A FOREST FIRE
Sir James Yardely sat in the shelter of his tent looking anxiously at
Gerald Ainley.
"Then you have not found my niece, Ainley?"
"No, Sir James! But I have news of her, and I am assured she is alive."
"Tell me what gives you that assurance."
Ainley thereupon described the search he had made, and produced the
swastiki brooch, explaining the circumstances under which he had found
it, and then gave an account of the meeting with the half-breed and of
the latter's declaration that he had seen Helen going up the main river
in a canoe with a white man.
"But why on earth should Helen go up there?" asked Sir James
wonderingly.
"I cannot say, Sir James! I can only guess, and that is that Miss
Yardely knew that we were making for the old Fort Winagog, and
mentioned it to her rescuer who was probably journeying that way.
Anyhow I went up to the Fort. The Indians there had not seen nor heard
of any white girl in the neighbourhood, but I gave them instructions to
look for her, promising a reward if she were found, then I hurried back
here by the shorter route in the hope that possibly Miss Yardely might
have returned in the meantime."
Sir James stared through the tent-door at the wild landscape before
him. His face showed a lightening of his anxiety, though it was clear
that the turn of events puzzled him.
"I can't understand it," he said. "Why shouldn't Helen have made her
way straight back here?"
"Can't say, Sir James! Possibly the man who helped her doesn't know the
country, and of course Miss Yardely is quite ignorant of it."
"And here she is, lost in the wilderness, careering round the compass
with heaven knows what come-by-chance fellow!" commented Sir James,
adding quickly, "Ainley, she has got to be found!"
"Yes, Sir James!"
"This unfortunate affair has upset me. It has quite disarranged my
plans. We have lost five days here, and I shall be compelled to curtail
my journey. I have decided to cut out the visits to the posts north of
this, and to work across to the Peace River, and so southward."
"You are going back?" cried Ainley in some consternation. "You are
going to leave Miss Yardely----"
"No, my dear fellow," interrupted Sir James, anticipating the
conclusion of his subordinate's sentence. "I am not going to leave her
to her fate. I am going to leave you to find her. I have thought the
matter out very carefully. I shall leave four Indians with you, and
shall establish a camp at this point, so that in the event of Helen
returning here you will not miss her by any chance. I shall send a
messenger to Rodwell, at Fort Malsun, instructing him to send you down
an outfit that will last the winter if necessary, and you will have
_carte blanche_ to follow your own plans, only you must understand,
Ainley, my niece must be found. Even though you have to comb this
country through with a dust-comb she must be found."
"She shall be, Sir James," answered Ainley with conviction.
"It is, of course, just possible that the man with whom your half-breed
saw her was making north to the post at Lobstick Creek, and it will be
as well to make an early inquiry there."
"Yes, Sir James, I have thought of that."
"By the way, did you get any description of the man whom my niece was
with?"
"Yes. You remember that man who was at Fort Malsun, and who departed
quietly one night?"
"You mean that fellow whom you knew at Oxford, and who has since gone
under?"
"That is the man, Sir James; I am convinced of it, from the
half-breed's description."
A look of anxiety came on the great man's face. "A discharged convict,
wasn't he, Ainley?"
"Yes, Sir James. He is of good family, and I fancy he is wealthy, for
he succeeded to the estate whilst he was in prison, and came out here I
imagine, because the old country was impossible to him."
"What was the crime that knocked him out of things?"
"Forgery!"
"Um!" was the reply. "Things might have been worse. Possibly the fellow
will remember that he used to be a gentleman."
"Possibly," agreed the younger man.
"Anyhow, you know exactly who you have to look for and that ought to
make your task much easier. Rodwell will instruct all the Indians who
show up at Fort Malsun to keep a bright look-out and no doubt in a few
days you will get track of her. But as I said just now, she must be
found, at all costs she must be found!"
"Yes, Sir James! I shall spare no effort to that end, and I may say
that, if possible, I am even more anxious about her than you."
