ANTIOCH had grown indifferent to forest fires, They were of almost annual recurrence, and the town had come to expect them each fall. As the Hon. Jeb Barrows remarked, with cheerful optimism, voicing a popular belief, if it was intended Antioch should go that way it would have gone long ago.
But this summer the drought had been of longer duration than usual. The woods were like tinder, and the inevitable wadding from some careless hunter's gun, or the scattered embers from some camp-fire far up in the northern part of the State, had started a conflagration that was licking up miles of timber and moving steadily south behind a vast curtain of smoke that darkened half the State. It was only when the burned-out settlers from the north began to straggle in that Antioch awoke to a proper sense of its danger.
Quick upon the heels of these fugitives came the news that the half-dozen families at Barrow's Saw Mills had been forced to flee from their homes. The fire had encircled the mills in a single night, and one old man, a trapper and hunter, who lived alone in a cabin in a small clearing on the outskirts of the settlement, had been burned to death in his bunk before he could be warned of his danger or help reach him.
It was then that Antioch sent out its first call for help. It needed fire-engines and hose, and it needed them badly, especially the hose, for the little reservoir from which the town drew its water supply was almost empty.
Antioch forgot the murder of Ryder. It forgot Roger Oakley, the strike, and all lesser affairs. A common danger threatened its homes, perhaps the lives of its citizens.
A score of angry men were stamping up and down the long platform across from the shops, or pushing in and out of the ugly little depot, which had taken on years in apparent age and decay in the two days during which no trains had been running.
They were abusing Holt, the railroad, and every one connected with it. For the thousandth time they demanded to know where the promised relief train was—if it had started from Buckhorn Junction, and, if ithadn'tstarted, the reason of the delay.
The harried assistant-treasurer answered these questions as best he could.
“Are you going to let the town burn without making a move to save it?” demanded an excited citizen.
“You don't think I am any more anxious to see it go than you are?” retorted Holt, angrily.
“Then why don't your damn road do something to prevent it?”
“The road's doing all it can, gentlemen.”
“That's a whole lot, ain't it?”
“We are cut off,” said Holt, helplessly. “Everything's tied up tight.”
“You can wire, can't you?”
“Yes, I can wire; I have wired.”
“Well, where's the relief train, then?”
“It's at the Junction.”
“It's going to do us a lot of good there, ain't it?”
“They'll send it as soon as they can get together a crew.”
“Stir them up again, Holt Tell 'em we got to have that hose and those engines, or the town's gone. It's a matter of life and death.”
Holt turned back into the depot, and the crowd dispersed.
In the ticket-office he found McClintock, who had just come in from up-town. The master mechanic's face was unusually grave.
“I have been investigating the water supply with the city engineer. Things are in awful shape. The mains are about empty, and there isn't pressure enough from the stand-pipe to throw a thirty-five foot stream.”
“I wish Oakley was here,” muttered Holt.
“So do I. Somehow he had a knack at keeping things moving. I don't mean but what you've done your level best, Byron,” he added, kindly.
“They've laid down on me at the Junction,” said the younger man, bitterly.
He stepped to the door, mopping his face with his handkerchief, and stood looking down the track in the direction of Buckhorn.
“They made it so Oakley couldn't stay, and now they wonder why the relief train is hung up. All Durks says is that he can't get a crew. I tell you if Oakley was here he'dhaveto get one.”
“It was a mistake to send the yard engine up to Parker's Run. If we had it here now—”
“How in hell wasIto know we'd need it? I had to try to save those ties, and we thought the wind was shifting into the south,” in fierce justification of his course.
“That's so, all right,” said McClintock. “We did think the danger was past; only we shouldn't have taken any chances.”
At this point they were joined by Dr. Emory.
“Anything new from Buckhorn?” he inquired, anxiously.
“No, it's the same old story. Durks ain't got anybody to send.”
“Damn his indifference!” muttered McClintock.
The doctor, like Holt, fell to mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“Don't he know our danger? Don't he know we can't fight the fire without engines and hose?—that our water supply is about exhausted, and that we'll have to depend on the river?”
Holt nodded wearily.
“It looks as though we were to be left to face this situation as best we can, without help from the outside,” said the doctor, uneasily.
Holt turned to McClintock.
“Isn't there some method of back-firing?”
“It's too late to try that, and, with this wind blowing, it would have been too big a risk.”
He glanced moodily across the town to the north, where the black cloud hung low in the sky. He added:
“I have told my wife to keep the young ones in, no matter what happens. But Lord! they will be about as well off one place as another, when it comes to the pinch.”
“I suppose so,” agreed the doctor. “I am at a loss to know what precautions to take to insure the safety of Mrs. Emory and my daughter.”
It was only four o'clock, but it was already quite dark in the town—a strange half-light that twisted the accustomed shape of things. The air was close, stifling; and the wind, which blew in heavy gusts, was like the breath from a furnace. The sombre twilight carried with it a horrible sense of depression. Every sound in nature was stilled; silence reigned supreme. It was the expectant hush of each living thing.
The three men stepped out on the platform. Holt and the doctor were still mopping their faces with their limp handkerchiefs. McClintock was fanning himself with his straw hat. When they spoke they unconsciously dropped their voices to a whisper.
