"What is it?" Fanny demanded.
"The raccoon dogs," the boy paused at the door. "A lot of the furnacemen
and woodcutters from round about are hunting."
Fanny Gilkan leaned across the table to Howat, her face glowing with
interest. "Come ahead," she urged; "we can do this anyhow. I like to
hear the dogs yelping, and follow them through the night. You can bring
your gun, I'll leave mine back, and perhaps we'll get something really
big."
Howat himself responded thoroughly to such an expedition; to the mystery
of the primitive woods, doubly withdrawn in the dark; the calls of the
others, near or far, or completely lost in a silence of stars; the still
immensity of a land unguessed, mythical--endless trees, endless
mountains, endless rivers with their headwaters buried in arctic
countries beyond human experience, and emptying into the miraculous blue
and gilded seas of the tropics.
Fanny Gilkan would follow the dogs closely, too, with infinite swing
and zest. She knew the country better than himself, better almost than
any one else at the Furnace. He stirred at her urgency, and she caught
his arm, dragging him from behind the table. She tied a linsey-woolsey
jacket by its arms about her waist, and put out the candles. Outside the
blast was steadily in progress at the stack; the clear glow of the flame
shifted over the nearby walls, glinted on the new yellow of more distant
foliage, fell in sharp or blurred traceries against the surrounding
night.
They could hear the short, impatient yelps of the dogs; but, before they
reached them, the hunt was away. A lantern flickered far ahead, a minute
blur vanishing through files of trees. Fanny turned to the right,
mounting an abrupt slope thickly wooded toward the crown. A late moon,
past full, shed an unsteady light through interlaced boughs, matted
grape vines, creepers flung from tree to tree; it shone on a hurrying
rill, a bright thread drawn through the brush. Fanny Gilkan jumped
lightly from bank to bank. She made her way with lithe ease through
apparently unbroken tangles. It was Fanny who went ahead, who waited for
Howat to follow across a fallen trunk higher than his waist. She even
mocked him gaily, declared that, through his slowness, they were
hopelessly losing the hunt.
However, the persistent barking of the dogs contrived to draw them on.
They easily passed the stragglers, left a group gathered about a lantern
and a black bottle. They caught up to the body of men, but preferred to
follow a little outside of the breathless comments and main, stumbling
progress. They stirred great areas of pigeons and countless indifferent
coveys of partridges barely moved to avoid the swiftly falling feet. But
no deer crossed near them, and the crashing of a heavy animal through
the bushes diminished into such a steep gulley that they relinquished
thought of pursuit. The chase continued for an unusual distance; the
moon sank into the far, unbroken forest; the stars brightened through
the darkest hour of the night.
Fanny Gilkan and Howat proceeded more slowly now, but still they went
directly, without hesitation, in the direction they chose. They crossed
a log felled over a shallow, hurrying creek; the course grew steeper,
more densely wooded. "Ruscomb Manor," Fanny pronounced over her
shoulder. "Since a long way back," he agreed. Finally a sharper,
stationary clamour announced that the object of the hunt had been
achieved, and a raccoon treed. They made their way to the dim
illumination cast on moving forms and a ring of dogs throwing themselves
upward at the trunk of a tree. There was a concerted cry for "Ebo," and
a wizened, grey negro in a threadbare drugget coat with a scarlet
handkerchief about his throat came forward and, kicking aside the dogs,
commenced the ascent of the smooth trunk that swept up to the obscure
foliage above. There was a short delay, then a violent agitation of
branches. A clawing shape shot to the ground, struggled to its feet, but
the raccoon was instantly smothered in a snarling pyramid of dogs.
Howat Penny was overwhelmingly weary. He had tramped all day, since
before morning; while now another dawn was approaching, and the hunters
were at least ten miles from the Furnace. He would have liked to stay,
sleep, where he was; but the labour of preparing a proper resting place
would be as great as returning to Shadrach. Besides, Fanny Gilkan was
with him, with her new, cautious regard for the world's opinion. They
stood silent for a moment, under a fleet dejection born of the hour and
a cold, seeping mist of which he became suddenly conscious. The barrel
of his gun was wet, and instinctively he wiped off the lock. Two men
passing brushed heavily against him and stopped. "Who is it," one
demanded, "John Rajennas? By God, it's a long way back to old Shadrach
with splintering shoes." A face drew near Howat, and then retreated.
"Oh, Mr. Penny! I didn't know you were up on the hunt." It was, he
recognized, one of the coaling men who worked for Dan Hesa. The other
discovered Fanny Gilkan. "And Fanny, too," the voice grew inimical. The
men drew away, and a sharp whispering fluctuated out of the darkness.
"Come," Howat Penny said sharply; "we must get back or stay out here for
the rest of the night. I don't mind admitting I'd like to be where I
could sleep." She moved forward, now tacitly taking a place behind him,
and he led the return, tramping doggedly in the shortest direction
possible.
The hollows and stream beds were filled with the ghostly mist, and
bitterly chill; the night paled slightly, diluted with grey; there was a
distant clamour of crows. They entered the Furnace tract by a path at
the base of the rise from where they had started. On the left, at a
crossing of roads, one leading to Myrtle Forge, the other a track for
the charcoal sleds, a blacksmith's open shed held a faint smoulder on
the hearth. The blast from Shadrach Furnace rose perpendicular in the
still air.
