SURMISES
Mrs. Horton and Jessie walked around the house to the bed-room window,
and stood surveying the pile of rubbish beneath it, wondering greatly
why a fire should break out in that place.
"The only way I can account for it is that a spark from the chimney
must have fallen into this pile and set it afire," Mrs. Horton
observed, turning bits of the pile in question over with the toe of
her shoe. "I'm not blaming you, Leslie, but it is true that young
folks can't be too careful with fire. I wouldn't be a mite surprised
now, if you just filled the kitchen stove full of dry stuff and set it
off when you built a fire to get your supper."
"Leslie always does use lots of kindling," interposed Jessie, who was,
it must be admitted, more careful about small savings than I.
"You may depend on it, then, that that's just how it happened," Mrs.
Horton went on, while I remained silent. "You see, when you start a
fire like that, lots of live sparks are carried up the chimney, and
it's just a mercy that there are not more houses burned than there are
on account of it. I say it for your good, Leslie, when I say that I
hope this will be a lesson to you; you've had a narrow escape. My! but
it makes me shudder to think of it!"
As she stopped talking to shudder more effectively I ventured to make
an observation that, it was strange, had occurred to neither Jessie
nor herself:
"It took that spark--supposing the fire was started by a spark from
the chimney--a long time to fall, didn't it? It was after twelve when
the fire broke out, and I had supper at six, besides--" but there I
checked myself. The more I thought the matter over, the more desirable
it seemed that I should keep to myself the dreadful certainty that I
felt in regard to the origin of the fire. If people liked to believe
that it was caused by some negligence or carelessness of mine, it
would only complicate matters, beside robbing them of a comfortable
conviction, for me to tell that I had had no fire on the previous
evening. Yet such was the case. I had made my solitary meal of bread
and milk.
"What a girl you are, to be sure!" Mrs. Horton exclaimed, in genuine
admiration, as we turned back into the house. "Now, why couldn't
Jessie or I think of that! Twelve hours to fall! No, it would have
been six hours falling, wouldn't it? You said the fire broke out about
midnight. Well, you can think of more things and keep more quiet about
them than any ten men that ever I saw. When I think of anything I like
to tell of it, and I expect likely that's the reason that I never
think of real smart things; I don't hold on to them long enough; I
pick them before they're ripe."
Jessie went to the stove and lifted a lid to peep inquiringly into the
fire-box. "I'm not so sure that the fire wasn't started as Mrs. Horton
says," she declared. "This stove holds fire for a long time, you
know, Leslie. A gust of wind might have come up and made such a draft
that the embers started to burning again."
"If all the world were apple-pie, and all the sea were ink, and all
the trees were bread and cheese, what should we have to drink?" was my
not irrelevant thought. In strict accordance, however, with the
character for sagacity that Mrs. Horton had just given me, I said
nothing; but Mrs. Horton assented to the proposition with energy
enough for both. Ralph was giving unmistakable signs of sleepiness.
Mrs. Horton sat down and took him on her lap; the small head drooped
on her shoulder while she went on to the creaking accompaniment of the
old rocking chair. "I've just thought of another way in which that
fire might have been started"--she evidently had it upon her
conscience to furnish a satisfactory solution of the mystery--"I have
been noticing that you keep matches in that china saucer over the
mantel-piece, and it's right alongside the window-sill. Now, girls, I
don't want to seem to find fault with any of your arrangements; but I
do like an iron match safe, with a heavy lid, better myself; then
there's no danger of their getting out, and you can't be too careful
about such things. Suppose, now, that one of those mountain rats that
are always prying around, getting into every crack and crevice that
they can wedge themselves into--suppose one of them had come into the
house, and crept out again with a lot of matches--they'll eat
anything--and suppose that rat went through the rubbish pile and
rubbed against--"
But this line of reasoning proved too much for Jessie, who, with good
cause, prided herself upon her housekeeping.
"There isn't a hole big enough for a rat to crawl through in the
house!" she declared, with some warmth.
The rooms were all lathed and plastered. Mrs. Horton looked around.
"One might come in at a window," she suggested, with less confidence.
