Bruce walked over to Linda, waiting in the snow on her knees. It was not
an intentional posture. She had been jerked down by the plunging horse,
and she had not yet completely risen. But the sight of her slight
figure, her raised white face, her clasped hands, and the remorseless
snow of the wilderness about her moved Bruce to his depths. He saw her
but dimly in the snow flurries, and she looked as if she were in an
attitude of prayer.
He came rather slowly, and he even smiled a little. And she gave him a
wan, strange, little smile in return.
"We're down to cases at last," he said, with a rather startling
quietness of tone. "You see what it means?"
She nodded, then got to her feet.
"We can walk out, if we are let alone and given time; it isn't that we
are obliged to have the horse. But our blankets are on its back, and
this storm is steadily becoming a blizzard. And you see--_time_ is one
thing that we don't have. No human being can stand this cold for long
unprotected."
"And we can't keep going--keep warm by walking?"
His answer was to take out his knife and put the point of the steel to
his thumb nail. His eyes strained, then looked up. "A little way," he
answered, "but we can't keep our main directions. The sun doesn't even
cast a shadow on my nail to show us which is west. We could keep up a
while, perhaps, but there is no end to this wilderness and at noon or
to-night--the result would be the same."
"And it means--the end?"
"If I can't catch the horse. I'm going now. If we can regain the
blankets--by getting in rifle range of the horse--we might make some
sort of shelter in the snow and last out until we can see our way and
get our bearings. You don't know of any shelter--any cave or cabin where
we might build a fire?"
"No. There are some in the hills, but we can't see our way to find
them."
"I know. I should have thought of that. And you see, we can't build a
fire here--everything is wet, and the snow is beginning to whirl so we
couldn't keep it going. If we should stagger on all day in this storm
and this snow, we couldn't endure the night." He smiled again. "And I
want you to climb a tree--and stay there--until I come back."
She looked at him dully. "What's the use, Bruce? You won't come back.
You'll chase the thing until you die--I know you. You don't know when to
give up. And if you want to come back--you couldn't find the way. I'm
going with you."
"No." Once more she started to disobey, but the grave displeasure in
his eyes restrained her. "It's going to take all my strength to fight
through that snow--I must go fast--and maybe life and death will have to
depend on your strength at the end of the trail. You must save it--the
little you have left. I can find my way back to you by following my own
tracks--the snow won't fill them up so soon. And since I must take the
rifle--to shoot the horse if I can't catch him--you must climb a tree.
You know why."
"Partly to hide from Simon if he comes this way. And partly--"
"Because there's some danger in that thicket beyond!" he interrupted
her. "The horse's terror was real--besides, you heard the sound. It
might be only a puma. But it might be--the Killer. Swing your arms and
struggle all you can to keep the blood flowing. I won't be gone long."
He started to go, and she ran after him with outstretched arms. "Oh,
Bruce," she cried, "come back soon--soon. Don't leave me to die alone.
I'm not strong enough for that--"
He whirled, took two paces back, and his arms went about her. He had
forgotten his injury long since. He kissed her cool lips and smiled into
her eyes. Then at once the flurries hid him.
The girl climbed up into the branches of a fir tree. In the thicket
beyond a great gray form tacked back and forth, trying to locate a scent
that a second before he had caught but dimly and had lost. It was the
Killer, and his temper was lost long ago in the whirling snow. His anger
was upon him, partly from the discomfort of the storm, partly from the
constant, gnawing pain of three bullet wounds in his powerful body.
Besides, he realized the presence of his old and greatest enemy,--those
tall, slight forms that had crossed him so many times, that had stung
him with their bullets, and whose weakness he had learned.
The wind was variable, and all at once he caught the scent plain. He
lurched forward, crashed again through the brush, and walked out into
the snow-swept open. Linda saw his vague outline, and at first she hung
perfectly motionless, hoping to escape his gaze. She had been told many
times that grizzlies cannot climb, yet she had no desire to see him
raging below her, reaching, possibly trying to shake her from the limbs.
Her muscles were stiff and inactive from the cold, and she doubted her
ability to hold on. Besides, in that dread moment she found it hard to
believe that the Killer would not be able to swing into the lower limbs,
high enough to strike her down.
He didn't seem to see her. His eyes were lowered; besides, it was never
the grizzly way to search the branches of a tree. The wind blew the
message that he might have read clearly in the opposite direction. She
saw him walk slowly across the snow, head lowered, a huge gray ghost in
the snow flurries not one hundred feet distant. Then she saw him pause,
with lowered head.
In the little second before the truth came to her, the bear had already
turned. Bruce's tracks were somewhat dimmed by the snow, but the Killer
interpreted them truly. She saw too late that he had crossed them, read
their message, and now had turned into the clouds of snow to trace them
down.
For an instant she gazed at him in speechless horror; and already the
flurries had almost obscured his gray figure. Desperately she tried to
call his attention from the tracks. She called, then she rustled the
branches as loudly as she could. But the noise of the wind obscured what
sound she made, and the bear was already too absorbed in the hunt to
turn and see her. As always, in the nearing presence of a foe, his rage
grew upon him.
Sobbing, Linda swung down from the tree. She had no conscious plan of
aid to her lover. She only had a blind instinct to seek him, to try to
warn him of his danger, and at least to be with him at the death. The
great tracks of the Killer, seemingly almost as long as her own arm,
made a plain trail for her to follow. She too struck off into the
storm-swept canyon.
