by Van Reid
Two or three buildings away, a door swung open and the unmistakable form of the big-bellied man hove into sight. They could not know that the sharp-nosed man had ordered his associate to “see if we’ve been seen”; nor did the sharp-nosed man suspect that he and his confederate would not have been detected had he but kept quiet. The big-bellied man leaned out the doorway and glanced nervously up and down the street, then disappeared.
“I believe that is what they call the lookout,” said Eagleton.
“Very good, my friend!” replied Ephram.
“But what do we do?” wondered Eagleton.
“Do you think she’s in there?” wondered Ephram.
“Good heavens!” said Eagleton. It was a startling thought.
“What are they up to?” asked Bob
“Henry says, “What are they up to?’” said Bill.
“Where is Thump?” Eagleton asked aloud. It was an academic question, but he wished the answer (and the man) were at hand, for he had great faith in Thump’s courage and abilities and thought the big-bellied man a little daunting. Thump would be a welcome presence.
“Oh!” said Ephram. “That Mister Walton and Mr. Moss were nearby!”
Eagleton nodded. Another passage from Mrs. Charmaine’s engrossing novel returned to him and he said, barely loud enough for Ephram to hear: ‘“He could not ask wherefore relief would arrive while some poor soul might look upon his own unworthy brow and say, “Here it is! Here is my relief, my rescue!”’”
“Very right, Eagleton!” said Ephram, who had read Not Without Fondness and recognized the quotation. He patted his friend’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should approach the door and view the situation from a closer vantage.”
“Yes, yes,” said Eagleton. “Very good, Ephram.”
“Henry,” said Ephram, turning to the accompanying hoboes. “You and your friend may come along.”
“My name’s Bob,” said Bob.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ephram.
“Henry says, ‘My name’s Bob,’” said Bill.
“You’re not Henry?” said Ephram to Bob.
“I’m Bob.”
“Are you Henry?” said Ephram to Bill.
“He’s Bill,” said Bob.
“Henry says, “He’s Bill,’” said Bill.
“But he calls you Henry,” said Ephram to Bob.
“Yes,” said Bob, “he does.”
Old Ed Fischer had worked as constable for the town of Litchfield, and then as Kennebec County’s sheriff for some twenty-seven years, and if that was all of seventeen years ago, he yet found the habits of his previous employment hard to break; in fact, he didn’t try. He still carried a rifle on his saddle, and he still maintained the sort of watchful eye that a person develops when they have spent most of a lifetime nosing out errant behavior.
As he descended the hill above Iceboro, the outlying buildings rose out of the shadows and blotted the fire from view. He rode through the deserted streets, past the houses and businesses; the blaze and the collective noise of the men and women who fought it resounded among the brick and clapboard. The smoke and the acrid smell of overheated metals stung his nose and a freshening wind took billows of sparks over the roofs like fireworks. Emptying into the narrow way that ran behind the buildings on the main street, he felt the shift from country road to hard-packed lane beneath his horse’s hooves.
Old instincts pulled him up and he peered into the shadows of this back lane. He sensed movement just north of him. The horse turned its head and shifted its feet.
“Whoa,” said Ed quietly, more to himself than to the horse.
The horse blew out its nose.
Ed Fischer could spot furtive movement the way an ornithologist can identify a bird as it wings in the distance against the twilight. Someone was crouching in the shadows up the street, and someone else was skulking by a backdoor. His old eyes were not up to much detail, but gesture was as good as intent, in his mind, and he eased the horse behind a building before dismounting and looping the reins over a porch railing. He wasn’t sure the animal should be munching on someone’s bushes, but he took the rifle from its saddle sling and slipped down the backstreet with the sort of forestlike stealth Eagleton and Ephram would have admired.