Fanny Gilkan slipped away with a murmur. Howat abandoned all thought of
returning to Myrtle Forge that night. But it was, he corrected the
conclusion, morning. The light was palpable; he could see individual
trees, the bulk of the cast-house, built directly against the Furnace;
in the illusive radiance the coal house on the hill seemed poised on top
of the other structures. A lantern made a reddish blur in the
cast-house; it was warm in there when a blast was in progress, and he
determined to sleep at once.
Thomas Gilkan, with a fitful light, was testing the sealing clay on the
face of the Furnace hearth; two men were rolling out the sand for the
cast over the floor of the single, high interior, and another was
hammering on a wood form used for stamping the pig moulds. The interior
was soothing; the lights, blurred voices, the hammering, seemed to
retreat, to mingle with the subdued, smooth clatter of the turning wheel
without, the rhythmic collapse of the bellows. Howat Penny was losing
consciousness when an apparently endless, stuttering blast arose close
by. He cursed splenetically. It was the horn, calling the Furnace hands
for the day; and he knew that it would continue for five minutes.
Others had entered; a little group gathered about Thomas Gilkan's waning
lantern. Far above them a window glimmered against the sooty wall. Howat
saw that Dan Hesa was talking to Gilkan, driving in his words by a fist
smiting a broad, hard palm. The group shifted, and the countenance of
the man who had recognized Howat Penny in the woods swam into the pale
radiance. His lassitude swiftly deserted him, receding before the
instant resentment always lying at the back of his sullen
intolerance--they were discussing him, mouthing some foul imputation
about the past night. Hesa left the cast-house abruptly, followed by the
charcoal burner; and Howat rose, the length of his rifle thrust forward
under his arm, and walked deliberately forward.
The daylight was increasing rapidly; and, as he approached, Thomas
Gilkan extinguished the flame of the lantern. He was a small man, with a
face parched by the heat of the furnace, and a narrowed, reddened vision
without eyebrows or lashes. He was, Howat had heard, an unexcelled
founder, a position of the greatest importance to the quality of metal
run. There was a perceptible consciousness of this in the manner in
which Gilkan moved forward to meet Gilbert Penny's son.
"I don't want to give offence," the founderman said, "but, Mr. Penny,
sir--" he stopped, commenced again without the involuntary mark of
respect. "Mr. Penny, stay away from my house. There is more that I could
say but I won't. That is all--keep out of my place. No names, please."
Howat Penny's resentment swelled in a fiery anger at the stupidity that
had driven Thomas Gilkan into making his request. A sense of humiliation
contributed to an actual fury, the bitterer for the reason that he could
make no satisfactory reply. Gilkan was a freedman; while he was
occupying a dwelling at Shadrach Furnace it was his to conduct as he
liked. Howat's face darkened--the meagre fool! He would see that there
was another head founder here within a week.
But there were many positions in the Province for a man of Gilkan's
ability, there were few workmen of his sensitive skill with the charge
and blast. Not only Howat's father, but Abner Forsythe as well, would
search to the end all cause for the founderman's leaving. And, in
consequence of that, any detestable misunderstanding must increase. He
determined, with an effort unaccustomed and arduous, to ignore the
other; after all Gilkan was but an insignificant mouthpiece for the
familiar ineptitude of the world at large. Thomas Gilkan might continue
at the Furnace without interference from him; Fanny marry her stupid
labourer. Howat had seen symptoms of that last night. He would no longer
complicate her existence with avenues of escape from a monotony which
she patently elected.
"Very well, Gilkan," he agreed shortly, choking on his wrath. He turned
and tramped shortly from the interior. A sudden, lengthening sunlight
bathed the open and a sullen group of charcoal burners about Dan Hesa.
Their faces seemed ebonized by the grinding in of particles of blackened
wood. Some women, even, in gay, primitive clothes, stood back of the
men. As Howat passed, a low, hostile murmur rose. He halted, and met
them with a dark, contemptuous countenance, and the murmur died in a
shuffling of feet in the dry grass. He turned again, and walked slowly
away, when a broken piece of rough casting hurtled by his head. In an
overpowering rage he whirled about, throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
A man detached from the group was lowering his arm; and, holding the
sights hard on the other's metal-buttoned, twill jacket, Howat pulled
the trigger. There was only an answering dull, ineffectual click.
The rifle slid to the ground, and Howat stared, fascinated, at the man
he had attempted to kill. The charcoal burners were stationary before
the momentary abandon of Howat Penny's temper. "Right at me," the man
articulated who had been so nearly shot into oblivion. "--saw the hammer
fall." A tremendous desire to escape possessed Howat; a violent chill
overtook him; his knees threatened the loss of all power to hold him up.
He stepped backward, his gun stock trailing over the inequalities of the
ground; then he swung about, and, in an unbroken silence, stumbled away.
He was not running from anything the charcoal burner might say, do, but
from a terrifying spectacle of himself; from the vision of a body shot
through the breast, huddled in the sere underbrush. He was aghast at the
unsuspected possibility revealed, as it were, out of a profound dark by
the searing flash of his anger, cold at the thought of such absolute
self-betrayal. Howat saw in fancy the bald triumph of a society to which
his act consummated would have delivered him; a society that, as his
peer, would have judged, condemned, him. Hundreds of faces--faces mean,
insignificant, or pock-marked--merged into one huge, dominant
countenance; hundreds of bodies, unwashed or foul with disease, or
meticulously clean, joined in one body, clothed in the black robe of
delegated authority, and loomed above him, gigantic and absurd and
powerful, and brought him to death. Deeper than his horror, than any
fear of physical consequences, lay the instinctive shrinking from the
obliteration of his individual being, the loss of personal freedom.