They came with rather startling rapidity and almost immediately completely filled the sky. Young Bill had many things on his mind as he rode beneath them, yet he found time to gaze at them with some curiosity. They were of singular greenish hue, and they hung so low that the tops of near-by mountains were obscured.

The fact that there would be no moon to-night was no longer important.

The clouds would have cut off any telltale light that might illumine the activities of the Turners. There would not be even the dim mist of starlight.

Young Bill rode from house to house through the estate,--the homes occupied by Simon's brothers and cousins and their respective families.

He knocked on each door and he only gave one little message. "Simon wants you at the house," he said, "and come heeled."

He would turn to go, but always a singular quiet and breathlessness remained in the homes after his departure. There would be a curious exchange of glances and certain significant sounds. One of them was the metallic click of cartridges being slipped into the magazine of a rifle.

Another was the buckling on of spurs, and perhaps the rattle of a pistol in its holster. Before the night fell in reality, the clan came riding--strange, tall figures in the half-darkness--straight for Simon's house.

His horse was saddled too, and he met them in front of his door. And in a very few words he made all things plain to them.

"We've found Dave," he told them simply. "Most of you already know it.

We've decided there isn't any use of waiting any more. We're going to the Folger house to-night."

The men stood silent, breathing hard. The clouds seemed to lower, menacingly, toward them. Simon spoke very quietly, yet his voice carried far. In their growing excitement they did not observe the reason, that a puzzling, deep calm had come over the whole wilderness world. Even in the quietest night there is usually a faint background of winds in the mountain realms--troubled breaths that whisper in the thickets and rustle the dead leaves--but to-night the heavy air had no breath of life.

"To-night Bruce Folger is going to pay the price, just as I said." He spoke rather boastingly; perhaps more to impress his followers than from impulse. Indeed, the pa.s.sion that he felt left no room for his usual arrogance. "Fire on sight. Bill and I will come from the rear, and we will be ready to push through the back door the minute you break through the front. The rest of you surround the house on three sides. And remember--no man is to touch Linda."

They nodded grimly; then the file of hors.e.m.e.n started toward the ridge.

Far distant they heard a sound such as had reached them often in summer but was unfamiliar in fall. It was the faint rumble of distant thunder.

Bruce and Linda sat in the front room of the Folger house, quiet and watchful and unafraid. It was not that they did not realize their danger. They had simply taken all possible measures of defense; and they were waiting for what the night would bring forth.

"I know they'll come to-night," Linda had said. "To-morrow night there will be a moon, and though it won't give much light, it will hurt their chances of success. Besides--they've found that their other plot--to kill you from ambush--isn't going to work."

Bruce nodded and got up to examine the shutters. He wanted no ray of light to steal out into the growing darkness and make a target. It was a significant fact that the rifle did not occupy its usual place behind the desk. Bruce kept it in his hands as he made the inspection. Linda had her empty pistol, knowing that it might--in the mayhap of circ.u.mstance--be of aid in frightening an a.s.sailant. Old Elmira sat beside the fire, her stiff fingers busy at a piece of sewing.

"You know--" Bruce said to her, "that we are expecting an attack to-night?"

The woman nodded, but didn't miss a st.i.tch. No gleam of interest came into her eyes. Bruce's gaze fell to her work basket, and something glittered from its depth. Evidently Elmira had regained her knife.

He went back to his chair beside Linda, and the two sat listening. They had never known a more quiet night. They listened in vain for the little night sounds that usually come stealing, so hushed and tremulous, from the forest. The noises that always, like feeble ghosts, dwell in a house at night--the little explosions of a sc.r.a.ping board or a banging shutter or perhaps a mouse, scratching in the walls--were all lacking too. And they both started, ever so slightly, when they heard a distant rumble of thunder.

"It's going to storm," Linda told him.

"Yes. A thunderstorm--rather unusual in the fall, isn't it?"

"Almost unknown. It's growing cold too."

They waited a breathless minute, then the thunder spoke again. It was immeasurably nearer. It was as if it had leaped toward them, through the darkness, with incredible speed in the minute that had intervened. The last echo of the sound was not dead when they heard it a third time.

The storm swept toward them and increased in fury. On a distant hillside the strange file that was the Turners halted, then gathered around Simon. Already the lightning made vivid, white gashes in the sky and illumined--for a breathless instant--the long sweep of the ridge above them. "We'll make good targets in the lightning," Old Bill said.

"Ride on," Simon ordered. "You know a man can't find a target in the hundredth of a second of a lightning flash. We're not going to turn back now."

They rode on. Far away they heard the whine and roar of wind, and in a moment it was upon them. The forest was no longer silent. The peal of the thunder was almost continuous.

