In the winter it was probably dreary enough; but now the beauty of the swelling knoll where the little whitewashed house stood, with the tiny fields that surrounded it, actually made Nan's heart swell and the tears come into her eyes.
It seemed to her as though she had never seen the grass so green as here, and the thick wood that encircled the little farm was just a hedge of blossoming shrubs with the tall trees shooting skyward in unbroken ranks. A silver spring broke ground at the corner of the paddock fence. A pool had been scooped out for the cattle to drink at; but it was not muddied, and the stream tinkled down over the polished pebbles to the wider, more sluggish stream that meandered away from the farm into the depths of the swamp.
Toby told her, before they reached the hummock, that this stream rose in the winter and flooded all about the farm, so that the latter really was an island. Unless the ice remained firm they sometimes could not drive out with either wagon or sled for days at a time.
“Then you live on an island,” cried Nan.
“Huh! Ye might say so,” complained Toby. “And sometimes we feel like as though we was cast away on one, too.”
But the girl thought it must really be great fun to live on an island.
They went up to the house along the bank of the clear stream. On the side porch, vine-covered to the eaves, sat an old woman rocking in a low chair and another figure in what seemed at a distance, to be a child's wagon of wickerwork, but with no tongue and a high back to it.
“Here's Gran'pop!” cried a shrill voice and the little wagon moved swiftly to the edge of the steps. Nan almost screamed in fear as it pitched downward. But the wheels did not bump over the four steps leading to the ground, for a wide plank had been laid slantingly at that side, and over this the wheels ran smoothly, if rapidly.
“You have a care there, Corson!” shrilled the old lady after the cripple. “Some day you'll break your blessed neck.”
Nan thought he was a little boy, until they met. Then she was surprised to see a young man's head set upon a shriveled child's body! Corson Vanderwiller had a broad brow, a head of beautiful, brown, wavy hair, and a fine mustache. He was probably all of twenty-five years old.
But Nan soon learned that the poor cripple was not grown in mind, more than in body, to that age. His voice was childish, and his speech and manner, too. He was bashful with Nan at first; then chattered like a six-year-old child to her when she had once gained his confidence.
He wheeled himself about in the little express wagon very well indeed, old Toby having rigged brakes with which he moved the wagon and steered it. His arms and hands were quite strong, and when he wished to get back on to the piazza, he seized a rope his grandfather had hung there, and dragged himself, wagon and all, up the inclined plane, or gangplank, as it might be called.
He showed Nan all his treasures, and they included some very childish toys, a number of them showing the mechanical skill of his grandfather's blunt fingers. But among them, too, were treasures from the swamp and woods that were both very wonderful and very beautiful.
Old Toby had made Corson a neatly fitted cabinet in which were specimens of preserved butterflies and moths, most of them of the gay and common varieties; but some, Nan was almost sure, were rare and valuable. There was one moth in particular, with spread wings, on the upper side of the thorax of which was traced in white the semblance of a human skull. Nan was almost sure that this must be the famous death's-head moth she had read about in school; but she was not confident enough to say anything to old Toby Vanderwiller. A few specimens of this rare insect have been found in the swamps of America, although it was originally supposed to be an Old World moth.
Nan did say, however, to Toby that perhaps some of these specimens might be bought by collectors. The pressed flowers were pretty but not particularly valuable. In the museum at the Tillbury High School there was a much finer collection from the Indiana swamps.
“Sho!” said Toby, slowly; “I wouldn't wanter sell the boy's pretties. I brung most on 'em home to him; but he mounted 'em himself.”
Nan suspected that old Mrs. Vanderwiller had much to do with the neat appearance of the cabinet. She was a quiet, almost a speechless, old lady. But she was very kind and she set out her best for Nan's luncheon before the girl from Tillbury returned home.
“We ain't got much here on the island,” the old lady said; “but we do love to have visitors. Don't we, Corson?”
“Nice ones,” admitted the cripple, munching cake.
He had heard something of what Nan suggested to Toby about the moths and other specimens. So when the old lady was absent from the porch he whispered:
“Say, girl!”
“Well?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Is what's in that cabinet wuth as much as a dollar?”
