The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1923-01-05

I
Soon-Soon. Don't Leave Me to Die
Alone"
Bruce" she cried, "come back soon
soon. Don't leave me to die alone.
I'm not strong enough for that"
He whirled, took two PAGES back,
and his arms went about her. He had
forgotten his injury long since. He
kissed her cool lips and smiled into
her eyes. Then at once the fiurries
hid him.
The girl climbed up into the
branches Of fir tree. In the thicket
beyond great gray form tackled back
and forth, trying to locate scent that
second before he had caught but
dimly and had lost. 1t was the Killer,
and his temper was lost long ago in
the whirling snow.
His anger was upon him, partly from
the discomfort of the storm, partly
from the constant, gnawing pain of
three bullet wounds in his powerful
body. Besides, he realized the pres
ence of his old and greatest enemy
those stall, slight forms that had
crossed him so many times, that had
stung him with their bullets, and
whose weakness he had learned.
And then all at once he caught
the scent plain. He lurched forward,
crashed again through the brush, and
walked out into the snow-swept open.
Linda saw his vague outline, and at
first she hung perfectly motionless,
hoping to escape his gaze. She had
been told many times that grizzlies
cannot climb, yet she had no desire
to see him raging below her, reaching.
possibly trying to shake her from the
limb.
He didn't seem to see her. His eyes
were lowered; besides, 1t was never the
grizzly way to search the branches of
a tree. The wind blew the message
that he might have read clearly in the
opposite direction. She saw him walk
slowly across the snow, head low
cred, huge gray ghost In the snow
fiurries not one hundred feet distant.
Then she saw him pause, with lowered
head.
In the little second before the truth |
came to her, the bear had already
turned. Bruce's tracks were some
what dimmed by the snow, but the |
Killer interpreted them truly. She |
saw too late that he had crossed them, |
read their message, and now had |
turned into. the clouds of snow to trace
them down.
2 For an instant she gazed at him In |
speechless horror; and already the
hurries had almost obscured his gray |
dgure. Desperately she tried to call |
MS attention from the tracks. She
called, then she rustled the branches
IS loudly as she could But the noise
If the wind obscured what sound she
made, and the bear was already too
absorbed in the hunt to turn and see
Ter. AS always, in the nearing pres
.nce of foe, his rage grew upon him.
Sobbing, Linda swung down from
he tree. She had no conscious plan
If aid to her lover. She only had q
hind instinct to seek him, to try to
warn him CT his danger, and at least
o be with him at the death. The great
racks Of the Killer, seemingly almost
IS long as her own arm, made a plain
rail for her to follow. She too struck
If into the storm-swept canyon.
81
And the forest gods who dwell some
where In the region where the pine
ops taper into the sky, and who pull
he strings that drop and raise the
urtain and work the puppets that are
he players Of the wilderness dramas.
aw a chance for great and tragic
est In this strange chase over the
now. The destinies OF Bruce, Linda
No the Killer were already converg-
lg on this trail that all three followed /
The path that the runaway horse
iade in the snow. Only one Of the I
reat forces of the war that hal been
aged at Trails End was lacking, and
ow he came also.
Simon Turner had ridden late into
ne night and from before dawn. with 4
fury he had goaded on I