“Those families in the North End should move out of their homes,” said the doctor. “If they wait until the fire gets here, they will save nothing but what they have on their backs.”
“Yes, and the houses ought to come down,” added McClintock. “There's where the fire will get its first grip on the town, and then Heaven help us!”
Night came, and so imminent seemed the danger that Antioch was roused to something like activity.
A crowd, composed almost exclusively of men, gathered early on the square before the court-house.
They had by common consent given up all hope that the relief train would be sent from Buckhom Junction. The light in the sky told them that they were completely cut off from the outside world. The town and the woods immediately adjacent formed an island in the centre of an unbroken sea of fire. The ragged red line had crept around to the east, west, and south, but the principal danger would be from the north, where the wind drove the flames forward with resistless fury. To the south and east Billup's Fork interposed as a barrier to the progress of the fire, and on the west was a wide area of cultivated fields.
At regular intervals waves of light flooded the square, as the freshening gusts fanned the conflagration or whirled across the town great patches of black smoke. In the intervals of light a number of dark figures could be seen moving about on the roof of the court-house. Like the square below, it was crowded with anxious watchers.
The crowd jostled to and fro on the square, restless and excited, and incapable of physical quiet. Then suddenly a voice was raised and made itself heard above the tramp of feet. “Those houses in the North End must come down!” this voice said.
There was silence, and then a many-tongued murmur. Each man present knew that the residents of the North End had sworn that they would not sacrifice their homes to the public good. If their homes must go, they much preferred to have them burn, for then the insurance companies would have to bear the loss.
“'Those houses must come down!” the voice repeated.
It was McClintock who had spoken.
“Who's going to pull them down?” another voice asked. “They are ready to fight for them.”
“And we ought to be just as ready to fight, if it comes to that,” answered the master mechanic. “It's for the common good.”
The crowd was seized with a noisy agitation. Its pent-up feelings found vent in bitter denunciation of the North End. A man—it was the Hon. Jeb Barrows—had mounted the court-house steps, and was vainly endeavoring to make himself heard. He was counselling delay, but no one listened to him. The houses must be torn down whether their owners wanted it or not. McClintock turned up the street.
“Fall in!” he shouted, and at least a hundred men fell in behind him, marching two abreast. Here and there, as they moved along, a man would forsake the line to disappear into his own gate. When he rejoined his neighbors he invariably carried an axe, pick, or crowbar.
From the square they turned into Main Street, and from Main Street into the north road, and presently the head of the procession halted before a cluster of small frame houses resting in a hollow to their right.
“These must come down first,” said McClintock. “Now we want no noise, men. We'll pass out their stuff as quietly as we can, and take it back to the square.”
He swung open a gate as he spoke. “Williams keeps a team. A couple of you fellows run around to the barn and hook up.”
Just then the front door opened, and Williams himself appeared on the threshold. A dog barked, other doors opened, lights gleamed in a score of windows, and the North End threw off its cloak of silence and darkness.
“Keep quiet, and let me do the talking,” said McClintock over his shoulder. Then to the figure in the doorway:
“We have come to help you move, John. I take it you will be wanting to leave here shortly.”
“The hell you have!” responded Williams, roughly.
“We'll give you a hand!” and the master mechanic pushed through the gate and took a step down the path.
“Hold on!” cried Williams, swinging out an arm. “I got something to say about that!”
There was a sound as of the clicking, of a lock, and he presented the muzzle of a shot-gun.
“Oh, say,” said McClintock, gently; “you had better not try to use that. It will only make matters worse. Your house has got to come down.”
“The hell it has!”
“Yes,” said McClintock, still gently. “We got to save what we can of the town.”
Williams made no answer to this, but McClintock saw him draw the butt of the gun up towards his shoulder.
The men at his back were perfectly still. They filled the street, and, breathing hard, pressed heavily against the picket fence, which bent beneath the weight of their bodies.
“You'd better be reasonable. We are losing precious time,” urged McClintock.
“The hell you are!”
It occurred to McClintock afterwards that there had been no great variety to Williams's remarks.
“In an hour or two this place will be on fire.”
“I've got no kick coming if it burns, but it sha'n't be pulled down.”
“Put up your gun, and we'll give you a lift at getting your stuff out.”
“No, you won't.”
McClintock kept his eyes on the muzzle of the shotgun.
“It ain't the property loss we are thinking of—it's the possible loss of life,” he said, mildly.
“I'll chance it,” retorted Williams, briefly.
“Well, we won't.”
Williams made no reply; he merely fingered the lock of his gun.
“Put down that gun, John!” commanded McClintock, sternly.
At the same moment he reached around and took an axe from the hands of the nearest man.
“Put it down,” he repeated, as he stepped quickly towards Williams.
The listening men pressed heavily against the fence in their feverish anxiety to miss nothing that was said or done. The posts snapped, and they poured precipitously into the yard. At the same moment the gun exploded, and a charge of buckshot rattled harmlessly along the pavement at McClintock's feet.