A half-smile came on the great man's face, as he nodded: "I understand,
Ainley; I am not blind. It was for that reason I decided that you
should have charge of the search-party, seeing that you have--er--extra
inducements. Find my niece, bring her back to me, and then we can talk
over the matter. And now you had better go and think out your plans
carefully. I shall have to leave here in the morning, but now that I
know Helen is alive, I shall go with a comparatively easy heart."
Gerald Ainley went to his own tent with a smile on his face. For the
furtherance of his ultimate plans things could scarcely have fallen out
better. It was true that Helen yet remained to be found; but he was to
be left to find her, and was to have a free hand in the matter. After a
week or two in the wilderness Helen would be glad enough to meet with
an old friend bringing deliverance, and the intimacy of daily travel
together would inevitably bring her to his arms. His brow darkened a
little as he thought of her present protector. Then it cleared again.
Helen was very proud. Circumstances for the present had thrown her into
Stane's company, but she was the last person in the world to forget
that Stane was an ex-convict, and as he thought of that, all
apprehension of possible complications in that quarter vanished
instantly.
Had he known all, or had he even at that moment been granted a vision
of the camp by the great deadfall, he would scarcely have been so
complacent of mind. For at the very time when he was congratulating
himself on the opportunity opening out before him, Helen Yardely was
seated on a log by the side of the man whom he hated. There was a high
colour in her face and she was laughing a little nervously as she
looked at the astonished face of the sick man who had been her rescuer
and was now her patient.
"Miss Yardely," cried Stane, "do you really mean what you say?"
"Of course I do," replied the girl lightly.
"And Gerald Ainley with another man camped within two miles of here two
nights ago?"
"I should say the distance to the lake is even less than that," replied
Helen with a little laugh.
"And you let them go without a sign."
"I hid myself in the bushes," replied the girl, gaily.
"But do you realize that they were probably, searching for you?"
"Yes! And I was afraid that they might find me. I even put out the fire
that they should not discover our camp and come up to investigate. When
I saw them going away yestermorning I could have clapped my hands for
gladness."
Stane looked at her incredulously. Here was something that was beyond
him.
"Why--why did you let them go?" he cried sharply.
"You wish I had revealed myself?" she asked with compunction,
misunderstanding his question. "You think I ought to have brought them
up here?"
"That was for yourself to decide," he answered quietly, adding with a
little laugh. "I am well content with things as they are. But I am
curious to know why you let deliverance from the hardships of this
situation pass by on the other side."
"Oh," replied Helen in some confusion, "I remembered that you did not
like Gerald Ainley!"
"But," he protested, "there was yourself to think of."
"Yes," was the reply, given with laughter, "and I was doing so--if you
only knew it."
"How? I cannot see it."
"You forget my pride as amateur surgeon and nurse," she retorted. "I
like to see the end of things that I begin, and if I had brought Mr.
Ainley up here he would have wanted to take me away, and leave you with
the Indian." She broke off, and looked at him with a gay smile.
"Perhaps you would have preferred----"
"No! No!" he interrupted protestingly.
"And there is another reason--quite as selfish as the last. You see,
Mr. Stane, I have been delicately reared; boarding-school, Newnham--the
usual round you know! London in the season, Scotland in the autumn, and
the shires for the hunting months. It is an inane sort of life, as I
have always felt, pleasant enough at first, but inane for all that, and
after a time rather a bore. Can you understand that?"
"Yes," he said, with a nod, "I think I can."
"Most of the men of our set have something to do! Either they are in
the army, or in Parliament, or managing estates, but the women--well,
they live a butterfly life. There seems to me no escape for them. Do
what they will, unless they become suffragettes and smash windows or
smack fat policemen, their life drifts one way. Charity?--it ends in a
charity ball. Politics?--it means just garden-parties or stodgy
week-ends at country houses, with a little absurd canvassing of rural
labourers at election times. Sometimes I used to consider it, and with
that bus-driver of Stevenson's who drove to the station and then drove
back, cry 'My God is this life!' There was nothing real anywhere.
