CHAPTER XXIV
The sheep were taking their midday rest, and Hugh and Alice exchanged certain confidences as they kept watch over them, sitting side by side on a dead log. Always, it seemed to them, they had more to tell each other than time would possibly permit. There was only one thing, it seemed to Hugh, that they didn’t talk of: his real station in life before he came to Smoky Land. He had never told her of his wealth, of the Old Colonel sitting in the club. For once in his life his credentials were his own manhood and his own personality, and he wanted no others. It was the test, and no irrelevant matters must enter in.
And all at once he paused in the middle of a sentence, staring curiously at the ground. The shadow of their figures in the sunlight was no longer to be seen.
“Good Lord, Alice,” he exclaimed. “What’s happened to the sun?”
They both looked up at once. And they found it without difficulty. But it was not that potent orb that the long summer days had taught them to respect. It was a feeble sun, a mere red disk in the strange, gray-blue sky.
“Clouds?” Hugh asked. A queer little stir went over his body. It was as if instinct—not yet dead but only blunted in human beings—had spoken within his being, giving him knowledge that his conscious self had not yet grasped. He was angry with himself for the tone. He had tried to keep all urgency out of it, and yet it seemed so breathless, so charged with dread.
“No,” the girl answered clearly. “It’s smoke.”
They were silent a breath. Both of them were testing the direction of the wind. Both of them knew at the same instant that their whole world depended largely upon this. It was not blowing hard at present, yet there was wind enough to sweep the fire through the tree-tops. And, more than anything, they remembered the parched and inflammable condition of the woods and brush.
Both of them discovered the truth the same instant. “We’re right in its track,” Hugh said.
They waited a long time, hardly speaking. The sky slowly thickened with smoke. They saw it rising, in great billowing clouds, toward Bear Canyon. Listening closely, they heard—at the vague frontier of hearing—the distant crackle of the fire.
All doubt was past. The time for delay was spent. That age-old terror of the wilderness, the forest fire, was sweeping toward them. It was yet distant and they had no inkling of its true origin. And as they listened, the first of the vanguard of fleeing wild creatures—a full-grown buck with magnificent horns and soft eyes—swept past them at top speed.
“You see, Hugh, don’t you?” she said rather quietly. “The whole valley seems to be afire, and we’ve got to run before it. There’s no way to hold it off——”
“But won’t the rangers see the smoke and come?”
“They couldn’t come in time. Besides, the high range hides it from the settlements. Unless a gale starts up—or accidents happen—we can drive the sheep out before it. As yet there’s no need to leave the sheep.”
“Of course not,” Hugh agreed. “We can’t leave the sheep.”
The girl looked up, a wonderful luster in her dark eyes. She was a mountain girl, inured to the terror of the flaming forest, and it was natural that she should retain perfect self-control. But she found herself wondering at this tenderfoot, this man of cities. There is no greater test of the spirit than that slow, remorseless advance of the wall of flame. The sight calls forth dreadful memories from the labyrinthal depths of the germ plasm; it chokes up the heart with cold blood and distills a poison in the nerves, yet he seemed as free from panic as she herself. And he was also the eternal shepherd. He would not leave the sheep.
“We pass the camp on the walk and I’ll get the horses,” she explained quickly. “It will be hard to control the flock if the fire gets much nearer. And I’ll try to take time to snatch a little food to keep us going through the night.”
“And your father’s lease—it’s all lost?”
“No. The grass will come up after the winter rains. If it were just a top fire the underbrush would be even heavier.” She turned to the shepherd dog, who now stood gazing, as if entranced, toward the billowing wall of smoke behind them. “Get ’em up, Shep, old boy. We’ve got to start.”
The dog obeyed; they began to drive the flocks in the direction of the foothills. It was hard work for all three to control them. In the first place they missed the guidance of Spot,—gone some days before to join his people. Besides, they were all uneasy and at the very verge of panic from the increasing sound of the fire behind them.
They reached the camp, and Alice left her place to secure the horses. One of them, her own riding bay, came quickly to her hand, but the pack horses were not to be seen. The only explanation was that while her own animal, true to his trust, had remained for his rider to come, the others—terrorized by the fire—had fled in the direction of the foothills. They were hobbled, surely, but by striking down with both fore feet at once, horses learn to make good time even with hobbles. It was not a great disaster, yet it cut down—to an appreciable degree—their chances of saving the flock. It was more difficult for them to keep the flock closely bunched. And both of them knew, and neither of them spoke of it, that in case of the “accidents” that all mountaineers learn—some time in their lives—to expect, it hurt their own chances of getting out alive. Because it impeded his ease of motion, Hugh left his rifle in camp, depending on the pistol at his belt for any emergencies that might arise.
