AGAINST THE FIRE
Doctor Carter was not in when Billy arrived at his office breathless
and hatless. He had not foreseen this. All the way to town his thoughts
had raced with his wheel. He had planned how he could tell his story
the quickest; had thought of no other ear for his confidence than
Doctor Carter’s, the kind, all-understanding physician who had fought
valiantly if losingly to save Billy’s father; who had ever since been
the most thoughtful of friends as well as the best of physicians.
He seemed to Billy the only man to trust with his secret. This was
something that could not be told to the best mother in the world, even
not considering the fright it would give her; it was quite out of a
woman’s world.
The boy went into the street again, mounted and rode rapidly round the
corner. His own home was across the way; his mother might see him at
the office and call him. But once out of sight he stopped to consider
what came next. Who was the right man to tell after the Doctor? The
Sheriff!
A shiver chased up and down Billy’s spine. He knew the Sheriff by
sight only; and he was so inseparable from the handcuffs the boy had
seen protruding from a pocket, that Billy felt it would “almost fasten
suspicion on a fellow just to be seen speaking to the officer.”
But a familiar sound came to his ear, and he turned to see the Doctor’s
splendid bays pounding down the street, pulling the buggy almost by the
taut reins. Billy followed quickly and was soon closeted with the man,
who listened, first with a smile, afterward with grave attention.
“My boy, you have done a wonderful thing!” he said when Billy had
finished. “You must come with me and tell your story again. If it
comes out as I think, you’ll earn at least a thousand dollars.”
Half paralyzed with astonishment Billy went with the Doctor to the
Sheriff’s office; but he was out and the deputy didn’t know when he
would return; thought it might be within an hour or so. There was
nothing to do but wait. Billy’s perplexed, baffled face touched the
Doctor. His temples were already gray, but he had not forgotten how a
boy feels.
“You don’t want to see your mother now, do you, boy? No more do you
feel like jabbering with Bess at our table. Come over to the hotel, and
we’ll lunch together.”
“But Mrs. Carter’ll expect--” Billy began, yet stopped, for the
physician was laughing.
“A doctor’s wife gets over ‘expecting’ very young, Billy. They won’t
think I’m dead if I don’t come home to lunch. But your mother?” His
inflection finished the question.
“She’ll be all right. May Nell and me--I--we took our lunch and went
over to Potter’s pasture. Shoot! She’s waiting now! I hope the poor
little kiddie--little girl--eats, don’t wait for me,--she an’ Bouncer.”
“Oh, she’ll eat when she gets hungry, never fear.”
But Billy thought with pride that May Nell was one person he knew
better than the Doctor.
They turned into the town’s finest hotel, just opened.
“I didn’t--I haven’t washed. I’m--” All at once as Billy walked through
the tiled entrance, and felt himself in the midst of splendors he had
viewed only from without, he was overcome with the suspicion that he
looked rather queer beside the immaculate Doctor. He knew his hair
“stood up all ways for Sunday”; and his face must be dirty. “But they
won’t know how dirty,” he reflected; “this is the time them plaguey
freckles’ll get in an’ hide the dust.” Freckles were Billy’s sorest
point.
“Come with me, Billy; I must wash up. I’ve had a dusty drive up Spring
Mountain; you know the roads aren’t watered up there.”
Billy looked the Doctor over and wondered. He was not subtle enough
to suspect the Doctor’s purpose. “Golly! I’d hate to have to wash as
much as a doctor,” he exclaimed, as they stepped into the exquisitely
appointed lavatory. “You look now like you’d just had a Turkish bath.
But I’m glad of the chance for myself.” He surely did look better when
the two came out and crossed to the big dining-room; though there was
a tell-tale streak around his neck, and his crown lock stood stiff and
divided.
At first he could not eat with relish, his mind was so distracted with
admiration of the magnificent room, and impatient to get his worrying
secret off his heart and conscience. But his wise host ordered so
artfully, and filled the intervals of waiting with such delightful
stories and anecdotes, explanations of the decorations, funny facts
or conjectures concerning the hotel and guests, that before he knew
it, Billy had, he told his mother afterward, referring to his stomach,
“loaded her up to the guards, ’nough to make you ’shamed of me, mother.”
