a small beach that seemed to all of them ideal for a picnic. It was
Buzzy who had suggested the spot. He said he and the other boys used to
go there a lot in the summer to fish and swim. While the boys built the
fire, Kit and Jean walked on down the river a little way.
Not far off, the girls found some violets and picked some to take home.
Looking across the river, Jean saw an old house nestled among the
trees. “Who lives there, do you know, Kit? I never saw it before.”
“It’s Cynthy Allen’s place. People say she’s queer, but I don’t think
so. She’s real old, over seventy. But she thinks she is only about
seventeen, and she’s always doing flighty things. She’s lived out in
the woods ever since she ran away from her family years ago. Once she
started to make doughnuts and they found her hanging them on nails all
over the kitchen. So people have been afraid of her ever since. Isn’t
that silly?”
“Let’s go over to see her some day. Want to?”
“Sure. I’ll bet she gets lonely there, all by herself. Say, we’d better
start back. That fire ought to be started by now.”
And it was. The boys were lying lazily on their backs in front of it
when Kit and Jean came up. “Hey, you lazy guys, why aren’t you cooking
the steaks instead of lying there doing nothing?” Kit called.
“We’re waiting for you to do it,” retorted Buzzy. “It’s women’s work to
do the cooking. Besides, you have to wait until the wood’s burned down
to coals before you can start broiling.”
“We’ve got news for you,” put in Ralph, “we did put in the potatoes to
bake. So you see, you’ve jumped to conclusions as usual, Kit, and we
weren’t as lazy as you thought.”
“I’m so hungry from that trek down the hillside, I could eat those
steaks raw,” said Jean. “Shall I put them on now? When did you start
the potatoes?”
“Quite a while ago. They should be done soon. Here, I’ll test them.”
Ralph groaned as he struggled to his feet. “This is the life for me.
Flat on my back beside a nice warm fire.”
Going back up the hill after the picnic was much harder, they found,
than it had been to go down. “Why did you let me eat so much,” mourned
Buzzy. “I’ll never make it to the top.”
“Come on, I’ll race you,” cried Kit, and pulling him along she began to
run. Laughing and shouting, they soon were out of earshot and Jean and
Ralph walked leisurely on behind.
“Nothing could make me run after a supper like that,” Ralph commented.
The moon had risen and it shone down on Jean’s hair making it look
silvery in the pale light. Ralph kissed her lightly. “You’re awfully
sweet, Jeannie. Do you know that? I wish I could make you mine forever.”
“Maybe it could be arranged sometime,” Jean said lightly.
“Won’t you be serious?”
“No. I can’t be now. I’m too young. Besides they need me at home.”
Ralph felt slightly discouraged by her answer, but he knew she was
right. True, she was young, but he was young, too. And he would wait
for her until she was ready, he thought to himself. He could tell by
the radiant look in her face that she, too, was in love.
Before she went upstairs to bed that night, Jean went out in the
kitchen to make sure the back door was locked. She glanced out of the
window and caught her breath. Dodging out of sight behind a pile of
wood that was waiting to be split, was a familiar figure. Without
waiting to call anyone, she slipped quietly around the house and there,
sure enough, backed up against the woodshed, was Jack.
“Oh, Jack,” Jean exclaimed happily. “Come here this minute. Nobody’s
going to hurt you, don’t you know that? Aren’t you hungry?”
Jack nodded mutely. He didn’t look one bit ashamed, just eager and glad
to be back home. Jean put her arm around him, patting him as her mother
would have done, and leading him to the kitchen.
After he had finished a huge sandwich, several glasses of milk, and a
piece of cake, the truth finally came out. “I went hunting my dad down
around Norwich,” he said.
“Did you find him?” cried Jean.
Jack nodded happily.
“Braced him up too. He says he won’t drink any more ’cause it’ll
disgrace me. He’s gone to work up there in the lockshop steady. He
wanted me to stay with him, but as soon as I got him braced up, I came
back here. You didn’t get my letter, did you? I left it stuck in the
clock.”
Stuck in the clock? Jean looked up at the old eight-day Seth Thomas on
the kitchen shelf that Kit had bought from old Mr. Weaver as a joke. It
was made of black walnut, with green vines painted on it and morning
glories rambling in wreaths around its borders. She opened the little
glass door and felt inside. Sure enough, tucked far back was Jack’s
farewell letter, put carefully where nobody would ever think of finding
it. It was written laboriously in pencil, and Jean read it to herself.
