The Strength of the Pines Part 7

"One after another the Rosses were killed, and I needn't make it any worse for you than I can help--by telling of each killing. Enough to say that at last no one was left except a few old men whose eyes were too dim to shoot straight, and my own father. And I was a baby then--just born.

"Then one night my father--seeing the fate that was coming down upon him--took the last course to defeat them. Matthew Folger--a connection by marriage--was still alive. Simon's clan hadn't attacked him yet. He had no share in the land, but instead lived in this house I live in now.

He had a few cattle and some pasture land farther down the Divide. There had been no purpose in killing him. He hadn't been worth the extra bullet.

"One night my father left me asleep and stole through the forests to talk to him. They made an agreement. I have pieced it out, a little at a time. My father deeded all his land to Folger.

"I can understand now. The enemy clan pretended it was a blood-feud only--and that it was fair war to kill the Rosses. Although my father knew their real aim was to obtain the land, he didn't think they would dare kill Matthew Folger to get it. He knew that he himself would fall, sooner or later, but he thought that to kill Folger would show their cards--and that would be too much, even for Simon's people. But he didn't know. He hadn't foreseen to what lengths they would go."

Bruce leaned forward. "So they killed--Matthew Folger?" he asked.

He didn't know that his face had gone suddenly stark white, and that a curious glitter had come to his eyes. He spoke breathlessly. For the name--Matthew Folger--called up vague memories that seemed to reveal great truths to him. The girl smiled grimly.

"Let me go on. My father deeded Folger the land. The deed was to go on record so that all the world would know that Folger owned it, and if the clan killed him it was plainly for the purposes of greed alone. But there was also a secret agreement--drawn up in black and white and to be kept hidden for twenty-one years. In this agreement, Folger promised to return to me--the only living heir of the Rosses--the lands acquired by the deed. In reality, he was only holding them in trust for me, and was to return them when I was twenty-one. In case of my father's death, Folger was to be my guardian until that time.

"Folger knew the risk he ran, but he was a brave man and he did not care. Besides, he was my father's friend--and friends.h.i.+p goes far in the mountains. And my father was shot down before a week was past.

"The clan had acted quick, you see. When Folger heard of it, before the dawn, he came to my father's house and carried me away. Before another night was done he was killed too."

The perspiration leaped out on Bruce's forehead. The red glow of the fire was in his eyes.

"He fell almost where this fire is built, with a thirty-thirty bullet in his brain. Which one of the clan killed him I do not know--but in all probability it was Simon himself--at that time only eighteen years of age. And Folger's little boy--something past four years old--wandered out in the moonlight to find his father's body."

The girl was speaking slowly now, evidently watching the effect of her words on her listener. He was bent forward, and his breath came in queer, whispering gusts. "Go on!" he ordered savagely. "Tell me the rest. Why do you keep me waiting?"

The girl smiled again,--like a sorceress. "Folger's wife was from the plains' country," she told him slowly. "If she had been of the mountains she might have remained to do some killing on her own account. Like old Elmira herself remained to do--killing on her own account! But she was from cities, just as you are, but she--unlike you--had no mountain blood in her. She wasn't used to death, and perhaps she didn't know how to hate. She only knew how to be afraid.

"They say that she went almost insane at the sight of that strong, brave man of hers lying still in the pine needles. She hadn't even known he was out of the house. He had gone out on some secret business--late at night. She had only one thing left--her baby boy and her little foster-daughter--little Linda Ross who is before you now. Her only thought was to get those children out of that dreadful land of bloodshed and to hide them so that they could never come back. And she didn't even want them to know their true parentage. She seemed to realize that if they had known, both of them would return some time--to collect their debts. Sooner or later, that boy with the Folger blood in him and that girl with the Ross blood would return, to attempt to regain their ancient holdings, and to make the clan pay!

"All that was left were a few old women with hate in their hearts and a strange tradition to take the place of hope. They said that sometime, if death spared them, they would see Folger's son come back again, and a.s.sert his rights. They said that a new champion would arise and right their wrongs. But mostly death didn't spare them. Only old Elmira is left.

"What became of the secret agreement I do not know. I haven't any hope that you do, either. The deed was carried down to the courts by Sharp, one of the witnesses who managed to get past the guard, and put on file soon after it was written. The rest is short. Simon and his clan took up the land, swearing that Matthew Folger had deeded it to them the day he had procured it. They had a deed to show for it--a forgery. And the one thing that they feared, the one weak chain, was that this secret agreement between Folger and my father would be found.

"You see what that would mean. It would show that he had no right to deed away the land, as he was simply holding it in trust for me. Old Elmira explained the matter to me--if I get mixed up on the legal end of it, excuse it. If that doc.u.ment could be found, their forged deed would be obviously invalid. And it angered them that they could not find it.

"Of course they never filed their forged deed--afraid that the forgery would be discovered--but they kept it to show to any one that was interested. But they wanted to make themselves still safer.

"There had been two witnesses to the agreement. One of them, a man named Sharp, died--or was killed--shortly after. The other, an old trapper named Hudson, was indifferent to the whole matter--he was just pa.s.sing through and was at Folger's house for dinner the night Ross came. He is still living in these mountains, and he might be of value to us yet.

"Of course the clan did not feel at all secure. They suspected the secret agreement had been mailed to some one to take care of, and they were afraid that it would be brought to light when the time was ripe.

