The Strength of the Pines Part 27

"I think I ought to tell you something else. I haven't the least way of knowing whether we are on the right trail."

"I knew that long ago. Whether we are on any trail at all."

"I've just been thinking. I don't know how many forks it has. We might have already got on a wrong one. Perhaps the horse is turned about and is heading back home--toward Simon's stables."

She spoke dully, and he thrust his arm back to her. "Linda, try to be brave," he urged. "We can only take a chance."

The horse plodded a few more steps. "Brave! To think that it is _you_ that has to encourage _me_--instead of my trying to keep up your spirits. I will try to be brave, Bruce. And if we don't live through the night, my last remembrance will be of your bravery--how you, injured and weak from loss of blood, still remembered to give a cheery word to me."

"I'm not badly injured," he told her gently. "And there are certain things that have come clear to me lately. One of them is that except for you--throwing your own precious body between--I wouldn't be here at all."

The feeling that they had lost the trail grew upon them. More than once the stirrup struck the bark of a tree and often the thickets gave way beneath them. Once they halted to adjust the blankets on the saddle, and they listened for any sounds that might indicate that Simon was overtaking them. But all they heard was the soft rustle of the leaves under the wind-blown snow.

"Linda," he asked suddenly. "Does it seem to you to be awfully cold?"

She waited a long time before she spoke. This was not the hour to make quick answers. On any decision might rest their success or failure.

"I believe I can stand it--awhile longer," she answered at last.

"But I don't think we'd better try to. It's getting cold. Every hour it's colder, and I seem to be getting weaker. It isn't a real wound, Linda--but it seems to have knocked some of my vitality out of me, and I'm dreadfully in need of rest. I think we'd better try to make a camp."

"And go on by morning light?"

"Yes."

"But Simon might overtake us then."

"We must stay out of sight of the trail. But somehow--I can't help but hope he won't try to follow us on such a night as this."

He drew up the horse, and they sat in the beat of the snow. "Don't make any mistake about that, Bruce," she told him. "Remember, that unless he overtakes us before we come into the protection of the courts, his whole fight is lost. It doesn't alone mean loss of the estate--for which he would risk his life just as he has a dozen times. It means defeat--a thing that would come hard to Simon. Besides, he's got a fire within him that will keep him warm."

"You mean--hatred?"

"Hatred. Nothing else."

"But in spite of it we must make camp. We'll get off the trail--if we're still on it--and try to slip through to-morrow. You see what's going to happen if we keep on going this way?"

"I know that I feel a queer dread--and hopelessness--"

"And that dread and hopelessness are just as much danger signals as the sound of Simon's horse behind us. It means that the cold and the snow and the fear are getting the better of us. Linda, it's a race with death. Don't misunderstand me or disbelieve me. It isn't Simon alone now. It's the cold and the snow and the fear. The thing to do is to make camp, keep as warm as we can in our blankets, and push on in the morning. It's two full days' ride, going fast, the best we can go--and G.o.d knows what will happen before the end."

"Then turn off the trail, Bruce," the girl told him.

"I don't know that we're even on the trail."

"Turn off, anyway. As long as we stay together--it doesn't matter."

She spoke very quietly. Then he felt a strange thing. A warmth which even that growing, terrible cold could not transcend swept over him. For her arms had crept out under his arms and encircled his great breast, then pressed with all her gentle strength.

No word of encouragement, no cheery expression of hope could have meant so much. Not defeat, not even the long darkness of death itself could appall him now. All that he had given and suffered and endured, all the mighty effort that he had made had in an instant been shown in its true light, a thing worth while, a sacrifice atoned for and redeemed.

They headed off into the thickets, blindly, letting the horse choose the way. They felt him turn to avoid some object in his path--evidently a fallen tree--and they mounted a slight ridge or rise. Then they felt the wet touch of fir branches against their cheeks.

Bruce stopped the horse and both dismounted. Both of them knew that under the drooping limbs of the tree they would find, at least until the snows deepened, comparative shelter from the storm. Here, rolled in their blankets, they might pa.s.s the remainder of the night hours.

Bruce tied the horse, and the girl unrolled the blankets. But she did not lay them together to make a rude bed,--and the dictates of conventionality had nothing whatever to do with it. If one jot more warmth could have been achieved by it, these two would have lain side by side through the night hours between the same blankets. She knew, however, that more warmth could be achieved if each of them took a blanket and rolled up in it; thus they would get two thicknesses instead of one and no openings to admit the freezing air. When this was done they lay side by side, economizing the last atom of warmth.

