“It’s along here somewhere,” said Burleson, leaning forward in his saddle to scan the swale-grass. A moment later he said, “Look there, Miss Elliott!”
In the tall, blanched grasses a velvety black space marked the ashes of a fire, which had burned in a semi-circle, then westward to the water’s edge.
“You see,” he said, “it was started to sweep the vlaie to the pine timber. The wind changed, and held it until the fire was quenched at the shore.”
“I see,” she said.
He touched his horse, and they pressed forward along the bog’s edge.
“Here,” he pointed out, “they fired the grass again, you see, always counting on the west wind; and here again, and yonder too, and beyond that, Miss Elliott — in a dozen places they set the grass afire. If that wet east wind had not come up, nothing on earth could have saved a thousand acres of white pine — and I’m afraid to say how many deer and partridges and woodcock.… It was a savage bit of business, was it not, Miss Elliott?”
She sat her horse, silent, motionless, pretty head bent, studying the course of the fire in the swale. There was no mistaking the signs; a grass fire had been started, which, had the west wind held, must have become a brush fire, and then the most dreaded scourge of the north, a full-fledged forest-fire in tall timber. After a little while she raised her head and looked full at Burleson, then, without comment, she wheeled her mare eastward across the vlaie towards the pines.
“What do you make of it?” he asked, pushing his horse forward alongside of her mare.
“The signs are perfectly plain,” she said. “Whom do you suspect?”
He waited a moment, then shook his head.
“You suspect nobody?”
“I haven’t been here long enough. I don’t exactly know what to do about this. It is comparatively easy to settle cases of simple trespass or deer-shooting, but, to tell the truth, Miss Elliott, fire scares me. I don’t know how to meet this sort of thing.”
She was silent.
“So,” he added, “I sent for the fire-warden. I don’t know just what the warden’s duties may be.”
“I do,” she said, quietly. Her mare struck solid ground; she sent her forward at a gallop, which broke into a dead run. Burleson came pounding along behind, amused, interested at this new caprice. She drew bridle at the edge of the birches, half turned in her saddle, bidding him follow with a gesture, and rode straight into the covert, now bending to avoid branches, now pushing intrusive limbs aside with both gloved hands.
Out of the low bush pines, heirs of the white birches’ heritage, rabbits hopped away; sometimes a cock grouse, running like a rat, fled, crested head erect; twice twittering woodcock whirred upward, beating wings tangled for a moment in the birches, fluttering like great moths caught in a net.
And now they had waded through the silver-birches which fringed the pines as foam fringes a green sea; and before them towered the tall timber, illuminated by the sun.
In the transparent green shadows they drew bridle; she leaned forward, clearing the thick tendrils of hair from her forehead, and sat stock-still, intent, every exquisite line and contour in full relief against the pines.
At first he thought she was listening, nerves keyed to sense sounds inaudible to him. Then, as he sat, fascinated, scarcely breathing lest the enchantment break, leaving him alone in the forest with the memory of a dream, a faint aromatic odor seemed to grow in the air; not the close scent of the pines, but something less subtle.
“Smoke!” he said, aloud.
She touched her mare forward, riding into the wind, delicate nostrils dilated; and he followed over the soundless cushion of brown needles, down aisles flanked by pillared pines whose crests swam in the upper breezes, filling all the forest with harmony.
And here, deep in the splendid forest, there was fire, — at first nothing but a thin, serpentine trail of ashes through moss and bedded needles; then, scarcely six inches in width, a smouldering, sinuous path from which fine threads of smoke rose straight upward, vanishing in the woodland half-light.
He sprang from his horse and tore away a bed of green moss through which filaments of blue smoke stole; and deep in the forest mould, spreading like veins in an autumn leaf, fire ran underground, its almost invisible vapor curling up through lichens and the brown carpet of pine-needles.
