The Strength of the Pines Part 17

He stood a moment, hardly breathing. But he decided it was not best to strike a match. There were no enemies here, or they certainly would have accosted him when he raised the window; and a match might reveal his presence to some one in an adjoining room. He rested his hand against the wall, then moved slowly around the room. He knew that by this course he would soon encounter the door that led into the interior rooms.

In a moment he found it. He stood waiting. He turned the k.n.o.b gently; then softly pulled. But the door was locked.

There was no sound now but the loud beating of his own heart. He could no longer hear the voices of the wind outside the open window. He wondered whether, should he hurl all his magnificent strength against the panels, he could break the lock; and if he did so, whether he could escape with the girl before he was shot down. But his hand, wandering over the lock, encountered the key.

It was easy, after all. He turned the key. The door opened beneath his hand.

If there had been a single ray of light under the door or through the keyhole, his course would have been quite different. He would have opened the door suddenly in that case, hoping to take by surprise whosoever of the clan were guarding Linda. To open a door slowly into a room full of enemies is only to give them plenty of time to c.o.c.k their rifles. But in this case the room was in darkness, and all that he need fear was making a sudden sound. The opening slowly widened. Then he slipped through and stood ten breathless seconds in silence.

"Linda," he whispered. He waited a long time for an answer. Then he stole farther into the room.

"Linda," he said again. "It's Bruce. Are you here?"

And in that unfathomable silence he heard a sound--a sound so dim and small that it only reached the frontier of hearing. It was a strange, whispering, eerie sound, and it filled the room like the faintest, almost imperceptible gust of wind. But there was no doubting its reality. And after one more instant in which his heart stood still, he knew what it was: the sound of suppressed breathing. A living creature occupied this place of darkness with him, and was either half-gagged by a handkerchief over the face or was trying to conceal its presence by m.u.f.fling its breathing. "Linda," he said again.

There was a strange response to the calling of that name. He heard no whispered answer. Instead, the door he had just pa.s.sed through shut softly behind him.

For a fleeting instant he hoped that the wind had blown it shut. For it is always the way of youth to hope,--as long as any hope is left. His heart leaped and he whirled to face it. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a bolt being slid into place.

Some little s.p.a.ce of time followed in silence. He struggled with growing horror, and time seemed limitless. Then a strong man laughed grimly in the darkness.

XXII

As Bruce waited, his eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. He began to see the dim outlines of his fellow occupants of the room,--fully seven brawny men seated in chairs about the walls. "Let's hear you drop your rifle," one of them said.

Bruce recognized the grim voice as Simon's,--heard on one occasion before. He let his rifle fall from his hands. He knew that only death would be the answer to any resistance to these men. Then Simon scratched a match, and without looking at him, bent to touch it to the wick of the lamp.

The tiny flame sputtered and flickered, filling the room with dancing shadows. Bruce looked about him. It was the same long, white-walled room that Dave and Simon had conversed in, after Elmira had first dispatched her message by Barney Wegan. Bruce knew that he faced the Turner clan at last.

Simon sat beside the fireplace, the lamp at his elbow. As the wick caught, the light brightened and steadied, and Bruce could see plainly.

On each side of him, in chairs about the walls, sat Simon's brothers and his blood relations that shared the estate with him. They were huge, gaunt men, most of them dark-bearded and sallow-skinned, and all of them regarded him with the same gaze of speculative interest.

Bruce did not flinch before their gaze. He stood erect as he could, instinctively defiant.

"Our guest is rather early," Simon began. "Dave hasn't come yet, and Dave is the princ.i.p.al witness."

A bearded man across the room answered him. "But I guess we ain't goin'

to let the prisoner go for lack of evidence."

The circle laughed then,--a harsh sound that was not greatly different from the laughter of the coyotes on the sagebrush hills. But they sobered when they saw that Simon hadn't laughed. His dark eyes were glowing.

"You, by no chance, met him on the way home, did you?" he asked.

"I wish I had," Bruce replied. "But I didn't."

"I don't understand your eagerness. You didn't seem overly eager to meet us."

Bruce smiled wanly. These wilderness men regarded him with fresh interest. Somehow, they hadn't counted on his smiling. It was almost as if he were of the wilderness breed himself, instead of the son of cities. "I'm here, am I not?" he said. "It isn't as if you came to my house first."

He regarded the clansmen again. He _had_ missed Dave's crafty face in the circle.

"Yes, you're here," Simon confirmed. "And I'm wondering if you remember what I told you just as you left Martin's store that day--that I gave no man two warnings."

"I remember that," Bruce replied. "I saw no reason for listening to you.

I don't see any reason now, and I wouldn't if it wasn't for that row of guns."

Simon studied his pale face. "Perhaps you'll be sorry you didn't listen, before this night is over. And there are many hours yet in it.

Bruce--you came up here to these mountains to open old wounds."

"Simon, I came up here to right wrongs--and you know it. If old wounds are opened, I can't help it."

"And to-night," Simon went on as if he had not been answered, "you have come unbidden into our house. It would be all the evidence the courts would need, Bruce--that you crept into our house in the dead of night.

If anything happened to you here, no word could be raised against us.

You were a brave man, Bruce."

"So I can suppose you left the note?"

The circle laughed again, but Simon silenced them with a gesture.

"You're very keen," he said.

"Then where is Linda?" Bruce's eyes hardened. "I am more interested in her whereabouts than in this talk with you."

"The last seen of her, she was going up a hill with Dave. When Dave returns you can ask him."

The bearded man opposite from Simon uttered a short syllable of a laugh.

"And it don't look like he's going to return," he said. The knowing look on his face was deeply abhorrent to Bruce. Curiously, Simon's face flushed, and he whirled in his chair.

"Do you mean anything in particular, Old Bill?" he demanded.

"It looks to me like maybe Dave's forgot a lot of things you told him, and he and Linda are havin' a little sparkin' time together out in the brush."

The idea seemed to please the clan. But Simon's eyes glowed, and Bruce himself felt the beginnings of a blind rage that might, unless he held hard upon it, hurl him against their remorseless weapons. "I don't want any more such talk out of you, Old Bill," Simon reproved him, "and we've talked enough, anyway." His keen eyes studied Bruce's flushed face. "One of you give our guest a chair and fix him up in it with a thong. We don't want him flying off the coop and getting shot until we're done talking to him."

One of the clansmen pushed a chair forward with sudden force, striking Bruce in the knees and almost knocking him over. The circle leered, and he sat down in it with as much ease as possible. Then one of the men looped his arms to the arms of the chair with thongs of buckskin.

Another thong was tied about his ankles. Then the clansmen went back to their chairs.

"I really don't see the use of all these dramatics," Bruce said coldly.

"And I don't particularly like veiled threats. At present I seem to be in your hands."

"You don't seem to be," Simon answered with reddening eyes. "You are."

"I have no intention of saying I'm sorry I didn't heed the threats you gave me before--and as to those I've heard to-night--they're not going to do you any good, either. It is true that you found me in the house you occupy in the dead of night--but it isn't your house to start with.

What a man seizes by murder isn't his."

"What a man holds with a hard fist and his rifle--in these mountains--_is_ his," Simon contradicted him.