“Oh! I expect so,” said Nan. “More.”
“Will you give me a dollar for 'em?” he asked, eagerly.
“Oh, I couldn't! But perhaps I can write to somebody who would be interested in buying some of your things, and for much more than a dollar.”
Corson looked disappointed. Nan asked, curiously: “Why do you want the dollar?”
“To git Gran'mom a silk dress,” he said promptly. “She's admired to have one all her life, and ain't never got to git it yet.”
“I'm sure that's nice of you,” declared Nan, warmly. “I'll try to sell some of your collection.”
“Well!” he jerked out. “It's got to be pretty soon, or she won't git to wear it much. I heard her tell Gran'pop so.”
This impressed Nan Sherwood as being very pitiful, for she was of a sympathetic nature. And it showed that Corson Vanderwiller, even if he was simple-minded, possessed one of the great human virtues, gratitude.
On this, her first visit to the island in the swamp, Nan said nothing to old Toby Vanderwiller about the line dispute between her uncle and Gedney Raffer, which the old lumberman was supposed to be able to settle if he would.
Mrs. Vanderwiller insisted upon Toby's hitching up an old, broken-kneed pony he owned, and taking her over the corduroy road to Pine Camp, where she arrived before dark. To tell the truth, little Margaret Llewellen was not the only person who thought it odd that Nan should want to go to see the Vanderwillers in the heart of the tamarack swamp. Nan's uncle and aunt and cousins considered their guest a little odd; but they made no open comment when the girl arrived at home after her visit.
Nan was full of the wonders she had seen, commonplace enough to her relatives who had lived all their lives in touch with the beautiful and queer things of Nature as displayed in the Michigan Peninsula. Perhaps none but Tom appreciated her ecstasy over crippled Corson Vanderwiller's collection.
Rafe was inclined to poke good-natured fun at his young cousin for her enthusiasm; but Tom showed an understanding that quite surprised Nan. Despite his simplicity regarding some of the commonest things of the great outside world, he showed that he was very observant of the things about him.
“Oh, Tom was always like that,” scoffed Rafe, with ready laughter at his slow brother. “He'd rather pick up a bug any day and put it through a cross-examination, than smash it under the sole of his boot.”
“I don't think bugs were made to smash,” Tom said stoutly.
“Whew! What in thunder were they made for?” demanded the mocking Rafe.
“I don't think God Almighty made things alive just for us to make 'em dead,” said Tom, clumsily, and blushing a deep red.
Rafe laughed again. Rafe had read much more in a desultory fashion than Tom.
“Tom ought to be one of those Brahmas,” he said, chuckling. “They carry a whisk broom to brush off any seat they may sit on before they sit down, so's they sha'n't crush an ant, or any other crawling thing. They're vegetarians, too, and won't take life in any form.”
“Now, Rafe!” exclaimed his mother, who was never quite sure when her younger son was playing the fool. “You know that Brahmas are hens. I've got some in my flock those big white and black, lazy fowls, with feathers on their legs.”
Nan had to laugh at that as well as Rafe. “Brahma fowl, I guess, came from Brahma, or maybe Brahmaputra, all right. But Rafe means Brahmans. They're a religious people of India,” the girl from Tillbury said.
“And maybe they've got it right,” Tom said stubbornly. “Why should we kill unnecessarily?”
Nan could have hugged him. At any rate, a new feeling for him was born at that moment, and she applauded. Aunt Kate said:
“Tom always was soft-hearted,” and her big son became silent. She might as well have called him “soft-headed”; but Nan began better to appreciate Tom's worth from that time on.
Rafe remained in her eyes still the reckless, heroic figure he had seemed when running over the logs the day of the timber drive. But she began to confide in Tom after this evening of her return from the tamarack swamp.
However, this is somewhat in advance of the story. The pleasant evening passed as usual until bedtime came for Nan. She retired to her east chamber, for the windows of which Tom had made screens to keep out the night-flying insects. No matter how tired she was at night there was one thing Nan Sherwood seldom forgot.
Possibly it was silly in a girl who was almost through her freshman year at high school, but Nan brought out Beautiful Beulah and rocked her, and hugged her, and crooned over her before she went to bed. She was such a comfort!
