The Isle of Retribution

by Edison Marshall

Now Ned was leading up toward the shore crags, into a little pass between the rocks that was the natural egress from the beach on to the hills behind. He walked easily, one step after another in regular cadence: only his glowing eyes could have told that this instant had, by light of circumstances beyond Bess’s ken, become the most crucial in his life. And it was a strange and ironic thing that the knowledge he relied on now, the facility that might turn defeat into victory, was not some finesse gained in his years of civilized living, no cultural growth from some great university far to the south, but merely one of the basic tricks of a humble trade.

Doomsdorf had told him, once, that a good trapper must learn to mark his sets. Any square yard of territory must be so identified, in the mind’s eye, that the trapper can return, days later, walk straight to it and know its every detail. Ned Cornet had learned his trade. He was a trapper; and he knew this snowy pass as an artist knows his canvas. He stepped boldly through.

Bess walked just behind, stepping exactly in his tracks. Her heart raced. It was not merely because the full truth was hidden from her that she walked straight and unafraid. She would always follow bravely where Ned led. Now both of them had passed through the little, narrow gap between lofty, snow-swept crags. Doomsdorf trudged just behind.

Then something sharp and calamitous as a lightning bolt seemed to strike the pass. There was a loud ring and clang of metal, the sharp crack of a snowshoe frame broken to kindling, and then, obliterating both, a wild bellow of human agony like that of a mighty grizzly wounded to the death. Ned and Bess had passed in safety, but Doomsdorf had stepped squarely into the great bear trap that Ned had set the evening before.

The cruel jaws snapped with a clang of iron and the crunch of flesh. The shock, more than any human frame could endure, hurled Doomsdorf to his knees; yet so mighty was his physical stamina that he was able to retain his grip on his rifle. And the instant that he went down Ned turned, leaping with savage fury to strike out his hated life before he could rise again.

He was upon him before Doomsdorf could raise his rifle. As he sprang he drew his knife from its sheath, and it cut a white path through the gathering dusk. And now their arms went about each other in a final struggle for mastery.

Caught though he was in the trap, Doomsdorf was not beaten yet. He met that attack with incredible power. His great hairy hand caught Ned’s arm as it descended, and though he could not hold it, he forced him to drop the blade. With the other he reached for his enemy’s throat.

This was the final conflict; yet of such might were these contestants, so terrible the fury of their onslaughts, that both knew at once that the fight was one of seconds. These two mighty men gave all they had. The fingers clutched and closed at Ned’s throat. The right hand of the latter, from which the blade had fallen, tugged at the pistol butt at Doomsdorf’s holster.

Bess leaped in, like a she-wolf in defense of her cubs, but one great sweep of Doomsdorf’s arm hurled her unconscious in the snow. There were to be no outside forces influencing this battle. The trap at Doomsdorf’s foot was Ned’s only advantage; and he had decoyed his enemy into it by his own cunning. It was man to man at last: a cruel war settled for good and all.

It could endure but an instant more. Already those iron fingers were crushing out Ned’s life. So closely matched were the two foes, so terrible their strength, that their bodies scarcely moved at all; each held the other in an iron embrace, Ned tugging with his left hand at the fingers that clutched his throat, Doomsdorf trying to prevent his foe from drawing the pistol that he wore at his belt and turning it against him.