The long afternoon drew to twilight. The fire slowly gained. It came with a rush up the ridges, a veritable charge that drove the wild beasts before it, but it crept like a snail as it descended. The crackle was no longer just a whisper in the air to be drowned out by the slightest sound. It had swollen until it filled the forest, and it had begun to have a strange, roaring quality that fire fighters learn to dread. It meant but one thing: an all-consuming forest and brush fire in which great sheets of flame spring from tree to tree, wherein no living thing may survive. Already a pronounced heat was in the air. The twilight did not fall soft and cool as usual. Worst of all, the wind had begun to increase.
They didn’t pause to eat. The girl shared with him the little food she had snatched from the tent—a handful of jerked venison and a few pieces of bread—and they ate it on the march. As the dog worked near her, she slipped scraps of the dried meat into his mouth. This was no time to neglect Shep. The success of their flight depended on his strength and skill.
The shadows lengthened, the sun declined and set, and an ominous glare spread over the sky behind them. And the impression began to grow on both of them that the sheep were constantly more hard to control. They kept dipping into the little glens and draws on each side of their valley; they bunched uneasily, then spread out into little scurrying groups. Their sense of unity seemed lost, and more than once only a quick word, a sharp command, a swift dash about the flanks of the flock kept them from a panic. They did not keep the even gait by which sheep usually move. Sometimes they ran and sometimes stopped, milling.
“I don’t understand,” Alice told Hugh, in an instant when they were within speaking range of each other. “Sheep usually know what to do better than their herders. And it looks as if they’d run straight away from the fire.”
It was true. Even the domestic sheep have not lost all their powers of instinct, and every herder knows that this inner knowledge is often more to be relied upon than his own intelligence. The flocks usually know what is best for them. And many a time a wise and experienced herder will come racing his flocks down from the higher levels just in time to escape a blizzard—without a word of forecast from the weather man. He has simply followed the sheep who in turn have obeyed their own instincts. And Hugh, too, found himself wondering why the flocks seemed so reluctant to flee down into the valley. It was true that their course led them to a narrow pass, bound on each side by steep cliffs and impassable walls of brush, but the flock could pass through with ease. It looked to him as if the sheep did not themselves know where they wished to go, but were undeniably uneasy and vacillating. The thought haunted Hugh, returning again and again, and filling him with a vague discomfort and dread.
There would be light to travel by to-night. The glare in the sky behind them ever brightened, and the eyes kept seeking it with an irresistible apprehension. It cast a red glow over the whole forest world. The warm color deepened as the night encroached upon the twilight, and all semblance of reality faded from the land. It was as if it had been dipped in red wine. The great trees were incarnadine, the canyons swam in red vapor, even the sheep had red wool. No longer was this the green and lovely mountain realm they had known. Rather it was an inferno of mythology, an underworld lighted by sulphurous fires.
From time to time, through the long afternoon, they beheld the march of the wild creatures. All manner of the forest people passed them, sometimes in little groups, sometimes one by one. Often the deer sped by, seemingly almost flying in the long tree-lanes; once a coyote ran yapping, his fur singed by the fire, and once a great bull elk stalked soberly past. He seemed to give no thought to the man that walked behind the sheep,—the same form that had terrorized him that summer day beside the spring. Once a porcupine rattled his quills on a nearby hillside, and far away the brush crinkled and popped as a cougar passed through. And now—in the early night—a magnificent grizzly—that ancient and mystic nobleman of the forest—ambled past him at an awkward run.
But he was no longer gray. The red radiance was upon him, too. Hugh watched him, but for once the sheep paid him no heed. The terror behind them left no room for their usual fears. And the bear slowly reduced his pace to a walk and then stopped altogether.
Hugh couldn’t have told why he kept his eyes upon the old bear with such entranced attention. For an instant he forgot his task, the dreadful beauty of the fire-lighted forest, and even Alice, riding back and forth on her horse. He seemed to know that from this shaggy forest creature he was to receive a sign that must not be ignored or missed. “The wild folk show the way,” is one of the oldest maxims of the forest, and Hugh had learned his lesson. He was the shepherd, but also he was the forester. And the simple faith, the humbleness, the sure and inner knowledge of the Indian had come to him at last.
The bear seemed distressed. For a moment he stood quite still, then turned his great head this way and that. And then he turned back, running at top speed, toward the fire.
