Dan Failing was never more thankful for his unerring sense of direction.
He struck off at a forty-five-degree angle between their late course and
a direct road to the river, and he kept it as if by a surveyor's line.
All the old devices of the wilderness--the ridge on ridge that looked
just alike, inclines that to the casual eye looked like downward slopes,
streams that vanished beneath the snow, and the snow-mist blowing across
the face of the landmarks--could not avail against him.
A half dozen of the wolves followed him at first. But perhaps their
fierce eyes marked his long stride and his powerful body, and decided
that their better chance was with the helpless man and the girl beside
the flickering fire. They turned back, one by one. Dan kept straight on
and in two hours crossed Cranston's trail.
It was perfectly plain in the moonlit snow. He began to back-track. He
headed down a long slope and in an hour more struck the North Fork. He
didn't doubt but that he would find Cranston in his camp, if he found
the camp at all. The man had certainly returned to it immediately after
setting fire to the buildings, if for no other reason than for food. It
isn't well to be abroad on the wintry mountains without a supply of
food; and Cranston would certainly know this fact.
Dan didn't know when a rifle bullet from some camp in the thickets would
put an abrupt end to his advance. The brush grew high by the river, the
elevation was considerably lower, and there might be one hundred camps
out of the sight of the casual wayfarer. If Cranston should see him,
mushing across the moonlit snow, it would give him the most savage joy
to open fire upon him with his rifle.
Dan's advance became more cautious. He was in a notable trapping region,
and he might encounter Cranston's camp at any moment. His keen eyes
searched the thickets, and particularly they watched the sky line for a
faint glare that might mean a camp fire. He tried to walk silently. It
wasn't an easy thing to do with awkward snowshoes; but the river drowned
the little noise that he made. He tried to take advantage of the shelter
of the thickets and the trees. Then, at the base of a little ridge, he
came to a sudden halt.
He had estimated just right. Not two hundred yards distant, a camp fire
flickered and glowed in the shelter of a great log. He saw it, by the
most astounding good fortune, through a little rift in the trees. Ten
feet on either side, and it was obscured.
He lost no time. He did not know when the wolves about Snowbird's camp
would lose the last of their cowardice. Yet he knew he must keep a tight
grip on his self-control and not let the necessity of haste cost him his
victory. He crept forward, step by step, placing his snowshoes with
consummate care. When he was one hundred yards distant he saw that
Cranston's camp was situated beside a little stream that flowed into the
river and that--like the mountaineer he was--he had built a large
lean-to reinforced with snowbanks. The fire burned at its opening.
Cranston was not in sight; either he was absent from camp or asleep in
his lean-to. The latter seemed the more likely.
Dan made a wide detour, coming in about thirty yards behind the
construction. Still he moved with incredible caution. Never in his life
had he possessed a greater mastery over his own nerves. His heart leaped
somewhat fast in his breast; but this was the only wasted motion. It
isn't easy to advance through such thickets without ever a misstep,
without the rustle of a branch or the crack of a twig. Certain of the
wild creatures find it easy; but men have forgotten how in too many
centuries of cities and farms. It is hardly a human quality; and a
spectator would have found a rather ghastly fascination in watching the
lithe motions, the passionless face, the hands that didn't shake at all.
But there were no spectators--unless the little band of wolves,
stragglers from the pack that had gathered on the hills behind--watched
with lighted eyes.
Dan went down at full length upon the snow and softly removed his
snowshoes. They would be only an impediment in the close work that was
sure to follow. He slid along the snow crust, clear to the mouth of the
lean-to.
The moonlight poured through and showed the interior with rather
remarkable plainness. Cranston was sprawled, half-sitting, half-lying on
a tree-bough pallet near the rear wall. There was not the slightest
doubt of the man's wakefulness. Dan heard him stir, and once--as if at
the memory of his deed of the day before--he cursed in a savage whisper.
Although he was facing the opening of the lean-to, he was wholly unaware
of Dan's presence. The latter had thrust his head at the side of the
opening, and it was in shadow. Cranston seemed to be watching the
great, white snow fields that lay in front, and for a moment Dan was at
loss to explain this seeming vigil. Then he understood. The white field
before him was part of the long ridge that the three of them would pass
on their way to the valleys. Cranston had evidently anticipated that the
girl and the man would attempt to march out--even if he hadn't guessed
they would try to take the helpless Lennox with them--and he wished to
be prepared for emergencies. There might be sport to have with Dan,
unarmed as he was. And his eyes were full of strange conjectures in
regard to Snowbird. Both would be exhausted now and helpless--
Dan's eyes encompassed the room: the piles of provisions heaped against
the wall, the snowshoes beside the pallet, but most of all he wished to
locate Cranston's rifle. Success or failure hung on that. He couldn't
find it at first. Then he saw the glitter of its barrel in the
moonlight,--leaning against a grub-box possibly six feet from Cranston
and ten from himself.
His heart leaped. The best he had hoped for--for the sake of Snowbird,
not himself--was that he would be nearer to the gun than Cranston and
would be able to seize it first. But conditions could be greatly worse
than they were. If Cranston had actually had the weapon in his hands,
the odds of battle would have been frightfully against Dan. It takes a
certain length of time to seize, swing, and aim a rifle; and Dan felt
that while he would be unable to reach it himself, Cranston could not
procure it either, without giving Dan an opportunity to leap upon him.
