The homeward journey over the ridges had meant only pleasure to Bruce. Every hour of it had brought a deeper and more intimate knowledge of the wilderness. The days had been full of little, nerve-tingling adventures, and the nights full of peace. And beyond all these, there was the hope of seeing Linda again at the end of the trail.

Thoughts of her hardly ever left him throughout the long tramp. She had more than fulfilled every expectation. It was true that he had found no one of his own kin, as he had hoped; but the fact opened up new possibilities that would have been otherwise forbidden.

It was strange how he remembered her kiss. He had known other kisses in his days—being a purely rational and healthy young man—but there had been nothing of immortality about them. Their warmth had died quickly, and they had been forgotten. They were just delights of moonlight nights and nothing more. But he would wake up from his dreams at night to feel Linda's kiss still upon his lips. To recall it brought a strange tenderness,—a softening of all the hard outlines of his picture of life. It changed his viewpoint; it brought him a knowledge of a joy and a gentleness that could exist even in this stern world of wilderness and pines. With her face lingering before his eyes, the ridges themselves seemed less stern and forbidding; there were softer messages in the wind's breath; the drama of the wild that went on about him seemed less remorseless and cruel.

He remembered the touch of her hands. They had been so cool, so gentle. He remembered the changing lights in her dark eyes. Life had opened up new vistas to him. Instead of a stern battleground, he began to realize that it had a softer, gentler, kinder side,—a place where there could be love as well as hatred, peace as well as battle, cheery homes and firesides and pleasant ways and laughter instead of cold ways and lonely trails and empty hearts and grim thoughts. Perhaps, if all went well, tranquillity might come to him after all. Perhaps he might even know the tranquil spirit of the pines.

These were mating days. It was true that the rutting season had not, in reality, commenced. The wolf pack had not yet gathered, and would not until after the heavy frosts. But the bucks had begun to rub the velvet from their horns so that they would be hard and sharp for the fights to come. And these would be savage battles—with death at the end of many of them. But perhaps the joys that would follow—the roving, mating days with the does—would more than make up for their pain. The trim females were seen less often with their fawns; and they seemed strangely restless and tremulous, perhaps wondering what fortune the fall would have for them in the way of a mate.

The thought gave Bruce pleasure. He could picture the deer herd in the fall,—the proud buck in the lead, ready to fight all contenders, his harem of does, and what fawns and young bucks he permitted to follow him. They would make stealing journeys down to the foothills to avoid the snow, and all manner of pleasures would be theirs in the gentler temperatures of the lowlands. They would know crisp dawns and breathless nights, long runnings into the valleys, and to the does the realization of motherhood when the spring broke.

But aside from his contemplations of Linda, the long tramp had many delights for him. He rejoiced in every manifestation of the wild life about him, whether it was a bushy-tailed old gray squirrel, watching him from a tree limb, a magpie trying its best to insult him, or the fleeting glimpse of a deer in the coverts. Once he saw the black form of Ashur the bear, mumbling and grunting as he searched under rotten logs for grubs. But he didn't see the Killer again. He didn't particularly care to do so.

He kept his rifle ready during the day for game, but he shot only what he needed. He did not attempt to kill the deer. He knew that he would have no opportunity to care for the meat. But he did, occasionally, shoot the head off a cock-grouse at close range, and no chef of Paris could offer a more tempting dish than its flesh, rolled in flour and served up, fried brown, in bacon grease. It was mostly white meat, exceedingly tender, yet with the zest of wild game. But he dined on bacon exclusively one night because, after many misses at grouse, he declined to take the life of a gray squirrel that had perched in an oak tree above the trail. Someway, it seemed to be getting too much pleasure out of life for him to blast it with a rifle shot. A squirrel has only a few ounces of flesh, and the woods without them would be dull and inane indeed. Besides, they were bright-eyed, companionable people—dwellers of the wilderness even as Bruce—and their personality had already endeared itself to him.

Once he startled a fawn almost out of its wits when he came upon it suddenly in a bend in the trail, and he shouted with delight as it bounded awkwardly away. Once a porcupine rattled its quills at him and tried to seem very ferocious. But it was all the most palpable of bluffs, for Urson, while particularly adept at defense, has no powers of offense whatever. He cannot move quickly. He can't shoot his spines, as the story-books say. He can only sit on the ground and erect them into a sort of suit of armor to repel attack. But Bruce knew enough not to attempt to stroke the creature. If he had done so, he would have spent the remainder of the season pulling out spines from the soft flesh of his hand.

Urson was a patient, stupid, guileless creature, and he and Bruce had a strange communion together as they stood face to face on the trail. "You've got the right idea," Bruce told him. "To erect a wall around you and let 'em yell outside without giving them a thought. To stand firm, not to take part. You're a true son of the pines, Urson. Now let me past."

But the idea was furthest from Urson's mind. He sat firm on the trail, hunched into a spiny ball. Instead of killing him with his rifle butt, as Dave would have done, Bruce laughed good-naturedly and went around him.