Even before his senses made verification, Hugh knew beyond all question what the sign betokened. While he took one breath he stood strangely silent and bowed, the lines of his face graven deep, his eyes darkened with shadows. Then he straightened. The eyes cleared and looked out straight. The lips set, the muscles seemed to gather and bunch beneath his brown skin,—as if for some crucial test.
Strength was upon him. The dog circled by, seemed to sense it, and paused for an instant at his feet. Hugh listened. The air was charged full with the roar of the fire behind, but there was a new sound too. And far ahead a gray haze lay over the trees.
He signaled to the girl, then motioned toward it. He watched her face, and a great weight came upon his heart when he read in her expression the fact that she also had discerned the truth.
“We can’t go on,” he said simply. “There’s a fire in front, too.”
CHAPTER XXV
In the glow of the fire, and speaking just loud enough to be heard above its roar, Alice and Hugh made swift appraisal of their situation. It was not easy to be calm, to hold the body in subjugation to the brain in that death valley, between two walls of flame. Yet the calm strength of the wilderness itself seemed to be in their thews.
“Wait, wait,” the girl whispered. “Every second is precious—but give me time to think. I know this country, and I’ve got to remember how the canyons lie.”
Hugh stood silent, and endless hours seemed to go by before the girl had marshalled all her memories of the geographical nature of Smoky Land. In reality, her thoughts came quickly and surely.
“There’s only one way,” she told him at last, “and that’s only a chance. It depends on how far the fire has advanced behind us. We might ride out through the old Dark Canyon, back from the camp at Two Pines.”
“Alice, the fire has already swept it——”
“I don’t think so. The canyon is deep, and the fire hasn’t got down into it. We must run for it—and if we get through to safety we can ride to a ’phone on the old Lost River road. Then we can ’phone to the ranger station, and they may be able to rush men in time to save some of the forest.”
“But that wouldn’t save the flock——”
“No. We can’t think of that, Hugh—any more. We’ve done what we could. We’ll try to get the dog to follow us, and save him——”
“Then don’t wait any longer,” he urged her. “And kill the horse if need be.” His hands, a single instant, groped toward hers. “Good-by——”
“Good-by?” she questioned; and for the first time a sob caught at her throat. “What do you mean? Get up behind me. It’s the only chance——”
Her eyes leaped to his face,—for the sight of a little weakness, a little sign of breaking strength. It was pale, even under the angry glow of the fire, but it seemed graven of white stone. “No,” he answered clearly. “No, Alice—just one of us must go——”
“Then I’ll stay too. I won’t go alone.”
“Listen!” His voice, ringing out in command above the roar of the flames, held her and silenced her. “You’re wasting precious seconds. The only way you can help is to ride—fast as the horse can run—and try to send rangers to make a last stand in the canyon, and maybe help me out with the sheep. The horse couldn’t make good time with both of us; it would just mean that both of us would die, caught between those two fires. One of us has got to stay here and try the best he can to head the sheep back in the direction that we’ve come—to follow you through the canyon. The wind might change—the fire might not be able to work down at once to the canyon floor—and we might all get through.”
“There’s no hope of that. It means death for you—that’s all it means. And there’s plenty of time for both of us if you’d just leave the sheep. Oh, please——”
She looked down in desperate appeal, and she knew her answer when she found a strange little ghost of a smile at his white lips. “But a good herder—doesn’t leave his sheep,” he told her soberly. The tone was perfectly simple, wholly sincere, utterly free from emotionalism or self-pity. Yet it thrilled and moved her to the depths of her being.
She understood. At last she knew this man who stood before her. Perhaps with this knowledge there came an understanding of the whole great race of men,—the breed that has waged war with the powers of the wilderness, who have driven back the beast and plowed the fields, established a protectorate over the wild creatures, and followed the flocks at the dusky edge of the forest. No longer was she the employer and he the servant. She was simply the woman, sick at heart with fear for the man she loved. And he was the man: one of a breed that has ever been willing to die for an ideal. To her, the sheep no longer mattered. She only knew that the wall of fire was creeping toward this man, this tall, straight-eyed companion that held her heart. Yet she knew in the depths of her own heart that she could not turn him from his resolve, that she could not make him break his trust. She had longed to find strength in him, the strength of the mountains and the pines, the basic strength that has made men the rulers of the earth, and now she had found it,—only to have it break her heart.
The captain who stayed with his ship when his children at his hearth wept for his return, the soldier in his trench for an ideal that few women, in their heart of hearts, can really understand, and this shepherd, willing to stand the test of fire to save his flocks were simply three of one breed. Nor did they greatly differ from the whole race of men from which they sprung. They were only obeying the immutable laws of their own beings. They could not break trust with themselves.
