The Strength of the Pines Part 18

"Besides, you got me here with a trick," Bruce went on without heeding him. "So don't pretend that any wickedness you do to-night was justified by my coming. You'll have to answer for it just the same."

Simon leaned forward in his chair. His dark eyes glowed in the lamplight. "I've heard such talk as that before," he said. "I expect your own father talked like that a few times himself."

The words seemed to strike straight home to the gathered Turners. The moment was breathless, weighted with suspense. All of them seemed straining in their chairs.

Bruce's head bowed, but the veins stood out beneath the short hair on his temples, and his lips trembled when he answered. "That was a greater wickedness than anything--_anything_ you can do to-night. And you'll have to answer for it all the more."

He spoke the last sentence with a calm a.s.surance. Though spoken softly, the words rang clear. But the answer of the evil-hearted man before him was only a laugh.

"And there's one thing more I want to make clear," Bruce went on in the strong voice of a man who had conquered his terror. And it was not because he did not realize his danger. He was in the hands of the Turners, and he knew that Simon had spoken certain words that, if for no other reason than his reputation with his followers, he would have to make good. Bruce knew that no moment of his life was ever fraught with greater peril. But the fact itself that there were no doors of escape open to him, and he was face to face with his destiny, steadied him all the more.

The boy that had been wakened in his bed at home by the ring of the 'phone bell had wholly vanished now. A man of the wild places had come instead, stern and courageous and unflinching.

"Everything is tolerable clear to us already," Simon said, "except your sentence."

"I want you to know that I refuse to be impressed with this judicial att.i.tude of you and your blackguard followers," Bruce went on. "This gathering of the group of you doesn't make any evil that you do any less wrong, or the payment you'll have to make any less sure. It lies wholly in your power to kill me while I'm sitting here, and I haven't much hope but that you'll do it. But let me tell you this. A reign of bloodshed and crime can go on only so long. You've been kings up here, and you think the law can't reach you. But it will--believe me, it will."

"And this was the man who was going to begin the blood-feud--already hollering about the law," Simon said to his followers. He turned to Bruce. "It's plain that Dave isn't going to come. I'll have to be the chief witness myself, after all. However, Dave told me all that I needed to know. The first question I have to ask of you, Folger, is the whereabouts of that agreement between your late lamented father and the late lamented Matthew Ross, according to what the trapper Hudson told you a few days ago."

Bruce was strong enough to laugh in his bonds. "Up to this time I have given you and your murderous crowd credit for at least natural intelligence," he replied, "but I see I was mistaken--or you wouldn't expect an answer to that question."

"Do you mean you don't know its whereabouts?"

"I won't give you the satisfaction of knowing whether I know or not. I just refuse to answer."

"I trust the ropes are tight enough about your wrists."

"Plenty tight, thank you. They are cutting the flesh so it bleeds."

"How would you like them some tighter?"

"Pull them till they cut my arms off, and you won't get a civil answer out of me. In fact--" and the man's eyes blazed--"I'm tired of talking to this outlaw crowd. And the sooner you do what you're going to do, the better it will suit me."

"We'll come to that shortly enough. Disregarding that for a moment--we understand that you want to open up the blood-feud again. Is that true?"

Bruce made no answer, only gazed without flinching into his questioner's face.

"That was what my brother Dave led me to understand," Simon went on, "so we've decided to let you have your way. It's open--it's been open since you came here. You disregarded the warning I gave--and men don't disregard my warnings twice. You threatened Dave with your rifle. This is a different land than you're used to, Bruce, and we do things our own way. You've hunted for trouble and now you've found it. Your father before you thought he could stand against us--but he's been lying still a long time. The Rosses thought so too. And it is part of our code never to take back a threat--but always to make it good."

Bruce still sat with lowered head, seemingly not listening. The clansmen gazed at him, and a new, more deadly spirit was in the room. None of them smiled now; the whole circle of faces was dark and intent, their eyes glittered through narrowed lids, their lips set. The air was charged with suspense. The moment of crisis was near.

