XVII
Soon the now thickly overcast heavens became lighted everywhere ahead by a lurid, blood-red glow. It was evident that the conflagration was great and steadily growing. Granny Wolfe knelt on the lumber flat, turned her seamed and troubled face toward the Omnipotent, and begged that a rain might come and put to rout the element that is at once mankind's best friend and worst enemy. The rest of the party kept grimly silent.
When the little locomotive pushed its one car through the jaws of Devil's Gate and into the basin, those on board were greeted by a spectacle that was nothing less than appalling. Every one of the deep and finely-timbered coves was a raging furnace of dead leaves, dead wood, and resinous pine, which were as dry as tinder. The big mill itself was a raging furnace. It was already too late for any rain except a cloudburst to save anything whatever. The devastation promised to be complete within a very short time.
"This is the end," Wolfe kept saying bitterly to himself. "This is the end of it all."
The locomotive and its flat came to a jarring, grinding halt a hundred yards from the burning mill, and the hunting party alighted. The "furriners" of the mill crew, most of the Singletons, and the women and children of the Wolfes were gathered together before the blazing plant in an awed, helpless mass of humanity. The children were crying with fear; some of the women were sobbing aloud; the men were pale and silent.
Weaver, the foreman, and Nathan Wolfe, the watchman, hurried to meet the party that had just arrived. The watchman was burned about the hands and face and arms; his clothing was scorched and blackened and torn.
"Well?" the general manager said unsteadily.
The foreman looked toward Nathan Wolfe, then turned his face away. Nathan Wolfe gulped, and tears began to sting in the broken blisters of his cheeks.
"Here's how it was, Little Buck," he said in a shaken drawl. "A fire was started up in every cove, it seemed to me, at about the same time. As soon as I seed it, I made a streak fo' the whistle-cord. Somebody slipped up and grabbed me from ahind o' me, and throwed me down hard. This man was half-drunk, but he was as strong as a bear all the same, and I jest couldn't git loose to save my life. Three other men carried bucket atter bucket o' mile-ile upstairs, and poured it out, and 'en set it afire. When the ile it was a-burnin' good, the big man he le' me go.
"I tried awful hard to put the fire out, Little Buck, but I jest couldn't do it. The water I throwed on the burnin' ile didn't do nothin' but spread the fire. Then I made fo' the whistle-cord ag'in, and this time I got to it. I'd done blowed one long blow, and was a-startin' to blow ag'in, when the same man 'at grabbed me afore grabbed me and throwed me out o' the ingyne-room door and kep' me out. Mr. Weaver and them 'ar other furriners they run in then, but they met about twenty men wi' clubs, and they couldn't do nothin'. And purty soon it was too late to even try to save anything. Was the mill inshored, Little Buck?"
"The insurance men were to be out tomorrow," Little Buck Wolfe answered hoarsely. "They'd refused the risk twice before. But you didn't tell me who set the mill and woods on fire, Nathan."
"I hates to tell ye, Little Buck," sadly, "but you're plum' shore to find it out anyhow. It was our own people. They must ha' broke jail. It was pap who grabbed me the twicet, and it was Unc' Brian Wolfe and our brother Oliver and Cat-Eye Mayfield who carried the ile upstairsand set the mill afire. The whole outfit of 'em was a-drinkin' hard."
Young Wolfe straightened under this, the greatest blow of his life, and folded his arms across his deep, broad chest. He stared toward the furnaces that lighted the whole of the basin as bright as noonday and roared as though they were Gehennas filled with lost souls; his hopes were all in those fires and burning, burning to gray ashes. Everything was gone. The Masons were left practically penniless in their old days; it was this, perhaps, that hurt him most—he could have wept over it. There had come to his whitened countenance a look that kept away even those of his friends and kinsmen who loved him best.
Suddenly there appeared from the bush to the eastward the Wolfe clan and Cat-Eye Mayfield. They reeled a little, and they were full of defiance. The Wolfes were now armed with rifles, which they had taken from their homes after their womenfolk and children had gone to the burning mill. They halted a few rods from the awed multitude. Their leader, staggering for the first time under alcoholic influence, shook his great fist toward the man who was losing most, and lifted his Goliath voice in tones of black triumph:
"Who wins now?"