And the forest gods who dwell somewhere in the region where the pine
tops taper into the sky, and who pull the strings that drop and raise
the curtain and work the puppets that are the players of the wilderness
dramas, saw a chance for a great and tragic jest in this strange chase
over the snow. The destinies of Bruce, Linda, and the Killer were
already converging on this trail that all three followed,--the path that
the runaway horse made in the snow. Only one of the great forces of the
war that had been waged at Trail's End was lacking, and now he came
also.
Simon Turner had ridden late into the night and from before dawn; with
remorseless fury he had goaded on his exhausted horse, he had driven him
with unpitying strength through coverts, over great rocks, down into
rocky canyons in search of Bruce and Linda, and now, as the dawn broke,
he thought that he had found them. He had suddenly come upon the tracks
of Bruce's horse in the snow.
If he had encountered them farther back, when the animal had been
running wildly, he might have guessed the truth and rejoiced. No man
would attempt to ride a horse at a gallop through that trailless
stretch. But at the point he found the tracks most of the horse's terror
had been spent, and it was walking leisurely, sometimes lowering its
head to crop the shrubbery. The trail was comparatively fresh too; or
else the fast-falling snow would have already obscured it. He thought
that his hour of triumph was near.
But it had come none too soon. And Simon--out of passion-filled
eyes--looked and saw that it would likely bring death with it.
He realized his position fully. The storm was steadily developing into
one of those terrible mountain blizzards in which, without shelter, no
human being might live. He was far from his home, he had no blankets,
and he could not find his way. Yet he would not have turned back if he
could.
In all the manifold mysteries of the wilderness there was no stranger
thing than this: that in the face of his passion Simon had forgotten and
ignored even that deepest instinct, self-preservation. Nothing mattered
any more except his hatred. No desire was left except its expression.
The securing of the document by which Bruce could take the great estates
from him was only a trifle now. He believed wholly within his own soul
that the wilderness--without his aid--would do his work of hatred for
him; and that by no conceivable circumstances could Bruce and Linda find
shelter from the blizzard and live through the day. He could find their
bodies in the spring if he by any chance escaped himself, and take the
Ross-Folger agreement from them. But it was not enough. He wanted also
to do the work of destruction.
Even his own death--if it were only delayed until his vengeance was
wreaked--could not matter now. In all the ancient strife and fury and
ceaseless war of the wild through which he had come, there was no
passion to equal this. The Killer was content to let the wolf kill the
fawn for him. The cougar will turn from its warm, newly slain prey, in
which its white fangs have already dipped, at the sight of some great
danger in the thickets. But Simon could not turn. Death lowered its
wings upon him as well as upon his enemy, yet the fire in his heart and
the fury in his brain shut out all thought of it.
He sprang off his horse better to examine the tracks, and then stood,
half bent over, in the snow.
* * * * *
Bruce Folger headed swiftly up the trail that his runaway horse had
made. It was, he thought, his last effort, and he gave his full strength
to it. Weakened as he was by the cold and the wound, he could not have
made headway at all except for the fact that the wind was behind him.
The snow ever fell faster, in larger flakes, and the track dimmed before
his eyes. It was a losing game. Terrified not only by the beast that had
stirred in the thicket but by the ever-increasing wind as well, the
animal would not linger to be overtaken. Bruce had not ridden it enough
to have tamed it, and his plan was to attempt to shoot the creature on
sight, rather than try to catch it. They could not go forward, anyway,
as long as the blizzard lasted. Which way was east and which was west he
could no longer guess. And with the blankets they might make some sort
of shelter and keep life in their bodies until the snow ceased and they
could find their way.
The cold was deepening, the storm was increasing in fury. Bruce's bones
ached, his wounded arm felt numb and strange, the frost was getting into
his lungs. The wind's breath was ever keener, its whistle was louder in
the pines. There was no hope of the storm decreasing, rather it was
steadily growing worse. And Bruce had some pre-knowledge--an
inheritance, perhaps, from frontier ancestors--of the real nature of the
mountain blizzard such as was descending on him now. It was a losing
fight. All the optimism of youth and the spirit of the angels could not
deny this fact.
The tracks grew more dim, and he began to be afraid that the falling
flakes would obscure his own footprints so that he could not find his
way back to Linda. And he knew, beyond all other knowledge, that he
wanted her with him when the shadows dropped down for good and all. He
couldn't face them bravely alone. He wanted her arms about him; the
flight would be easier then.
"Oh, what's the use?" he suddenly said to the wind. "Why not give up and
go back?"
He halted in the trail and started to turn. But at that instant a banner
of wind swept down into his face, and the eddy of snow in front of him
was brushed from his gaze. Just for the space of a breath the canyon for
a hundred feet distant was partially cleared of the blinding streamers
of snow. And he uttered a long gasp when he saw, thirty yards distant
and at the farthest reaches of his sight, the figure of a saddled horse.
His gun leaped to his shoulder, yet his eagerness did not cost him his
self-control. He gazed quietly along the sights until he saw the
animal's shoulder between them. His finger pressed back against the
trigger.
The horse rocked down, seemingly instantly killed, and the snow swept in
between. Bruce cried out in triumph. Then he broke into a run and sped
through the flurries toward his dead.
But it came about that there was other business for Bruce than the
recovery of his blankets that he had supposed would be tied to the
saddle. The snow was thick between, and he was within twenty feet of the
animal's body before he glimpsed it clearly again. And he felt the first
wave of wonder, the first promptings of the thought that the horse he
had shot down was not his, but one that he had never seen before.
But there was no time for the thought to go fully home. Some one cried
out--a strange, half-snarl of hatred and triumph that was almost lacking
in all human quality--and a man's body leaped toward him from the
thicket before which the horse had fallen. It was Simon, and Bruce had
mistaken his horse for the one he had ridden.