At first, for it was so feeble a fire, scarcely alive, he strove to stamp it out, then to smother it with damp mould. But as he followed its wormlike course, always ahead he saw the thin, blue signals rising through living moss — everywhere the attenuated spirals creeping from the ground underfoot.
“I could summon every man in this town if necessary,” she said; “I am empowered by law to do so; but — I shall not — yet. Where could we find a keeper — the nearest patrol?”
“Please follow me,” he said, mounting his horse and wheeling eastward.
In a few moments they came to a foot-trail, and turned into it at a canter, skirting the Spirit Water, which stretched away between two mountains glittering in the sun.
“How many men can you get?” she called forward.
“I don’t know; there’s a gang of men terracing below the lodge—”
“Call them all; let every man bring a pick and shovel. There is a guard now!”
Burleson pulled up short and shouted, “Murphy!”
The patrol turned around.
“Get the men who are terracing the lodge. Bring picks, shovels, and axes, and meet me here. Run for it!”
The fire-warden’s horse walked up leisurely; the girl had relinquished the bridle and was guiding the mare with the slightest pressure of knee and heel. She sat at ease, head lowered, absently retying the ribbon on the hair at her neck. When it was adjusted to her satisfaction she passed a hat-pin through her sombrero, touched the bright, thick hair above her forehead, straightened out, stretching her legs in the stirrups. Then she drew off her right gauntlet, and very discreetly stifled the daintiest of yawns.
“You evidently don’t believe there is much danger,” said Burleson, with a smile which seemed to relieve the tension he had labored under.
“Yes, there is danger,” she said.
After a silence she added, “I think I hear your men coming.”
He listened in vain; he heard the wind above filtering through the pines; he heard the breathing of their horses, and his own heart-beats, too. Then very far away a sound broke out.
“What wonderful ears you have!” he said — not thinking of their beauty until his eye fell on their lovely contour. And as he gazed the little, clean-cut ear next to him turned pink, and its owner touched her mare forward — apparently in aimless caprice, for she circled and came straight back, meeting his gaze with her pure, fearless gray eyes.
There must have been something not only perfectly inoffensive, but also well-bred, in Burleson’s lean, bronzed face, for her own face softened into an amiable expression, and she wheeled the mare up beside his mount, confidently exposing the small ear again.
The men were coming; there could be no mistake this time. And there came Murphy, too, and Rolfe, with his great, swinging stride, gun on one shoulder, a bundle of axes on the other.
“This way,” said Burleson, briefly; but the fire-warden cut in ahead, cantering forward up the trail, nonchalantly breaking off a twig of aromatic black birch, as she rode, to place between her red lips.
Murphy, arriving in the lead, scanned the haze which hung along the living moss.
“Sure, it’s a foolish fire, sorr,” he muttered, “burrowing like a mole gone mad. Rest aisy, Misther Burleson; we’ll scotch the divil that done this night’s worruk! — bad cess to the dhirrty scut!”
“Never mind that, Murphy. Miss Elliott, are they to dig it out?”
She nodded.
The men, ranged in an uneven line, stood stupidly staring at the long vistas of haze. The slim fire-warden wheeled her mare to face them, speaking very quietly, explaining how deep to dig, how far a margin
might be left in safety, how many men were to begin there, and at what distances apart.
Then she picked ten men and bade them follow her.
Burleson rode in the rear, motioning Rolfe to his stirrup.
“What do you think of it?” he asked, in a low voice.
“I think, sir, that one of those damned Storms did it—”
“I mean, what do you think about the chances? Is it serious?”
“That young lady ahead knows better than I do. I’ve seen two of these here underground fires: one was easy killed; the other cleaned out three thousand acres.”
Burleson nodded. “I think,” he said, “that you had better go back to the lodge and get every spare man. Tell Rudolf to rig up a wagon and bring rations and water for the men. Put in something nice for Miss Elliott — see to that, Rolfe; do you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Rolfe, bring feed for the horses — and see that there are a couple of men to watch the house and stables—” He broke out, bitterly, “It’s a scoundrelly bit of work they’ve done!—” and instantly had himself under control again. “Better go at once, Rolfe, and caution the men to remain quiet under provocation if any trespassers come inside.”