Nobody ever expected a woman in our set to do anything worth doing."
She broke off, and gave a little laugh, then continued: "Now I have my
chance to prove I'm something better than a doll, and I'm not going to
be robbed of it by Gerald Ainley, my uncle, or any one else! This camp
depends on me for a time at least, and I'm going to make good; and
prove myself for my own satisfaction. Do you understand?"
"Yes," answered Stane, his eyes shining with admiration.
"That is what I meant when I said that if you only knew it, I was
thinking of myself. It would strike some people as a little mad. I know
some women who in a situation like this would have sat down and just
cried themselves to death."
"So do I. Lots of them."
"I don't feel that way. I feel rather like a man I know at home who was
brought up on the sheltered life system, nursery governess, private
tutor, etc., who when he came of age just ran amok, drank, fought with
the colliers on his own estate, and then enlisted in an irregular corps
and went to fight the Spaniards in Cuba, just to prove to himself that
he wasn't the ninny his father had tried to make him. He shocked his
neighbours thoroughly, but he's a man today, listened to when he speaks
and just adored by the miners on his estate.... I want to make good,
and though Mrs. Grundy would chatter if she knew that I had
deliberately chosen to remain and nurse a sick man in such conditions,
I don't care a jot."
"You needn't worry about Mrs. Grundy," he laughed. "She died up here
about 1898, and was buried on the road to the Klondyke."
Helen Yardely joined in his laughter. "May she never be
resurrected--though I am afraid she will be. Where there are
half-a-dozen conventional women Mrs. Grundy is always in the midst. But
I'm free of her for the time, and I'm just going to live the primitive
life whilst I'm here. I feel that I have got it in me to enjoy the life
of the woods, and to endure hardships like any daughter of the land,
and I'm going to do it. Not that there is much hardship about it now!
It is just an extended pic-nic, and I wouldn't have missed it for
anything."
Stane smiled. "I am very glad you feel like that," he said. "I myself
shall be much happier in mind and I count myself lucky to have fallen
in such capable hands!"
"Capable!" she looked at her scratched and rather grimy hands. "A
kitchen-maid's are more capable! But I can learn, and I will, however
much I bungle. Now, as the universal provider, I am going out to look
at my snares."
She rose, and left the tent, and he heard her pass into the wood
singing to herself. A thoughtful look came on Stane's face, and
presently gave place to a smile. "Happy in these circumstances!" he
murmured to himself. "What a treasure of a girl!"
And there was no question that Helen Yardely was happy. She radiated
gladness as she made her way towards the lake carrying an express rifle
in the crook of her arm. Except for the barking of squirrels, and the
distant cry of waterfowl the land was very still, the silence that of
an immense solitude. But it affected her not at all, she was not even
conscious of loneliness, and she hummed gaily to herself as she went
along the path which now was beginning to define itself.
As she reached the lakeside, however, her song was suddenly checked,
and she looked round sniffing the air thoughtfully. There was a fire
somewhere, for there was the smell of burning spruce in the atmosphere.
She thought of her own camp-fire, and looked back in the direction of
it. Never before had the aromatic odour reached her so far away, and
she was a little puzzled that it should do so now. There was little
movement in the air, and in order to discover the direction of it she
wet her hand and held it up, and as one side grew cooler than the
other, looked southward. The slight wind was blowing from that quarter
towards the camp and not away from it, so it could not be her own fire,
which thus filled the air with odour. There was another encampment
somewhere in the neighbourhood.
Having reached that conclusion, she looked about her carefully for any
revealing column of smoke, and found none. She examined the shore of
the lake expecting to discover a canoe or canoes beached there, but
there was nothing of the sort to be seen. For a time she stood there
frankly puzzled, wondering what was the explanation of the smell of
fire which was in the air, but the reason for which did not appear.
Then, after searching the lake bank once more, she gave up the problem
and addressed herself to the task which had brought her from the camp.
There was nothing in her snares, but as she approached a large patch of
water-reeds, a flock of wild geese rose into the air, "honking" in
alarm.
