The Strength of the Pines Part 11

It hurt him to think that the hundred dollars that he carried was to be pa.s.sed over, without a wink of an eye, to this bearded trapper; and the only return for it was to be a promise that Hudson would not testify in Bruce's behalf. And a hundred dollars was real money! It was to be thought of twice. On the other hand, it would be wholly impossible for one that lies face half-buried in the pine needles beside a dead fire to make any kind of testimony whatsoever. It would come to the same thing, and the hundred dollars would still be in his pocket. Just a little matter of a single glance down his rifle barrel at the figure in the silhouette of the fire glow--and a half-ounce of pressure on the hair trigger. Half jesting with himself, he dropped on one knee and raised the weapon. The trapper did not guess his presence. The blood leaped in Dave's veins.

It would be so easy; the drawing back of the hammer would be only the work of a second; and an instant's peering through the sights was all that would be needed further. His body trembled as if with pa.s.sion, as he started to draw back the hammer.

But he caught himself with a wrench. He had a single second of vivid introspection; and what he saw filled his cunning eyes with wonder.

There would have been no holding back, once the rifle was c.o.c.ked and he saw the man through the sights. The blood madness would have been too strong to resist. He felt as might one who, taking a few injections of morphine on prescription, finds himself inadvertently with a loaded needle in his hands. He knew a moment of remorse--so overwhelming that it was almost terror--that the shedding of blood had become so easy to him. He hadn't known how easy it had been to learn. He didn't know that a vice is nothing but a l.u.s.t that has been given free play so many times that the will can no longer restrain it.

But the sight of Hudson's form, sitting down now to his meal, dispelled his remorse quickly. After all, his own course would have been the simplest way to handle the matter. There would be no danger that Hudson would double-cross them then. But he realized that Simon had spoken true when he said that the old days were gone, that the arm of the law reached farther than formerly, and it might even stretch to this far place. He remembered Simon's instructions. "The quieter we can do these things, the better," the clan leader had said. "If we can get through to October thirtieth with no killings, the safer it is for us. We don't know how the tenderfeet in the valley are going to act--there isn't the same feeling about blood-feuds that there used to be. Go easy, Dave.

Sound this Hudson out. If he'll keep still for a hundred, let him have it in peace."

Dave slipped his rifle into the hollow of his arm and continued on down the trail. He didn't try to stalk. In a moment Hudson heard his step and looked up. They met in a circle of firelight.

It is not the mountain way to fraternize quickly, nor are the mountain men quick to show astonishment. Hudson had not seen another human being since his last visit to the settlements. Yet his voice indicated no surprise at this visitation.

"Howdy," he grunted.

"Howdy," Dave replied. "How about grub?"

"Help yourself. Supper just ready."

Dave helped himself to the food of the man that, a moment before, he would have slain; and in the light of the high fire that followed the meal, he got down to the real business of the visit.

Dave knew that a fairly straight course was best. It was general knowledge through the hills that the Turners had gouged the Rosses of their lands and it was absurd to think that Hudson did not realize the true state of affairs. "I suppose you've forgotten that little deed you witnessed between old Mat Folger and Ross--twenty years ago," Dave began easily, his pipe between his teeth.

Hudson turned with a cunning glitter in his eyes. Dave saw it and grew bolder. "Who wants me to forget it?" Hudson demanded.

"I ain't said that anybody wants you to," Dave responded. "I asked if you had."

Hudson was still a moment, stroking absently his beard. "If you want to know," he said, "I ain't forgotten. But there wasn't just a deed. There was an agreement too."

Dave nodded. Hudson's eyes traveled to his rifle,--for the simple reason that he wanted to know just how many jumps he would be obliged to make to reach it in case of emergencies. Such things are good to know in meetings like this.

"I know all about that agreement," Dave confessed.

"You do, eh? So do I. I ain't likely to forget."

Dave studied him closely. "What good is it going to do you to remember?"

he demanded.

"I ain't saying that it's going to do me any good. At present I ain't got nothing against the Turners. They've always been all right to me.

What's between them and the Rosses is past and done--although I know just in what way Folger held that land and no transfer from him to you was legal. But that's all part of the past. As long as the Turners continue to be my friends I don't see why anything should be said about it."

Dave did not misunderstand him. He didn't in the least a.s.sume that these friendly words meant that he could go back to the ranches with the hundred dollars still in his pocket. It meant merely that Hudson was open to reason and it wouldn't have to be a shooting affair.

Dave speculated. It was wholly plain that the old man had not yet heard of Bruce's return. There was no need to mention him. "We're glad you are our friend," Dave went on. "But we don't expect no one to stay friends with us unless they benefit to some small extent by it. How many furs do you hope to take this year?"

"Not enough to pay to pack out. Maybe two hundred dollars in bounties before New Year--coyotes and wolves. Maybe a little better in the three months following in furs."

"Then maybe fifty or seventy-five dollars, without bothering to set the traps, wouldn't come in so bad."

"It wouldn't come in bad, but it doesn't buy much these days. A hundred would do better."

"A hundred it is," Dave told him with finality.

The eyes above the dark beard shone in the firelight. "I'd forget I had a mother for a hundred dollars," he said. He watched, greedily, as Dave's gaunt hand went into his pocket. "I'm gettin' old, Dave. Every dollar is harder for me to get. The wolves are gettin' wiser, the mink are fewer. There ain't much that I wouldn't do for a hundred dollars now. You know how it is."