Then succeeded a sudden pause, deep, breathless, and intense, and then the crowd gave a cry—a cry that was in answer to a hoarse cheer that had reached them from the square.
An instant later the trampled front yard was deserted by all save Williams in the doorway. He still held the smoking gun to his shoulder.
WHEN Roger Oakley appeared on the platform at Buckhom Junction, Durks started violently, while Dan took a quick step forward and placed a warning hand on the old convict's arm. He feared what he might say. Then he said to the operator: “He'll do. Go see if you can get Antioch. Try just once more. If you succeed, tell them the engines and hose will be there within an hour, or they need not look for them. Do you understand?”
“All right, Mr. Oakley.” And Durks moved up the platform with alacrity. He was relieved of one irksome responsibility. He had his own theories as to who the stranger was, but he told himself it was none of his business.
As soon as he was out of hearing, Dan turned to his father, and said, earnestly: “Look here, daddy, I can't allow you to do it. We are neither of us popular. It's bad enough for me to have to go.”
“Why can't you allow it, Dannie?” And his son recognized the same cheerful tone with which he had always met and overruled his objections.
“It will end in your arrest, and we don't want that.”
“It's more than likely I'll be arrested sooner or later, anyhow,” he said, with a suggestion of weariness, as if this were a matter it was a waste of time to consider. “The Lord has set His face against me. It's His wish I should return. I've been stubborn and headstrong and wouldn't see it, but look there,” and he nodded towards the red western sky. “It's a summons. I got to obey, whether I want to or not.”
“It won't be safe. No telling what they will do with you.”
“That ain't the question, Dannie; that ain't at all the question. It's not what they'll do to me,” and he softly patted the hand that rested on his arm.
Dan saw that his clothes hung loosely to his mighty frame. They were torn and stained. He had the appearance of a man who had endured hardship, privation, and toil. His glance was fugitive and anxious. “Where have you been all this while?” he asked. “Not here?”
“No, I have been living in the woods, trying to escape from the country, and the fires wouldn't let me. Wherever I went, they were there ahead of me, driving me back.”
“Why did you kill him? How did it happen?” Dan added. “Or is it all a mistake? Did you do it?”
The smile faded from the old convict's lips.
“It was a sort of accident, and it was sort of carelessness, Dannie,” he explained, with a touch of sullenness. “I hit him—not hard, mind you. I know I shouldn't have done it, but he was in the wrong, and he wouldn't listen to reason. I don't know when I ever seen a man so set in his wickedness.”
“And now you want to go back. Do you know what it means if you are arrested? Have you thought of that?”
Roger Oakley waved the query aside as though it concerned him not at all.
“I want to be with you,” he said, wistfully. “You may not get through alive, and I want to be with you. You'll need me. There's no one you can trust as you can me, for I won't fail you, no matter what the danger is. And there's the girl, Dannie. Have you thought of her?”
Dan set his lips. “My God, I can't think of anything else.”
There was a moment's silence.
“Here,” said Dan, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “I am going to give you what money I have. It isn't much.”
“What for, Dannie?”
“You are sure to be seen and recognized if you stay about here. Your description has been telegraphed all over the State. For that reason I'll take you with me part way. Then I'll slow up, and you can hide again. It's your only chance. I am sorry I can't do more for you. I wish I could; but perhaps we can arrange to meet afterwards.”
His father smiled with the unconscious superiority of the man who firmly believes he is controlled by an intelligence infinitely wise and beyond all human conception. No amount of argument could have convinced him that Providence was not burning millions of feet of standing timber and an occasional town solely for his guidance. In his simple seriousness he saw nothing absurd nor preposterous in the idea. He said:
“I've wanted to escape, Dannie, for your sake, not for mine. But when I seen you to-night I knew the Lord intended we should keep together. He didn't bring us here for nothing. That ain't His way. There's no one to go with you but me, and you can't go alone.”
“I can—I will!” And Dan swore under his breath. He realized that no word of his could move his father. He would carry his point, just as he always had.
Durks came running along the platform from the dépôt.
“It's no use,” shaking his head. “The wire's down. Say, you want to keep your eyes open for the freight. It may be on the siding at Parker's Run, and it may be on the main track.”
Dan made a last appeal to his father.
“Won't you listen to what I say?” sinking his voice to a hoarse whisper. “They'll hang you—do you hear? If ever they lay hands on you they will show no mercy!” It did not occur to him that his father would be returning under circumstances so exceptional that public sentiment might well undergo a radical change in his favor.
Roger Oakley merely smiled as he answered, with gentle composure: “I don't think we need to worry about that. We are in His hands, Dannie,” and he raised his face to the heavens.
Dan groaned.
“Come, then,” he said aloud.
“I'll throw the switch for you!” and the operator ran down the track. He was quite positive he should never see Oakley again, and he felt something akin to enthusiasm at the willing sacrifice of his life which he conceived him to be making.
Father and son stepped to the engine. The old convict mounted heavily to his post, and Dan sprang after him, his hand groping for the throttle lever. There was the hiss of steam, and Joe cried from the darkness:
“All right, come ahead!” And the engine, with its tender and two cars, began its hazardous journey.