So Nan, on this evening, went first of all to the closet and reached down to draw out the box in which she had kept the doll hidden ever since coming to Pine Camp.
It was not there!
At first Nan Sherwood could not believe this possible. She dropped on her knees and scrambled over the floor of her closet, reaching under the hanging skirts and frocks, her fear rising, second by second.
The box was not in its place. She arose and looked about her room wildly. Of course, she had not left it anywhere else, that was out of the question.
She could scarcely believe that any member of the family had been in her room, much less would disturb anything that was hers. Not even Aunt Kate came to the east chamber often. Nan had insisted upon taking care of the room, and she swept and dusted and cleaned like the smart little housewife she was. Aunt Kate had been content to let her have her way in this.
Of course Nan never locked her door. But who would touch a thing belonging to her? And her doll! Why, she was sure the family did not even know she had such a possession.
Almost wildly the girl ran out of her chamber and into the sitting room, where the family was still gathered around the evening lamp, Rafe cleaning his shot-gun, Tom reading slowly the local paper, published at the Forks, Aunt Kate mending, and Uncle Henry sitting at the open window with his pipe.
“Oh, it's gone!” gasped Nan, as she burst into the room.
“What's gone?” asked Aunt Kate, and Uncle Henry added: “What's happened to you, honey-bird?”
“My Beulah!” cried Nan, almost sobbing. “My Beulah, she's been taken!”
“My mercy, child!” cried Aunt Kate, jumping up. “Are you crazy?”
“Who's Beulah?” demanded Rafe, looking up from his gun and, Nan thought, showing less surprise than the others.
“My Beulah doll,” said Nan, too troubled now to care whether the family laughed at her or not. “My Beautiful Beulah. Somebody's played a trick.”
“A doll!” shouted Rafe, and burst into a chatter of laughter.
“Mercy me, child!” repeated Aunt Kate. “I didn't know you had a doll.”
“Got a baby rattle, too, Sissy?” chuckled Rafe. “And a ring to cut your teeth on? My, my!”
“Stop that, Rafe!” commanded his father, sternly, while Tom flushed and glared angrily at his brother.
“I didn't know you had a doll, Nannie,” said Mrs. Sherwood, rather weakly. “Where'd you have it?”
“In my closet,” choked Nan. “She's a great, big, beautiful thing! I know somebody must be playing a joke on me.”
“Nobody here, Nannie,” said Uncle Henry, with decision. “You may be sure of that.” But he looked at Rafe sternly. That young man thought it the better part of wisdom to say no more.
In broken sentences the girl told her innocent secret, and why she had kept the doll hidden. Aunt Kate, after, all, seemed to understand.
“My poor dear!” she crooned, patting Nan's hand between her hard palms. “We'll all look for the dolly. Surely it can't have been taken out of the house.”
“And who'd even take it out of her closet?” demanded Tom, almost as stern as his father.
“It surely didn't walk away of itself,” said Aunt Kate.
She took a small hand lamp and went with Nan to the east chamber. They searched diligently, but to no good end, save to assure Nan that Beulah had utterly disappeared.
As far as could be seen the screens at the windows of the bedroom had not been disturbed. But who would come in from outside to steal Nan's doll? Indeed, who would take it out of the closet, anyway? The girl was almost sure that nobody had known she had it. It was strange, very strange indeed.
Big girl that she was, Nan cried herself to sleep that night over the mystery. The loss of Beulah seemed to snap the last bond that held her to the little cottage in Amity street, where she had spent all her happy childhood.
Nan awoke to a new day with the feeling that the loss of her treasured doll must have been a bad dream. But it was not. Another search of her room and the closet assured her that it was a horrid reality.
She might have lost many of her personal possessions without a pang; but not Beautiful Beulah. Nan could not tell her aunt or the rest of the family just how she felt about it. She was sure they would not understand.
The doll had reminded her continually of her home life. Although the stay of her parents in Scotland was much more extended than they or Nan had expected, the doll was a link binding the girl to her old home life which she missed so much.