The breaking of the storm seemed to rock the Folger house on its foundation. Both Linda and Bruce leaped to their feet; but they felt a little tingle of awe when they saw that old Elmira still sat sewing. It was as if the calm that dwelt in the Sentinel Pine outside had come down to abide in her. No force that the world possessed could ever take it from her.

They heard the rumble and creak of the trees as the wind smote them, and the flame of the lamp danced wildly, filling the room with flickering shadows. Bruce straightened, the lines of his face setting deep. He glanced once more at the rifle in his hands.

"Linda," he said, "put out that fire. If there's going to be an attack, we'd have a better chance if the room were in darkness. We can shoot through the door then."

She obeyed at once, knocking the burning sticks apart and drenching them with water. They hissed, and steamed, but the noise of the storm almost effaced the sound. "Now the light?" Linda asked.

"Yes. See where you are and have everything ready."

She took off the gla.s.s shade of the lamp, and the little gusts of wind that crept in the cracks of the windows immediately extinguished the flame. The darkness dropped down. Then Bruce opened the door.

The whole wilderness world struggled in the grasp of the storm. The scene was such that no mortal memory could possibly forget. They saw it in great, vivid glimpses in the intermittent flashes of the lightning, and the world seemed no longer that which they had come to know. Chaos was upon it. They saw young trees whipping in the wind, their slender branches flailing the air. They saw the distant ridges in black and startling contrast against the lighted sky. The tall tops of the trees wagged back and forth in frenzied signals; their branches smote and rubbed together. And just without their door the Sentinel Pine stood with top lifted to the fury of the storm.

A strange awe swept over Bruce. A moment later he was to behold a sight that for the moment would make him completely forget the existence of the great tree; but for an instant he poised at the brink of a profound and far-reaching discovery. There was a great lesson for him in that dark, towering figure that the lightning revealed. Even in the fury of the storm it still stood infinitely calm, watchful, strong as the mountains themselves. Its great limbs moved and spoke; its top swayed back and forth, yet still it held its high place as Sentinel of the Forest, pa.s.sionless, patient, talking through the murk of clouds to the stars that burned beyond.

"See," Linda said. "The Turners are coming."

It was true. Bruce dropped his eyes. Even now the clan had spread out in a great wing and was bearing down upon the house. The lightning showed them in strange, vivid flashes. Bruce nodded slowly.

"I see," he answered. "I'm ready."

"Then shoot them, quick--when the lightning shows them," she whispered in his ear. "They're in range now." Her hand seized his arm. "What are you waiting for?"

He turned to her sternly. "Have you forgotten we only have five sh.e.l.ls?"

he asked. "Go back to Elmira."

Her eyes met his, and she tried to smile into them. "Forgive me, Bruce--it's hard--to be calm."

But at once she understood why he was waiting. The flashes of lightning offered no opportunity for an accurate shot. Bruce meant to conserve his little supply of sh.e.l.ls until the moment of utmost need. The clan drew nearer. They were riding slowly, with ready rifles. And ever the storm increased in fury. The thunder was so close that it no longer gave the impression of being merely sound. It was a veritable explosion just above their heads. The flashes came so near together that for an instant Bruce began to hope they would reveal the attackers clearly enough to give him a chance for a well-aimed shot. The first drops of rain fell one by one on the roof.

His eyes sought for Simon's figure. To Simon he owed the greatest debt, and to lay Simon low might mean to dishearten the whole clan. But although the attackers were in fair range now, scarcely two hundred yards away, he could not identify him. They drew closer. He raised his gun, waiting for a chance to fire. And at that instant a resistless force hurled him to the floor.

There was the sense of vast catastrophe, a great rocking and shuddering that was lost in billowing waves of sound; and then a frantic effort to recall his wandering faculties. A blinding light cut the darkness in twain; it smote his eyeb.a.l.l.s as if with a physical blow; and summoning all his powers of will he sprang to his feet.

There was only darkness at first; and he did not understand. But it was of scarcely less duration than the flash of lightning. A red flame suddenly leaped into the air, roared and grew and spread as if scattered by the wind itself. And Bruce's breath caught in a sob of wonder.

The Sentinel Pine, that ancient friend and counselor that stood not over one hundred feet from the house, had been struck by a lightning bolt, its trunk had been cleft open as if by a giant's ax, and the flame was already springing through its balsam-laden branches.

XXIX

Bruce stood as if entranced, gazing with awed face at the flaming tree.

There was little danger of the house itself catching fire. The wind blew the flame in the opposite direction; besides, the rains were beating on the roof. The fire in the great tree itself, however, was too well started to be extinguished at once by any kind of rainfall; but it did burn with less fierceness.