He had known looters in his day—all the way from the war to his experiences as constable and sheriff—and they had always proved to be among the lowest and vilest form of men; they were not simply thieves but thieves in an hour of common desperation. To his mind, a looter was almost invariably the worst sort of skulker and the vilest form of physical coward. He liked a looter about as much as he liked a bully, and he despised a bully. Sometimes they were one and the same.
Ed Fischer moved from shadow to shadow. He crouched in a doorway and when he peeked up the street again, he saw two more men standing in the dark. They were conferring, he thought. There was a sign above the door, and Ed could barely make out the word Emporium. They were planning a robbery, he realized. The sound and fury of the fire and those battling it had dwindled from his conscious thought, giving way to this secretive tableau.
“Hoboes,” he said to himself. He thought he might have to fire a shot to keep them from running, but was there already someone inside? He saw a light at a window.
Ed’s attention was distracted then by the beginnings of a fire on a roof some distance up the street. He could see, by the light of the flames, someone rush to the threatened building and throw open a pair of stable doors.
One of the skulkers approached the back stoop, and Ed Fischer had the impression of a well-dressed man, which surprised him. Perhaps, he thought, they would be easier to trap once they were all inside. He fingered the rifle’s safety. He watched from the shadows as the four men lined up outside the door. The foremost of them reached for the latch, holding it for a long anxious moment. Ed stood.
Without warning, the store’s backdoor burst open and a small man in a cap came charging out. It was clear, from his shouts, that he had not expected the men outside, and it was clear, from their shouts, that they had not expected his sudden exit. Legs and arms flailing, the whole lot fell over in a shouting, yelping heap. Ed Fischer was momentarily frozen in place while attempting to decipher the relationship between these fellows. Then a larger man came running from the building, his arms full of several items that bounced out of his grasp and fell to the ground.
“Help me! Help me, you idiot!” the first, smaller man was shouting, though he was on the top of the pile of wiggling bodies.
Other shouts of “Good heavens, Eagleton!” and “Metatarsal pads!” and “Ouch!” along with some less genteel locutions, peppered the air.
“Henry says, “Ouch!’” came a plaintive cry.
It struck Ed that the first four men he had spotted were attempting to foil a robbery, and, while he adjusted to this new thought, a horse came charging up the street, took a magnificent leap over the mass of struggling figures, and disappeared into the shadows. Ed stepped from his hiding place, levered a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle, and fired into the air.
55. Where Diligence Leads
Thump wondered how a person got out of a barrel. It was troublesome, no matter how he looked at it, and the woman only stood there and said, “Oh, dear!” several times over, once she had gotten past the joy of having her cat safely in her arms again.
It had been puzzling to Thump to discover that he was rescuing a cat, and it took several attempts on the part of the woman to apprise him of this, but no sooner did he understand what was expected of him than he found a barrel that stood at the side of a nearby building and upended it beneath the lowest limb of the tree. Gaining the top of the inverted barrel had itself proved strenuous, not the least because there was hardly enough surface to accommodate him.
As things fell out (or fell in, as it were), the durability of the barrel bottom, too, proved insufficient, and Thump plunged straight through to the ground. The barrel staves were a little more dependable, unfortunately, and h
is broad shoulders were gripped and his arms rendered immovable.
The cat had then seen fit to come down from the tree by way of Thump’s head. Now, with the animal in her arms, the lady exclaimed “Oh, dear!” several times, to which Thump’s only reply was an increasingly agitated “Hmmm.”
“You can come out of there, now,” said the woman. “Such a dear!” she said, and she actually leaned forward and bussed Thump upon the cheek.
Thump was astonished.
The woman, meanwhile, was sensible, once again, of the commotion and toil taking place not so far away. The light and sound from the fire spilled down the side street in swells and waves.
Recovering himself somewhat, Thump said, “Hmmm,” though he could not expect to be heard amid that clamor. He wiggled himself a little (as well as the barrel) and understood quickly that he was in hazard of tipping over. The slope of the street was not hopeful either, and he thought that he might roll some distance before meeting who knew what that would eventually stop him.