Her uncle and aunt had tried to make her happy here at Pine Camp. As far as they could do so they had supplied the love and care of Momsey and Papa Sherwood. But Nan was actually ill for her old home and her old home associations.
On this morning, by herself in her bedroom, she cried bitterly before she appeared before the family.
“I have no right to make them feel miserable just because my heart, is, breaking,” she sobbed aloud. “I won't let them see how bad I feel. But if I don't find Beulah, I just know I shall die!”
Could she have run to Momsey for comfort it would have helped, Oh, how much!
“I am a silly,” Nan told herself at last, warmly. “But I cannot help it. Oh, dear! Where can Beulah have gone?”
She bathed her eyes well in the cold spring water brought by Tom that she always found in the jug outside her door in the morning, and removed such traces of tears as she could; and nobody noticed when she went out to breakfast that her eyelids were puffy and her nose a bit red.
The moment Rafe caught sight of her he began to squall, supposedly like an infant, crying:
“Ma-ma! Ma-ma! Tum an' take Too-tums. Waw! Waw! Waw!”
After all her hurt pride and sorrow, Nan would have called up a laugh at this. But Tom, who was drinking at the water bucket, wheeled with the full dipper and threw the contents into Rafe's face. That broke off the teasing cousin's voice for a moment; but Rafe came up, sputtering and mad.
“Say! You big oaf!” he shouted. “What you trying to do?”
“Trying to be funny,” said Tom, sharply. “And you set me the example.”
“Now, boys!” begged Aunt Kate. “Don't quarrel.”
“And, dear me, boys,” gasped Nan, “please don't squabble about me.”
“That big lummox!” continued Rafe, still angry. “Because dad backs him up and says he ought to lick me, he does this. I'm going to defend myself. If he does a thing like that again, I'll fix him.”
Tom laughed in his slow way and lumbered out. Uncle Henry did not hear this, and Nan was worried. She thought Aunt Kate was inclined to side with her youngest boy. Rafe would always be “the baby” to Aunt Kate.
At any rate Nan was very sorry the quarrel had arisen over her. And she was careful to say nothing to fan further the flame of anger between her cousins. Nor did she say anything more about the lost doll. So the family had no idea how heartsore and troubled the girl really was over the mystery.
It hurt her the more because she could talk to nobody about Beulah. There was not a soul in whom she could confide. Had Bess Harley been here at Pine Camp Nan felt that she could not really expect sympathy from her chum at this time; for Bess considered herself quite grown up and her own dolls were relegated to the younger members of her family.
Nan could write to her chum, however, and did. She could write to Momsey, and did that, too; not forgetting to tell her absent parents about old Toby Vanderwiller, and his wife and his grandson, and of their dilemma. If only Momsey's great fortune came true, Nan was sure that Gedney Raffer would be paid off and Toby would no longer have the threat of dispossession held over him.
Nan Sherwood wrote, too, to Mr. Mangel, the principal of the Tillbury High School, and told him about the collection the crippled grandson of the old lumberman had made, mentioning those specimens which had impressed her most. She had some hope that the strange moth might be very valuable.
Nan was so busy writing letters, and helping Aunt Kate preserve some early summer fruit, that she did not go far from the house during the next few days, and so did not see even Margaret Llewellen. The other girl friends she had made at Pine Camp lived too far away for her to visit them often or have them come to call on her.
A long letter from Papa Sherwood about this time served to take Nan's mind off the mystery, in part, at least. It was a nice letter and most joyfully received by the girl; but to her despair it gave promise of no very quick return of her parents from Scotland:
“Those relatives of your mother's whom we have met here, Mr. Andrew Blake's family, for instance, have treated us most kindly. They are, themselves, all well-to-do, and gentlefolk as well. The disposal by Old Hughie Blake, as he was known hereabout, of his estate makes no difference to the other Blakes living near Emberon,” wrote Mr. Sherwood.
“It is some kin at a distance, children of a half sister of Old Hughie, who have made a claim against the estate. Mr. Andrew Blake, who is well versed in the Scotch law, assures us these distant relatives have not the shadow of a chance of winning their suit. He is so sure of this that he has kindly offered to advance certain sums to your mother to tide us over until the case is settled.