Dere folks,
I hered from a pedlar my dad is sick up in norwich. goodbye
and thanks i am coming back sumday.
yurs with luv,
Jack.
Jack looked at her with his old confident smile.
“See?” he said. “I told you I was coming back.”
“And you’re going to stay too,” replied Jean thankfully. “I’m so glad
you weren’t lost forever, Jack. Now you’d better run along to bed.”
14. Billie’s Crisis
Billie failed to rally from the pneumonia as soon as everyone had
hoped. Doris was restless and uneasy over her pal’s plight. She
would saddle Princess and ride over on her twice a day to see what
the bulletins were, and sometimes sit out in the garden watching the
windows of the room where Becky kept vigil. She almost resented the
joyous activity of the bees and birds in their spring delirium when she
thought of Billie, lying there fighting pneumonia.
Jean never forgot the final night. She had a phone call from her mother
about nine, to leave Mrs. Gorham in charge and come to her.
“I’d like you to be here, dear. It’s the crisis, and we can’t be sure
what may happen. Billie’s in a heavy sleep now, and the old doctor says
we can just wait. Becky is with him.”
Jean took off her coat when she arrived, and went in where old Dr.
Gallup sat. It always seemed foolish to call him old, although he was
over sixty. His hair was gray and straggled boyishly as some football
hero’s, his eyes were brown and bright, and his smile something so much
better than medicine that one just naturally revived at the sight of
him, Becky said. He sat now by the table, looking out of the window,
one hand tapping the edge, the other deep in his pocket. One could not
have said what his thoughts were as he sat looking out into the shadowy
spring night.
“Hello, Jeannie,” he said cheerily. “Going to keep me company, are
you? Did you come up alone?”
“Kit drove me over. Doctor, Billie is all right, isn’t he?”
“We hope so,” answered the old doctor. “But what is it to be all right?
If the boy’s race is run, it has been a good one, and he goes out
fearlessly, and if not, then he is all right too, and we hope to hold
him with us. But when this time comes and it’s the last sleep before
dawn, there’s nothing to do but watch and wait.”
“But do you think--”
Jean hesitated. She could not help feeling he must know what the hope
was.
“He’s got a fine fighting chance,” said the doctor. “Now, I’m going in
with Mrs. Ellis, and you comfort the Judge and brace him up. He’s in
the study there.”
It was dark in the study. Jean opened the door gently and looked in.
The old Judge sat in his deep, old leather chair by the desk, and his
head was bent forward. She did not say a word, but tiptoed over and
knelt beside him, her cheek against his sleeve. And the Judge laid his
arm around her shoulders in silence, patting her absent-mindedly. So
they sat until out of the windows the garden took on a lighter aspect,
and there came the faint twittering of birds wakening in their nests.
Jean, watching the beautiful miracle of the dawn, marveled. The dew
lent a silvery radiance to every blade of grass, every leaf and twig.
There was an unearthly, mystic beauty to the whole landscape and the
garden.
And just then the old doctor put his head in the door and sang out
cheerily, “It’s all right. Billie’s awake.”
Jean called Kit later to tell her the good news and Kit drove over
shortly. “That’s a relief,” Kit exclaimed. “I hardly slept a wink all
night, I was so worried. You don’t look as if you slept.”
“I didn’t and I’m practically dead on my feet. But I’m so glad that
Billie is going to pull through.”
Now that Billie’s recovery was assured everybody’s spirits seemed to
become lighter. After two weeks of almost daily showers there had come
a spell of close warm weather that dried up the fields and woods, and
left them, so Becky said, dry as tinder and twice as dangerous.
Kit and Doris were preparing the garden for planting.
“Oh, dear!” Kit leaned back against the side of the barn and looked
lazily off at the widening valley before her. “I’m so afraid that Dad
will get too interested in chicken raising and crops and soils and
things, so that we’ll stay on here forever. Somehow I didn’t mind it
half as much all through the winter, but now that spring is here, it’s
just simply awful to have to pitch in and work from the rising of the
sun until it goes down. I want to be a lady of leisure.”