As it turned out, who knew what was a brick wall at the bottom of the slope. When he hit it, it was with a sudden and startling crash that shattered the constricting barrel like a great eggshell. Thump never was very sure what had tipped him over, though it may have been the act of stiffening at the moment he realized his peril; he was never very sure, either, whether his increasingly rapid progress as he rolled down the hill was improved or worsened by his inability to see exactly where he was going, or to understand that a brick wall was rising up to meet him with like rapidity.
The noise of the barrel striking the building was extraordinary and his ears were still ringing when he staggered back up the hill.
The lady couldn’t understand where he had gone. “Sir?” she called. “Sir?”
“Good heavens!” he said, coming up the hill and out of the darkness. “There’s another fire!”
“Oh!” she shouted, startled by his voice in the darkness, and the cat leaped from her arms and up the tree.
Thump glanced at the vanishing cat with horror. It was not like him to abandon someone in need, particular a member of the fairer sex, but up the street a roof was catching fire. He saw a woman leading a horse from the smoking building.
“Oh!” said the more immediate lady. “Sir?” she said, pointing up the tree to her newly escaped cat, but Thump was hurrying his stocky frame up the street.
56. Darkness, Fire, and Chains
“A raft of sparks just set fire to the roof of a building back of here,” said Sundry as he came back into the pantry.
“Good heavens, Sundry!” said Mister Walton.
“We had better be quick,” said Dee.
The old man who had provided the flask of rum scurried into the kitchen and peered through the window at the roof of the imperiled building. Sundry was at the front door, looking for someone to spread this new alarm, but everyone was down the street cheering the brigade that had stopped the boardinghouse from catching fire. He could barely see, through the smokey air and the distance, a bucket line disappearing into the church and someone still leaning out the belfry, dumping buckets of water on the roof below.
Dee knew immediately what he was thinking. “I can go,” she said, but Sundry didn’t like to ask a woman to skirt the larger fire at the icehouse, no matter that there were women among those fighting it. “If that fire back there breaks loose, you may want to get everyone out of here,” he said.
“Jacob’s rig is down the street,” said Aunt Beatrice.
Sundry would not have trusted many people with Mister Walton, certainly not many people he had just met, but he had an absolute faith in Miss Pilican. He nodded back and ran out the door.
“It’s the livery,” said the old man as he came in from the kitchen.
“The livery?” said Dee.
“The livery’s on fire,” said the man.
“Good heavens,” said Mister Walton again, and he stood unsteadily from his chair.
“Mrs. Mulligan,” said Dee.
“Yes,” called the lady of the house from the front parlor.
“Could you find someone to help these gentlemen to Mr. Lister’s rig?” asked Dee. Her first steps to the kitchen were brisk; she touched Mister Walton’s shoulder as she passed him, and then her steps were hurried. She was running by the time she reached the backdoor.
Across the alley at the back of the house stood the livery. The roof was ablaze, and the leaves of an overhanging elm were curling with the heat. Racing across a small court of packed earth, Dee threw open the stable doors.
Billows of smoke spilled out. She could see nothing inside, but she heard the shuffling of hooves and the frightened whinny of a horse. A spotted dog padded out from the smokey shadows carrying a puppy by the scruff of its neck. There was a crash, one shadow shifted from another, and a horse wheeled out of the smokey interior. The creature plunged past her and galloped up the street.
“Ma’am,” came a voice behind her. Jacob Lister was hurrying across the backstreet. “I wouldn’t go in there,” he said.
Dee almost said, “Of course not,” when there came a terrified scream from within. Having deposited one puppy in some safe place, the spotted dog reappeared, balked for a moment at the stable door, then bounded into the darkness. Through the general commotion of fire and the shouts of people on Iceboro’s main street, a gunshot rang out, clear and precise. “Now, what is that?” she said, looking up the street. Then she hurried after the dog.