“I am sending some money to your Uncle Henry for your use, if any emergency should arise. You must not look for our return, my dear Nancy, too soon. Momsey's health is so much improved by the sea voyage and the wonderfully invigorating air here, that I should be loath to bring her home at once, even if the matter of the legacy were settled. By the way, the sum she will finally receive from Mr. Hugh Blake's estate will be quite as much as the first letter from the lawyer led us to expect. Some of your dearest wishes, my dear, may be realized in time.”
“Oh! I can go to Lakeview Hall with Bess, after all!” cried Nan, aloud, at this point.
Indeed, that possibility quite filled the girl's mind for a while. Nothing else in Papa Sherwood's letter, aside from the good news of Momsey's improved health, so pleased her as this thought. She hastened to write a long letter to Bess Harley, with Lakeview Hall as the text.
Summer seemed to stride out of the forest now, full panoplied. After the frost and snow of her early days at Pine Camp, Nan had not expected such heat. The pools beside the road steamed. The forest was atune from daybreak to midnight with winged denizens, for insect and bird life seemed unquenchable in the Big Woods.
Especially was this true of the tamarack swamp. It was dreadfully hot at noontide on the corduroy road which passed Toby Vanderwiller's little farm; but often Nan Sherwood went that way in the afternoon. Mr. Mangel, the school principal, had written Nan and encouraged her to send a full description of some of Corson Vanderwiller's collection, especially of the wonderful death's-head moth, to a wealthy collector in Chicago. Nan did this at once.
So, one day, a letter came from the man and in it was a check for twenty-five dollars.
“This is a retainer,” the gentleman wrote. “I am much interested in your account of the lame boy's specimens. I want the strangely marked moth in any case, and the check pays for an option on it until I can come and see his specimens personally.”
Nan went that very afternoon to the tamarack swamp to tell the Vanderwillers this news and give Toby the check. She knew poor Corson would be delighted, for now he could purchase the longed-for silk dress for his grandmother.
The day was so hot and the way so long that Nan was glad to sit down when she reached the edge of the sawdust strip, to rest and cool off before attempting this unshaded desert. A cardinal bird—one of the sauciest and most brilliant of his saucy and brilliant race, flitted about her as she sat upon a log.
“You pretty thing!” crooned Nan. “If it were not wicked I'd wish to have you at home in a cage. I wish—”
She stopped, for in following the flight of the cardinal her gaze fastened upon a most surprising thing off at some distance from the sawdust road. A single dead tree, some forty feet in height and almost limbless, stood in solemn grandeur in the midst of the sawdust waste. It had been of no use to the woodcutters and they had allowed the shell of the old forest monarch to stand. Now, from its broken top, Nan espied a thin, faint column of blue haze rising.
It was the queerest thing! It was not mist, of course and she did not see how it could be smoke. There was no fire at the foot of the tree, for she could see the base of the bole plainly. She even got up and ran a little way out into the open in order to see the other side of the dead tree.
The sky was very blue, and the air was perfectly still. Almost Nan was tempted to believe that her eyes played her false. The column was almost the color of the sky itself, and it was thin as a veil.
How could there be a fire in the top of that tall tree?
“There just isn't! I don't believe I see straight!” declared Nan to herself, moving on along the roadway. “But I'll speak to Toby about it.”
Nan, however, did not mention to Toby the haze rising from the dead tree. In the first place, when she reached the little farm on the island in the tamarack swamp, old Toby Vanderwiller was not at home. His wife greeted the girl warmly, and Corson was glad to see her. When Nan spread the check before him and told him what it was for, and what he could do with so much money, the crippled boy was delighted.
It was a secret between them that the grandmother was to have the black silk dress that she had longed for all her married life; only Nan and Corson knew that Nan was commissioned to get the check cashed and buy the dress pattern at the Forks; or send to a catalogue house for it if she could not find a suitable piece of goods at any of the local stores.
Nan lingered, hoping that Toby would come home. It finally grew so late that she dared not wait longer. She had been warned by Aunt Kate not to remain after dusk in the swamp, nor had she any desire to do so.
Moreover there was a black cloud rolling up from the west. That was enough to make the girl hurry, for when it rained in the swamp, sometimes the corduroy road was knee deep in water.
