The Strength of the Pines Part 30

She glanced up and saw her answer in the growing strength of his face.

Then his words spoke too. "As long as the slightest chance remains," he replied.

"And you'll forgive me if it comes to nothing?"

He smiled, dimly. She took fresh heart when she saw he still had strength enough to smile. "You don't have to ask me that."

"A moment ago an idea came to me--it came so straight and sure it was as if a voice told me," she explained hurriedly. She didn't look at him again. She kept her eyes intent upon the great footprints in the snow.

To miss them for a second meant, in that world of whirling snow, to lose them forever. "It was after the bear had killed Simon and had gone away.

He acted exactly as if he thought of something and went out to do it--exactly as if he had a destination in view. Didn't you see--his anger seemed to die in him and he started off in the _face of the storm_. I've watched the ways of animals too long not to know that he had something in view. It wasn't food; he would have attacked the body of the horse, or even Simon's body. If he had just been running away or wandering, he would have gone with the wind, not against it. He was weakened from the fight, perhaps dying--and I think--"

He finished the sentence for her, breathlessly. "That he's going toward shelter."

"Yes. You know, Bruce--the bears hibernate every year. They always seem to have places all chosen--usually caverns in the hillsides or under uprooted trees--and when the winter cuts off their supplies of food they go straight toward them. That's my one hope now--that the Killer has gone to some cave he knows about to hibernate until this storm is over.

I think from the way he started off, so sure and so straight, that it's near. It would be dry and out of the storm, and if we could take it away from him we could make a fire that the snow wouldn't put out. It would mean life--and we could go on when the storm is over."

"You remember--we have only one cartridge."

"Yes, I know--I heard you fire. And it's only a thirty-thirty at that.

It's a risk--as terrible a risk as we've yet run. But it's a chance."

They talked no more. Instead, they walked as fast as they could into the face of the storm. It was a moment of respite. This new hope returned some measure of their strength to them. They walked much more swiftly than the bear, and they could tell by the appearance of the tracks that they were but a few yards behind him.

"He won't smell us, the wind blowing as it does," Linda encouraged. "And he won't hear us either."

Now the tracks were practically unspotted with the flakes. They strained into the flurries. Now they walked almost in silence, their footfall m.u.f.fled in the snow.

They soon became aware that they were mounting a low ridge. They left the underbrush and emerged into the open timber. And all at once Bruce, who now walked in front, paused with lifted hand, and pointed. Dim through the flurries they made out the outline of the bear. And Linda's inspiration had come true.

There was a ledge of rocks just in front--a place such as the rattlesnakes had loved in the blasting sun of summer--and a black hole yawned in its side. The aperture had been almost covered with the snow, and they saw that the great creature was scooping away the remainder of the white drift with his paw. As they waited, the opening grew steadily wider, revealing the mouth of a little cavern in the face of the rock.

"Shoot!" Linda whispered. "If he gets inside we won't be able to get him out."

But Bruce shook his head, then stole nearer. She understood; he had only one cartridge, and he must not take the risk of wounding the animal. The fire had to be centered on a vital place.

He walked steadily nearer until it seemed to Linda he would advance straight into reach of the terrible claws. He held the rifle firmly; his jaw was set, his face white, his eyes straight and strong with the strength of the pines themselves. He went as softly as he could--nearer, ever nearer--the rifle c.o.c.ked and ready in his hands.

The Killer turned his head and saw Bruce. Rage flamed again in his eyes.

He half-turned about; then poised to charge.

The gun moved swiftly, easily, to the man's shoulder, his chin dropped down, his straight eyes gazed along the barrel. In spite of his wound never had human arms held more steady than his did then. And he marked the little s.p.a.ce of gray squarely between the two reddening eyes.

The finger pressed back steadily against the trigger. The rifle cracked in the silence. And then there was a curious effect of tableau, a long second in which all three figures seemed to stand deathly still.

The bear leaped forward, and it seemed wholly impossible to Linda that Bruce could swerve aside in time to avoid the blow. She cried out in horror as the great paws whipped down in the place where Bruce had stood. But the man had been prepared for this very recoil, and he had sprung aside just as the claws raked past.

And the Killer would hunt no more in Trail's End. At the end of that leap he fell, his great body quivering strangely in the snow. The lead had gone straight home where it had been aimed, and the charge itself had been mostly muscular reflex. He lay still at last, a gray, mammoth figure that was majestic even in death.

No more would the deer shudder with terror at the sound of his heavy step in the thicket. No more would the herds fly into stampede at the sight of his great shadow on the moonlit gra.s.s. The last of the Oregon grizzlies had gone the way of all his breed.

To Bruce and Linda, standing breathless and awed in the snow-flurries, his death imaged the pa.s.sing of an old order--the last stand that the forces of the wild had made against conquering man. But there was pathos in it too. There was the symbol of mighty breeds humbled and destroyed.

But the pines were left. Those eternal symbols of the wilderness--and of powers beyond the wilderness--still stood straight and grand and impa.s.sive above them. While these two lived, at least, they would still keep their watch over the wilderness, they would still stand erect and brave to the buffeting of the storm and snow, and in their shade dwelt strength and peace.

The cavern that was revealed to them had a rock floor and had been hollowed out by running water in ages past. Bruce built a fire at its mouth of some of the long tree roots that extended down into it, and the life-giving warmth was a benediction. Already the drifting snow had begun to cover the aperture.

"We can wait here until the blizzard is done," Bruce told Linda, as she sat beside him in the soft glow of the fire. "We have a little food, and we can cut more from the body of the grizzly when we need it. There's dead wood under the snow. And when the storm is over, we can get our bearings and walk out."

She sat a long time without answering. "And after that?" she asked.

He smiled. "No one knows. It's ten days before the thirtieth--the blizzards up here never last over three or four days. We've got plenty of time to get the doc.u.ment down to the courts. The law will deal with the rest of the Turners. We've won, Linda."

His hands groped for hers, and he laid it against his lips. With her other hand she stroked his snow-wet hair. Her eyes were l.u.s.trous in the firelight.

"And after that--after all that is settled? You will come back to the mountains?"

"Could I ever leave them!" he exclaimed. "Of course, Linda. But I don't know what I can do up here--except maybe to establish my claim to my father's old farm. There's a hundred or so acres. I believe I'd like to feel the handles of a plow in my palms."

"It was what you were made for, Bruce," she told him. "It's born in you.

There's a hundred acres there--and three thousand--somewhere else.

You've got new strength, Bruce. You could take hold and make them yield up their hay--and their crops--and fill all these hills with the herds."

She stretched out her arms. Then all at once she dropped them almost as if in supplication. But her voice had regained the old merry tone he had learned to love when she spoke again. "Bruce, have I got to do all the asking?"

His answer was to stretch his great arms and draw her into them. His laugh rang in the cavern.

"Oh, my dearest!" he cried. The eyes lighted in his bronzed face. "I ask for everything--everything--bold that I am! And what I want worst--this minute--"

"Yes?"

"--Is just--a kiss."

She gave it to him with all the tenderness of her soft lips. The snow sifted down outside. Again the pines spoke to one another, but the sadness seemed mostly gone from their soft voices.

THE END