They didn’t know why. It was as blind faith as that which will make a mother—a woman useful to the earth—give her life to save her crying infant—not through love, not through a sense of duty, but just from the inexorable command of the soul. Common sense and the voice of reason go unheard: and only instinct, blind and cruel, remains. No human being would blame Hugh for leaving his flock to the terror of the flame. Yet he was a man, one of the Breed, and he had no power to disobey the promptings of his own spirit.
Yet out of her tearful eyes, Alice saw in Hugh’s stand the heaven-sent impulse that has brought the world up from the darkness. She understood old wars, the martyrdom of peoples. Vision had come to her, and throughout the world she saw men’s works and heard women’s tears. She could see the Viking, leaving the white arms of his woman and following western stars; the frontiersman, striking out from his beloved hearth to seek new dominions; the blood-stained paths of armies; the builder, stretching his bridges across roaring rivers and his railroads into uncharted lands. Through the long roll of the ages she saw the shepherd on the rugged hills, alone and wondering and full of thoughts, watching his sheep.
The man he had been—the waster and the egotist—was wholly gone now. Only the shepherd remained. Hugh saw himself as he really was,—just a pawn by which Destiny works out vast and invisible schemes of its own. His life didn’t matter here. His love for this girl beside him pulled at his heart, but the laws within him could not be disobeyed. He was only the shepherd, and here—a milling, panic-stricken band—were his sheep.
“Way round,” he ordered the dog, and the girl helped him keep the control of the animals until he had started to turn them. And just for a moment he took her hands, two little, hard brown hands that were clasped about his heart.
“Good-by, Alice,” he said quietly. “Don’t blame me for staying—and forgive me. All my life has been wasted, and now I’ve got a chance to pay the debt. You don’t know what it means——”
But yet she understood this personal reason too. His manhood was at the test; and even if he should fall, at last, victim to those hungry flames, his life would have been vindicated—beyond all the powers of Destiny to accuse him. He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them again and again.
“Maybe there won’t be time to put my petitions to the queen,” he told her soberly. “But I want you to know what they were to be. I love you, Alice. Never doubt it—never forget it. And it’s my right—to tell you at last.”
“And I love you, Hugh,” she answered clearly. He heard her without exultation, rather only with a great and inward peace, as if this were his ordained fate, his destiny fulfilled. He swung toward her, their lips met. And she rode away toward the advancing wall of flame.
CHAPTER XXVI
Landy Fargo was not of a mind to have his plan go wrong, so he had given particular care to its details. He didn’t want to take even the slightest chance of failure. Not probabilities alone mattered at a time like this: he must consider the remotest possibilities also. And he had not forgotten the pass through the Dark Canyon.
“They may try to drive the sheep out that way,” he had said, “and if they get there before eight o’clock, they may make it. By eight at most, I should think, the fire’ll get into it—and then of course they’re blocked—penned in tight. And we don’t want to forget the ’phone line on the old Lost River road—we don’t want ’em to get to that and send for help until every pass is blocked. If they leave the sheep and try to ride out, they’ll take that way—and that’s why I don’t want you to fire it earlier in a special trip. I want you to puncture the horse and the man. You can do it—I’ve seen you shoot too many times to think you can’t. All you have to do is wait on the trail. The plan’s only half done if that tenderfoot gets out alive—and that’s the surest way to prevent it, and a way there won’t be no doubt about later. And if you want to spare the girl, all right—but keep her there until the pass is closed.”
Nothing could be plainer. José waited on the trail. The fire madness still branded—like fire itself—his face; and he found an evil exultation in watching the slow sweep of the flames behind him. But he didn’t intend to wait too long. He didn’t want to take any chances on being trapped himself. The way of the forest fire is the way of the wind, and no man can always predict accurately where it will go. Besides, he was just at the mouth of the canyon and had a long ride himself to safety.
The Mexican found nothing to his displeasure in the work. The pay was good, and there had been a certain, savage rapture in aiding in the destruction of the forest and its people. But the work before him now promised best of all. It was just straight shooting and clean killing, and he had been well educated for such work as this. He had known the deserts, the hot battles of his own land; his eyes were true and his hand steady. Best of all, the interview with the girl afforded pleasing conjectures. José had not often operated among women. His eyes were lurid with a fire of different source from the red glamor that was over all the land.
It was eight o’clock, and the fire was only a little behind time. Fargo had estimated with really astonishing accuracy. Already the flames played on the ridges at each side, the tall trees caught, flashed, swayed and fell, and the fiery wall was slowly working down into the canyon’s depths. Once there, no passing could be made. He couldn’t wait much longer. Fargo would have to forego the detailed report of how Hugh lurched and fell from the saddle at the rifle report. José had to think of his own safety.