When they entered the Sheriff’s office again it was two o’clock. He
was there, and gave Billy a private audience far more graciously than
he would have done had not Doctor Carter’s presence been voucher
for the importance of the matter. When the boy repeated his story,
less confidently, less dramatically than before, yet not needing the
Doctor’s comment to prove its value, the Sheriff drew a long breath and
emphasized it with a blow of his fist on the table.
“That’s the gang we’ve been hunting through five counties. Boy, you’ve
done what the State’s been trying a long time to do. The reward’s a
good lump; if we bag the game you shall have your share.”
Billy looked on wide-eyed, as the Doctor said with a puzzling smile,
“And, Sheriff, if I don’t think you divide fair with my friend here,
you’ve got me to deal with next election. See?”
“All right, Doc,” the other replied a bit gruffly; “suppose we catch
’em before we fight about the divvy.”
It took a very short time to gather the posse, instruct it, and set
out for the mountain. The Sheriff gave Billy an old hat and bade
him to a seat behind the swift horses; and Billy obeyed, feeling a
strange elation as they set out. It was just like a story. Could it
be he, plain Billy Bennett, that was assisting the State to find
long-sought-for criminals? The horses flew, yet Billy thought they
would never arrive at the turn in the road where they would leave
them. He felt as if in some unknown way the man at the hut would surely
know of their coming, would hide, destroy, perhaps carry off all that
would convict him, and the other, the big man,-- Oh, would they never
be there?
But a different and sudden fear leaped in both hearts as they
rounded the shoulder of the mountain. The air had rapidly grown more
oppressive; now they knew the cause, the forest was on fire!
June had been unusually warm and dry, and careless early campers had
already started their annual conflagrations. Now high over the crest of
the mountain the flames came sweeping down; came with the wind from the
valley on the other side where they had raged till fuel was exhausted.
“Great Scott, boy! We’ll have to hurry. We must get up there before the
fire gets down. Do you know the shortest way?”
“Yes,” Billy answered breathlessly as he leaped from the buggy; “but
we’ll have to go in the way I did if you want to catch ’em sure. We can
come out by the trail.”
They tied the horses, and once hidden from the road, shed every
superfluous garment. Billy was quite ashamed of the chill he could not
help when he saw the handcuffs, pistols, and cartridges disposed neatly
and conveniently about the Sheriff’s waist. They looked so vicious,
“disrespectable.”
The heat and smoke increased alarmingly as they went on, the man
puffing at the boy’s pace. In and out, occasionally doubling and
returning but never losing altitude, Billy crashed on. His slender body
slipped through underbrush by way of small apertures that would not
admit the man’s greater bulk; he had to break his way. The boy, also
accustomed to running, climbing, had the advantage of better breath;
though the other could not, Billy still held his mouth shut against
the suffocating smoke, kept his smarting eyes partly closed.
The roar of the flames came dreadfully near. Trees cracked, crashed and
fell, sending up columns of sparks and cinders that dropped about the
panting climbers. Billy began to wonder if he would hold out to the end
of his task. His boy’s agility had easily outdone the man’s; but he had
made the trip once before that day, had ridden from town at a killing
speed; and now his endurance was almost at an end, while the Sheriff
was getting his “second wind.”
They came to the crest of the gorge. “We’ll have to slow up and zig-zag
down carefully or they’ll hear us an’ get away,” Billy suggested.
“They won’t be watching for visitors,” the man answered; “they’ll be
hiding the plant and skinning out of here,--if they haven’t already,”
he added apprehensively. He stood back to the wind and scanned the
opposite bank. “There they are, two of our fellows; the chaps haven’t
escaped in that direction.”
As ordered two of the posse were closing in from the west toward the
rendezvous. A few more steps and the four met. Those who had been
ordered to beat the mountain about the spring were waiting below; the
fire had perfectly policed that territory.