As they slipped past him, the operator yelled his good-bye, and Dan pushed open the cab window and waved his hand.
Roger Oakley, on the narrow iron shelf between the engine and the tender, was already throwing coal into the furnace. His face wore a satisfied expression. Apparently he was utterly unmoved by the excitement of the moment, for he bent to his work as if it were the most usual of tasks, and the occasion the most commonplace. He had taken off his coat and vest and had tossed them up on the tender out of his way. Dan, looking over the boiler's end, could see his broad shoulders and the top of his head. He leaned back with his hand on the throttle.
“Father!” he called.
The old convict straightened up instantly.
“Yes, Dannie?”
“You are going with me? You are determined?”
“I thought we settled that, Dannie, before we started,” he said, pleasantly, but there was a shrewd, kindly droop to the corners of his mouth, for he appreciated his victory.
“I want to know, because if I am to slow up for you I'll have to do it soon, or I'll be leaving you in worse shape than I found you.”
To this his father made no direct reply. Instead he asked, “Do you think we'll reach Antioch in time to do them any good?” Dan faced about.
They slid into a straight stretch of road beyond the Junction, and the track shone yellow far ahead, where the engine looked down upon it with its single eye. Each minute their speed increased. A steady jarring and pounding had begun that grew into a dull and ponderous roar as the engine rushed forward. Dan kept a sharp watch for the freight.
As Durks had said, it might be on the siding at Parker's Rim, and it might not. In the latter event, his and his father's troubles would soon be at an end.
He rose from his seat and went to the door of the cab.
“We'll take it easy for the first ten miles or so, then we'll be in the fire, and that will be our time to hit her up.”
Roger Oakley nodded his acquiescence. In what he conceived to be worldly matters he was quite willing to abide by Dan's judgment, for which he had profound respect.
“How fast are we going?” he asked. Dan steadied himself and listened, with a finger on his pulse, until he caught the rhythmic swing of the engine, as it jarred from one rail to another. Then he said: “Twenty-five miles an hour.”
“It ain't very fast, is it, Dannie?”
He was evidently disappointed.
“We'll do twice that presently.”
The old convict looked relieved. They were running now with a strip of forest on one side of the track and cultivated fields on the other, but with each rod they covered they were edging in nearer the flames. At Parker's Rim the road crossed a little stream which doubled back in the direction of Buckhorn Junction. There was nothing after that to stay the progress of the fire, and the rest of their way lay through the blazing pine-woods.
Just before they reached the ten-mile fill they came to the strip of burned timber that had sent Baker back to Buckhorn earlier in the day. Here and there a tree was still blazing, but for the most part the fire had spent its strength.
As they swung past Parker's Run a little farther on, Dan saw the freight, or, rather, what was left of it, on the siding. It had been cutting out four flat-cars loaded with ties, and he understood the difficulty at a glance. On the main track a brick-and-stone culvert spanned the Run, but the siding crossed it on a flimsy wooden bridge. This bridge had probably been burning as the freight backed in for the flatcars, and when it attempted to pull out the weakened structure had collapsed and the engine had gone through into the cut. It rested on its forward end, jammed between the steep banks, with its big drivers in the air. Of the cars there remained only the trucks and iron work. Near by a tool-shed had formerly stood, but that was gone, too. The wheels and gearing of a hand-car in the midst of a heap of ashes marked the spot.
Dan turned to his father. “Are you all right, daddy?” he asked.
“Yes, Dannie.”
“Mind your footing. It will be pretty shaky back there.”
They were still in the burned district, where a change in the wind that afternoon had driven the fire back on itself. It had made a clean sweep of everything inflammable. Luckily the road had been freshly ballasted, and the track was in fair condition to resist the flames. But an occasional tie smouldered, and from these the rushing train thrashed showers of sparks.
Dan kept his eyes fastened on the rails, which showed plainly in the jerky glare of the headlight It was well to be careful while care was possible. By-and-by he would have to throw aside all caution and trust to chance. Now he increased his speed, and the insistent thud of the wheels drowned every other sound, even the far-off roar of the flames. At his back, at intervals, a ruddy glow shot upward into the night, when Roger Oakley threw open the furnace door to pass in coal. Save for this it was still quite dark in the cab, where Dan sat with his hand on the throttle lever and watched the yellow streak that ran along the rails in advance of the engine. Suddenly the wall of light ahead brightened visibly, and its glare filled the cab. They were nearing the fire.
Dan jammed the little window at his elbow open and put out his head. A hot blast roared past him, and the heat of the fire was in his face. He drew the window shut. It was light as day in the cab now.
He leaned across the boiler's end, and, with a hand to his lips, called to his father, “Are you all right?”
The old man drew himself erect and crept nearer.
“What's that you say, Dannie?” he asked. His face was black with coal-dust and grime.
“Are you all right? Can you bear the heat?”
“I am doing very nicely, but this ain't a patch on what it's going to be.”
“Yes, it will be much worse, though this is had enough.”
“But we can stand it. We must think of those poor people at Antioch.”
“We'll stick to the engine as long as the engine sticks to the rails,” said Dan, grimly. “Hadn't you better come into the cab with me? You'll be frightfully exposed when we get into the thick of it.”