And at that instant he flattened in the trail. The butt-plate of his rifle nestled against his shoulder. Of course it might be just the footfall of the running elk, fleeing in terror before the fire, but this possibility died quickly. Before ever the rider came in sight, he recognized the sound as the hoofbeats of a racing horse. Thus he was to have his pleasure, after all.
No deer, quietly grazing toward the thicket where the puma lay crouched, no blind gopher, venturing forth from his burrow in the icy gaze of a rattler stretched still and lifeless in the moonlight, ever sped so straight and unsuspecting into an ambush as Alice, riding toward the shadowed mouth of the canyon. A little gleam of hope had returned to her, for she saw that the fire advanced but slowly from the ridge above the canyon, and that she could not only ride to safety but that there was some hope, at least, of Hugh driving his flocks through in time. True, a long ride still remained before her, but even the longest chance was worth praying for. And even as the prayers rose, sweet and appealing, from her lips, José saw her speeding horse through his rifle sights.
His finger was perfectly steady as he pressed back against the trigger. Except for one little telltale curl of his lips, his dark face was impassive. The rifle cracked, a little dart of flame that was scarcely distinguishable in the eerie and terrible glow of the fire spat from the muzzle and the horse shot forward with a strange effect of diving into the dead pine needles. There was no need to shoot twice. The noble heart of the animal was pierced through with the wicked lead. He had done his last service—willingly and well—and what need had he of a more eloquent epitaph?
Alice was fairly hurled through the air, and it seemed an incredible thing that human flesh should endure such a fall and yet retain life. She shot down into a heavy clump of brush a few feet in front of the head of the dead horse. No second rider followed. Fargo’s enemy had evidently stayed with his sheep. And for a moment José thought the rest of his own anticipated pleasure would be lacking too: the girl lay very still and curiously huddled in the dry brush.
José sped forward, but in a moment he saw that she was not seriously hurt. The thicket had broken the force of her fall, and although she was unconscious, deep scratches at her throat and arms were her only visible wounds. Once more a flood of dark conjectures returned to him. It would be pleasant, he thought, to have a short chat with her when she wakened,—a grim, exciting little talk at the threshold of the flame. The meeting possessed all kinds of possibilities.
At that instant he saw the pistol that swung at her belt, and he remembered Fargo’s word to take no chances. He took hold of her shoulders: and he liked the touch of her warm flesh in his hands. Very softly he drew her to a young tree, letting her half-recline with her shoulders against its trunk. And at the first glance it would have seemed that he was only trying to make her comfortable. The real truth could only be determined when he drew her hands back around the slender trunk and tied them fast.
Hugh had not heard the shot that had killed the horse. The distance was not far and in the silent summer nights he would have heard the sharp sound with ease, but to-night the forest was full of the roar of the fire. And perhaps his senses had already lost some of their acuteness. It seemed to him that a curious stupor was stealing over him, a sadness and a despair that he could not fight off.
In the first place he was terribly fatigued. As the moments had passed, one by one with a dreadful slowness that only men in the peril of death may know, the chances for his escape seemed ever less. The fire steadily encroached upon him, the heat increased, the red glow over the wilderness brightened until the world no longer seemed that into which he was born. And now the sheep had begun to “balk,” refusing to be driven. It was a development that a more experienced herder might have expected and dreaded, and it always means that the spirit of the flock is broken. The animals refused to move, standing like forms in stone with legs braced and heads down, and it was a sign that the dread spirit of the wilderness was about to claim its own. When the sheep despair of saving themselves, the herder knows that the end is very near indeed.
They would run forward a little way as the dog barked at their heels, but would halt at once. Hugh could not urge them on at all. The fire swept ever nearer. There seemed no use of further effort now: he couldn’t save the flock. And the crudest thing of all was that the shot had gone unheard,—and he could not even turn his strength to the aid of Alice.
And just for an instant Hugh shook off his weight of despair to wonder at the dog. The animal was standing motionless—almost like a bird dog at the point—one foot lifted, ears alert, staring away into the thickets whither Alice had gone. He seemed to have forgotten the sheep. The firelight bathed him, finding a curious reflection in the garnet glare in his eyes. He swung about to eye the sheep and as quickly returned to his rapt contemplation of the forest in front of the flock. And to Hugh it might have seemed that a grim and savage battle was being waged in the dim depths of the faithful creature’s soul. He seemed to be torn between two great impulses. One of them was his ancient trust,—to stay and guard the sheep. The other would lead him into the forest ahead.