Knowing the truth, and having in my possession the means of proving
it, if need be, I took a somewhat wicked pleasure in this game of wild
conjecture. It was, at all events, a satisfaction to be able to veto
this last proposition.
"There were only two windows open, Mrs. Horton, and they were open
only a few inches at the top," I said.
"A rat might climb up the side of the window, and come in that way,"
was the reply to this. "But"--her face suddenly brightening as a new
solution of the mystery flashed upon her mind--"I don't think it was a
rat, after all, and I'll warrant I know now just how it happened. Last
night was Wednesday night, you know, and they always have those
dancing-parties out at Morley's tavern, beyond the Eastern Slope, of a
Wednesday night. Lots of those Crusoe miners go to them, and they all
smoke. Now what'll you chance that as one of them was coming
home--they have to go right past here--he didn't light a match for his
cigar, and when he was through with it, fling the match right down
against the house, or, maybe, he threw the stub of a cigar down?"
"It might be, I suppose," Jessie admitted, rather reluctantly. She was
evidently disposed to abide by her own theory of reviving embers and
falling sparks.
"Oh, I'm well-nigh sure, now that I think of it, that that was the way
it happened," Mrs. Horton insisted, pausing to brush Ralph's damp
curls back from his forehead. "You see, I wouldn't feel so positive
that it was done in just that way if it wasn't for an experience that
we had, here in the valley a long spell ago."
"You refer to the time when the great forest was burned?" Jessie
inquired rather absently. She had seated herself at the sewing machine
and was busily running up the seams of Ralph's new kilt.
"Yes; that's the time. It was before you came here. And the fire was
set in the way I spoke of. A couple of young men--they weren't much
more than boys--came up from town, and they were just at that age when
they thought it a smart thing to be able to smoke a cigar without
turning sick after it. They were staying at the hotel, and one day
they went with a party from there up to see the marble quarries.
There'd been an awful dry spell; it had lasted for weeks, and
everything was just as dry as touch-wood. There were notices posted
all along the roads and trails, forbidding folks building camp-fires,
or anything of that kind. The boys, after they had been to the
quarries, started home ahead of the others, and on foot. I don't
reckon that they'd got above a quarter of a mile from the quarries
when they pulled out some cigars and matches, intending, of course, to
have a smoke. Well, they had it, but it wasn't just the kind they'd
expected. First one, then the other, threw down their lighted matches,
after they'd got their cigars to going. The wind was blowing hard in
their faces and toward the quarry, as it happened, and the next thing
they knew they heard a great roaring, and as they said afterward, two
pillars of flame seemed to spring right out of the ground, one on
either side of the trail, and to reach so high that they almost
touched the tree-tops. In less time than I'm taking in telling of it
they had reached the tree-tops, and then the two little pillars of
fire became a great blazing ocean of fire up in mid-air. You know how
'tis with pine needles and cones; they make a blaze as if the end of
the world had come. No wonder the poor boys were scared! It was right
in the thickest part of the woods, and what with the fire roaring away
before the wind on either side of them, and the clouds of smoke and
sparks roaring away above the burning tree-tops, it must have been an
awful sight. They were in no particular danger themselves, because the
fire was going away from them, but as they stood there, blistering in
the heat, they thought of their parents--their parents, who were right
in the path of the flames, and in the way they acted up to that
thought, you may see the difference in folks. One of them--Dick Adams,
his name was--pulled his hat down over his eyes, shook out his
handkerchief and tied it over his mouth to save his lungs, and said
to the other, 'If anything happens to our folks we are the ones to
blame for it; come on and help;' and with that he gave a leap down the
trail as if he would overtake the fire itself. But the other boy, he
wasn't made of that kind of stuff. He just turned and ran the other
way, and folks did say that he never stopped running until he reached
town, twenty miles away. When poor Dick, blackened with grime and
smoke, with his hair singed and his burnt shoes dropping off his feet,
staggered into the open space about the quarry, there were the folks,
and even the horses, all safe. They hadn't started when they saw the
fire coming, and so, knowing that they were safe where they were, they
stayed. The fire swept past them on either side, and all they had to
do was to wait till the trail got cool enough to travel over. There
was no great damage done after all, though a great many trees were
destroyed, but so were acres and acres of underbrush, and that was a
big help to stockmen. Dick was pretty well done up, but he didn't
care for any more cigars, and his father paid the fine that the
township's trustees assessed against him, cheerful on that account,
though he said he was sorry he couldn't save the timber. Now, Leslie,"
she concluded her story, abruptly, "if you'll just move those hats a
little I'll lay the baby on the bed."
