Even in that instant crisis Bruce did not forget that he had as yet
neglected to expel the empty cartridge from the barrel of his rifle and
to throw in the other from the magazine. He tried to get the gun to his
shoulder, working the lever at the same time. But Simon's leap was too
fast for him. His strong hand seized the barrel of the gun and snatched
it from his hands. Then the assailant threw it back, over his shoulder,
and it fell softly in the snow. He waited, crouched.
The two men stood face to face at last. All things else were forgotten.
The world they had known before--a world of sorrow and pleasures, of
mountains and woods and homes--faded out and left no realities except
each other's presence. All about them were the snow flurries that their
eyes could not penetrate, and it was as if they were two lone
contestants on an otherwise uninhabited sphere who had come to grips at
last. The falling snow gave the whole picture a curious tone of
unreality and dimness.
Bruce straightened, and his face was of iron. "Well, Simon," he said.
"You've come."
The man's eyes burned red through the snow. "Of course I would. Did you
think you could escape me?"
"It didn't much matter whether I escaped you or not," Bruce answered
rather quietly. "Neither one of us is going to escape the storm and the
cold. I suppose you know that."
"I know that _one_ of us is. Because one of us is going out--a more
direct way--first. Which one that is doesn't much matter." His great
hands clasped. "Bruce, when I snatched your gun right now I could have
done more. I could have sprung a few feet farther and had you around the
waist--taken by surprise. The fight would have been already over. I
think I could have done more than that even--with my own rifle as you
came up. It's laying there, just beside the horse."
But Bruce didn't turn his eyes to look at it. He was waiting for the
attack.
"I could have snatched your life just as well, but I wanted to wait,"
Simon went on. "I wanted to say a few words first, and wanted to master
you--not by surprise--but by superior strength alone."
It came into Brace's mind that he could tell Simon of the wound near his
shoulder, how because of it no fight between them would be a fair test
of superiority, yet the words didn't come to his lips. He could not ask
mercy of this man, either directly or indirectly, any more than the
pines asked mercy of the snows that covered them.
"You were right when you said there is no escaping from this storm,"
Simon went on. "But it doesn't much matter. It's the end of a long war,
and what happens to the victor is neither here nor there. It seems all
the more fitting that we should meet just as we have--at the very brink
of death--and Death should be waiting at the end for the one of us who
survives. It's so like this damned, terrible wilderness in which we
live."
Bruce gazed in amazement. The dark and dreadful poetry of this man's
nature was coming to the fore. The wind made a strange echo to his
words,--a long, wild shriek as it swept over the heads of the pines.
"Then why are you waiting?" Bruce asked.
"So you can understand everything. But I guess that time is here. There
is to be no mercy at the end of this fight, Bruce; I ask none and will
give none. You have waged a war against me, you have escaped me many
times, you have won the love of the woman I love--and this is to be my
answer." His voice dropped a note and he spoke more quietly. "I'm going
to kill you, Bruce."
"Then try it," Bruce answered steadily. "I'm in a hurry to go back to
Linda."
Simon's smoldering wrath blazed up at the words. Both men seemed to
spring at the same time. Their arms flailed, then interlocked; and they
rocked a long time--back and forth in the snow.
They fought in silence. The flurries dropped over them, and the wind
swept by in its frantic wandering. Bruce called upon his last ounce of
reserve strength,--that mysterious force that always sweeps to a man's
aid in a moment of crisis.
For the first time he had full realization of Simon's mighty strength.
With all the power of his body he tried to wrench him off his feet, but
it was like trying to tear a tree from the ground.
But surprise at the other's power was not confined to Bruce alone. Simon
knew that he had an opponent worthy of the iron of his own muscles, and
he put all his terrible might into the battle. He tried to reach Bruce's
throat, but the man's strong shoulder held the arm against his side.
Simon's great hand reached to pin Bruce's arm, and for the first time he
discovered the location of his weakness.
He saw the color sweep from Bruce's face and water drops that were not
melted snow come upon it. It was all the advantage needed between such
evenly matched contestants. And Simon forgot his spoken word that he
wished this fight to be a test of superiority alone. His fury swept over
him like a flood and effaced all things else; and he centered his whole
attack upon Bruce's wound.
In a moment he had him down, and he struck once into Bruce's white face
with his terrible knuckles. The blow sent a strange sickness through the
younger man's frame; and he tried vainly to struggle to his feet.
"Fight! Fight on!" was the message his mind dispatched along his nerves
to his tortured muscles, but for an instant they wholly refused to
respond. They had endured too much. Total unconsciousness hovered above
him, ready to descend.
Strangely, he seemed to know that Simon had crept from his body and was
even now reaching some dreadful weapon that lay beside the dead form of
the horse. In an instant he had it, and Bruce's eyes opened in time to
see him swinging it aloft. It was his rifle, and Simon was aiming a
murderous blow at him with its stock.
There was no chance to ward it off. No human skull could withstand its
shattering impact. Bruce saw the man's dark face with the murder madness
upon it, the blazing eyes, the lips drawn back. The muscles contracted
to deal the blow.
But that war of life and death in the far reaches of Trail's End was not
to end so soon. At that instant there was an amazing intervention.