II
By afternoon they had not found the end of the underground fire. The live trail had been followed and the creeping terror exterminated for half a mile; yet, although two ditches had been dug to cut the fire off from farther progress, always ahead the haze hung motionless, stretching away westward through the pines.
Now a third trench was started — far enough forward this time, for there was no blue haze visible beyond the young hemlock growth.
The sweating men, stripped to their undershirts, swung pick and axe and drove home their heavy shovels. Burleson, his gray flannel shirt open at the throat, arms bared to the shoulder, worked steadily among his men; on a knoll above, the fire-warden sat cross-legged on the pine-needles, her straight young back against a tree. On her knees were a plate and a napkin. She ate bits of cold partridge at intervals; at intervals she sipped a glass of claret and regarded Burleson dreamily.
To make certain, she had set a gang of men to clear the woods in a belt behind the third ditch; a young growth of hemlock was being sacrificed, and the forest rang with axe-strokes, the cries of men, the splintering crash of the trees.
“I think,” said Burleson to Rolfe, who had just come up, “that we are ahead of the trouble now. Did you give my peaceful message to Abe Storm?”
“No, sir; he wasn’t to home — damn him!”
The young man looked up quickly. “What’s the trouble now?” he asked.
“There’s plenty more trouble ahead,” said the keeper, in a low voice. “Look at this belt, sir!” and he drew from his pocket a leather belt, unrolled it, and pointed at a name scratched on the buckle. The name was “Abe Storm.”
“Where did that come from?” demanded Burleson.
“The man that fired the vlaie grass dropped it. Barry picked it up on patrol. There’s the evidence, sir. The belt lay on the edge of the burning grass.”
“You mean he dropped it last night, and Barry found it where the grass had been afire?”
“No, sir; that belt was dropped two hours since. The grass was afire again.”
The color left Burleson’s face, then came surging back through the tightening skin of the set jaws.
“Barry put out the blaze, sir. He’s on duty there now with Chase and Connor. God help Abe Storm if they get him over the sights, Mr. Burleson.”
Burleson’s self-command was shaken. He reached out his hand for the belt, flung away his axe, and walked up the slope of the knoll where the fire-warden sat calmly watching him.
For a few moments he stood before her, teeth set, in silent battle with that devil’s own temper which had never been killed in him, which he knew now could never be ripped out and exterminated, which must, must lie chained — chained while he himself stood tireless guard, knowing that chains may break.
After a while he dropped to the ground beside her, like a man dead tired. “Tell me about these people,” he said.
“What people, Mr. Burleson? My own?”
Her sensitive instinct had followed the little drama from her vantage-seat on the knoll; she had seen the patrol display the belt; she had watched the color die out and then flood the young man’s face and neck; and she had read the surface signs of the murderous fury that altered his own visage to a mask set with a pair of blazing eyes. And suddenly, as he dropped to the ground beside her, his question had swept aside formality, leaving them on the very edge of an intimacy which she had accepted, unconsciously, with her low-voiced answer.
“Yes — your own people. Tell what I should know I want to live in peace among them if they’ll let me.”
She gathered her knees in her clasped fingers and looked out into the forest. “Mr. Burleson,” she said, “for every mental, every moral deformity, man is answerable to man. You dwellers in the pleasant places of the world are pitiless in your judgment of the sullen, suspicious, narrow life you find edging forests, clinging to mountain flanks, or stupidly stifling in the heart of some vast plain. I cannot understand the mental cruelty which condemns with contempt human creatures who have had no chance — not one single chance. Are they ignorant? Then bear with them for shame! Are they envious, grasping, narrow? Do they gossip about neighbors, do they slander without mercy? What can you expect from starved minds, human intellects unnourished by all that you find so wholesome? Man’s progress only inspires man; man’s mind alone stimulates man’s mind. Where civilization is, there are many men; where is the greatest culture, the broadest thought, the sweetest toleration, there men are many, teaching one another unconsciously, consciously, always advancing, always uplifting, spite of the shallow tide of sin which flows in the footsteps of all progress—”
She ceased; her delicate, earnest face relaxed, and a smile glimmered for a moment in her eyes, in the pretty curled corners of her parted lips.