Both days of the journey home he wakened sharply at dawn. The cool, morning hours were the best for travel. He would follow down the narrow, brown trail,—now through a heavy covert that rustled as the wild creatures sped from his path, now up a long ridge, now down into a still, dark glen, and sometimes into a strange, bleak place where the forest fire had swept. Every foot was a delight to him.

He was of naturally strong physique, and although the days fatigued him unmercifully, he always wakened refreshed in the dawn. At noon he would stop to lunch, eating a few pieces of jerkey and frying a single flapjack in his skillet. He learned how to effect it quickly, first letting his fire burn down to coals. And usually, during the noon rest, he would practice with his rifle.

He knew that if he were to fight the Turners, skill with a rifle was an absolute necessity; such skill as would have felled the grizzly with one shot instead of administering merely a flesh wound, accuracy to take off the head of a grouse at fifty yards; and at the same time, an ability to swing and aim the weapon in the shortest possible space of time. The only thing that retarded him was the realization that he must not waste too many cartridges. Elmira had brought him only a small supply.

He would walk all afternoon—going somewhat easier and resting more often than in the morning; and these were the times that he appreciated a fragment of jerked venison. He would halt just before nightfall and make his camp.

The first work was usually to strip a young fir tree of its young, slender branches. These, according to Linda's instructions, were laid on the ground, their stalks overlapping, and in a remarkably few minutes he could construct a bed as comfortable as a hair mattress. It was true that the work always came at an hour when most of all he wanted food and rest, but he knew that a restless night means quick fatigue the next day. Then he would clean his game and build his fire and cook his evening meal. Simple food had never tasted so good to him before. Bacon grease was his only flavor, but it had a zest that all the sauces and dressings of France could not approach. The jerkey was crisp and nutty; his flapjacks went directly to the spot where he desired them to go.

But the best hour of all was after his meal, as he sat in the growing shadows with his pipe. It was always an hour of calm. The little, breathless noises of the wild people in the thickets; the gophers, to whose half blind eyes—used to the darkness of their underground passages—the firelight was almost blinding; the chipmunks, and even the larger creatures came clearest to him then and told him more. But they didn't frighten him. Ordinarily, he knew, the forest creatures of the Southern Oregon mountains mean and do no harm to lonely campers. Nevertheless, he kept fairly accurate track of his rifle. He had enough memory of the charge of the Killer to wish to do that. And he thought with some pleasure that he had a reserve arsenal,—Dave's thirty-thirty with five shells in its magazine.

At this hour he felt the spirit of the pines as never before. He knew their great, brooding sorrow, their infinite wisdom, their inexpressible aloofness with which they kept watch over the wilderness. The smoke would drift about him in soothing clouds; the glow of the coals was red and warm over him. He could think then. Life revealed some of its lesser mysteries to him. And he began to glimpse the distant gleam of even greater truths, and sometimes it seemed to him that he could almost catch and hold them. Always it was some message that the pines were trying to tell him,—partly in words they made when their limbs rubbed together, partly in the nature of a great allegory of which their dark, impassive forms were the symbols. If he could only see clearly! But it seemed to him that passion blinded his eyes.

"They talk only to the stars," Linda had said once of the pines. But he had no illusions about this talk of theirs. It was greater, more fraught with wisdom, than anything men might say together below them. He could imagine them telling high secrets that he himself could discern but dimly and could hardly understand. More and more he realized that the pines, like the stars, were living symbols of great powers who lived above the world, powers that would speak to men if they would but listen long and patiently enough, and in whose creed lay happiness.

When the pipe was out he would go to his fragrant bed. The night hours would pass in a breath. And he would rise and go on in the crisp dawns.

The last afternoon he traveled hard. He wanted to reach Linda's house before nightfall. But the trail was too long for that. The twilight fell, to find him still a weary two miles distant. And the way was quite dark when he plunged into the south pasture of the Ross estates.

Half an hour later he was beneath the Sentinel Pine. He wondered why Linda was not waiting beneath it; in his fancy, he thought of it as being the ordained place for her. But perhaps she had merely failed to hear his footsteps. He called into the open door.

"Linda," he said. "I've come back."

No answer reached him. The words rang through the silent rooms and echoed back to him. He walked over the threshold.

A chair in the front room was turned over. His heart leaped at the sight of it. "Linda," he called in alarm, "where are you? It's Bruce."

He stood an instant listening, a great fear creeping over him. He called once more, first to Linda and then to the old woman. Then he leaped through the doorway.

The kitchen was similarly deserted. From there he went to Linda's room. Her coat and hat lay on the bed, but there was no Linda to stretch her arms to him. He started to go out the way he had come, but went instead to his own room. A sheet of note-paper lay on the bed.

It had been scrawled hurriedly; but although he had never received a written word from Linda he did not doubt but that it was her hand:

The Turners are coming—I caught a glimpse of them on the ridge. There is no use of my trying to resist, so I'll wait for them in the front room and maybe they won't find this note. They will take me to Simon's house, and I know from its structure that they will lock me in an interior room in the East wing. Use the window on that side nearest the North corner. My one hope is that you will come at once to save me.

Bruce's eyes leaped over the page; then thrust it into his pocket. He slipped through the rear door of the house, into the shadows.

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