He was growling now, with a savagery that Hugh had never seen in him before. He turned to his master with a look that was to haunt the man even in those wild moments following, in which he would make his last effort to drive the flock on to safety,—an expression of wistful and unutterable appeal. And then he raced away—just as on a summer day he had sped when one of the lambs had been menaced by Running Feet—into the deep thickets beyond.
A strange and tragic blankness came into Hugh’s face. The lips seemed to waver, the firm set of the jaw weakened,—just for an instant. Despair was upon him. Seemingly the forest had beaten him down and broken him at last. Blow after blow, disaster upon disaster, until the spirit broke beneath them.
“So you’ve deserted me, old Shep,” he said simply. “So you’re fleeing to save yourself.”
For was he not taking the same path that Alice had taken, heading for the deep canyon where perhaps the fire had not yet crept and the pass was open? The blow went deep to Hugh. He was down at last to the elements of life—with death, a stern reality, even now stretching dreadful arms toward him—and it is not good in such moments to have an ancient and beloved trust betrayed. The fight was lost: no honor remained except to go down with the ship.
But Hugh hadn’t understood. A pin-prick through the air, Shep had heard the crack of José’s rifle. This in itself would not have been enough to call him from his post of duty with the flocks. But through the air came even clearer messages: mysterious vibrations such as only the lower creatures of the earth—closer to the heart of things than their proud masters—could receive. No man may tell in what language those messages were sent, by what impulse they came tingling through the still forest to him, and by what law within himself he made his answer. But it was always the way of the great shepherd dog to hasten to the aid of those of his flock who were in peril. Perhaps in his heart of hearts this slim, tall mistress of his—one whose word must never be disobeyed—was also just one of his wards, in whose service his life was merely a pawn. But in the secret ways of the wilderness he knew of her distress, and had sped to give help.
CHAPTER XXVII
While José Mertos had been riding, Landy Fargo had been busy, too. It wasn’t enough just to order things done, and later to learn of their accomplishment. In the hand, more than the brain, lies the gratification of vengeance; and Fargo didn’t intend to miss this satisfaction. Riding swiftly, he had lighted the circle of fires in front of the sheep flock.
Exultation was upon him when he saw the red, greedy flames creeping into the trees. It was his long-awaited moment. By no conceivable circumstances could the flock and its shepherd escape. He had prepared for every emergency, blockaded every pass.
The blows that Hugh had dealt him were paid for at last. His dog-pack been laid low, in a still, ugly, curious heap—but there would be other silent ones before this night was done. And there would be less of beauty in these still forms than in those of his slain pets. Everything was square at last. His brutal lips leered and his eyes burned.
When his last fire was ignited, he stopped for a moment of exultation. The red terror was sweeping into the trees, faster than he had ever dreamed. Even now his enemies were enclosed in a prison of fiery walls from which they never could escape. “I’ve got you,” he cried in triumph. “You thought you could trample on me and get away with it, but I’ve shown you.” He lifted his powerful hand. “I’ve crushed you—like that.”
His brutal fingers closed. His fiery eyes glowed with self-worship. “With this hand,” he exulted, in half-insane rapture. “This is the hand that crushed you—no one else’s. You thought you could stand against it, but it’s smashed you at last.”
He waited a little while more, fascinated by the lightning advance of the fire. The brush and trees were particularly heavy in this glade—and the red tongues swept forward with startling rapidity. He hadn’t much time to linger further. It was always best to play safe—and take no chances on this demon of fire. Yet he stayed, thrilled and fascinated by his handiwork.
All at once a crackle behind him caused him to glance quickly over his shoulder. He saw to his terror that a little arm of the fire had spread here, too. He whirled his horse, then with a savage oath lashed down with his quirt.
Yet plenty of time remained, by riding swiftly, to save himself. There was no need for fear. He would go straight to his home, and from its windows he could watch the progress of the fire. Yet the crackle behind him got on his nerves, and he struck his horse again.
And this second blow was a serious mistake. The horse was already running at a swift pace down the narrow trail. There is a limit to the speed a horse can run with safety in the Idaho mountains, and that limit was already reached. Beyond that point comes only panic and blind frenzy. The horse leaped forward to the wildest pace it knew.
The sweat leaped from Fargo’s dark brow, and slowly his self-mastery came back to him. There was no need of this wild flight. He had plenty of time. He started to check the horse.
But at that instant the sinister forces of the wild—always lurking in ambush for such as Fargo—saw their chance. And the forest-demons do not need mighty weapons. Their agents are the Little Things, the covert trivialities that few men notice. In this case the resistless force that overwhelmed him was only a furry, half-blind creature of the dust—a rodent such as ordinarily Fargo would press his heel upon and crush.
