The Strength of the Pines Part 6

But for some unaccountable reason Bruce's heart leaped when he saw it.

It had potentialities, that smile. It seemed to light her whole face. He was suddenly exultant at the thought that once he understood everything, he might bring about such changes that he could see it often.

"They were just baby letters from--from Linda-Tinda to Bwovaboo--letters about the deer and the berries and the squirrels--and all the wild things that lived up here."

"Berries!" Bruce cried. "I had some on the way up." His tone wavered, and he seemed to be speaking far away. "I had some once--long ago."

"Yes. You will understand, soon. I didn't understand why you didn't answer my letters. I understand now, though. You never got them."

"No. I never got them. But there are several Duncans in my city. They might have gone astray."

"They went astray--but it was before they ever reached the post-office.

They were never mailed, Bruce. I was to know why, later. Even then it was part of the plan that I should never get in communication with you again--that you would be lost to me forever.

"When I got older, I tried other tacks. I wrote to the asylum, enclosing a letter to you. But those letters were not mailed, either.

"Now we can skip a long time. I grew up. I knew everything at last and no longer lived with the family I mentioned before. I came here, to this old house--and made it decent to live in. I cut my own wood for my fuel except when one of the men tried to please me by cutting it for me. I wouldn't use it at first. Oh, Bruce--I wouldn't touch it!"

Her face was no longer lovely. It was drawn with terrible pa.s.sions. But she quieted at once.

"At last I saw plainly that I was a little fool--that all they would do for me, the better off I was. At first, I almost starved to death because I wouldn't use the food that they sent me. I tried to grub it out of the hills. But I came to it at last. But, Bruce, there were many things I didn't come to. Since I learned the truth, I have never given one of them a smile except in scorn, not a word that wasn't a word of hate.

"You are a city man, Bruce. You are what I read about as a gentleman.

You don't know what hate means. It doesn't live in the cities. But it lives up here. Believe me if you ever believed anything--that it lives up here. The most bitter and the blackest hate--from birth until death!

It burns out the heart, Bruce. But I don't know that I can make you understand."

She paused, and Bruce looked away into the pine forest. He believed the girl. He knew that this grim land was the home of direct and primitive emotions. Such things as mercy and remorse were out of place in the game trails where the wolf pack hunted the deer.

"When they knew how I hated them," she went on, "they began to watch me.

And once they knew that I fully understood the situation, I was no longer allowed to leave this little valley. There are only two trails, Bruce. One goes to Elmira's cabin on the way to the store. The other encircles the mountain. With all their numbers, it was easy to keep watch of those trails. And they told me what they would do if they found me trying to go past."

"You don't mean--they threatened you?"

She threw back her head and laughed, but the sound had no joy in it.

"Threatened! If you think threats are common up here, you are a greener tenderfoot than I ever took you for. Bruce, the law up here is the law of force. The strongest wins. The weakest dies. Wait till you see Simon.

You'll understand then--and you'll shake in your shoes."

The words grated upon him, yet he didn't resent them. "I've seen Simon,"

he told her.

She glanced toward him quickly, and it was entirely plain that the quiet tone in his voice had surprised her. Perhaps the faintest flicker of admiration came into her eyes.

"He tried to stop you, did he? Of course he would. And you came anyway.

May Heaven bless you for it, Bruce!" She leaned toward him, appealing.

"And forgive me what I said."

Bruce stared at her in amazement. He could hardly realize that this was the same voice that had been so torn with pa.s.sion a moment before. In an instant all her hardness was gone, and the tenderness of a sweet and wholesome nature had taken its place. He felt a curious warmth stealing over him.

"They meant what they said, Bruce. Believe me, if those men can do no other thing, they can keep their word. They didn't just threaten death to me. I could have run the risk of that. Badly as I wanted to make them pay before I died, I would have gladly run that risk.

"You are amazed at the free way I speak of death. The girls you know, in the city, don't even know the word. They don't know what it means. They don't understand the sudden end of the light--the darkness--the cold--the awful fear that it is! It is no companion of theirs, down in the city. Perhaps they see it once in a while--but it isn't in their homes and in the air and on the trails, like it is here. It's a reality here, something to fight against every hour of every day. There are just three things to do in the mountains--to live and love and hate. There's no softness. There's no middle ground." She smiled grimly. "Let them live up here with me--those girls you know--and they'd understand what a reality Death is. They'd know it was something to think about and fight against. Self-preservation is an instinct that can be forgotten when you have a policeman at every corner. But it is ever present here.

"I've lived with death, and I've heard of it, and I've seen it all my life. If there hadn't been any other way, I would have seen it in the dramas of the wild creatures that go on around me all the time. You'll get down to cases here, Bruce--or else you'll run away. These men said they'd do worse things to me than kill me--and I didn't dare take the risk.