The cloud had increased to such proportions when Nan was half way across the sawdust desert that she began to run. She had forgotten all about the smoking tree.
Not a breath of air was stirring as yet; but there was the promise of wind in that cloud. The still leaves on the bushes, the absence of bird life overhead, the lazy drone of insects, portended a swift change soon. Nan was weather-wise enough to know that.
She panted on, stumbling through the loose sawdust, but stumbling equally in the ruts; for the way was very rough. This road was lonely enough at best; but it seemed more deserted than ever now.
A red fox, his tail depressed, shot past her, and not many yards away. It startled Nan, for it seemed as though something dreadful was about to happen and the fox knew it and was running away from it.
She could not run as fast as the fox; but Nan wished that she could. And she likewise wished with all her heart that she would meet somebody.
That somebody she hoped would be Tom. Tom was drawing logs from some point near, she knew. A man down the river had bought some timber and they had been cut a few weeks before. Tom was drawing them out of the swamp for the man; and he had mentioned only that morning at breakfast that he was working within sight of the sawdust tract and the corduroy road.
Nan felt that she would be safe with big, slow Tom. Even the thought of thunder and lightning would lose some of its terrors if she could only get to Tom.
Suddenly she heard a voice shouting, then the rattle of chain harness. The voice boomed out a stave of an old hymn:
“On Jordan's stormy bank I stand, And cast a wishful eye.”
“It's Tom!” gasped Nan, and ran harder.
She was almost across the open space now. The cooler depths of the forest were just ahead. Beyond, a road crossed the mainly-traveled swamp track at right angles to it, and this was the path Tom followed.
He was now coming from the river, going deeper into the swamp for another log. Nan continued to run, calling to him at the top of her voice.
She came in sight of the young timberman and his outfit. His wagon rattled so that he could not easily hear his cousin calling to him. He sat on the tongue of the wagon, and his big, slow-moving horses jogged along, rattling their chains in a jingle more noisy than harmonious.
The timber cart was a huge, lumbering affair with ordinary cartwheels in front but a huge pair behind with an extended reach between them; and to the axle of the rear pair of wheels the timber to be transported was swung off the ground and fastened with chains. Nan ran after the rumbling cart and finally Tom saw her.
“My mercy me!” gasped the boy, using one of his mother's favorite expressions. “What you doing here, Nan?”
“Chasing you, Tom,” laughed the girl. “Is it going to rain?”
“I reckon. You'll get wet if it does.”
“I don't care so much for that,” confessed Nan. “But I am so afraid of thunder! Oh, there it comes.”
The tempest muttered in the distance. Tom, who had pulled in his horses and stopped, looked worried. “I wish you weren't here, Nan,” he said.
“How gallant you are, I declare, Tommy Sherwood,” cried Nan, laughing again, and then shuddering as the growl of the thunder was repeated.
“Swamp's no place for a girl in a storm,” muttered the boy.
“Well, I am here, Tommy; what are you going to do with me?” she asked him, saucily.
“If you're so scared by thunder you'd better begin by stopping your ears,” he drawled.
Nan laughed. Slow Tom was not often good at repartee. “I'm going to stick by you till it's over, Tom,” she said, hopping up behind him on the wagon-tongue.
“Cracky, Nan! You'll get soaked. It's going to just smoke in a few minutes,” declared the anxious young fellow.
And that reminded Nan again of the smoking tree.
“Oh, Tom! Do you know I believe there is a tree afire over yonder,” she cried, pointing.
“A tree afire?”
“Yes. I saw it smoking.”
“My mercy me!” exclaimed Tom again. “What do you mean?”
Nan told him about the mystery. The fact that a column of smoke arose out of the top of the dead tree seemed to worry Tom. Nan became alarmed.
“Oh, dear, Tom! Do you really think it was afire?”
“I, don't know. If it was afire, it is afire now,” he said. “Show me, Nan.”
He turned the horses out of the beaten track through the brush and brambles, to the edge of the open place which had been heaped with sawdust from the steam-mill.