The rodent had been enlarging his winter home, and he had dug away some of the earth from under the trail. The horse was running too wildly to be careful, his hoof broke through the little shelf of dirt, and he tripped and hurled headlong.
To the rodent, the disaster meant further hours of toil—digging tirelessly till his rooms were clean again. Through some incredible chance—perhaps because the great god Manitou had saved him for further work—the horse was uninjured, and soon regained his feet. But Fargo was hurled to the earth as the horse fell, and he only knew a great darkness that transcended and smothered him.
As if they were trying to restore his nervous forces for some great ordeal, the forest gods granted him a full hour of peaceful, restful slumber. But it was doubtful mercy. At the end of that hour they laughed—a sound not greatly different from the crackle of a great fire, and began to call him into consciousness.
First they brought evil dreams, and Fargo started and murmured in his sleep, tossing a little on his bed of pine needles. His look of triumph was gone from his brutal features now. Instead, there was a curious drawing and strain—and for all the sudden heat of the early night, cold drops on his brow. Still his eyes wouldn’t open. He fought hard, and his quivering body rustled the dead leaves.
Curious streaks of light slashed before his eyeballs now—all colors, and they filled him with horror. But slowly remembrance returned to him. He had set the fire, and now it was time to ride away. He mustn’t get caught in his own trap. He rallied all the powers of his spirit and fought for consciousness.
And the forest-demons decided to grant it to him. It was not in accord with their plans that he should lie insensible throughout all the entertainment they had provided for him. So they not only permitted him to waken, but as a final favor they bestowed upon him a super-consciousness—a fine keying of every nerve and an added sensitiveness to his flesh. It was their final beneficence, and they gave it freely. Fargo opened his starting eyes.
His first thought was of flight, and therefore of his horse. But the animal, knowing of old the fear of fire, had sped on down the trail. Fargo was alone. He had to run for it, then, before it was too late. . . . He sat up, shuddering.
It occurred to him then that the fall had bewildered him as to his directions. At the first glance he beheld the fire, but it was in front of him instead of behind where he had left it. It was curious to be so turned around—and he looked over his shoulder, intending to mark the best trail to safety. And then Landy Fargo’s throat convulsed and his breath came out in a scream.
The fiery wall was behind him, too, leaping toward him with a deadly and terrible ferocity. The trees flamed like great torches, swayed and fell; the brush was a wall of fire. The conflagration had made a great half circle, just as he had planned, converging to the left of him.
But to his right the fiery barrier was nearest of all. He didn’t have to turn to know that. Its crackle was just in his ear. And then he leaped to his feet with a wild, blasphemous cry.
A little peninsula of fire had crept out from the burning brush to his right, and had paused—in grim speculation—beside something hard and strong that it found resting in the pine needles. It was Fargo’s hand—the hand in which he had exulted such a little time before, and which had set the flame. As if in gratitude, the red tongue licked at its brown skin.
Full knowledge came to Fargo then. All about him raged the fire, pressing ever closer. He was helpless—powerless to aid himself as the Shropshire lamb that he had thrown, so many weeks ago, among his hounds. His own handiwork had turned against him, and the vengeance of the wilderness was complete.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The face before her seemed only part of her dark dreams as Alice wakened from her unconsciousness. She hoped in an instant to waken into the world of reality she had always known, not this abyss with its red glare and creeping tongues of flame. She couldn’t understand why her arms felt so numb and why they didn’t answer the command of her nerves.
No moment of Alice’s life had ever been more fearful, more fraught with despair, than that in which her full consciousness returned to her. The fire’s glow was more lurid and terrifying than ever. The flame itself was nearer: already it had crept almost to the bottom of the glen. The way was still open, but a few moments would see it closed. Yet all these things were apart from her and infinitely remote. The only reality in her life, now that her dreams were done, was the intent face of her captor.
The red radiance was upon it, and all semblance of humanity seemed gone. Rather it seemed the face of some dreadful inmate of an Inferno. The glow was in his dark eyes too: they were too close to hers for her to mistake this fact. They smouldered, like the dead trees where the flame had swept. Her throat convulsed, and a high, far-carrying, piercing scream shuddered out above the roar of the fire.