Sometimes the men glanced at their leader's face, and what they saw there filled them with a grim and terrible eagerness. Simon was beginning to run true to form. His dark pa.s.sions were slowly mastering him. For a moment they all sat as if entranced in a communion of cruelty, and to Bruce they seemed like a colony of spotted rattlesnakes such as sometimes hold their communions of hatred on the sun-blasted cliffs.

All at once Simon laughed,--a sharp, hoa.r.s.e sound that had, in its overtones, a note of madness. Every man in the room started. They seemed to have forgotten Bruce. They looked at their leader with a curious expectancy. They seemed to know that that wild laugh betokened but one thing--the impact of some terrible sort of inspiration.

As they watched, they saw the idea take hold of him. The huge face darkened. His eyes seemed to smolder as he studied his huge hands. They understood, these wilderness men. They had seen their leader in such sessions before. A strange and grim idea had come to him; already he was feasting on its possibilities. It seemed to heat his blood and blur his vision.

"We've decided to be merciful, after all," he said slowly. But neither Bruce nor the clansmen misunderstood him or were deceived. They only knew that these words were simply part of a deadly jest that in a moment all would understand. "Instead of filling you full of thirty-thirty bullets, as better men than you have been filled and what we _ought_ to do--we're just going to let you lay out all night--in the pasture--with your feet tied and your hands behind your back."

No one relaxed. They listened, staring, for what would follow.

"You may get a bit cold before morning," Simon went on, "but you're warmly dressed, and a little frost won't hurt you. And I've got the place all picked out for you. And we're even going to move something that's laying there so it will be more pleasant."

Again he paused. Bruce looked up.

"The thing that's lying there is a dead yearling calf, half ate up. It was killed last night by the Killer--the old grizzly that maybe you've heard of before. Some of the boys were going to wait in trees to-night by the carca.s.s and shoot the Killer when he comes back after another meal--something that likely won't happen until about midnight if he runs true to form. But it won't be necessary now. We're going to haul the carca.s.s away--down wind where he won't smell it. And we're going to leave you there in its place to explain to him what became of it."

Bruce felt their glowing eyes upon him. Exultation was creeping over the clan; once more their leader had done himself proud. It was such suggestions as this that kept them in awe of him.

And they thought they understood. They supposed that the night would be of the utter depths of terror to the tenderfoot from the cities, that the bear would sniff and wander about him, and perchance the man's hair would be turned quite white by morning. But being mountain men, they thought that the actual danger of attack was not great. They supposed that the inborn fear of men that all animals possess would keep him at a distance. And, if by any unlikely chance the theft of the beef-carca.s.s should throw him into such a rage that he would charge Bruce, no harm in particular would be done. The man was a Folger, an enemy of the clan, and after once the telltale ropes were removed, no one would ask questions about the mutilated, broken thing that would be found next morning in the pasture. The story would carry down to the settlements merely as a fresh atrocity of the Killer, the last and greatest of the grizzlies.

But they had no realization of the full dreadfulness of the plan. They hadn't heard the more recent history of the Killer,--the facts that Simon had just learned from Dave. Strange and dark conjecturing occupied Simon's mind, and he knew--in a moment's thought--that something more than terror and indignity might be Bruce's fate. But his pa.s.sion was ripe for what might come. The few significant facts that they did not know were merely that the Killer had already found men out, that he had learned in an instant's meeting with Hudson beside Little River that men were no longer to be feared, and worse, that he was raving and deadly from the pain of the wound that Bruce's bullet had inflicted.

The circle of faces faded out for both of them as the eyes of Bruce and Simon met and clashed and battled in the silent room.

XXIII

"If Simon Turner isn't a coward," Bruce said slowly to the clan, "he will give me a chance to fight him now."

The room was wholly silent, and the clan turned expectant eyes to their leader. Simon scowled, but he knew he had to make answer. His eyes crept over Bruce's powerful body. "There is no obligation on my part to answer any challenges by you," he said. "You are a prisoner. But if you think you can sleep better in the pasture because of it, I'll let you have your chance. Take off his ropes."