Overhead the great fleecy, white clouds sailed up from the south in
a squadron of splendor. A new family of bluebirds lately hatched was
calling hungrily from a nest in the old cherry tree nearby, and being
scolded lustily by a catbird for lack of patience. There was a delicate
haze lingering still over the woods and distant fields. The new foliage
was out, but hardly enough to make any difference in the landscape’s
coloring.
“How’s Billie?” asked Doris suddenly. “I’ll be awfully glad when he’s
out again.”
“They’ve got him on the porch bundled up like a mummy. He’s so topply
that you can push him over with one finger and Becky treats him as
if she had him wadded up in pink cotton. I think if they just stopped
treating him like a half-sick person, and just let him do as he pleased
he’d get well twice as fast.”
Doris had been gazing up at the sky dreamily. All at once she said,
“What a funny cloud that is over there, Kit.”
It hung over a big patch of woods toward the village, a low motionless,
pearl-colored cloud, very peculiar looking, and very suspicious, and
the odd part about it was that it seemed balanced on a base of cloud,
like a huge mushroom or a waterspout in shape.
“What on earth is that?” exclaimed Kit, springing to her feet. “That’s
never a cloud, and it’s right over the old Ames place. Do you suppose
they’re out burning brush with the woods so dry?”
“There’s nobody home today. Don’t you know it’s Saturday, and Astrid
said they were all going to the auction at Woodchuck Hill?”
Kit did not wait to hear any more. She sped to the house like a young
deer and, with eyes quite as startled, she burst into the kitchen and
called up the stairs.
“Mother, do you see that smoke over the Ames’s woods?”
“Smoke,” echoed Mrs. Craig’s voice. “Why, no, dear, I haven’t noticed
any. Wait a minute, and I’ll see.”
But Kit was by nature a joyous alarmist. She loved a new thrill, and
in the daily monotony that smothered one in Elmhurst anything that
promised an adventure came as a heaven-sent relief. She flew up the
stairs, stopping to call to Jean who was in her room. Her father and
mother were standing at the open window when she entered their room,
and Mr. Craig had his field glasses.
“It is a fire, isn’t it, Dad?” Kit asked eagerly, and even as she
spoke there came the long, shrill blast of alarm on the Peckham mill
whistle. There was no fire department of any kind for fourteen miles
around. Nothing seemed to unite the little outlying communities of
the hill country so much as the fire peril, but on this Saturday it
happened that nearly all the available men had leisurely jaunted over
to the Woodchuck Hill auction. This was one of the characteristics of
Elmhurst, shunting its daily tasks when any diversion offered.
“Oh, listen,” exclaimed Doris who had followed Kit from the barn.
“There’s the alarm bell ringing up at the church, too. It must be a big
one.”
Even as she spoke the telephone bell rang downstairs, while Tommy
called from the front garden. “Awful big fire just broke out between
here and Ames’s. I’m going over with the mill boys to help fight it.”
“Be careful, son,” called Mr. Craig.
“Can I go too, Tommy?” cried Jack eagerly. “I won’t be in the way,
honest, I won’t.”
“Naw, you’d better stay here. You might get hurt and I won’t be able to
take care of you. Besides you should be here to milk the cow in case I
don’t get back on time.” Tommy started off up the road with a shovel
over one shoulder and a heavy mop over the other. Jean was at the
telephone. It was Judge Ellis calling.
“He’s worried about Becky, Mother,” Jean called up the stairs. “Cynthy
Allen wanted her to come over to her place today to get some carpet
rags, and Becky drove over there about an hour ago. He says her place
lies right in the path of the fire. Mrs. Gorham has gone away for the
day to the auction with Ben, and the Judge will have to stay with
Billie. He’s terribly anxious.”
“Oh, Dad,” exclaimed Kit, “couldn’t I please, please, go over and stay
with Billie, and let the Judge come up to the fire, if he wants to. I’m
sure he’s just dying to. Not but what I’m sure Becky can take care of
herself. May I? Oh, you dear. Tell him I’m coming, Jean.”