The smoke was not as thick as she feared, but the fire had eaten a hole through the roof, lighting the stables with its orange glow. A dark, wild-eyed horse kicked in its stall, not far from the entrance, and at least one other whinnied near the back of the livery. The dark animal’s bridle was chained to an iron ring, which seemed to Dee more than sufficient. You must be a bad boy, she thought, and he did have a devilish look to him that she imagined was not entirely due to fear. She had to exercise all her own preternatural calm upon the animal before she dared let it loose and open the stable door. The horse seemed less nervous with her hand upon the bridle, but when it shook its head she was nearly lifted from her feet.
Jacob Lister met her at the door, and when the animal dipped its head the old man snatched a handful of the creature’s ear and calmly walked it away. The dog trotted past Dee with two pups in her mouth. Smoke tumbled from the doorway in gouts, and Dee heard a high-pitched whine. The flames on the roof seemed eerily silent; even here, behind the main street, the roar of the burning icehouse drowned everything else.
But where is help? Dee wondered.
There was a low shuddery sound from the horse still left in the livery. Dee made an impatient noise and hurried inside. The increasing smoke glowed with the fire. She was coughing and her eyes watered. The horse at the back of the livery was in a blind panic, crashing against the walls of its stable and kicking as it spun about. Dee felt her sense of direction threatened, she groped forward, her hands out, till she touched a back wall.
“Ma’am!” came the call of the old man from outside. “Ma’am!”
Dee heard a tiny cry at her feet. Blindly, she reached down and touched something soft and shivering. Feeling about in some sort of box, she found three puppies. They were wee, squirming little things, and she gathered them into her arms before stumbling across to the last horse. She heard the stable door burst open and almost stepped out of the way before the horse careened past. The broad side of the animal caught her by the shoulder and drove her against the wall. The puppies whimpered and struggled, but, miraculously, she did not drop them. She staggered back to her feet, then tried dazedly to understand which way was out. Her head reeled from the smoke and the heat and the collision with the wall.
There were shouts outside and she realized that help had come, though perhaps too late if she couldn’t find her way out—and quickly.
“Ma’am?” came a voice, close by—a deep voice. “Ma’am?” it came again, and then a hand that she could not see caught hold of her elbow�
��quite by accident, she was sure—and her unexpected rescuer tugged her through the choking smoke.
57. Everything They Wanted to Know...
When the last horse came charging out of the livery, Jacob Lister called after Dee and started in. He was taken by the elbow, however, and pulled back. The young man who had gone to spread the alarm about this new fire had arrived with several others and more were running from the alley with sloshing buckets.
“There’s someone in there!” Jacob exclaimed, even as a tall, blond man came up, saying, “Stay back.” Olin Bell had shaken a handkerchief from his pocket and was ready to go in himself, the cloth before his face, when a broad-shouldered, stocky fellow with an enormous beard trudged out of the darkness and, without slowing his progress, plunged into the cloud of smoke.
“Quick!” shouted Olin, who still had no idea who was inside. “Form a chain and we’ll go in after them.” He grabbed one wild-eyed fellow near to him and tugged.
“Ho, beaus!” shouted Big Eye Pfelt, and very quickly a line of men had locked arms in a living chain.
While hurrying up the street, Thump had seen the woman disappear into the livery, and the closer he got to the burning building, the more sure he was that he was going in after her. He had no notion of the physics of smoke, but it was perhaps a good thing, in the end, that a man of abbreviated stature made the attempt—in such circumstances proximity to the floor is more conducive to breathing.
Nonetheless, Thump entered a choking, pitch-black cloud that set his lungs into rebellion on the instant. It did not occur to him to put his handkerchief to his face, nor would it have done him much good, perhaps. The heat and fumes were thick and strangling; his eyes burned, though he shut them tight, and he felt dizzy as he entered the noxious cloud. There was a great shout from outside, which signal was his only evidence of stumbling in the opposite and (therefore) right direction.