Instantly the rifle was at her shoulder, and as she fired, a gander
jerked in the air, and then fell like a stone back into the reeds. It
took her some time to retrieve it, and when she had done so, she looked
round again. The sound of her rifle in that great stillness would
travel a long way, and if there had been any traveller camped in the
neighbourhood he must have heard it! But there was no one to be seen
anywhere, though the smell of fire was as strong as ever. Puzzled, she
returned to the camp, looked at her own fire which was burning low and
which could not possibly be the explanation of that which was
perplexing her, and without saying anything to her companion about it,
turned in for the night.
She awoke early to find a wind humming in the tree-tops and immediately
there impinged upon her nostrils the odour of burning wood. She rose
instantly and dressing hastily went to the tent and looked in. Stane
was still sleeping, and without awakening him she hurried down to the
lakeside, very conscious that the smell of fire was much stronger than
on the previous night. When she reached the shore she looked southward
in the direction from which the wind was blowing. As she did so, for
one brief moment her heart seemed to stop and a great fear leaped up
within her.
Up the lake-side the shore was hidden under rolling clouds of smoke,
the dark green of the woods was shrouded by the same bluish veil, and
the air seemed full of distant crackling. Out of the veil of smoke as
she watched broke a long leaping tongue of yellow flame, and the air
blowing towards her seemed hot as a furnace. Her face paled before the
terror in front. Though she had never seen the like before, on the way
up to Fort Malsun, she had seen the blackened patches where such fires
had been. She had heard stories of men surprised by them, and she knew
that the forest full of dry deadfall and resinous trees, was on fire.
Her first thought was for the sick man who was in her care. The camp
was directly in the line of fire, and, if the wind kept up, must
inevitably burn. She would have to get him away. But how?
The question was beating in her brain as she hurried back, and through
the reiteration of it she became conscious of moving life about her. A
weasel almost crossed her foot without a glance at her, and she saw
others moving in front of her. Small wood-mice swarmed, fleeing from
the terror they could not see; and a great timber-wolf followed by a
couple of cubs fled by without more than a sidelong look. The squirrel
in the trees screeched alarm and once she caught sight of a big, dark
lumbering body crashing through the undergrowth to the left of her, and
divined that it was a bear. All the creatures of the wood had taken the
alarm and were fleeing before the fiery horror against which none could
stand.
When she reached the camp she went straight to the tent. Stane was
awake, lifted up on one elbow, an anxious look upon his face. As his
eyes saw her pallor, he knew that a fear which in the last few moments
had come to him was not groundless.
"Ah!" he cried, "the timber is on fire! I thought I could smell it."
"Yes," she answered, "and the wind is driving the fire this way."
"How far away?" he inquired calmly.
"Two or three miles."
"You will have to go, Miss Yardely," he answered quickly. "The fire
travels quickly in such timber as this. You must not mind me----"
"You want me to run away and leave you to die," cried the girl. "I
shall do nothing of the kind. I would sooner die myself! I could never
respect myself again. There must be some way out of this difficulty,
only I don't know it. But you are used to the ways of this wilderness.
You must tell me what to do, and quickly, and I will do it. Oh--if we
only had a canoe!"
"We haven't," he answered thoughtfully, "but the next best thing, we
could make, and----"
"What is that?"
"A raft!"
"A raft?" she echoed, hope lighting her face.
"Yes. If by any means you could get me down to the lake-side, I could
instruct you in the construction. But how you are going to do that----"
"I shall carry you," interrupted the girl. "It will be very painful for
you, but there is no other way."
"But how----?"
"On my back! I am strong, thank Heaven! And as we have no time to waste
I will make arrangements at once. I'll take our things down to the
shore, and then come back for you. You don't mind being left for a
little while?"
"Of course not."
"There'll be no breakfast this morning, but I can't help that. A forest
fire is no help to housekeeping."
She forced a little laugh as she spoke the words, but once outside the
tent, a look of deepest anxiety clouded her beautiful face.