The Lookout Man

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHEN FORESTS ARE ABLAZE

  It seemed to Jack that he had been running for an hour, though itcould not have been more than a few minutes at most. Where the trailswung out and around a steep, rocky place, he left it and plungedheedlessly straight down the hill. The hot breath of the fire swept upin gusts, bearing charred flakes that had been leaves. The smokebillowed up to him, then drove back in the tricky air-currents thatplayed impishly around the fire. When he could look down to the knollwhere the hydrometer stood, he saw that it was not yet afire, but thatthe flames were working that way faster even than he had feared.

  Between gasps he shouted her name as Hank Brown had repeated it tohim. He stopped on a ledge and stared wildly, in a sudden panic, lesthe should somehow miss her. He called again, even while reason toldhim that his voice could not carry any distance, with all that crackleand roar. He forced himself to stand there for a minute to get hisbreath and to see just how far the fire had already swept, and howfast it was spreading.

  Even while he stood there, a flaming pine branch came whirling up andfell avidly upon a buck bush beside him. The bush crackled andshriveled, a thin spiral of smoke mounting upward into the cloud thatrolled overhead. Jack stood dazed, watching the yellow tongues golicking up the smaller branches. While he stood looking, the ravagingflames had devoured leaves and twigs and a dead branch or two, andleft the bush a charred, smoking, dead thing that waved its blackenedstubs of branches impotently in the wind. Alone it had stood, alone ithad died the death of fire.

  "Marion Rose!" he shouted abruptly, and began running again. "MarionRose!" But the hot wind whipped the words from his lips, and the deep,sullen roar of the fire drowned his voice. Still calling, he reachedthe road that led to Crystal Lake. The wind was hotter, the roar wasdeeper and louder and seemed to fill all the world. Hot, black ashflakes settled thick around him.

  Then, all at once, he saw her standing in the middle of the road, alittle farther up the hill. She was staring fascinated at the fire,her eyes wide like a child's, her face with the rapt look he had seenwhen she stood looking down from the peak into the heart of theforest. And then, when he saw her, Jack could run no more. His kneesbent under him, as though the bone had turned suddenly to softgristle, and he tottered weakly when he tried to hurry to her.

  "Isn't it wonderful?" she called out when she saw him. Her words camefaintly to him in all that rush and crackle of flame and windtogether. "I never saw anything like it before--did you? It sprung upall at once, and the first I knew it was sweeping along."

  "Don't stand here!" Jack panted hoarsely. "Good Lord, girl! You--"

  "Why, you've been running!" she cried, in a surprised tone. "Were youdown there in it? I thought you had to stay up on top." She had toraise her voice to make him hear her.

  Her absolute ignorance of the danger exasperated him. He took her bythe arm and swung her up the trail. "We've got to beat it!" he yelledin her ear. "Can't you see it's coming this way?"

  "It can't come fast enough to catch us," she answered impatiently."It's away back there down the hill yet. Wait! I want to watch it fora minute."

  A bushy cedar tree ten feet away to their left suddenly burst intoflame and burned viciously, each branch a sheet of fire.

  "Well, what do you know about _that_?" cried Marion Rose. "It jumpedfrom away down there!"

  "Come on!" Pulling her by the arm, Jack began running again up thehill, leaving the road where it swung to the east and taking a shortcut through the open space in the brush. "Run!" he urged, stillpulling at her arm. "We've--got to--swing around it--"

  She ran with him, a little of their peril forcing itself upon herconsciousness and making her glance often over her shoulder. And Jackkept pulling at her arm, helping her to keep her feet when shestumbled, which she did often, because she would not look where shewas going.

  "Don't look--run!" he urged, when another brand fell in a fir nearthem and set the whole tree ablaze. The air around them was hot, likethe breath of a furnace.

  She did not answer him, but she let him lead her whither he would. Andthey came breathless to the rocky outcropping through which the packtrail wormed its way farther down the hill. There he let her stop, forhe knew that they had passed around the upper edge of the fire, andwere safe unless the wind changed. He helped her upon a high,flat-topped boulder that overlooked the balsam thicket and manzanitaslope, and together they faced the debauchery of the flames.