“I’m talking very like a school-marm,” she said. “I am one, by-the-way, and I teach the children of these people — my people,” she added, with an exquisite hint of defiance in her smile.
She rested her weight on one arm and leaned towards him a trifle.
“In Fox Cross-roads there is much that is hopeless, much that is sorrowful, Mr. Burleson; there is hunger, bodily hunger; there is sickness unsolaced by spiritual or bodily comfort — not even the comfort of death! Ah, you should see them — once! Once would be enough! And no physician, nobody that knows, I tell you — nobody through the long, dusty, stifling summers — nobody through the lengthening bitterness of the black winters — nobody except myself. Mr. Burleson, old man Storm died craving a taste of broth; and Abe Storm trapped a partridge for him, and Rolfe caught him and Grier jailed him — and confiscated the miserable, half-plucked bird!”
The hand which supported her weight was clinched; she was not looking at the man beside her, but his eyes never left hers.
“You talk angrily of market hunting, and the law forbids it. You say you can respect a poacher who shoots for the love of it, but you have only contempt for the market hunter. And you are right sometimes—” She looked him in the eyes. “Old Santry’s little girl is bedridden. Santry shot and sold a deer — and bought his child a patent bed. She sleeps almost a whole hour now without much pain.”
Burleson, eyes fixed on her, did not stir. The fire-warden leaned forward, picked up the belt, and read the name scratched with a hunting-knife on the brass buckle.
“Before Grier came,” she said, thoughtfully, “there was misery enough here — cold, hunger, disease — oh, plenty of disease always. Their starved lands of sand and rock gave them a little return for heart-breaking labor, but not enough. Their rifles helped them to keep alive; timber was free; they existed. Then suddenly forest, game, vlaie, and lake were taken from them — fenced off, closed to these people whose fathers’ fathers had established free thoroughfare w
here posted warnings and shot-gun patrols now block every trodden trail! What is the sure result? — and Grier was brutal! What could be expected? Why, Mr. Burleson, these people are Americans! — dwarfed mentally, stunted morally, year by year reverting to primal type — yet the fire in their blood set their grandfathers marching on Saratoga! — marching to accomplish the destruction of all kings! And Grier drove down here with a coachman and footman in livery and furs, and summoned the constable from Brier Bridge, and arrested old man Santry at his child’s bedside — the new bed paid for with Grier’s buck.…”
She paused; then, with a long breath, she straightened up and leaned back once more against the tree.
“They are not born criminals,” she said. “See what you can do with them — see what you can do for them, Mr. Burleson. The relative values of a deer and a man have changed since they hanged poachers in England.”
They sat silent for a while, watching the men below.
“Miss Elliott,” he said, impulsively, “may I not know your father?”
She flushed and turned towards him as though unpleasantly startled. That was only instinct, for almost at the same moment she leaned back quietly against the tree.
“I think my father would like to know you,” she said. “He seldom sees men — men like himself.”
“Perhaps you would let me smoke a cigarette, Miss Elliott?” he ventured.
“You were very silly not to ask me before,” she said, unconsciously falling into his commonplace vein of easy deference.
“I wonder,” he went on, lazily, “what that débris is on the land which runs back from the store at Fox Cross-roads. It can’t be that anybody was simple enough to go boring for oil.”
She winced; but the smile remained on her face, and she met his eyes quite calmly.
“That pile of débris,” she said, “is, I fancy, the wreck of the house of Elliott. My father did bore for oil and found it — about a pint, I believe.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1127