The son did not even appear to be aware that the father had addressed him. There fell a silence that the noise of the nearby hungry flame was scarcely able to dissipate. Now no woman sobbed; no child wept.
"Who wins now?" the giant mountaineer repeated.
At last Little Buck Wolfe turned his head and looked toward his half-drunken father. A great deal of the suffering left his face, and a pity that was akin to the divine shone from his eyes. The old clan chief went pale in spite of himself. Came at that moment an old voice that seemed to hang in the air, like the smoke of incense——
"'And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, a-bein' interp'eted, The place o' a skull.' Saint Mark; fifteen, twenty-two."
Like a John the Baptist out of the wilderness, Grandpap Singleton, the Prophet, stepped before them. Until this moment, his people had not seen him since the time of the mill's starting. His mind was almost completely broken. His snow-white head was bare, and his lean face was strangely haggard. In one hand he carried a dark, round object that the others did not then recognize for the pitiful, tragic thing it was.
He went to a point close beside the young man whom his good old heart had loved so truly and so well. He stretched one of his long, thin arms toward Picketts Dome, which stood out plainly in the fire's light and in bold relief against the red, red heavens. The others looked, and saw on the summit of the peak a great ironwood cross. He had erected it there in the hope that his children and the children of his children might see it when temptation assailed them, and not forget.
"Finish it!" he cried to Old Buck Wolfe, and it was a terrible condemnation. "Finish it! Loose the silver cord, and break the golden bowl—break the pitcher at the fountain, and the wheel at the cistern! Take this good man, yore own flesh and blood, up thar and nail him hand and foot. Spit upon him, and give him vinegar and gall to drink when he axes fo' water. Pierce his side, and cast lots fo' his clothin'. Finish it!"
The demented patriarch held up the dark, round object he had brought. It was a crudely woven crown of thorns. He pressed it down upon the brow of Little Buck Wolfe, the Arnold Mason that was, who stood as dumb and as motionless as a tree; and if the thorns that sent several tiny drops of blood trickling down the pallid face gave pain, there was not the least sign of it.
Save for the Wolfe clan, Cat-Eye Mayfield and Whitney Fair, the multitude groaned at the sight. It was eerie, and it was also somehow holy. Tot Singleton sank to her knees and sobbed aloud. The Wolfe clan, and even Cat-Eye Mayfield, became suddenly sober. Old Buck shuddered. Long forgotten things were gripping his soul and making him ashamed of himself. He dragged a tremulous, grimy hand across his forehead and started slowly, drawn irresistibly, toward the best of his five sons; and his footsteps led him all too near the burning plant.
Young Wolfe removed the chaplet ofthorns from his brow, and put it down at his feet.
"It makes me afraid," he muttered; "it makes me afraid," and he went to meet his father.
Then the great, hot smokestack swooped downward with a mighty swishing roar. It was Little Buck who saw Old Buck's imminent danger first.
He leaped forward, shouting, "Out of the way! Run! Quick!"
His father stopped as though the words had paralyzed him. He appeared to be unaccountably dazed. The great stack loosened a beam from the roof which flew out and struck him across his shoulders, and bore him to the ground on his face.
"He'p me!" he screamed smotheredly. "I'm a-burnin' to death—he'p me, fo' God's sake!"
Every man of those present dashed toward him. There was no time to be lost in looking for levers; if the wheels of fate were to be cheated, bare hands must lift the smoldering beam; human flesh must voluntarily be seared.
"Drag him out, Little Buck, when we raise; all together, boys—go to it!" Alex Singleton bellowed.
They went to it all together, Wolfes and Singletons face to face and shoulder to shoulder, and there rose the sickening scent of scorched flesh. Little Buck Wolfe dragged his father's giant figure to safety. The others dropped the searing beam and ran. A blazing wall fell and hid the spot where Old Buck had lain.
"His pore back!" wept Granny Wolfe. "It's all burnt and blistered! He'p me to take him home, Nathan, honey. Will ye go home, Buck, pore boy?"
And her favorite son answered weakly, "I'll go anywhar ye wants me to go, mother. Fo' because I'm already in hell."
It began to rain then. It was a slow, drizzling rain that could have saved nothing, had it begun hours before.