Part 20 (1/2)

Cranston could spring up too. So he did the next most disarming thing.

He sprang up and strode into the lean-to.

”Good evening, Cranston,” he said pleasantly.

Cranston was also upon his feet the same instant. His instincts were entirely true. He knew if he leaped for his rifle, Dan would be upon his back in an instant, and he would have no chance to use it. His training, also, had been that of the hills, and his reflexes flung him erect upon his feet at the same instant that he saw the leap of his enemy's shadow.

They brought up face to face. The rifle was now out of the running, as they were at about equal distances from it, and neither would have time to swing or aim it.

Dan's sudden appearance had been so utterly unlooked-for, that for a moment Cranston could find no answer. His eyes moved to the rifle, then to his belt where hung his hunting knife, that still lay on the pallet.

”Good evening, Failing,” he replied, trying his hardest to fall into that strange spirit of nonchalance with which brave men have so often met their adversaries, and which Dan had now. ”I'm surprised to see you here. What do you want?”

Dan's voice when he replied was no more warm than the snow banks that reinforced the lean-to. ”I want your rifle--also your snowshoes and your supplies of food. And I think I'll take your blankets, too.”

”And I suppose you mean to fight for them?” Cranston asked. His lips drew up in a smile, but there was no smile in the tone of his words.

”You're right,” Dan told him, and he stepped nearer. ”Not only for that, Cranston. We're face to face at last--hands to hands. I've got a knife in my pocket, but I'm not even going to bring it out. It's hands to hands--you and I--until everything's square between us.”

”Perhaps you've forgotten that day on the ridge?” Cranston asked. ”You haven't any woman to save you this time.”

”I remember the day, and that's part of the debt. The thing you did yesterday is part of it too. It's all to be settled at last, Cranston, and I don't believe I could spare you if you went to your knees before me. You've got a clearing out by the fire--big as a prize ring. We'll go out there--side by side. And hands to hands we'll settle all these debts we have between us--with no rules of fighting and no mercy in the end!”

They measured each other with their eyes. Once more Cranston's gaze stole to his rifle, but lunging out, Dan kicked it three feet farther into the shadows of the lean-to. Dan saw the dark face drawn with pa.s.sion, the hands clenching, the shoulder muscles growing into hard knots. And Cranston looked and knew that merciless vengeance--that age-old sin and Christless creed by which he lived--had followed him down and was clutching him at last.

He saw it in the position of the stalwart form before him, the clear level eyes that the moonlight made bright as steel, the hard lines, the slim, powerful hands. He could read it in the tones of the voice,--tones that he himself could not imitate or pretend. The hour had come for the settling of old debts.

He tried to curse his adversary as a weakling and a degenerate, but the obscene words he sought for would not come to his lips. Here was his fate, and because the darkness always fades before the light, and the courage of wickedness always breaks before the courage of righteousness, Cranston was afraid to look it in the face. The fear of defeat, of death, of Heaven knows what remorselessness with which this grave giant would administer justice was upon him, and his heart seemed to freeze in his breast. Cravenly he leaped for his knife on the blankets below him.

Dan was upon him before he ever reached it. He sprang as a cougar springs, incredibly fast and with shattering power. Both went down, and for a long time they writhed and struggled in each other's arms. The pine boughs rustled strangely.

The dark, gaunt hand reached in vain for the knife. Some resistless power seemed to be holding his wrist and was bending its bone as an Indian bends a bow. Pain lashed through him.--And then this dark-hearted man, who had never known the meaning of mercy, opened his lips to scream that this terrible enemy be merciful to him.

But the words wouldn't come. A ghastly weight had come at his throat, and his tortured lungs sobbed for breath. Then, for a long time, there was a curious pounding, las.h.i.+ng sound in the evergreen boughs. It seemed merciless and endless.

But Dan got up at last, in a strange, heavy silence, and swiftly went to work. He took the rifle and filled it with cartridges from Cranston's belt. Then he put the remaining two boxes of sh.e.l.ls into his s.h.i.+rt pocket. The supplies of food--the sack of nutritious jerked venison like dried bark, the little package of cheese, the boxes of hardtack and one of the small sacks of prepared flour--he tied, with a single kettle, into his heavy blankets and flung them with the rifle upon his back.

Finally he took the pair of snowshoes from the floor. He worked coldly, swiftly, all the time munching at a piece of jerked venison. When he had finished he walked to the door of the lean-to.

It seemed to Dan that Cranston whispered faintly, from his unconsciousness, as he pa.s.sed; but the victor did not turn to look. The snowshoes crunched away into the darkness. On the hill behind a half-dozen wolves--stragglers from the pack--frisked and leaped about in a curious way. A strange smell had reached them on the wind, and when the loud, fearful steps were out of hearing, it might pay them to creep down, one by one, and investigate its cause.

VIII

The gray circle about the fire was growing impatient. s...o...b..rd waited to the last instant before she admitted this fact. But it is possible only so long to deny the truth of a thing that all the senses verify, and that moment for her was past.

At first the wolves had lingered in the deepest shadow and were only visible in profile against the gray snow. But as the night wore on, they became increasingly careless. They crept up to the very edge of the little circle of firelight; and when a high-leaping flame threw a gleam over them, they didn't shrink. She had only to look up to see that age-old circle of fire--bright dots, two and two--at every side.

It is an instinct in the hunting creatures to remain silent before the attack. The triumph cries come afterward. But they seemed no longer anxious about this, either. Sometimes she would hear their footfall as they leaped in the snow, and what excitement stirred them she didn't dare to think. Quite often one of them would snarl softly,--a strange sound in the darkness.