  Even in the few minutes since Jack had stopped on that rocky knoll thefire had swept far. It had crossed the Crystal Lake road and was noweating its way steadily up the timbered hillside beyond. The manzanitaslope where the girl had sat and signalled with her mirror was allcharred and stripped bare of live growth, and the flames were lickingup the edges beyond.

  Jack touched her arm and pointed to the place. "You said it couldn'ttravel very fast," he reminded her. "Look down there where you satfooling with the little mirror."

  Marion looked and turned white. "Oh!" she cried. "It wasn't anywherenear when I started up the road. Oh, do you suppose it has burned downas far as the cabin? Because there's Kate--can't we go and see?"

  "We can't, and when I left the lookout the fire was away up this sideof Toll-Gate, and not spreading down that way. Wind's strong. Comeon--I expect I better beat it back up there. They might phone."

  "But I must hunt Kate up! Why, she was all alone there, taking a napin the hammock! If it should--"

  "It won't," Jack reiterated positively. "I ought to know, oughtn't I?It's my business to watch fires and see how they're acting, isn't it?"He saw her still determined, and tried another argument. "Listen here.It isn't far up to the station. We'll go up there, and I'll phone downto the office to have the firemen stop and see if she's all right.They'll have to come right by there, to get at the fire. And you can'tcross that burning strip now--not on a bet, you couldn't. And if youcould," he added determinedly, "I wouldn't let you try it. Comeon--we'll go up and do that little thing, telephone to the office andhave them look after Kate."

  Marion, to his great relief, yielded to the point of facing up hillwith him and taking a step or two. "But you don't know Kate," shedemurred, turning her face again toward the welter of burning timber."She'll be worried to death about me, and it would be just like her tostart right out to hunt me up. I've simply got to get back and let herknow I'm all right."

  Jack threw back his head and laughed aloud--think how long it had beensince he really had laughed! "What's the matter with phoning thatyou're all right? I guess the wire will stand that extra sentence,maybe--and you can phone in yourself, if you want to convince themab-so-lutely. What?"

  "Well, who'd ever have thought that I might phone a message to Kate!Down there in that hole of a place where we live, one can scarcelybelieve that there are telephones in the world. Let's hurry, then.Kate will be perfectly wild till she hears that I am safe. And then--"she quirked her lips in a little smile, "she'll be wilder stillbecause I'm not there where she supposed I'd be when she waked up."

  Jack replied with something slangy and youthful and altogether likethe old Jack Corey, and led her up the steep trail to the peak. Theytook their time, now that they were beyond the fire zone. They turnedoften to watch the flames while they got their breath; and every timeMarion stopped, she observed tritely that it was a shame suchbeautiful timber must burn, and invariably added, "But isn't itbeautiful?" And to both observations Jack would agree without anyscorn of the triteness. Whereas he would have been furious had a meretourist exclaimed about the beauty of a forest fire, which to him hadalways seemed a terrible thing.

  They found the telephone ringing like mad, and Jack turned red aroundthe ears and stuttered a good deal before he was through answering thequestions of the supervisor, and explaining why he had not answeredthe phone in the last hour.

  "Here, let me talk," commanded Marion suddenly, and took the receiverout of Jack's hand. "I'll tell you where he was," she called crisplyto the accusing voice at the other end.
"I was down the hill, right inthe track of the fire, and I couldn't get back to the cabin at all,and--ah--this gentleman saw me through the telescope and ran downthere and got me out of it. And right where I had been sitting on arock, the fire has burned just everything! And I wish you would getword somehow to Miss Kate Humphrey, at Toll-Gate cabin, that MarionRose is all right and will be home just as soon as she can get downthere without burning her shoes. And--oh, will you please tell herthat I took the bread out of the oven before I left, and that it'sunder the box the cream came in? I put it there to keep the bluejaysaway from it till she woke up, and she may not know where to look....Yes, thank you, I think that will be all.... But listen! This man uphere saved my life, though of course it is a pity he was not here toanswer the phone, every minute of the day. What I want to say is thatit was my fault, and I hope you'll please excuse me for having a lifethat needed to be saved just when you called! I wouldn't for theworld.... Oh, don't mention it! I just didn't want you to blame him,is all. Good-by."

  She turned to Jack with a little frown. "People seem to think, justbecause you work for a living, that your whole mission in life is totake orders on the jump. It was that way at the Martha Washington, andevery other place I ever worked. That man down there seems to thinkthat your life begins and ends right here in this little glass box.What made you apologize for keeping a telephone call waiting while youwent out and saved a perfectly good life? Men are the queerestthings!"