"But once or twice I was able to get word to old Elmira--the only ally I had left. She was of the true breed, Bruce. You'll call her a hag, but she's a woman to be reckoned with. She could hate too--worse than a she-rattlesnake hates the man that killed her mate--and hating is all that's kept her alive. You shrink when I say the word. Maybe you won't shrink when I'm done. Hating is a thing that gentlefolk don't do--but gentlefolk don't live up here. It isn't a land of gentleness. Up here there are just men and women, just male and female.

"This old woman tried to get in communication with every stranger that visited the hills. You see, Bruce, she couldn't write herself. And the one time I managed to get a written message down to her, telling her to give it to the first stranger to mail--one of my enemies got it away from her. I expected to die that night. I wasn't going to be alive when the clan came. The only reason I didn't was because Simon--the greatest of them all and the one I hate the most--kept his clan from coming. He had his own reasons.

"From then on she had to depend on word of mouth. Some of the men promised to send letters to Newton Duncan--but there was more than one Newton Duncan--as you say--and possibly if the letters were sent they went astray. But at last--just a few weeks ago--she found a man that knew you. And it is your story from now on."

They were still a little while. Bruce arose and threw more wood on the fire.

"It's only the beginning," he said.

"And you want me to tell you all?" she asked hesitantly.

"Of course. Why did I come here?"

"You won't believe me when I say that I'm almost sorry I sent for you."

She spoke almost breathlessly. "I didn't know that it would be like this. That you would come with a smile on your face and a light in your eyes, looking for happiness. And instead of happiness--to find _all this_!"

She stretched her arms to the forests. Bruce understood her perfectly.

She did not mean the woods in the literal sense. She meant the primal emotions that were their spirit.

She went on with lowered tones. "May Heaven forgive me if I have done wrong to bring you here," she told him. "To show you--all that I have to show--you who are a city man and a gentleman. But, Bruce, I couldn't fight alone any more. I had to have help.

"To know the rest, you've got to go back a whole generation. Bruce, have you heard of the terrible blood-feuds that the mountain families sometimes have?"

"Of course. Many times."

"These mountains of Trail's End have been the scene of as deadly a blood-feud as was ever known in the West. And for once, the wrong was all on one side.

"A few miles from here there is a wonderful valley, where a stream flows. There is not much tillable land in these mountains, Bruce, but there, along that little stream, there are almost five sections--three thousand acres--of as rich land as was ever plowed. And Bruce--the home means something in the mountains. It isn't just a place to live in, a place to leave with relief. I've tried to tell you that emotions are simple and direct up here, and love of home is one of them. That tract of land was acquired long ago by a family named Ross, and they got it through some kind of grant. I can't be definite as to the legal aspects of all this story. They don't matter anyway--only the results remain.

"These Ross men were frontiersmen of the first order. They were virtuous men too--trusting every one, and oh! what strength they had! With their own hands they cleared away the forest and put the land into rich pasture and hay and grain. They built a great house for the owner of the land, and lesser houses for his kinsfolk that helped him work it on shares. Then they raised cattle, letting them range on the hills and feeding them in winter. You see, the snow is heavy in winter, and unless the stock are fed many of them die. The Rosses raised great herds of cattle and had flocks of sheep too.

"It was then that dark days began to come. Another family--headed by the father of the man I call Simon--migrated here from the mountain districts of Oklahoma. But they were not so ignorant as many mountain people, and they were _killers_. Perhaps that's a word you don't know.

Perhaps you didn't know it existed. A killer is a man that has killed other men. It isn't a hard thing to do at all, Bruce, after you are used to it. These people were used to it. And because they wanted these great lands--my own father's home--they began to kill the Rosses.

"At first they made no war on the Folgers. The Folgers, you must know, were good people too, honest to the last penny. They were connected, by marriage only, to the Ross family. They were on our side clear through.

At the beginning of the feud the head of the Folger family was just a young man, newly married. And he had a son after a while.

"The newcomers called it a feud. But it wasn't a feud--it was simply murder. Oh, yes, we killed some of them. Folger and my father and all his kin united against them, making a great clan--but they were nothing in strength compared to the usurpers. Simon himself was just a boy when it began. But he grew to be the greatest power, the leader of the enemy clan before he was twenty-one.

"You must know, Bruce, that my own father held the land. But he was so generous that his brothers who helped him farm it hardly realized that possession was in his name. And father was a dead shot. It took a long time before they could kill him."

The coldness that had come over her words did not in the least hide her depth of feeling. She gazed moodily into the darkness and spoke almost in a monotone.

"But Simon--just a boy then--and Dave, his brother, and the others of them kept after us like so many wolves. There was no escape. The only thing we could do was to fight back--and that was the way we learned to hate. A man can hate, Bruce, when he is fighting for his home. He can learn it very well when he sees his brother fall dead, or his father--or a stray bullet hit his wife. A woman can learn it too, as old Elmira did, when she finds her son's body in the dead leaves. There was no law here to stop it. The little semblance of law that was in the valleys below regarded it as a blood-feud, and didn't bother itself about it.

Besides--at first we were too proud to call for help. And after our numbers were few, the trails were watched--and those who tried to go down into the valleys--never got there.