In all his dreams, through the months of preparation, he had pictured it
thus. It was the test at last.
The gun might be loaded, and still--in these days of safety
devices--unready to fire; and the loss of a fraction of a second might
enable Cranston to reach his knife. Thus Dan felt justified in ignoring
the gun altogether and trusting--as he had most desired--to a battle of
hands. And he wanted both hands free when he made his attack.
If Dan had been erect upon his feet, his course would have been an
immediate leap on the shoulders of his adversary, running the risk of
Cranston reaching his hunting knife in time. But the second that he
would require to get to his feet would entirely offset this advantage.
Cranston could spring up too. So he did the next most disarming thing.
He sprang up and strode into the lean-to.
"Good evening, Cranston," he said pleasantly.
Cranston was also upon his feet the same instant. His instincts were
entirely true. He knew if he leaped for his rifle, Dan would be upon his
back in an instant, and he would have no chance to use it. His training,
also, had been that of the hills, and his reflexes flung him erect upon
his feet at the same instant that he saw the leap of his enemy's shadow.
They brought up face to face. The rifle was now out of the running, as
they were at about equal distances from it, and neither would have time
to swing or aim it.
Dan's sudden appearance had been so utterly unlooked-for, that for a
moment Cranston could find no answer. His eyes moved to the rifle, then
to his belt where hung his hunting knife, that still lay on the pallet.
"Good evening, Failing," he replied, trying his hardest to fall into
that strange spirit of nonchalance with which brave men have so often
met their adversaries, and which Dan had now. "I'm surprised to see you
here. What do you want?"
Dan's voice when he replied was no more warm than the snow banks that
reinforced the lean-to. "I want your rifle--also your snowshoes and your
supplies of food. And I think I'll take your blankets, too."
"And I suppose you mean to fight for them?" Cranston asked. His lips
drew up in a smile, but there was no smile in the tone of his words.
"You're right," Dan told him, and he stepped nearer. "Not only for that,
Cranston. We're face to face at last--hands to hands. I've got a knife
in my pocket, but I'm not even going to bring it out. It's hands to
hands--you and I--until everything's square between us."
"Perhaps you've forgotten that day on the ridge?" Cranston asked. "You
haven't any woman to save you this time."
"I remember the day, and that's part of the debt. The thing you did
yesterday is part of it too. It's all to be settled at last, Cranston,
and I don't believe I could spare you if you went to your knees before
me. You've got a clearing out by the fire--big as a prize ring. We'll go
out there--side by side. And hands to hands we'll settle all these debts
we have between us--with no rules of fighting and no mercy in the end!"
They measured each other with their eyes. Once more Cranston's gaze
stole to his rifle, but lunging out, Dan kicked it three feet farther
into the shadows of the lean-to. Dan saw the dark face drawn with
passion, the hands clenching, the shoulder muscles growing into hard
knots. And Cranston looked and knew that merciless vengeance--that
age-old sin and Christless creed by which he lived--had followed him
down and was clutching him at last.
He saw it in the position of the stalwart form before him, the clear
level eyes that the moonlight made bright as steel, the hard lines, the
slim, powerful hands. He could read it in the tones of the voice,--tones
that he himself could not imitate or pretend. The hour had come for the
settling of old debts.
He tried to curse his adversary as a weakling and a degenerate, but the
obscene words he sought for would not come to his lips. Here was his
fate, and because the darkness always fades before the light, and the
courage of wickedness always breaks before the courage of righteousness,
Cranston was afraid to look it in the face. The fear of defeat, of
death, of Heaven knows what remorselessness with which this grave giant
would administer justice was upon him, and his heart seemed to freeze in
his breast. Cravenly he leaped for his knife on the blankets below him.
Dan was upon him before he ever reached it. He sprang as a cougar
springs, incredibly fast and with shattering power. Both went down, and
for a long time they writhed and struggled in each other's arms. The
pine boughs rustled strangely.
The dark, gaunt hand reached in vain for the knife. Some resistless
power seemed to be holding his wrist and was bending its bone as an
Indian bends a bow. Pain lashed through him.--And then this dark-hearted
man, who had never known the meaning of mercy, opened his lips to scream
that this terrible enemy be merciful to him.
But the words wouldn't come. A ghastly weight had come at his throat,
and his tortured lungs sobbed for breath. Then, for a long time, there
was a curious pounding, lashing sound in the evergreen boughs. It seemed
merciless and endless.
But Dan got up at last, in a strange, heavy silence, and swiftly went to
work. He took the rifle and filled it with cartridges from Cranston's
belt. Then he put the remaining two boxes of shells into his shirt
pocket. The supplies of food--the sack of nutritious jerked venison like
dried bark, the little package of cheese, the boxes of hardtack and one
of the small sacks of prepared flour--he tied, with a single kettle,
into his heavy blankets and flung them with the rifle upon his back.
Finally he took the pair of snowshoes from the floor. He worked coldly,
swiftly, all the time munching at a piece of jerked venison. When he
had finished he walked to the door of the lean-to.
It seemed to Dan that Cranston whispered faintly, from his
unconsciousness, as he passed; but the victor did not turn to look. The
snowshoes crunched away into the darkness. On the hill behind a
half-dozen wolves--stragglers from the pack--frisked and leaped about in
a curious way. A strange smell had reached them on the wind, and when
the loud, fearful steps were out of hearing, it might pay them to creep
down, one by one, and investigate its cause.