Just as they broke cover a vivid flash of lightning cleaved the black cloud that had almost reached the zenith by now, and the deep rumble of thunder changed to a sharp chatter; then followed a second flash and a deafening crash.
“Oh, Tom!” gasped Nan, as she clung to him.
“The flash you see'll never hit you, Nan,” drawled Tom, trying to be comforting. “Remember that.”
“It isn't so much the lightning I fear as it is the thunder,” murmured Nan, in the intermission. “It just so-o-ounds as though the whole house was coming down.”
“Ho!” cried Tom. “No house here, Nan.”
“But——-”
The thunder roared again. A light patter on the leaves and ground announced the first drops of the storm.
“Which tree was it you saw smoking?” asked the young fellow.
Nan looked around to find the tall, broken-topped tree. A murmur that had been rising in the distance suddenly grew to a sweeping roar. The trees bent before the blast. Particles of sawdust stung their faces. The horses snorted and sprang ahead. Tom had difficulty in quieting them.
Then the tempest swooped upon them in earnest.
Nan knew she had never seen it rain so hard before. The falling water was like a drop-curtain, swept across the stage of the open tract of sawdust. In a few minutes they were saturated to the skin. Nan could not have been any wetter if she had gone in swimming.
“Oh!” she gasped into Tom's ear. “It is the deluge!”
“Never was, but one rain 't didn't clear up yet,” he returned, with difficulty, for his big body was sheltering Nan in part, and he was facing the blast.
“I know. That's this one,” she agreed. “But, it's awful.”
“Say! Can you point out that tree that smoked?” asked Tom.
“Goodness! It can't be smoking now,” gasped Nan, stifled with rain and laughter. “This storm would put out Vesuvius.”
“Don't know him,” retorted her cousin. “But it'd put most anybody out, I allow. Still, fire isn't so easy to quench. Where's the tree?”
“I can't see it, Tom,” declared Nan, with her eyes tightly closed. She really thought he was too stubborn. Of course, if there had been any fire in that tree-top, this rain would put it out in about ten seconds. So Nan believed.
“Look again, Nan,” urged her cousin. “This is no funning. If there's fire in this swamp.”
“Goodness, gracious!” snapped Nan. “What a fuss-budget you are to be sure, Tom. If there was a fire, this rain would smother it. Oh! Did it ever pelt one so before?”
Fortunately the rain was warm, and she was not much discomforted by being wet. Tom still clung to the idea that she had started in his slow mind.
“Fire's no funning, I tell you,” he growled. “Sometimes it smoulders for days and days, and weeks and weeks; then it bursts out like a hurricane.”
“But the rain”
“This sawdust is mighty hard-packed, and feet deep,” interrupted Tom. “The fire might be deep down.”
“Why, Tom! How ridiculously you talk!” cried the girl. “Didn't I tell you I saw the smoke coming out of the top of a tree? Fire couldn't be deep down in the sawdust and the smoke come out of the tree top.”
“Couldn't, heh?” returned Tom. “Dead tree, wasn't it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Hollow, too, of course?”
“I don't know.”
“Might be hollow clear through its length,” Tom explained seriously. “The butt might be all rotted out. Just a tough shell of a tree standing there, and 'twould be a fine chimney if the fire was smouldering down at its old roots.”
“Oh, Tom! I never thought of such a thing,” gasped Nan.
“And you don't see the tree now?”
“Let me look! Let me look!” cried Nan, conscience-stricken.
In spite of the beating rain and wind she got to her knees, still clinging to her big cousin, and then stood upon the broad tongue of the wagon. The horses stood still with their heads down, bearing the buffeting of the storm with the usual patience of dumb beasts.
A sheer wall of water seemed to separate them from every object out upon the open land. Behind them the bulk of the forest loomed as another barrier. Nan had really never believed that rain could fall so hard. It almost took her breath.
Moreover, what Tom said about the smoking tree began to trouble the girl. She thought of the fire at Pale Lick, of which she had received hints from several people. That awful conflagration, in which she believed two children belonging to her uncle and aunt had lost their lives, had started in the sawdust.
Suddenly she cried aloud and seized Tom more tightly.
“Cracky! Don't choke a fellow!” he coughed.
“Oh, Tom!”