A knife slashed at his bonds. Simon stood up, and Bruce sprang from his chair like a wild cat, aiming his hardened knuckles straight for the leering lips. He made the attack with astonis.h.i.+ng swiftness and power, and his intention was to deliver at least one terrific blow before Simon could get his arms up to defend himself. He had given the huge clan leader credit for tremendous physical strength, but he didn't think that the heavy body could move with real agility. But the great muscles seemed to snap into tension, the head ducked to one side, and his own huge fists struck out.

If Bruce's blow had gone straight home where it had been aimed, Simon would have had nothing more to say for a few moments at least. When man was built of clay, Nature saw fit to leave him with certain imperfections lest he should think himself a G.o.d, and a weak spot in the region of the chin is one of them. The jaw bones carry the impact of a hard blow to certain nerve centers near the temples, and restful sleep comes quickly. There are never any ill effects, unless further damage is inflicted while unconsciousness is upon him. In spite of the fact that Simon got quickly into a position of defense, that first blow still had a fair chance of bringing the fight to an abrupt end. But still another consideration remained.

Bruce's muscles had refused to respond. The leap had been powerful and swift yet wholly inaccurate. And the reason was just that his wrists and ankles had been numbed by the tight thongs by which they had been confined. Simon met the leap with a short, powerful blow into Bruce's face; and he reeled backward. The arms of the clansmen alone kept him from falling.

The blow seemed to daze Bruce; and at first his only realization was that the room suddenly rang with harsh and grating laughter. Then Simon's words broke through it. "Put back the thongs," he ordered, "and go get your horses."

Bruce was dimly aware of the falling of a silence, and then the arms of strong men half carrying him to the door. But he couldn't see plainly at first. The group stood in the shadow of the building; the moon was behind. He knew that the clan had brought their horses and were waiting for Simon's command. They loosened the ropes from about his ankles, and two of the clansmen swung him on to the back of a horse. Then they pa.s.sed a rope under the horse's belly and tied his ankles anew.

Simon gave a command, and the strange file started. The night air dispelled the mists in Bruce's brain, and full realization of all things came to him again. One of the men--he recognized him as Young Bill--led the horse on which he rode. Two of the clansmen rode in front, grim, silent, incredibly tall figures in the moonlight. The remainder rode immediately behind. Simon himself, bowed in his saddle, kept a little to one side. Their shadows were long and grotesque on the soft gra.s.s of the meadows, and the only sound was the soft footfall of their mounts.

A full mile distant across the lush fields the cavalcade halted about a grotesque shadow in the gra.s.s. Bruce didn't have to look at it twice to know what it was: the half-devoured body of the yearling calf that had been the Killer's prey the night before. From thence on, their operations became as outlandish occurrences in a dream. They seemed to know just what to do. They took him from the saddle and bound his feet again; then laid him in the fragrant gra.s.s. They searched his pockets, taking the forged note that had led to his downfall. "It saves me a trip," Simon commented. He saw two of them lift the torn body of the animal on to the back of one of the horses, and he watched dully as the horse plunged and wheeled under the unfamiliar weight. He thought for an instant that it would step upon his own p.r.o.ne body, but he didn't flinch. Simon spoke in the silence, but his words seemed to come from far away.

"Quiet that horse or kill him," he said softly. "You can't drag the carca.s.s with your rope--the Killer would trace it if you did and maybe spoil the evening for Bruce."

Strong arms sawed at the bits, and the horse quieted, trembling. For a moment Bruce saw their white moonlit faces as they stared down at him.

"What about a gag?" one of them asked.

"No. Let him shout if he likes. There is no one to hear him here."

Then the tall men swung on their horses and headed back across the fields. Bruce watched them dully. Their forms grew constantly more dim, the sense of utter isolation increased. Then he saw the file pause, and it seemed to him that words, too faint for him to understand, reached him across the moonlit s.p.a.ces. Then one of the party turned off toward the ridge.