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.
XXI
As Bruce hurried up the hill toward the Ross estates, he made a swift calculation of the rifle shells in his pocket. The gun held six. He had perhaps fifteen others in his pockets, and he hadn't stopped to replenish them from the supply Elmira had brought. He hadn't brought Dave's rifle with him, but had left it with the remainder of his pack. He knew that the lighter he traveled the greater would be his chance of success.
The note had explained the situation perfectly. Obviously the girl had written when the clan was closing about the house, and finding her in the front room, there had been no occasion to search the other rooms and thus discover it. The girl had kept her head even in that moment of crisis. A wave of admiration for her passed over him.
And the little action had set an example for him. He knew that only rigid self-control and cool-headed strategy could achieve the thing he had set out to do. There must be no false motions, no missteps. He must put out of his mind all thought of what dreadful fate might have already come upon the girl; such fancies would cost him his grip upon his own faculties and lose him the power of clear thinking. His impulse was to storm the door, to pour his lead through the lighted windows; but such things could never take Linda out of Simon's hands. Only stealth and caution, not blind courage and frenzy, could serve her now. Such blind killing as his heart prompted had to wait for another time.
Nevertheless, the stock of his rifle felt good in his hands. Perhaps there would be a running fight after he got the girl out of the house, and then his cartridges would be needed. There might even be a moment of close work with what guards the Turners had set over her. But the heavy stock, used like a club, would be most use to him then.
He knew only the general direction of the Ross house where Simon lived. Linda had told him it rested upon the crest of a small hill, beyond a ridge of timber. The moonlight showed him a well-beaten trail, and he strode swiftly along it. For once, he gave no heed to the stirring forest life about him. When a dead log had fallen across his path, he swung over it and hastened on.
He had a vague sense of familiarity with this winding trail. Perhaps he had toddled down it as a baby, perhaps his mother had carried him along it on a neighborly visit to the Rosses. He went over the hill and pushed his way to the edge of the timber. All at once the moon showed him the house.
He couldn't mistake it, even at this distance. And to Bruce it had a singular effect of unreality. The mountain men did not ordinarily build homes of such dimensions. They were usually merely log cabins of two or three lower rooms and a garret to be reached with a ladder; or else, on the rough mountain highways, crude dwellings of unpainted frame. The ancestral home of the Rosses, however, had fully a dozen rooms, and it loomed to an incredible size in the mystery of the moonlight. He saw quaint gabled roofs and far-spreading wings. And it seemed more like a house of enchantment, a structure raised by the rubbing of a magic lamp, than the work of carpenters and masons.