“Not yet, Dannie? I'll give you steam, and you drive her as hard as you can.”
He turned away, shovel in hand.
Then, all in a second, and they were in the burning woods, rushing beneath trees that were blazing to their very summits. The track seemed to shake and tremble in the fierce light and fiercer heat. Burning leaves and branches were caught up to be whirled in fiery eddies back down the rails as the train tore along, for Dan was hitting her up.
Tongues of fire struck across at the two men. Smoke and fine white ashes filled their mouths and nostrils. Their bodies seemed to bake. They had been streaming wet with perspiration a moment before.
Off in the forest it was possible to see for miles. Every tree and bush stood forth distinct and separate.
Roger Oakley put down his shovel for an instant to fill a bucket with water from the tank on the tender. He plunged his head and arms in it and splashed the rest over his clothes. Dan turned to him for the last time.
“It isn't far now,” he panted. “Just around the next curve and we'll see the town, if it's still there, off in the valley.”
The old convict did not catch more than the half of what he said, but he smiled and nodded his head.
As they swung around the curve a dead sycamore, which the fire had girdled at the base, crashed across the track. The engine plunged into its top, rolled it over once and tossed it aside. There was the smashing of glass and the ripping of leather as the sycamore's limbs raked the cab, and Roger Oakley uttered a hoarse cry, a cry Dan did not hear, but he turned, spitting dust and cinders from his lips, and saw the old convict still standing, shovel in hand, in the narrow gangway that separated the engine and tender.
He had set the whistle shrieking, and it cut high above the roar of the flames, for, off in the distance, under a canopy of smoke, he saw the lights of Antioch shining among the trees.
Two minutes later and they were running smoothly through the yards, with the brakes on and the hiss of escaping steam. As they slowed up beside the depot, Dan sank down on the seat in the cab, limp and exhausted. He was vaguely conscious that the platform was crowded with people, and that they were yelling at him excitedly and waving their hats, but he heard their cries only indifferently well. His ears were dead to everything except the noise of his engine, which still echoed in his tired brain.
He staggered to his feet, and was about to descend from the cab, when he saw that his father was lying face down on the iron shelf between the engine and tender. He stooped and raised him gently in his arms.
The old convict opened his eyes and looked up into his face, his lips parted as if he were about to speak, but no sound came from them.
CONSTANCE EMORY and her mother, waiting quietly in their own home, heard the cheers when the noise from Dan's shrieking engine reached the crowd of desperate men on the square. Then presently they heard the rattle and clash of the fire-engines as they were dragged through the street, and were aware that the relief train had arrived, but it was not until the doctor came in some time long after midnight that they knew who had been the savior of the town.
“It's all over, dear. The fire is under control,” he said, cheerfully, addressing his wife. “I guess we can go to bed now and feel pretty sure we won't be burned out before morning.”
Constance put down the book she had been trying to read, and rose tiredly and stiffly from her chair beside the table.
“Then the train did come, after all?” she said. “Yes, but not a moment too soon. I tell you we can't be grateful enough. I've been with Oakley and his father; that's what kept me,” he explained.
“Oakley!” Constance cried, in amazement. “You don't mean—”
“Yes. Didn't you know that it was Oakley and his father who brought the relief train? The old man is dead. He was killed on the way. It's a miracle that either of them got through alive. Hadn't you heard?”
Constance put out her hands blindly, for a sudden mist had come before her eyes.
“Father, you don't mean that Mr. Oakley has returned to Antioch—that he is here now?”
“Yes, it seems no one else would come. Oakley was in Chicago when he first heard of the fire, and started immediately for Buckhorn, where he found the relief train. Oddly enough, he found his father there, too.”
“Then there was something to the old man, after all,” said Mrs. Emory, whose sympathies were as generous as they were easily aroused.
“A good deal, I should say. He must have known that he was coming back to arrest and almost certain conviction.”
Constance's glance searched her father's face. She wanted to hear more of Oakley. Her heart was hungering for news of this man who had risked his life to save them. All her lingering tenderness—the unwilling growth of many days—was sweeping away the barriers of her pride. “Mr. Oakley was not hurt?” she questioned, breathlessly, pale to the lips.
“He is pretty badly shaken up, and no wonder, but he will be all right in the morning.”
“Where is he now?” she asked.
Her father turned to her.
“Oakley—You look tired out, Constance. Do go to bed. I'll tell you all about it in the morning.”
“Where is he now, papa?” she questioned, going to his side and clasping her hands about his arm.
“Down at the shop. They carried his father there from the train.”
“Why didn't you have them bring him here?” said Mrs. Emory, quickly. “After this I won't listen to a word against either of them. I would like to show the town just how we feel in the matter.”
“I suggested it, but Oakley wouldn't hear to it. But don't worry about the town. It's gone wild. You should have seen the crowd on the platform when it saw Oakley in the engine-cab. It went stark mad.”
Again Constance's eyes swam with tears. The strike, the murder of Ryder, the fire, had each seemed in turn a part of the tragedy of her life at Antioch, but Oakley's return was wholly glorious.
Her father added, “I shall see Oakley in the morning, and learn if we can be of any service to him.”
