The Strength of the Pines

by Edison Marshall

As the shadows grew and the twilight deepened, the undercurrent of savagery that is the eternal quality of the wilderness grew ever more pronounced. A thrill and fever came in the air, mystery in the deepening shadows, and brighter lights into the eyes of the hunting folk. The dusk deepened between the trees; the distant trunks dimmed and faded quite away. The stars emerged. The nightwind, rising somewhere in the region of the snow banks on the highest mountains, blew down into the Killer's face and brought messages that no human being may ever receive. Then his sharp ears heard the sound of brush cracked softly as some one of the larger forest creatures came up the trail toward him.

The steps drew nearer and the Killer recognized them. They were plainly the soft footfall of some member of the deer tribe, yet they were too pronounced to be the step of any of the lesser deer. The bull elk had left his bed. The red eyes of the grizzly seemed to glow as he waited. Great though the stag was, only one little blow of the massive forearm would be needed. The huge fangs would have to close down but once. The long, many-tined antlers, the sharp front hoofs would not avail him in a surprise attack such as this would be. Best of all, he was not suspecting danger. He was walking down wind, so that the pungent odor of the bear was blown away from him.

The bear did not move a single telltale muscle. He scarcely breathed. And the one movement that there was was such that not even the keen ears of an elk could discern, just a curious erection of the gray hairs on his vast neck.

The bull was almost within striking range now. The wicked red eyes could already discern the dimmest shadow of his outline through the thickets. But all at once he stopped, head lifting.

Perhaps a grizzly bear does not have mental processes as human beings know them. Perhaps all impulse is the result of instinct alone,—instinct tuned and trained to a degree that human beings find hard to imagine. But if the bear couldn't understand the sudden halt just at the eve of his triumph, at least he felt growing anger. He knew perfectly that the elk had neither detected his odor nor heard him, and he had made no movements that the sharp eyes could detect. Just a glimpse of gray in the heavy brush would not have been enough in itself to arouse the stag's suspicions. For the lower creatures are rarely able to interpret outline alone; there must be movement too.

Yet the bull was evidently alarmed. He stood immobile, one foot lifted, nostrils open, head raised. Then, the wind blowing true, the grizzly understood.

A pungent smell reached him from below,—evidently the smell of a living creature that followed the trail along the stream that flowed through the glen. He recognized it in an instant. He had detected it many times, particularly when he went into the cleared lands to kill cattle. It was man, an odor almost unknown in this lonely glen. Dave Turner, brother of Simon, was walking down the stream toward Hudson's camp.

The elk was widely traveled too, and he also realized the proximity of man. But his reaction was entirely different. To the grizzly it was an annoying interruption to his hunt; and a great flood of rage swept over him. It seemed to him that these tall creatures were always crossing his path, spoiling his hunting, even questioning his rule of the forests. They did not seem to realize that he was the wilderness king, and that he could break their slight forms in two with one blow of his paw. It was true that their eyes had strange powers to disquiet him; but his isolation in the fastnesses of Trail's End had kept him from any full recognition of their real strength, and he was unfortunately lacking in the awe with which most of the forest creatures regard them. But to the elk this smell was Fear itself. He knew the ways of men only too well. Too many times he had seen members of his herd fall stricken at a word from the glittering sticks they carried in their hands. He uttered a far-ringing snort.

It was a distinctive sound, beginning rather high on the scale as a loud whistle and descending into a deep bass bawl. And the Killer knew perfectly what that sound meant. It was a simple way of saying that the elk would progress no further down that trail. The bear leaped in wild fury.

A growl that was more near a puma-like snarl came from between the bared teeth, and the great body lunged out with incredible speed. Although the distance was far, the charge was almost a success. If one second had intervened before the elk saw the movement, if his muscles had not been fitted out with invisible wings, he would have fought no more battles with his herd brethren in the fall. The bull seemed to leap straight up. His muscles had been set at his first alarm from Turner's smell on the wind, and they drove forth the powerful limbs as if by a powder explosion. He was full in the air when the forepaws battered down where he had been. Then he darted away into the coverts.