A great gray form came lunging out of the snow flurries. Their vision
was limited to a few feet, and so fast the creature came, with such
incredible, smashing power, that he was upon them in a breath. It was
the Killer in the full glory of the charge; and he had caught up with
them at last.
Bruce saw only his great figure looming just over him. Simon, with
amazing agility, leaped to one side just in time, then battered down the
rifle stock with all his strength. But the blow was not meant for Bruce.
It struck where aimed,--the great gray shoulder of the grizzly.
Then, dimmed and half-obscured by the snow flurries, there began as
strange a battle as the great pines above them had ever beheld. The
Killer's rage was upon him, and the blow at the shoulder had arrested
his charge for a moment only. Then he wheeled, a snarling, fighting
monster with death for any living creature in the blow of his forearm,
and lunged toward Simon again.
It was the Killer at his grandest. The little eyes blazed, the neck hair
bristled, he struck with forearms and jaws--lashing, lunging,
recoiling--all the terrible might and fury of the wilderness centered
and personified in his mighty form. Simon had no chance to shoot his
rifle. In the instant that he would raise it those great claws and fangs
would be upon him. He swung it as a club, striking again and again,
dodging the sledge-hammer blows and springing aside in the second of the
Killer's lunges. He was fighting for his life, and no eye could bemean
that effort.
Simon himself seemed exalted, and for once it appeared that the grizzly
had found an opponent worthy of his might. It was all so fitting: that
these two mighty powers, typifying all that is remorseless and terrible
in the wild, should clash at last in the gathering fury of the storm.
They were of one kind, and they seemed to understand each other. The
lust and passion and fury of battle were upon them both.
The scene harked back to the young days of the world, when man and beast
battled for dominance. Nothing had changed. The forest stood grave and
silent, just the same. The elements warred against them from the
clouds,--that ancient persecution of which the wolf pack sings on the
ridge at night, that endless strife that has made of existence a travail
and a scourge. Man and beast and storm--those three great foes were
arrayed the same as ever. Time swung backward a thousand-thousand
years.
The storm gathered in force. The full strength of the blizzard was upon
them. The snow seemed to come from all directions in great clouds and
flurries and streamers, and time after time it wholly hid the
contestants from Bruce's eyes. At such times he could tell how the fight
was going by sound alone,--the snarls of the Killer, the wild oaths of
Simon, the impact of the descending rifle-butt. Bruce gave no thought to
taking part. Both were enemies; his own strength seemed gone. The cold
deepened; Bruce could feel it creeping into his blood, halting its flow,
threatening the spark of life within him. The full light of day had come
out upon the land.
Bruce knew the wilderness now. All its primitive passions were in play,
all its mighty forces at grips. The storm seemed to be trying to
extinguish these mortal lives; jealous of their intrusion, longing for
the world it knew before living things came to dwell upon it, when its
winds swept endlessly over an uninhabited earth, and its winter snows
lay trackless and its rule was supreme. And beneath it, blind to the
knowledge that in union alone lay strength to oppose its might--to
oppose all those cruel forces that make a battleground of life--man and
beast fought their battle to the death.
It seemed to go on forever. Linda came stealing out of the
snow--following the grizzly's trail--and crept beside Bruce. She
crouched beside him, and his arm went about her as if to shield her.
She had heard the sounds of the battle from afar; she had thought that
Bruce was the contestant, and her terror had left a deep pallor upon her
face; yet now she gazed upon that frightful conflict with a strange and
enduring calm. Both she and Bruce knew that there was but one sure
conqueror, and that was Death. If the Killer survived the fight and
through the mercy of the forest gods spared their lives, there remained
the blizzard. They could conceive of no circumstances whereby further
effort would be of the least avail. The horse on which was tied their
scanty blankets was miles away by now; its tracks were obscured in the
snow, and they could not find their way to any shelter that might be
concealed among the ridges.
The scene grew in fury. The last burst of strength was upon Simon; in
another moment he would be exhausted. The bear had suffered terrible
punishment from the blows of the rifle stock. He recoiled once more,
then lunged with unbelievable speed. His huge paw, with all his might
behind it, struck the weapon from Simon's hand.
It shot through the air seemingly almost as fast as the bullets it had
often propelled from its muzzle and struck the trunk of a tree. So hard
it came that the lock was shattered; they heard the ring of metal. The
bear rocked forward once more and struck again. And then all the sound
that was left was the eerie complaint of the wind.
Simon lay still. The brave fight was over. His trial had ended
fittingly,--in the grip of such powers as were typical of himself. But
the bear did not leap upon him to tear his flesh. For an instant he
stood like a statue in gray stone, head lowered, as if in a strange
attitude of thought. The snow swept over him.
Linda and Bruce gazed at him in silent awe. Some way, they felt no fear.
No room in their hearts was left for it after the tumult of that battle.
The great grizzly uttered one deep note and half-turned about. His eyes
rested upon the twain, but he did not seem to see them.
The fury was dead within him; this much was plain. The hair began to lie
down at his shoulders. The terrible eyes lost their fire. Then he turned
again and headed off slowly, deliberately, directly into the face of the
storm.