A little later, when Constance went to her own room, she drew forward a chair and seated herself by the window. Across the town, on the edge of the “flats,” she saw dimly the long, dark outline of the railroad shop, with its single tall chimney. She thought of Oakley as alone there keeping watch at the side of the grim old murderer, who had so splendidly redeemed himself by this last sacrifice.
Great clouds of black smoke were still rolling over the town, and the woods were still blazing fiercely in the distance. Beyond her window she heard the call of frightened birds, as they fluttered to and fro in the dull red light, and farther off, in the North End, the muffled throbbing of the fire-engines.
If she had had any doubts as to her feeling for Oakley, these doubts were now a thing of the past. She knew that she loved him. She had been petty and vain; she had put the small things of life against the great, and this was her punishment. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that she should see him in the morning; then she could tell him all. But what could she tell him? The time had gone by when she could tell him anything.
It was almost morning when she undressed and threw herself down on her bed. She was disconsolate and miserable, and the future seemed quite barren of hope or happiness. Love had come to her, and she had not known its presence. Yes, she would tell Oakley that she had been little and narrow and utterly unworthy. He had cared for her, and perhaps he would understand. She fell asleep thinking this, and did not waken until her mother called her for breakfast.
“I am waiting for your father. He has gone down to see Mr. Oakley,” Mrs. Emory said when she entered the dining-room. Constance glanced at the table.
“Is he going to bring Mr. Oakley back with him?” she asked, nervously.
“He expected to. I declare, Constance, you look worn out. Didn't you sleep well?”
“No, not very. I wonder if they are coming?”
“You might go look,” said her mother, and Constance hurried into the parlor. She was just in time to see her father enter the gate. He was alone. Constance flew to the front door and threw it open.
“He wouldn't come?” she cried, breathlessly.
“He's gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, a train was made up early this morning, and he has returned to Buckhorn—Why, what's the matter, Constance?”
For Constance, with a little gasp of dismay, had slipped down into a chair, with her hands before her face.
“What is it, dear?” he questioned, anxiously. But she gave him no answer. She was crying softly, unrestrainedly. It was all over. Oakley was gone, and with him went her only hope of happiness. Yet more keen than her sense of pain and personal loss was her regret that he would never understand that she respected and admired him as he deserved.
“I am sorry, Constance, but I didn't know that you especially wanted to see him,” said the doctor, awkwardly, but with a dawning comprehension of what it all meant. She made no answer.
“What is it, dear?” he repeated.
“Oh, nothing. I wanted to tell him about something; that is all. It doesn't matter now.” She glanced up into his face with a sudden doubt. “You didn't see him—you are quite sure he went away without your seeing him—you are not deceiving me?”
“Why, of course, Constance, but he'll come back.”
“No, he won't, papa,” shaking her head sadly. “He's gone, and he will never come back. I know him better than you do.”
And then she fled promptly up-stairs to her own room.
This was the nearest Constance came to betraying her love for Oakley. She was not much given to confidences, and the ideals that had sustained her in her pride now seemed so childish and unworthy that she had no wish to dwell upon them, but whenever Dan's name was mentioned in her presence she looked frightened and guilty and avoided meeting her father's glance.
It seemed, indeed, that. Oakley had taken final leave of Antioch. A new manager appeared and took formal charge of the destinies of the road. Under his direction work was resumed in the shops, for the strike had died a natural death. None of the hands were disposed to question the ten-per-cent cut, and before the winter was over the scale of wages that had been in force before the strike was inaugurated was voluntarily restored. The town had no criticisms to make of Johnson, the new manager, a quiet, competent official; the most any one said was that he was not Oakley. That was enough. For Dan had come into his own.
Early in October there was a flutter of excitement when Turner Joyce and his wife left for the East to be Oakley's guests. When they returned, some weeks later, they had a good deal to say about him that Antioch was frankly curious to hear.
He had taken his father to Burton, where his mother was buried. Afterwards he had joined General Cornish in New York.
While abroad, the financier had effected a combination of interests which grouped a number of roads under one management, and Dan had been made general superintendent of the consolidated lines, with his headquarters in New York City. The Joyces were but vaguely informed as to where these lines were, but they did full justice to their magnitude, as well as to the importance of Oakley's new connection.
The dull monotony of those fall days in Antioch was never forgotten by Constance Emory. She was listless and restless by turns. She had hoped that she might hear from Oakley. She even thought the Joyces might bring her some message, but none had come. Dan had taken her at her word.
She had made no friends, and, with Ryder dead and Oakley gone, she saw. no one, and finally settled down into an apathy that alarmed the doctor. He, after some deliberation, suddenly announced his intention of going East to attend a medical convention.
“Shall you see Mr. Oakley?” Constance asked, with quick interest.
“Probably, if he's in New York when I get there.”
Constance gave him a scared look and dropped her eyes. But when the time drew near for his departure, she followed him about as if there were something on her mind which she wished to tell him.
The day he started, she found courage to ask, “Won't you take me with you, papa?”
“Not this time, dear,” he answered.
She was quiet for a moment, and then said:
“Papa, you are not going to tell him?”