The night hours were dreary and long. The rain beat into the limbs above them, and sometimes it sifted through. At the first gray of dawn Bruce opened his eyes.

His dreams had been troubled and strange, but the reality to which he wakened gave him no sense of relief. The first knowledge that he had was that the snow had continued to sift down throughout the night, that it had already laid a white mantle over the wilderness, and the whirling flakes still cut off all view of the familiar landmarks by which he might get his bearings.

He had this knowledge before he was actually cognizant of the cold. And then its first realization came to him in a strange heaviness and dullness in his body, and an almost irresistible desire to sleep.

He fought a little battle, lying there under the snow-covered limbs of the fir tree. Because it was one in which no blows were exchanged, no shots fired, and no muscles called into action, it was no less a battle, trying and stern. It was a fight waged in his own spirit, and it seemed to rend him in twain.

The whole issue was clear in his mind at once. The cold had deepened in these hours of dawn, and he was slowly, steadily freezing to death. Even now the blood flowed less swiftly in his veins. Death itself, in the moment, had lost all horror for him; rather it was a thing of peace, of ease. All he had to do was to lie still. Just close his eyes,--and soft shadows would drop over him.

They would drop over Linda too. She lay still beside him; perhaps they had already fallen. The war he had waged so long and so relentlessly would end in blissful calm. Outside there was only snow and cold and wracking limbs and pain, only further conflict with tireless enemies, only struggle to tear his agonized body to pieces; and the bitterness of defeat in the end. He saw his chances plain as he lay beneath that gray sky. Even now, perhaps, Simon was upon them. Only two little rifle sh.e.l.ls remained with which to combat him, and he doubted that his wounded arm would hold the rifle steady. There were weary, innumerable miles between them and any shelter, and only the terrible, trackless forest lay between.

Why not lie still and let the curtains fall? This was an easy, tranquil pa.s.sing, and heaven alone knew what dreadful mode of egress would be his if he rose to battle further. All the argument seemed on one side.

But high and bright above all this burned the indomitable flame of his spirit. Even as the thoughts came to him it mounted higher, it propelled its essence of strength through his veins, it brought new steel to his muscles. To rise, to fight, to struggle on! Never to yield until the Power above decreed! To stand firm, even as the pines themselves. The dominant greatness that Linda had found in this man rose in him, and he set his muscles like iron.

He struggled to rise. He shook off the mists of the frost in his brain.

He seemed to come to life. Quickly he knelt by Linda and shook her shoulders in his hands. She opened her eyes.

"Get up, Linda," he said gently. "We have to go on."

She started to object, but a message in his eyes kept her from it. His own spirit went into her. He helped her to her feet.

"Help me roll the blankets," he commanded, "and take out enough food for breakfast. We can't stop to eat it here. I think we're in sight of the main trail; whether we can find it--in the snow--I don't know." She understood; usually the absence of vegetation on a well-worn trail makes a shallow covering of snow appear more level and smooth and thus possible to follow.

"I'm afraid the snow's already too deep," he continued, "but we can go on in a general direction for a while at least--unless the snow gets worse so I can't even guess the position of the sun. We must get farther into the thickets before we stop to eat."

They were strange figures in the snow flurries as they went to work to roll the blankets into a compact bundle. The food she had taken from their stores for breakfast he thrust into the pocket of his coat; the rest, with the blankets, she tied swiftly on the horse. They unfastened the animal and for a moment she stood holding the reins while Bruce crept back on the hillside to look for the trail.

The snow swept round them, and they felt the lowering menace of the cold. And at that instant those dread spirits that rule the wilderness, jealous then and jealous still of the intrusion of man, dealt them a final, deadly blow.

Its weapon was just a sound--a loud crash in a distant thicket--and a pungent message on the wind that their human senses were too blunt to receive. Bruce saw the full dreadfulness of the blow and was powerless to save. The horse suddenly snorted loudly, then reared up. He saw as in a tragic, dream the girl struggle to hold him; he saw her pulled down into the snow and the rein jerked from her hand. Then the animal plunged, wheeled, and raced at top speed away into the snow flurries.

Some Terror that as yet they could not name had broken their control of him and in an instant taken from them this one last hope of safety.

x.x.xII

Bruce walked over to Linda, waiting in the snow on her knees. It was not an intentional posture. She had been jerked down by the plunging horse, and she had not yet completely risen. But the sight of her slight figure, her raised white face, her clasped hands, and the remorseless snow of the wilderness about her moved Bruce to his depths. He saw her but dimly in the snow flurries, and she looked as if she were in an att.i.tude of prayer.