After I had complied, and Ralph's head was on a pillow instead of her
arm, she came to Jessie's side and stood regarding her work
thoughtfully.
"You're real spry on the machine, aren't you?" she at length remarked,
admiringly. "Now me, I'm as slow!" She looked around the room and
continued, with seeming irrelevance: "I s'pose the furnishings must
have cost you a good deal?" Her tone was very gentle.
"Yes," Jessie returned, comprehending her meaning with the quick
intuition that grief gives. "Yes; they did."
"Well, he's at rest. You can visit his grave. They're worth all they
cost and more, but I was thinking now if you felt like taking in a
little sewing to help along until--"
"Why, I'd like to do it, dear Mrs. Horton!" Jessie interrupted,
looking up with sparkling eyes. "I've never thought of it before, but
if I could get it to do I would be so glad! Every little toward the
proving up is just so much gained."
"That is what I was thinking. I can let you have quite a little work
myself, and I know there are others who will be glad of a chance to
get sewing done. I declare, I'm glad I thought of it! It will be so
nice for you to do something to help out right here at home. And," she
went on, her kind eyes shining, "maybe you can learn to be a
dressmaker--"
"No, no!" interposed Jessie, who had her future comfortably mapped out
in her mind. "I mean to be a teacher."
"Do you? That's a good, respectable trade, too, and a teacher you
shall be if I can do anything to help you get a school."
Jessie smiled up at her gratefully. Mrs. Horton might not, perhaps,
have great influence in educational circles, but the highest authority
among them could not have had a kinder heart. But something that Mrs.
Horton had said set me thinking of quite another matter.
"If you were here so long ago," I observed, suspending my task of
shelling peas, and looking earnestly at our visitor, "why didn't Mr.
Horton take up some land? He could have taken anything, almost then,
and I--we--I have sometimes thought that he kind of wanted this
place," I concluded, weakly.
Mrs. Horton's gentle face flushed; she was really fond of her husband,
who, to be sure, was very careful not to let any knowledge of his
underhanded doings come to her ears.
"To tell the truth, Leslie," she said, "I've thought now and again
myself that Jake was looking after this place. It's a beautiful place;
there isn't another as pretty in the valley, but when we first came
here folks were not thinking of taking up land--no, indeed. Cattle
ranges were what they were after, and they couldn't abide the settler
that put up fences. No; Jake let his chance of taking the place slip,
and your father took it up; and that was right; he wasn't a cattleman,
and he needed the land to work. Don't you fret about Jake's wanting
it. He don't need it, for one thing, for we're real well to do, if I
do say it, and it would be a pretty unneighborly thing for him to
grudge the place to you now. You see, Jake's ways are different. He
makes folks think, often, I make no doubt, that he's set on getting
things when he isn't, really. I expect he'd feel quite hurt if you
were to lose this place."
"Unless he got it himself," was my silent amendment.
"We could buy the ranch where we are," Mrs. Horton went on, "and I
wish Jake was willing to do it; I'm like your father was; I want a
home of my own, but Jake says he doesn't like that place as well as he
does another that he has in mind."
"What place is that?" asked Jessie.
"I don't know, really, Jake's no hand to talk over business matters
with me; no hand at all, and so I don't worry him. I just let him take
his own gait." And a very bad gait it was, if she had but known it,
poor woman!
No more was said about the land, the remainder of the day passed
pleasantly, and it was nearly night-fall when Mrs. Horton again
climbed into the wagon-seat and headed the horses toward home.
Good-bys had been exchanged when, suddenly, she drew in the restless
horses to say: "You tell old Joe, when he comes back, how that fire
got started; tell him that he must be more careful, these dry times,
how he lets such a lot of dry stuff get lodged against the house."
And, with that admonition, she was gone.