  She went out and climbed upon the rock where Jack had lain watchingher, and set herself down as comfortably as possible, and stared atthe fire while Jack located on the chart the present extent of theblazing area, and sent in his report. When he had finished he did notgo out to her immediately. He stood staring down the hill with hiseyebrows pinched together. Now and then he lifted his handunconsciously and pushed his heavy thatch of hair straight back fromhis forehead, where it began at once to lie wavy as of old. He wasfeeling again the personal sense of tragedy and loss in that fire;cursing again his helplessness to check it or turn it aside from thatbeautiful stretch of timber over toward Genessee.

  Now the shadows had crept down the slope again to where the fire glowbeat them back while it crisped the balsam thicket. Behind him thesun, sinking low over the crest of a far-off ridge, sent flamingbanners across the smoke cloud. The sky above was all curdled withgold and crimson, while the smoke cloud below was a turgid black shotthrough with sparks and tongues of flame.

  Where were the fire-fighters, that they did not check the mad race offlames before they crossed that canyon? It seemed to Jack that neverhad a fire burned with so headlong a rush. Then his eyes went to theblackened manzanita slope where Marion had been idling, and heshivered at what might have happened down there. To comfort himselfwith the sight of her safe and serene, he turned and went out, meaningto go up where she was.

  She was still sitting on the rock, gazing down the mountain, her facesober. Her hat was off, and the wind was blowing the short strands ofher hair around her face. She was leaning back a little, braced by ahand upon the rock. She looked a goddess of the mountain tops, Jackthought. He stood there staring up at her, just as he had stared downat her when she had stood looking into the lake. Did she feel as hefelt about the woods and mountains? he wondered. She seemed ratherfond of staring and staring and saying nothing--and yet, heremembered, when she talked she gave no hint at all of any deep senseof the beauty of her surroundings. When she talked she was just likeother town girls he had known, a bit slangy, more than a bitself-possessed, and frivolous to the point of being flippant. Thattype he knew and could meet fairly on a level. But when she waslooking and saying nothing, she seemed altogether different. Which, hewondered, was the real Marion Rose?

  While he stood gazing, she turned and looked down at him; a littleblankly at first, as though she had just waked from sleep or fromabstraction too deep for instant recovery. Then she smiled and changedher position, putting up both hands to pat and pull her hair intoneatness; and with the movement she ceased to be a brooding goddess ofthe mountain tops, and became again the girl who had perversely takenthe telephone away from him, the girl who had played mock billiardsupon his beloved chart, the girl who said--she said it now, while hewas thinking of her melodious way of saying it.

  "Well, what do you know about that?" she inquired, making a gesturewith one arm toward the fire while with the other she fumbled in herabsurd little vanity bag. "It just burns as if it had a grudge againstthe country, doesn't it? But isn't it perfectly gorgeous, with allthat sunset and everything! It looks like a Bliffen ten-reel picture.He ought to see it--he could get some great pointers for his next bigpicture. Wouldn't that be just dandy on the screen?" She had found herpowder puff and her tiny mirror, and she was dabbing at her nose andher cheeks, which no more needed powder than did the little birds thatchirped around her. Between dabs, she was looking down the mountain,with an occasional wave of her puff toward some particularly"striking effect" of fire and sunset and rolling smoke and tall pinesseen dimly in the background.

  Jack wanted to climb up there and shake her out of her frivolity.Which was strange when you consider that all his life, until threemonths ago, he had lived in the midst of just such unthinkingflippancy, had been a part of it and had considered--as much as heever considered anything--that it was the only life worth living.

  He went around the little rock pinnacle and stood looking somberlydown at the devastation that was being wrought, with no greaterbeginning, probably, than a dropped match or cigarette stub. He wasthinking hazily that so his old life had been swept away in thedevastating effect of a passing whim, a foolish bit of play. The girlirritated him with her chatter--yet three months ago he himself wouldhave considered it brilliant conversation, and would have exertedhimself to keep pace with her.

  "Listen!" she cried suddenly, and Jack turned his head quickly beforehe remembered that the word had come to mean nothing more than asuperfluous ejaculation hung, like a bangle on a bracelet, to thesentences of modern youth. "Listen, it's going to be dark before thatfire burns itself out of the way. How am I going to get home? Whichway would be best to go around it, do you think?"

