The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1922-12-08

| lie IuoonlSnt dluernalely grew ana
died as the moon passed in and out
of the heavier cloud patches. Winds
must have been blowing in the high
lanes of the air, but there was no
| breath of them where Bruce lay. The
| forests were silent, and the little rus
things and STRINGS that reached him
from time to time only seemed to ac-
| centuate the quiet.
He speculated on how many hours
| had passed. He wondered if he could
| dare to hope that midnight had al
ready gone by and, through some d.
vergence from wilderness customs, the
grizzly had failed to return to his
feast. 1t seemed endless hours since
he had re-entered the empty rooms of
Llnda's home. A wave of hope crept
through the whole hydraulic system Of
his veins. And then, as sudden sound
reached him from the forests at one
side, that bright wave of hope turned
black, receded and left only despair.
He heard the sound but dimly. In
TACT, except for his straining with ev-
cry nerve alert, he might not have
heard it at all. Nevertheless, distance
alone had dimmed it; it had been
large sound to start with. So far had
it come that only scratch on the
eardrums was left of it; but there was
no chance to misunderstood it. 1t
cracked out to him through the unfath-
enable silence, and all the elements by
which he might recognize it were dis
tlnct. 1t was the noise of heavy
thicket being broken down and parted
before an enormous body.
He listened, straining. Then he
heard the sound again. Whoever came
toward him had passed the heavy
brush by now. The sounds that
reached him were just faint and inter-
mittent whispers-frst of a twig
cracking beneath a heavy foot, then
the rattle of two pebbles knocked to-
gether. Long moments of utter silence
would ensue between, in which he
could hear the steady drum of his
heart in his breast. and the long roll
of his blood in his veins.
The limbs of young fir tree rustled
and whispered as something brushed
against them. Leaves f1icked together,
and once heavy limb popped like a
distant small-calibered rife as a great
weight broke it in two. Then, as if
the gods of the wilderness were using
all their ingenuity to torture him, the
silence closed down deeper than ever
before.
1t lasted so long that he began to
hope again. Perhaps the sounds had
been made by deer stealing on it's
way to feed in the pastures Yet he
knew the step had been too heavy for
their way was to encircle a thicket
rather than crash through it. It might
have been the step of one of the small,
black bears-a harmless and friendly
wilderness dweller. Yet the impress
sion fingered and strengthened that
only some great hunter, a beast who
feared neither other beasts nor men,
had been steadily coming toward him
through the forest,
AT that instant the moon slipped
under a particularly heavy fragment
of cloud, and deep darkness settled
over him. Even his white face was no
longer discernible in the dusk. He Law
scarcely breathing, trying to fight
down his growing terror.
This silence could mean but one of
two things. One of them was that the
creature who had made the sounds had
turned off on one of the many infer.
secting game trails that wind through
the forest. This was his hope. The al
tentative was one of despair. 1t was
simply that the creature had detected
his presence and was stalking him in
silence through the shadows.
He thought that the light would new
er come. He strained again at the
ropes The dark cloud swept on: and
the moonlight, silver and bright, broke
over the scene.
The forest stood once more in sharp
silhouette against the sky. He studied
with straining eyes the dark fringe of
shadows one hundred feet distant.
Then he detected strange variation
in the dark border of shadows. It held
his gaze, and its outlines slowly
strengthened. So still it stood, so
seemingly natural shadow that some
irregularly shaped tree had cast, that
his eyes refused to recognize it. But
in an instant more he knew the truth.
The shadow was that of great
beast that had stalked him clear to the
border of the moonlight. The Killer
had come for his dead.