But it was cut off as from beneath a blade. She had summoned all the strength of her will and spirit. After all, it was only wasted strength to scream. There were none to hear her in these fire-swept forests. When the pack of hounds had been about her, she had still retained a dim and flickering hope that Hugh would come to her aid, but she had no such hope now. She knew that stern, unbending man who watched the sheep. All her tears, all her prayers could never move him: he would linger, still at his post, till the insatiable tongues of fire licked at his breast. She was only the woman, but Hugh watched the sheep! Besides, the thing to do was to show this dark man before her that even if this was the moment of her death she would show no fear.
And this was no easy thing. Only because she was of the mountains, because the spirit that dwells in the forest, the rugged places, the wilderness primeval dwelt also in her, was she able to effect it at all.
“Don’t be afraid,” the man was saying. “You ain’t goin’ to be hurt. I’m goin’ to let you go in plenty of time. In the first place, I’ve got to get out the same way myself.”
She could believe this, at least. She saw that he kept close watch of the fire as it crept down toward the floor of the canyon.
Her eyes looked straight into his. Yet the fear crept at her heart—for if indeed he intended to let her go, none but the most dreadful reason occurred to her why she should be tied. And in truth, the spirit of Landy Fargo was far distant now. José knew perfectly that before she could reach a ’phone and men be secured to battle at this last stand against the fire, the hungry little tongues would have already encompassed the canyon. He only knew that he was shivering strangely, and that he was not yet ready to let her go. “Untie my hands,” she commanded.
“I will—quick enough. I just thought we’d talk a while first. It ain’t often I get to talk to a pretty girl like you——”
There in the path of the advancing flame the words were ineffably strange and terrible to the girl,—like some demoniac torture of a shadow world. “And you’re not going to have a chance now,” she told him clearly. “If you want to leave me here in the track of the fire, it’s in your power to do it—but it won’t make me bend to you, or plead with you, or treat you any different than I’ve ever treated you.”
The man stiffened. She saw the gleam of his teeth through his thin lips. “Don’t be too sure. I was told to let you go, but nothin’s goin’ to happen to me if I don’t. Your position ain’t what it used to be, Alice, and maybe I’m a different kind of man than you’re used to. I come from a different race. And maybe you’d better try to be a little more polite.”
“And I can only tell you this,” she went on as if she had not heard. “If you do leave me here, if you put one indignity to me above what you’ve already put by tying me up and making me listen to your talk, you’ll pay for it. I’m just as sure of that as I am that I’m alive.”
And the man might have listened in vain for any waver, any note of doubt in her tone. She spoke as if in infallible prophecy.
“Who’s goin’ to do it?” the man demanded. “Who’s goin’ to find out?”
“It will be found out. You’ll pay, whether I live or not. It seems—almost as if vengeance is coming to you soon—right away. I can’t tell you how I know. I only tell you to let me go.
“You’re from the desert, José, and not the mountains, and maybe the desert lets debts go unpaid,” she went on, in a clear free tone of inspiration. “But I know these forests. It seems to me I know them now—better than I ever did before. One more insult—and I tell you you’ll pay.”
But José laughed. Just a little, harsh note of scorn fell from his lips. He was a mountain man, but in his passion and frenzy his wilderness knowledge had deserted him. He did not heed her words. And he bent to press his lips to hers.
And at that instant the thicket behind them parted as a terrible avenger leaped through. It was not his first leap in vengeance. Many times, in his years of service, he had sprung with magnificent ferocity at the throat of a wolf that menaced the white sheep in his care. But never before had he sprung so true, with such shattering power and dreadful fury. White fangs that could carry a lamb as tenderly as the arms of a shepherdess flashed in the firelight.
Just as she had said, the wilderness had spoken. One of the guardians of the flock had swept to her aid. Because he was in defense of his own, obeying the laws of his inmost being, his blow had the might not only of the wilderness but of that high power that has waged war with the wilderness, tamed its passions, subjugated its peoples. No man may say if love for this tall shepherdess was a factor too. Without its impulse, the lesser creatures do not often unleash their fury against man. Shep the dog had come because it was his duty and his destiny, and he sprang like a tigress through the air.
The great shepherd dog struck like a wolf, aiming straight for the throat. José had no time to ward off the blow. His back was to the thicket. He didn’t even see it come. Gleaming fangs tore once at his dark flesh.
Then for an instant there was only the red fire and the red sky, with the wilderness bathed in their glow between. The dog had dropped silently to his four feet and was crouched, waiting to see if another blow were needed. The girl’s face seemed bereft of all life. And that which had been a man was only a huddled heap in the pine needles, dark and strange and impotent as the dust. Red fire and red sky, and now a scarlet fountain, playing softly with ever decreasing impulses, on the parched earth.
Shep had avenged the insult. And in paying the debt the pair of hands that might have untied the bonds that held Alice in the path of the fire were stilled.