  "No way at all," Jack replied shortly. "You can't go home."

  "Why, forevermore! I'll have to go somewhere else, then--to some farmhouse where I can phone. Kate would be simply wild if--"

  "Forget the farm house stuff. There aren't any such trimmings to thesemountains. The next farm house is down around Keddie, somewhere.Through the woods, and mountain all the way." He said it rathercrossly, for his nerves were what he called edgy, and the girl stillirritated him.

  "Well, what do you know about that?"

  He had known she would say that. Cross between a peacock and a parrot,she must be, he thought vindictively. It was maddening that she wouldnot--could not, perhaps?--live up to that goddess-on-the-mountain-toplook she had sometimes.

  "I don't know anything about it except that it's hard luck for usboth."

  "Well, what--?" She paused in the act of putting away herfirst-aid-to-the-complexion implements, and looked at him with herwide, purple eyes. "Why, you cross, mean, little stingy boy, you! Youcan have your old peak then. I'll go down and jump in the lake." Shebegan to climb down from the little pinnacle quite as if she meant todo exactly as she said.

  "Aw, come out of it!" Jack tried not to turn and look at heranxiously, but he was a human being.

  "I'm not in it--yet," Marion retorted with dark meaning, and jumped tothe ground.

  "Hey! you wanta break a leg?" He swung toward her.

  "Just to spite you, I wouldn't mind. Only you'd throw me down thereamongst all those rocks and trees and make it my neck. Oh, would youlook at that!"

  "That" happened to be Mount Lassen, belching forth a stupendous columnof ashes and smoke. Up, up, up it went, as though it meant to go onand on into infinity. Jack had seen it too often to be affected as hehad been that first night. He looked at Marion instead. She wasstanding with her hands clinched by her side, and her
breath suckingin. As the black column mounted higher and higher, she lifted herselfto her toes, posing there absolutely unconscious of herself. Jack sawher face grow pale; saw her eyes darken and glow with innerexcitement. She was once more the goddess on the mountain top, gazingdown at one of the wonders she had wrought. It was as though shepulled that black column up and up and up with the tensity of herdesire.

  The column mushroomed suddenly, rolling out in great, puffy billowsbefore it dipped and went streaming away on the wind. The mountainbeneath it spewed sluggish masses of vapor and ashes up into the blackmoil above, until the whole mountain was obscured and only an angry,rolling cloud churning lumpishly there, told what was hidden beneath.

  Marion relaxed, took a long, deep breath and settled again to her trimheels. She was not filled with terror as Jack had been; though thatmay have been because she was not cast up here like a piece ofdriftwood out of her world, nor was she alone. But Jack paid her thetribute of bowing mentally before her splendid courage. She gazed awhile longer, awed ecstasy in her face. Then slowly she swung andstared at that other churning cloud behind her--the crimsoned-tintedcloud of destruction. She flung out both arms impulsively.

  "Oh, you world!" she cried adoringly, unafraid yet worshipping. "I'dlike to be the wind, so I could touch you and kiss you and beat you,and make you love me the way I love you! I'd rather be a tree and growup here and swing my branches in the wind and then burn, than be alittle petty, piffling human being--I would! I'm not afraid of you.You couldn't make me afraid of you. You can storm and rage around allyou like. I only love you for it--you beautiful thing!"

  It made Jack feel as though he had blundered upon a person kneeling inprayer; she was, after all, the goddess she looked, he thoughtwhimsically. At least she had all the makings of a goddess of themountain top. He felt suddenly inferior and gross, and he turned toleave her alone with her beautiful, terrible world. But manlike he dida frightfully human and earthly thing; he knocked his foot against anempty coal-oil can, and stood betrayed in his purpose of flight.

  She turned her head and looked at him like one just waking from atoo-vivid dream. She frowned, and then she smiled with a littleironical twist to her soft curving lips.

  "You heard what I said about piffling human beings?" she asked himsweetly. "That is your catalogue number. Why for goodness' sake! Withyour hair done in that marcelle pompadour, and that grin, you lookexactly like Jack Corey, that Los Angeles boy that all the girls weresimply crazy about, till he turned out to be such a perfectly terriblevillain!"