As the four descended the air in the gorge became clearer. They
approached the hut stealthily; and when in full view of the closed
door, the Sheriff told Billy his part of the work was done, and ordered
him home out of the fire.
“Oh, Mr. Sheriff, you won’t send me off now, will you, when the
business is just beginning?”
In spite of the grave situation, the officer smiled at Billy’s
entreating words, remembered suddenly the danger from both fire and
possible lurking desperadoes. “All right. Get behind that tree, and
stay out of the reach of stray shot.”
The three men lined up in front of the closed door, and one of the
deputies quickly threw it open. For an instant the officers stood
motionless with weapons drawn. Billy watched with fascinated eyes;
the moment the door opened forgot orders, ran and crouched behind the
Sheriff, peering under his uplifted arm. There in the lurid firelight
that streamed through the closed window, stood the two men he had seen
before, hands up, rigid, staring into pistol barrels. Floor boards were
torn up; strange vessels, scales, various paraphernalia Billy could not
understand, lay about them; while in a deep hole they had dug, a small,
iron-bound chest was partially covered with earth. The men’s faces were
smutched, streaming with perspiration, and pale with terror.
“Just in time, I reckon,” the Sheriff said facetiously; “pull up that
chest and come along to our party.”
Fight gleamed in the big man’s eye, and for the breath of an instant he
hesitated.
“Come, come! We can’t be cremated while we wait. Mush!”
The Sheriff was a small man with fair, curly hair like a girl’s; but
there was that in his eye that reinforced his pistol, made the big
fellow quail, the other mutter a low warning. The two lifted the chest
by its strong handles and stepped out.
In the short moments that had passed since their coming the Sheriff saw
that the fire had gained perilously. Instead of sparks great flaming
brands dropped all around them; the crests of the ravine were sheets of
fire that swept downward, wrapping every tree and shrub in their path,
making of the pines huge towers of flame.
“There’s a better way,” Billy called, when the deputy leading started
to climb back as he had come. “Follow the creek; there’s a trail.”
“That’s good news. Run ahead, boy, and show us the way. Fly, fly!”
Billy needed no hurrying. He dashed off along a well defined path, free
from hindering branches. It hugged the brawling stream, crossed it
more than once by way of stepping stones, and led on past the already
shriveling azaleas. It must have been long used to be so clear.
Billy ducked his head into the cooling water, filled his mouth, and
ran on. He could hear the painful breathing of the prisoners bearing
the chest. It looked heavy, and he knew it was hard to carry, walking
single file down the steep trail. How awfully they must feel, Billy
thought. It was like the children in the fiery furnace. Did the men see
that this was a tragic beginning of the just penalty for their sins?
Cheats! Robbers! No, not robbers, boldly risking life for booty, but
cunning thieves, stealing from their fellow men, from widows, orphans,
perhaps from his own mother; she had taken a counterfeit piece only a
little while before.
The heat was awful; yet it was growing less, for the fire was nearly
spent, but Billy was so exhausted he did not perceive it. He began to
stumble, to see double. Everything seemed to be on fire,--trees, rocks,
even the water gleaming from overhead flames. His blood felt hot in his
veins; and long afterward he saw red in his sleep. At length his foot
caught in a root, and he fell heavily.
They came upon him a second later, insensible, his head bleeding from
a scalp wound. Hurriedly the Sheriff lifted him close to the brook,
dashed water over his face, washed out the cut a little, and bound it
with his handkerchief, not untenderly if in haste; for Billy had won
something more than his approval.
“Oh, don’t wait for me,” Billy exclaimed, opening his eyes suddenly;
“you won’t catch ’em! The fire’ll get there first! Hurry! Leave me
alone, I tell you!”
The Sheriff smiled at the note of command in the boy’s incoherence.
“Not on your life, sonny,” and his voice softened; “we’ve got to have
you in our business. Help him along,” he said to one of the deputies,
as they came a moment later to where the path broadened; while he
walked behind covering the panting prisoners.
Presently they came to others of the posse, and after that to a
long line of farmers and other citizens, fighting desperately but
successfully against the dying flames.