They knew perfectly that their forged deed would never stand the test, so one of the things to do was to prevent their claim ever being contested. That meant to keep Folger's son in ignorance of the whole matter.

"I hope I can make that clear. The deed from my father to Folger was on record, Folger was dead, and Folger's son would have every right and opportunity to contest the clan's claim to the land. If he could get the matter into court, he would surely win.

"The second thing to do was to win me over. I was just a child, and it looked the easiest course of all. That's why I was stolen from the orphanage by one of Simon's brothers. The idea was simply that when the time came I would marry one of the clan and establish their claim to the land forever.

"Up to a few weeks ago it seemed to me that sooner or later I would win out. Bruce, you can't dream what it meant! I thought that some time I could drive them out and make them pay, a little, for all they have done. But they've tricked me, after all. I thought that I would get word to Folger's son, who by inheritance would have a clear t.i.tle to the land, and he, with the aid of the courts, could drive these usurpers out. But just recently I've found out that even this chance is all but gone.

"Within a few more weeks, they will have been in possession of the land for a full twenty years. Through some legal twist I don't understand, if a man pays taxes and has undisputed possession of land for that length of time, his t.i.tle is secure. They failed to win me over, but it looks as if they had won, anyway. The only way that they can be defeated now is for that secret agreement--between my father and Folger--to reappear.

And I've long ago given up all hope of that.

"There is no court session between now and October thirtieth--when their twenty years of undisputed possession is culminated. There seems to be no chance to contest them--to make them bring that forged deed into the light before that time. We've lost, after all. And only one thing remains."

He looked up to find her eyes full upon him. He had never seen such eyes. They seemed to have sunk so deep into the flesh about them that only lurid slits remained. It was not that her lids were partly down.

Rather it was because the flesh-sacks beneath them had become charged with her pounding blood. The fire's glow was in them and cast a strange glamour upon her face. It only added to the strangeness of the picture that she sat almost limp, rather than leaning forward in appeal. Bruce looked at her in growing awe.

But as the second pa.s.sed he seemed no longer able to see her plainly.

His eyes were misted and blurred, but they were empty of tears as Linda's own. Rather the focal points of his brain had become seared by a mounting flame within himself. The glow of the fire had seemingly spread until it encompa.s.sed the whole wilderness world.

"What is the one thing that remains?" he asked her, whispering.

She answered with a strange, terrible coldness of tone. "The blood atonement," she said between back-drawn lips.

X

When the minute hand of the watch in his pocket had made one more circuit, both Bruce and Linda found themselves upon their feet. The tension had broken at last. Her emotion had been curbed too long. It broke from her in a flood.

She seized his hands, and he started at their touch. "Don't you understand?" she cried. "You--you--you are Folger's son. You are the boy that crept out--under this very tree--to find him dead. All my life Elmira and I have prayed for you to come. And what are you going to do?"

Her face was drawn in the white light of the moon. For an instant he seemed dazed.

"Do?" he repeated. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

"You don't!" she cried, in infinite scorn. "Are you just clay? Aren't you a man? Haven't you got arms to strike with and eyes to see along a rifle barrel? Are you a coward--and a weakling; one of your mother's blood to run away? Haven't you anything to avenge? I thought you were a mountain man--that all your years in cities couldn't take that quality away from you! Haven't you any answer?"

He looked up, a strange light growing on his face. "You mean--killing?"

"What else? To kill--never to stop killing--one after another until they are gone! Till Simon Turner and the whole Turner clan have paid the debts they owe."

Bruce recoiled as if from a blow. "Turner? Did you say Turner?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"Yes. That's the clan's name. I thought you knew."

There was an instant of strange truce. Both stood motionless. The scene no longer seemed part of the world that men have come to know in these latter years,--a land of cities and homes and peaceful twilights over quiet countrysides. The moon was still strange and white in the sky; the pines stood tall and dark and sad,--eternal emblems of the wilderness.

The fire had burned down to a few lurid coals glowing in the gray ashes.

No longer were these two children of civilization. Their pa.s.sion had swept them back into the immeasurable past; they were simply human beings deep in the simplest of human pa.s.sions. They trembled all over with it.

Bruce understood now his unprovoked attack on the little boy when he had been taken from the orphanage on trial. The boy had been named Turner, and the name had been enough to recall a great and terrible hatred that he had learned in earliest babyhood. The name now recalled it again; the truth stood clear at last. It was the key to all the mystery of his life; it stirred him more than all of Linda's words. In an instant all the tragedy of his babyhood was recalled,--the hushed talk between his parents, the oaths, the flames in their eyes, and finally the body he had found lying so still beneath the pines. It was always the Turners, the dread name that had filled his baby days with horror. He hadn't understood then. It had been blind hatred,--hatred without understanding or self-a.n.a.lysis.

As she watched, his mountain blood mounted to the ascendancy. A strange transformation came over him. The gentleness that he had acquired in his years of city life began to fall away from him. The mountains were claiming him again.

It was not a mental change alone. It was a thing to be seen with the unaided eyes. His hand had swept through his hair, disturbing the part, and now the black locks dropped down on his forehead, almost to his eyes. The whole expression of his face seemed to change. His look of culture dropped from him; his eyes narrowed; he looked grotesquely out of place in his soft, well-tailored clothes.

But he was quite cold now. His pa.s.sion was submerged under a steel exterior. His voice was cold and hard when he spoke.

"Then you and I are no relation whatever?"