Bruce stood as if entranced, gazing with awed face at the flaming tree.
There was little danger of the house itself catching fire. The wind blew
the flame in the opposite direction; besides, the rains were beating on
the roof. The fire in the great tree itself, however, was too well
started to be extinguished at once by any kind of rainfall; but it did
burn with less fierceness.
Dimly he felt the girl's hand grasping at his arm. Her fingers pressed
until he felt pain. His eyes lowered to hers. The sight of that
passion-drawn face--recalling in an instant the scene beside the camp
fire his first night at Trail's End--called him to himself. "Shoot, you
fool!" she stormed at him. "The tree's lighted up the whole countryside,
and you can't miss. Shoot them before they run away."
He glanced quickly out. The clan that had drawn within sixty yards of
the house at the time the lightning struck had been thrown into
confusion. Their horses had been knocked down by the force of the bolt
and were fleeing, riderless, away. The men followed them, shouting,
plainly revealed in the light from the burning tree. The great torch
beside the house had completely turned the tables. And Linda spoke true;
they offered the best of targets.
Again the girl's eyes were lurid slits between the lids. Her lips were
drawn, and her breathing was strange. He looked at her calmly.
"No, Linda. I can't--"
"You can't," she cried. "You coward--you traitor! Kill--kill--kill them
while there's time."
She saw the resolve in his face, and she snatched the rifle from his
hands. She hurled it to her shoulder and three times fired blindly
toward the retreating Turners.
At that instant Bruce seemed to come to life. His thoughts had been
clear ever since the tree had been struck; his vision was straighter and
more far-reaching than ever in his life before, but now his muscles
wakened too. He sprang toward the girl and snatched the rifle from her
hand. She fought for it, and he held her with a strong arm.
"Wait--wait, Linda," he said gently. "You've wasted three cartridges
now. There are only two left. And we may need them some other time."
He held her from him with his arm; and it was as if his strength flowed
into her. Her blazing eyes sought his, and for a long second their wills
battled. And then a deep wonder seemed to come over her.
"What is it?" she breathed. "What have you found out?"
She spoke in a strange and distant voice. Slowly the fire died in her
eyes, the drawn features relaxed, her hands fell at her side. He drew
her away from he lighted doorway, out of the range of any of the
Turners that should turn to answer the rifle fire. The wind roared over
the house and swept by in clamoring fury, the electric storm dimmed and
lessened as it journeyed on.
These two knew that if death spared them in all the long passage of
their years, they could never forget that moment. The girl watched him
breathlessly, oblivious to all things else. He seemed wholly unaware of
her now. There was something aloof, impassive, infinitely calm about
him, and a great, far-reaching understanding was in his eyes. Her own
eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Linda, there's something come to me--and I don't know that I can make
you understand. I can only call it strength--a new strength and a
greater strength than I ever had before. It's something that the
pine--that great tree that we just saw split open--has been trying to
tell me for a long time. Oh, can't you see, Linda? There it stood,
hundreds of years--so great, so tall, so wise--in a moment broken like a
reed. It takes away my arrogance, Linda. It makes me see myself as I
really am. And that means--_power_."
His eyes blazed, and he caught her hands in his.
"It was a symbol, Linda, not only of the wilderness, but of powers
higher and greater than the wilderness. Powers that can look down, and
not be swept away by passion, and not try to tear to pieces those who in
their folly harm them. There's no room for such things as vengeance in
this new strength. There's no room for murder, and malice, and hatred,
and bloodshed."
Linda understood. She knew that this new-found strength did not mean
renunciation of her cause. It did not mean that he would give over his
attempt to reinstate her as the owner of her father's estates. It only
meant that the impulse of personal vengeance was dead within him. He
knew now--the same as ever--that the duty of the men that dwell upon the
earth is to do their allotted tasks, and without hatred and without
passion to overcome the difficulties that stand in the way. She realized
that if one of the Turners should leap through the door and attack her,
Bruce would kill him without mercy or regret. She knew that he would
make every effort to bring the offenders to the law. But the ability to
shoot a fleeing enemy in the back, because of wrongs done long ago, was
past.
Bruce's vision had come to him. He knew that if vengeance had been the
creed of the powers that ruled the world, the sphere would have been
destroyed with fire long since. To stand firm and straight and
unflinching; not to judge, not to condemn, not to resent; this was true
strength. He began to see the whole race of men as so many leaves,
buffeted by the winds of chance and circumstance; and was it for the oak
leaf that the wind carried swift and high to hold in scorn the shrub
leaf that the storm had already hurled to the dust?
"I know," the girl said, her thoughts wandering afar. "Perhaps the name
for it all is--tolerance."
"Perhaps," he nodded. "And possibly it is only--worship!"
* * * * *
The Turners had gone. The dimming lightning revealed the entire
attacking party half a mile distant and out of rifle range on the ridge;
and Bruce and Linda stole together out into the storm. The green foliage
of the tree had already burned away, but some of the upper branches
still glowed against the dark sky. A fallen branch smoldered on the
ground, hissing in the rain, and it lighted their way.
Awed and mystified, Bruce halted before the ruin of the great tree. He
had almost forgotten the stress of the moment just passed. It did not
even occur to him that some of his enemies, unseen before, might still
be lurking in the shadow, watching for a chance to harm. They stood a
moment in silence. Then Bruce uttered one little gasp and stretched his
arm into the hollow that the cleft in the trunk had revealed.
The light from the burning branch behind him had shown him a small, dark
object that had evidently been inserted in the hollow tree trunk through
some little aperture that had either since been closed up or they had
never observed. It was a leathern wallet, and Bruce opened it under
Linda's startled gaze. He drew out a single white paper.
He held it in the light, and his glance swept down its lines of faded
ink. Then he looked up with brightening eyes.
"What is it?" she asked.
"The secret agreement between your father and mine," he told her simply.
"And we've won."
He watched her eyes brighten. It seemed to him that nothing life had
ever offered had given him the same pleasure. It was a moment of
triumph. But before half of its long seconds were gone, it became a
moment of despair.
A rifle spoke from the coverts beyond,--one sharp, angry note that rose
distinct and penetrating above the noise of the distant thunder. A
little tongue of fire darted, like a snake's head, in the darkness. And
the triumph on Bruce's face changed to a singular look of wonder.