer silent. The peal of
the thunder was almost continuous.
The breaking of the storm seemed to rock the Folger house on its
foundation. Both Linda and Bruce leaped to their feet; but they felt a
little tingle of awe when they saw that old Elmira still sat sewing. It
was as if the calm that dwelt in the Sentinel Pine outside had come down
to abide in her. No force that the world possessed could ever take it
from her.
They heard the rumble and creak of the trees as the wind smote them, and
the flame of the lamp danced wildly, filling the room with flickering
shadows. Bruce straightened, the lines of his face setting deep. He
glanced once more at the rifle in his hands.
"Linda," he said, "put out that fire. If there's going to be an attack,
we'd have a better chance if the room were in darkness. We can shoot
through the door then."
She obeyed at once, knocking the burning sticks apart and drenching them
with water. They hissed, and steamed, but the noise of the storm almost
effaced the sound. "Now the light?" Linda asked.
"Yes. See where you are and have everything ready."
She took off the glass shade of the lamp, and the little gusts of wind
that crept in the cracks of the windows immediately extinguished the
flame. The darkness dropped down. Then Bruce opened the door.
The whole wilderness world struggled in the grasp of the storm. The
scene was such that no mortal memory could possibly forget. They saw it
in great, vivid glimpses in the intermittent flashes of the lightning,
and the world seemed no longer that which they had come to know. Chaos
was upon it. They saw young trees whipping in the wind, their slender
branches flailing the air. They saw the distant ridges in black and
startling contrast against the lighted sky. The tall tops of the trees
wagged back and forth in frenzied signals; their branches smote and
rubbed together. And just without their door the Sentinel Pine stood
with top lifted to the fury of the storm.
A strange awe swept over Bruce. A moment later he was to behold a sight
that for the moment would make him completely forget the existence of
the great tree; but for an instant he poised at the brink of a profound
and far-reaching discovery. There was a great lesson for him in that
dark, towering figure that the lightning revealed. Even in the fury of
the storm it still stood infinitely calm, watchful, strong as the
mountains themselves. Its great limbs moved and spoke; its top swayed
back and forth, yet still it held its high place as Sentinel of the
Forest, passionless, patient, talking through the murk of clouds to the
stars that burned beyond.
"See," Linda said. "The Turners are coming."
It was true. Bruce dropped his eyes. Even now the clan had spread out in
a great wing and was bearing down upon the house. The lightning showed
them in strange, vivid flashes. Bruce nodded slowly.
"I see," he answered. "I'm ready."
"Then shoot them, quick--when the lightning shows them," she whispered
in his ear. "They're in range now." Her hand seized his arm. "What are
you waiting for?"
He turned to her sternly. "Have you forgotten we only have five shells?"
he asked. "Go back to Elmira."
Her eyes met his, and she tried to smile into them. "Forgive me,
Bruce--it's hard--to be calm."
But at once she understood why he was waiting. The flashes of lightning
offered no opportunity for an accurate shot. Bruce meant to conserve his
little supply of shells until the moment of utmost need. The clan drew
nearer. They were riding slowly, with ready rifles. And ever the storm
increased in fury. The thunder was so close that it no longer gave the
impression of being merely sound. It was a veritable explosion just
above their heads. The flashes came so near together that for an
instant Bruce began to hope they would reveal the attackers clearly
enough to give him a chance for a well-aimed shot. The first drops of
rain fell one by one on the roof.
His eyes sought for Simon's figure. To Simon he owed the greatest debt,
and to lay Simon low might mean to dishearten the whole clan. But
although the attackers were in fair range now, scarcely two hundred
yards away, he could not identify him. They drew closer. He raised his
gun, waiting for a chance to fire. And at that instant a resistless
force hurled him to the floor.
There was the sense of vast catastrophe, a great rocking and shuddering
that was lost in billowing waves of sound; and then a frantic effort to
recall his wandering faculties. A blinding light cut the darkness in
twain; it smote his eyeballs as if with a physical blow; and summoning
all his powers of will he sprang to his feet.
There was only darkness at first; and he did not understand. But it was
of scarcely less duration than the flash of lightning. A red flame
suddenly leaped into the air, roared and grew and spread as if scattered
by the wind itself. And Bruce's breath caught in a sob of wonder.
The Sentinel Pine, that ancient friend and counselor that stood not over
one hundred feet from the house, had been struck by a lightning bolt,
its trunk had been cleft open as if by a giant's ax, and the flame was
already springing through its balsam-laden branches.