“Tell who, Constance? What?”
“Mr. Oakley.”
“What about Oakley, dear?”
She looked at him from under her long lashes while the color slowly mounted to her cheeks.
“You are not going to tell him what you think you know?”
The doctor smiled.
“I wish you would grant me the possession of ordinary sense, Constance. I am not quite a fool.”
“You are a precious,” she said, kissing him.
“Thank you. What message shall I give Oakley for you?”
“None.”
“None?”
“He won't want to hear from me,” shyly.
“Why not?”
“Because he just won't, papa. Besides, I expect he has forgotten that such a person ever lived.”
“I wouldn't be too sure of that. What was the trouble, Constance? You'd better tell me, or I may say something I shouldn't.”
“Oh, you must not say anything,” in alarm. “You must promise.”
“Constance, what did Oakley say to you that last day he was here at the house?”
Constance's glance wandered meditatively from her father's face to the window and back again, while her color came and went. There was a faraway, wistful look in her eyes, and a sad little smile on her lips. At last she said, softly, “Oh, he said a number of things. I can't remember now all he did say.
“Did Oakley tell you he cared for you?”
Constance hesitated a moment, then, reluctantly:
“Well, yes, he did. And I let him go, thinking I didn't care for him,” miserably, and with a pathetic droop of her lips, from which the smile had fled. “I didn't know, and I have been so unhappy!”
“Oh!”
Constance left the room abruptly.
When he reached New York, the first thing the doctor did was to look up Oakley. He was quick to notice a certain constraint in the young man's manner as they shook hands, but this soon passed off.
“I am awfully glad to see you,” he had said. “I have thought of you again and again, and I have been on the point of writing you a score of times. I haven't forgotten your kindness to me.”
“Nonsense, Oakley. I liked you, and it was a pleasure to me to be able to show my regard,” responded the doctor, with hearty good-will.
“How is Mrs. Emory—and Miss Emory?”
“They are both very well. They were just a little hurt that you ran off without so much as a goodbye.”
Oakley gave him a quick glance.
“She is—Miss Emory is still in Antioch?”
The doctor nodded.
“I didn't know but what she might be in the city with you,” Dan explained, with evident disappointment.
“Aren't we ever going to see you in Antioch again?” inquired the doctor. He put the question with studied indifference. Dan eagerly scanned his face. The doctor fidgeted awkwardly.
“Doyouthink I'd better go back?” he asked, with a perceptible dwelling on the “you.”
The doctor's face became a trifle red. He seemed to weigh the matter carefully; then he said:
“Yes, I think you'd better. Antioch would like mightily to lay hands on you.”
Dan laughed happily. “You don't suppose a fellow could dodge all that, do you? You see, I was going west to Chicago in a day or so, and I had thought to take a run on to Antioch. As a matter of fact, Cornish wants me to keep an eye on the shops. They are doing well, you know, and we don't want any falling off. But, you understand, I don't want to get let in for any fool hysterics,” he added, impatiently.
Notwithstanding the supposed confidence in which telegrams are transmitted, Brown, the day man at Antioch, generally used his own discretion in giving publicity to any facts of local interest that came under his notice. But when he wrote off Dr. Emory's message, announcing that he and Oakley were in Chicago, and would arrive in Antioch the last of the week, he held it for several hours, not quite knowing what to do. Finally he delivered it in person, a sacrifice of official dignity that only the exigencies of the occasion condoned in his eyes. As he handed it to Mrs. Emory, he said:
“It's from the doctor. You needn't be afraid to open it; he's all right. He'll be back Saturday night, and he's bringing Mr. Oakley with him. I came up to see if you had any objection to my letting the town know?”
Mrs. Emory saw no reason why the knowledge of Oakley's return should be withheld, and in less than half an hour Antioch, with bated breath, was discussing the news on street corners and over back fences.
That night the town council met in secret session to consider the weighty matter of his reception, for by common consent it was agreed that the town must take official action. It was suggested that he be given the freedom of the city. This sounded large, and met with instant favor, but when the question arose as to how the freedom of the city was conferred, the president turned, with a slightly embarrassed air, to the member who had made the motion. The member explained, with some reserve, that he believed the most striking feature had to do with the handing over of the city keys to the guest of honor. But, unfortunately, Antioch had no city keys to deliver. The only keys that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be so called, were those of the court-house, and they were lost. Here an appeal was made to the Hon. Jeb Barrows, who was usually called in to straighten out any parliamentary tangles in which the council became involved. That eminent statesman was leaning dreamily against a pillar at the end of the council-chamber. On one of his cards he had already pencilled the brief suggestion: “Feed him, and have out the band.” He handed the card to the president, and the council heaved a sigh of relief. The momentous question of Oakley's official reception was settled.
When Dan and Dr. Emory stepped from No. 7 Saturday night the station platform was crowded with men and boys. The brass-band, which Antioch loved with a love that stifled criticism, perspiring and in dire haste, was turning the street corner half a block distant. Across the tracks at the railroad shops a steam-whistle shrieked an ecstatic welcome.
Dan glanced at the doctor with a slightly puzzled air. “What do you suppose is the matter?” he asked, unsuspiciously.
