Many times, during the past years, he had wakened from curious dreams that in the light of day he had tried in vain to interpret. He was never able to connect them with any remembered experience. Now it was as if one of these dreams were coming true. There was the same silence about him, the dark forests beyond, the ridges stretching ever. There was some great foe that might any instant overwhelm him. "I guess you heard me," Simon said; "I told you to go back." "And I hope you heard me too. I'm going on. I haven't any more time to give you." "And I'm not going to take any more, either. But let me make one thing plain. No man, told to go back by me, ever has a chance to be told again. This ain't your cities--up here. There ain't any policeman on every corner. The woods are big, and all kinds of things can happen in them--and be swallowed up--as I swallow these leaves in my hand." His great arm reached out with incredible power and seized a handful of leaves off a near-by shrub. It seemed to Bruce that they crushed like fruit and stained the dark skin. "What is done up here isn't put in the newspapers down below. We're mountain men; we've lived up here as long as men have lived in the West. We have our own way of doing things, and our own law. Think once more about going back." "I've already decided. I'm going on." Once more they stood, eyes meeting eyes on the trail, and Simon's face was darkening with passion. Bruce knew that his hands were clenching, and his own muscles bunched and made ready to resist any kind of attack. But Simon didn't strike. He laughed instead,--a single deep note of utter and depthless scorn. Then he drew back and let Bruce pass on up the road. VII Bruce couldn't mistake the cabin. At the end of the trail he found it,--a little shack of unpainted boards with a single door and a single window. He stood a moment in the sunlight. His shadow was already long behind him, and the mountains had that curious deep blue of late afternoon. The pine needles were soft under his feet; the later-afternoon silence was over the land. He could not guess what was his destiny behind that rude door. It was a moment long waited; for one of the few times in his life he was trembling with excitement. He felt as if a key, long lost, was turning in the doorway of understanding. He walked nearer and tapped with his knuckles on the door.