The clearer air revived Billy, and he was soon walking without help,
coming shortly to the road where the wagons waited; coming in sight of
Ellen’s Isle.
May Nell! Where was she? He had forgotten her! It must be
three--four-- Oh, how late was it? Was she safe? Or had she fainted
from fright; and was she lying there now, helpless? He looked across
the plashing river to the green, blossoming isle, grateful for water
and grass and green shrub, and the sheltering Lodge that would keep her
safe from the fire. Yet the terror of being there alone, of seeing that
awful sheet of flame sweep down the mountain to her very feet,--perhaps
a fainting spell,--that surely must have followed,--with no one there
to revive her, it might be--fatal!
“Oh, Betsey, give it to me!” he whispered in agony of soul. “Don’t let
up’s long’s I live! Maybe I’ve killed her!”
But even as he looked he saw two people coming; his mother and Jean,
crossing the foot-bridge that led to the pasture side of the river. The
throbbing in his head, the stifled lungs, interest in the capture of
the prisoners,--all faded before this terrible dread.
“Let me go, please!” he pleaded. “There’s a little girl, our refugee,
over there, fainted, I think, perhaps--dead.”
The Sheriff wondered at the boy’s vehemence, yet was too busy loading
the wagon to pay much attention to him. “Think you’re fit, sonny? You
look all in. Better ride to town--we’ll send some one for the little
girl.”
“Oh, no, no! I’m fit--I must find her myself--right now!”
The man gave him an affectionate slap. “Go, then. You’re a right game
kid, sure.”
Billy was off, fear lending fleetness to feet that a moment before had
been leaden. He overtook his mother and Jean in the path to the Lodge.
“Have you come for her?” he panted. “Do you think she’s alone still?”
“What has happened to you, Billy?” his mother questioned sharply as she
turned at his voice and saw his damaged head. “You’re hurt, Billy!”
“Not a bit!” His words were strangely impatient. “I’ve got to find
her!” He started past them.
“Wait, Billy! You _are_ hurt, badly. Let me see.” She put out a
detaining hand.
But he was not to be hindered. “It’s only a scratch, mother; you can
fuss it up all you want to later; but you mustn’t stop me now!” He
pulled away from her and bounded up the path.
“It’s my fault, too, Mrs. Bennett; don’t put the blame all on Billy,”
Jean half sobbed; and hurried after him.
But Mrs. Bennett wasn’t blaming any one; she didn’t really know what
the excitement was all about.
Before he emerged from the leafy path Billy heard well-known whining,
and wondered why the dog didn’t come to meet him. The next instant he
saw him straining against his bonds.
Bouncer tied? That red handkerchief! The boy went cold and pale.
Before he looked he knew that May Nell was not there. He turned his
white face to the others as they came up.
“She’s been stolen, mother! But I’ll find her--I know where to look.
Don’t be afraid, mother, I _will_ find her!” he repeated with grave
emphasis, as he whipped out his knife and cut the dog loose.
“Billy! Who could steal our little girl? I cannot think it. She’s gone
with some of the children to watch the fire.” Mrs. Bennett’s words were
braver than her face, for in her heart she felt Billy was right, though
she wondered why.
“They’ve stolen her, all right. I don’t know why, but I know who,--it’s
the Ha’nt people!” Billy panted, coming out of the Lodge.
“O Billy!” Jean gasped, fear for the little, delicate girl in that eery
place lending sympathy to her voice.
“Are you sure, my boy? I’ll go with you--”
“No, no, mother! This is business for only Bouncer and me.” He caught
up the cut handkerchief and called the dog before his mother could
hinder. “Find her, Bouncer! Find May Nell! Sic ’em!” he shouted, and
set off heedless of his mother’s continued protestations, after the
bounding dog.
“You can send some one after us, a man--not you, not either of you,” he
called back over his shoulder, and was soon out of sight.
Jean was for following in spite of Billy’s commands; but Mrs. Bennett,
full of apprehension, insisted that the girl should go with her; and
the two set out in search of help.