“Why, man, don't you understand? It'syou!”
There was no need for him to say more, for the crowd had caught sight of Dan, and a hundred voices cried:
“There he is! There's Oakley!”
And in an instant Antioch, giving way to wild enthusiasm, was cheering itself black in the face, while above the sound of cheers and the crash of music, the steam-whistle at the shops shrieked and pealed.
The blood left Oakley's face. He looked down at the crowd and saw Turner Joyce. He saw McClintock and Holt and the men from the shops, who were, if possible, the noisiest of all. He turned helplessly to the doctor.
“Let's get out of this,” he said between his teeth. The crowd and the noise and the excitement recalled that other night when he had ridden into Antioch. As he spoke he swung himself down from the steps of the coach, and the crowd closed about him with a glad shout of welcome.
The doctor followed more slowly. As he gained the platform, the Hon. Jeb Barrows hurried to his side.
“Where is he to go, Doc?” he panted. “To your house, or to the hotel?”
“To my house.”
“All right, then. The crowd's spoiling the whole business. I've got an address of welcome in my pocket that I was to have delivered, and there's to be a supper at the Rink to-night. Don't let him get away from you.”
Meanwhile, Dan had succeeded in extricating himself from the clutches of his friends, and was struggling towards a closed carriage at the end of the platform that he recognized as the Emorys'.
In his haste and the dusk of the dull October twilight, he supposed the figure he saw in the carriage to be the doctor, who had preceded him, and called to the man on the box to drive home.
As he settled himself, he said, reproachfully:
“I hope you hadn't anything to do with this?”
A slim, gloved hand was placed in his own, and a laughing voice said:
“How do you do, Mr. Oakley?”
He glanced up quickly, and found himself face to face with Constance Emory.
There was a moment's silence, and then Dan said, the courage that had brought him all the way to Antioch suddenly deserting him: “It's too bad, isn't it? I had hoped I could slip in and out of town without any one being the wiser.”
“But you can't,” with a little air of triumph. “Antioch is going to entertain you. It's been in a perfect furor of excitement ever since it knew you were coming back.”
“Well, I suppose there is no help for it,” resignedly.
“Where is my father, Mr. Oakley?”
“I guess we left him behind,” with sudden cheerfulness. He leaned forward so that he could look into her face.
“Constance, I have returned because I couldn't stay away any longer. I tried to forget, but it was no use.”
She had withdrawn her hand, but he had found it again, and now his fingers closed over it and held it fast He was feeling a sense of ownership.
“Did you come to meet me?” he asked.
“I came to meet papa.”
“But you knew I was coming, too?”
“Oh no.”
It was too dark for him to see the color that was slowly mounting to her face.
“Constance, I don't believe you,” he cried.
“I was not sure you were coming,” Constance said, weakly.
“You might have known that I'd come back—that I couldn't stay away.”
“Don't you think you have been a long time in making that discovery?”
“Well, yes, but when I saw your father—”
“What did papa say to you?” with keen suspicion in her tones.
“You mustn't blame him, Constance. It was not so much what he said as what he didn't say. I never knew any one to be quite so ostentatious about what was left unsaid.”
Constance freed her hand, and, shrinking into a corner, covered her face. She had a painful realization of the direction those confidences must have taken, between her father, who only desired her happiness, and the candid Oakley, who only desired her love.
“Was there any use in my coming? You must be fair with me now. It's too serious a matter for you not to be.”
“You think I was not fair once?”
“I didn't mean that, but you have changed.”
“For the better, Mr. Oakley?”
“Infinitely,” with blunt simplicity.
“You haven't changed a scrap. You are just as rude as you ever were.”
Dan cast a hurried glance from the window. “Constance, we won't have much more time to ourselves; we are almost home. Won't you tell me what I have come to hear—that you do care for me, and will be my wife? You know that I love you. But you mustn't send me from you a second time without hope.”
“I shouldn't think you would care about me now. I wouldn't care about you if you had been as unworthy as I have been,” her voice faltered. “I might have shown you that I, too, could be brave, but I let the opportunity pass, and now, when everyone is proud—”
“But Idocare. I care a great deal, for I love you just as I have loved you from the very first.”
She put out both her hands.
“If you had only looked back when you left the house that day you told me you cared—”
“What, Constance?”
“I was at the window. I thought you'd surely look back, and then you would have known—”
“My darling!”
The carriage had drawn up to the Emorys' gate. Dan jumped out and gave Constance his hand. Off in the distance they heard the band. Constance paused and rested her hand gently on Oakley's arm.
“Hark! Do you hear?”
“I wish they'd stop their confounded nonsense,” said Dan.
“No, you can't stop them,” delightedly. “Antioch feels a sense of proprietorship. But do you hear the music, Dan?”
“Yes, dear. It's the band.”
“Of course it's the band. But do you know what it isplaying?”
Oakley shook his head dubiously. She gave his arm a little pat and laughed softly.
“It might be difficult to recognize it, but it's the bridal-march from 'Lohengrin.'”
“If they stick to that, I don't care, Constance.”
And side by side they went slowly and silently up the path to the house.