“Well”
“I think I see it.”
“The tree that smoked?” asked her cousin.
“Yes. There!”
For the moment it seemed as though the downpour lightened. Veiled by the still falling water a straight stick rose high in the air ahead of them. Tom chirruped to the horses and made them, though unwilling, go forward.
They dragged the heavy cart unevenly. Through the heavy downpour the trail was hard to follow, and once in a while a rear wheel bumped over a stump, and Nan was glad to drop down upon the tongue again, and cling more tightly than ever to her cousin's collar.
“Sure that's it?” queried Tom, craning his neck to look up into the tall, straight tree.
“I, I'm almost sure,” stammered Nan.
“I, don't, see, any, smoke,” drawled Tom, with his head still raised.
The rain had almost ceased, an intermission which would not be of long duration. Nan saw that her cousin's prophecy had been true; the ground actually smoked after the downpour. The sun-heated sawdust steamed furiously. They seemed to be crossing a heated cauldron. Clouds of steam rose all about the timber cart.
“Why, Tommy!” Nan choked. “It does seem as though there must be fire under this sawdust now.”
Tom brought his own gaze down from the empty tree-top with a jerk. “Hoo!” he shouted, and leaned forward suddenly to flick his off horse with the whiplash. Just then the rear wheel on that side slumped down into what seemed a veritable volcano.
Flame and smoke spurted out around the broad wheel. Nan screamed. The wind suddenly swooped down upon them, and a ball of fire, flaming sawdust was shot into the air and was tossed twenty feet by a puff of wind.
“We're over an oven!” gasped Tom, and laid the whip solidly across the backs of the frightened horses.
They plunged. Another geyser of fire and smoke spurted from the hole into which the rear wheel had slumped. Again and again the big horses flung themselves into the collars in an endeavor to get the wheel out.
“Oh, Tommy!” cried Nan. “We'll be burned up!”
“No you won't,” declared her cousin, leaping down. “Get off and run, Nan.”
“But you—”
“Do as I say!” commanded Tom. “Run!”
“Where, where'll I run to?” gasped the girl, leaping off the tongue, too, and away from the horses' heels.
“To the road. Get toward home!” cried Tom, running around to the rear of the timber cart.
“And leave you here?” cried Nan. “I guess not, Mr. Tom!” she murmured.
But he did not hear that. He had seized his axe and was striding toward the edge of the forest. For a moment Nan feared that Tom was running away as he advised her to do. But that would not be like Tom Sherwood!
At the edge of the forest he laid the axe to the root of a sapling about four inches through at the butt. Three strokes, and the tree was down. In a minute he had lopped off the branches for twenty feet, then removed the top with a single blow.
As he turned, dragging the pole with him, up sprang the fire again from the hollow into which the wheel of the wagon had sunk. It was a smoking furnace down there, and soon the felloe and spokes would be injured by the flames and heat. Sparks flew on the wings of the wind from out of the mouth of the hole. Some of them scattered about the horses and they plunged again, squealing.
It seemed to Nan impossible after the recent cloudburst that the fire could find anything to feed upon. But underneath the packed surface of the sawdust, the heat of summer had been drying out the moisture for weeks. And the fire had been smouldering for a long time. Perhaps for yards and yards around, the interior of the sawdust heap was a glowing furnace.
Nan would not run away and Tom did not see her. As he came plunging back to the stalled wagon, suddenly his foot slumped into the yielding sawdust and he fell upon his face. He cried out with surprise or pain. Nan, horrified, saw the flames and smoke shooting out of the hole into which her cousin had stepped. For the moment the girl felt as if her heart had stopped beating.
“Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!” she shrieked, and sprang toward him.
Tom was struggling to get up. His right leg had gone into the yielding mass up to his hip, and despite his struggles he could not get it out. A long yellow flame shot out of the hole and almost licked his face. It, indeed, scorched his hair on one side of his head.
But Nan did not scream again. She needed her breath, all that she could get, for a more practical purpose. Her cousin waved her back feebly, and tried to tell her to avoid the fire.
Nan rushed in, got behind him, and seized her cousin under the arms. To lift him seemed a giant's task; but nevertheless she tried.