Yes, Dave knew. The money changed hands. The fire burned down. They sat a long time, deep in their own thoughts.

"All we ask," Dave said, "is that you don't take sides against us."

"I'll remember. Of course you want me, in case I'm ever subpoenaed, to recall signing the deed itself."

"Yes, we'd want you to testify to that."

"Of course. If there hadn't been any kind of a deed, Folger couldn't have deeded the property to you. But how would it be, if any one asks me about it, to swear that there _never was_ no secret agreement, but a clear transfer; and to make it sound reasonable for me to say--to say that Ross was forced to deed the land to Folger because he'd had goings-on with Folger's wife, and Folger was about to kill him?"

The only response, at first, was the slightest, almost imperceptible narrowing of Dave's eyes. He had considerable native cunning, but such an idea as this had never occurred to him. But he was crafty enough to see its tremendous possibilities at once. All that either Simon or himself had hoped for was that the old man would not testify in Bruce's behalf. But he saw that such a story, coming from the apparently honest old trapper, might have a profound effect upon Bruce. Dave understood human nature well enough to know that he would probably lose faith in the entire enterprise. To Bruce it had been nothing but an old woman's story, after all; it was wholly possible that he would relinquish all effort to return the lands to Linda Ross. Men always can believe stranger things of s.e.x than any other thing; Bruce would in all probability find Hudson's story much more logical than the one Linda had told him under the pine. It was worth one hundred dollars, after all.

"I'll bet you could make him swallow it, hook, bait, and sinker," Dave responded at last, flattering. They chuckled together in the darkness.

Then they turned to the blankets.

"I'll show you another trail out to-morrow," Hudson told him. "It comes into the glen that you pa.s.sed to-night--the canyon that the Killer has been using lately for a hunting ground."

XVI

The Killer had had an unsuccessful night. He had waited the long hours through at the mouth of the trail, but only the Little People--such as the rabbits and similar folk that hardly const.i.tuted a single bite in his great jaws--had come his way. Now it was morning and it looked as if he would have to go hungry.

The thought didn't improve his already doubtful mood. He wanted to growl. The only thing that kept him from it was the realization that it would frighten away any living creature that might be approaching toward him up the trail. He started to stretch his great muscles, intending to leave his ambush. But all at once he froze again into a lifeless gray patch in the thickets.

There were light steps on the trail. Again they were the steps of deer,--but not of the great, wary elk this time. Instead it was just a fawn, or a yearling doe at least, such a creature as had not yet learned to suspect every turn in the trail. The morning light was steadily growing, the stars were all dimmed or else entirely faded in the sky, and it would have been highly improbable that a full-grown buck in his wisdom would draw within leaping range without detecting him. But he hadn't the slightest doubt about the fawn. They were innocent people,--and their flesh was very tender. The forest G.o.ds had been good to him, after all.

He peered through the thickets, and in a moment more he had a glimpse of the spotted skin. It was almost too easy. The fawn was stealing toward him with mincing steps--as graceful a creature as dwelt in all this wilderness world of grace--and its eyes were soft and tender as a girl's. It was evidently giving no thought to danger, only rejoicing that the fearful hours of night were done. The mountain lion had already sought its lair. The fawn didn't know that a worse terror still lingered at the mouth of the trail.

But even as the Killer watched, the prize was simply taken out of his mouth. A gray wolf--a savage old male that also had just finished an unsuccessful hunt--had been stealing through the thickets in search of a lair, and he came out on the trail not fifty feet distant, halfway between the bear and the fawn. The one was almost as surprised as the other. The fawn turned with a frightened bleat and darted away; the wolf swung into pursuit.

The bear lunged forward with a howl of rage. He leaped into the trail mouth, then ran as fast as he could in pursuit of the running wolf. He was too enraged to stop to think that a grizzly bear has never yet been able to overtake a wolf, once the trim legs got well into action. At first he couldn't think about anything; he had been cheated too many times. His first impulse was one of tremendous and overpowering wrath,--a fury that meant death to the first living creature that he met.

But in a single second he realized that this wild chase was fairly good tactics, after all. The chances for a meal were still rather good. The fawn and the wolf were in the open now, and it was wholly evident that the gray hunter would overtake the quarry in another moment. It was true that the Killer would miss the pleasure of slaying his own game,--the ecstatic blow to the shoulder and the bite to the throat that followed it. In this case, the wolf would do that part of the work for him. It was just a simple matter of driving the creature away from his dead.

The fawn reached the stream bank, then went bounding down the margin.

The distance shortened between them. It was leaping wildly, already almost exhausted; the wolf raced easily, body close to the ground, in long, tireless strides. The grizzly bear sped behind him.

But at that instant fate took a hand in this merry little chase. To the fawn, it was nothing but a sharp clang of metal behind him and an answering shriek of pain,--sounds that in its terror it heard but dimly.

But it was an unlooked-for and tragic reality to the wolf. His leap was suddenly arrested in mid-air, and he was hurled to the ground with stunning force. Cruel metal teeth had seized his leg, and a strong chain held him when he tried to escape. He fought it with desperate savagery.

The fawn leaped on to safety.