Jean had left the telephone and was putting on her coat. “Mother,” she
asked, “do you mind if Doris and I just walk up the wood road a little
way? We won’t go near the fighting line where the men are at all, and
I’d love to see it. Besides I thought perhaps we might work our way
around through that big back wood lot to Cynthy’s place and see if
Becky is there. Then, we could drive back with them.”
“Why, yes, Jean, I think it’s safe for you both to go. Don’t you, Tom?”
Mr. Craig smiled at Jean’s flushed, excited face. It was so seldom that
she lost her presence of mind and really became excited. “I don’t
think it will hurt them a bit,” he said.
Doris grabbed her coat and the two girls started up the hill road for
about three-quarters of a mile. The church bell over at the Plains kept
ringing steadily. At the top of the hill they came to the old wood
road that formed a short cut over to the old Ames place. Here where
the trees met overhead in an arcade the road was heavy with black mud,
and they had to keep to the side up near the old rock walls. As they
advanced farther there came a sound of driving wheels, and all at once
Hedda’s mother appeared in her car. She sat hunched over the wheel, a
man’s old felt hat jammed down over her heavy, blonde hair, and an old
overcoat with the collar upturned, thrown about her. Leaning forward
with eager eyes, she seemed to be thoroughly enthusiastic over this new
excitement in Elmhurst.
“Looks like it’s going to be some fire, girls,” she said as she
stopped the car momentarily to speak to them. “I’m giving the alarm
along the road.” And off she went.
“Isn’t that something?” declared Jean. “And to think that she runs a
ninety-acre farm with the help of Hedda, thirteen years old, and two
hired men. She gets right out into the fields with them and manages
everything herself.”
A farm truck coming the opposite way held Mr. Rudemeir and his son
August. An array of mops, axes, and shovels hung out over the rear of
the truck. Mr. Rudemeir was smoking his clay pipe placidly, and merely
waved one hand at the girls in salutation, but August called, “It has
broken out on the other side of the road, farther down.”
“It must be going toward the Allan place, then,” said Jean anxiously.
She hesitated. The smoke was thickening in the air, but they penetrated
farther into the woods. Up on the hill to one side, she saw the Ames
place, half obscured already by the blue haze. It lay directly in the
path of the fire, unless the wind happened to change, and if it should
change it would surely catch Doris and herself if they tried to reach
Cynthy’s house down near the river bank. Still she felt that she must
take the chance. There was an old road used by the lumber men, and she
knew every step of the way.
“Come on,” she said to Doris. “I’m sure we can make it.”
They turned now from the main road into an old overgrown byway. Along
its sides rambled ground pine, and wintergreen grew thickly in the
shade of the old oaks. Jean took the lead, hurrying on ahead. When they
came out on the river road, the little gray house was in sight, and
sure enough Becky’s car was out in front.
Jean didn’t even stop to rap at the door. It stood wide open, and the
girls went through the door into the kitchen. It was empty.
“Becky,” called Jean loudly. “Becky, are you here?”
From somewhere upstairs there came an answer.
“For pity’s sakes, child!” exclaimed Becky, appearing at the top of
the stairs with her arms full of carpet rags. “What are you doing down
here? Cynthy and I are just sorting out some things she wanted to take
over to my place.”
“Haven’t you seen the smoke? All the woods are on fire up around the
Ames place. The Judge was worried, and telephoned for us to warn you.”
“Land!” laughed Mrs. Ellis. “Won’t he ever learn that I’m big enough
and old enough to take care of myself. I never saw an Elmhurst fire yet
that put me in any danger.”
She stepped out of the doorway, pushed her glasses up on her forehead
and sniffed the air.
“’Tis kind of smoky, ain’t it,” she said. “And the wind’s beginning to
shift.” She looked up over the rise of the hill in front of the house.
Above it poured great belching masses of lurid smoke. Even as she
looked, the huge winglike mass veered and swayed in the sky like vast
shapes of strange animals. Jean caught her breath as she gazed.
Becky started out to the car with Doris. “Jean, you go and get Cynthy
quick as you can!” she called.
Jean ran to the house and met Cynthy groping her way nervously
downstairs. She was old and frail and her scrawny hands clutching the
banister were knotted and the veins were large.
“What on earth is it?” she faltered. “Land, I ain’t had such a set-to
with my heart in years. Is the fire coming this way? Where’s Becky?”
“She says for you to come right away. Please, please hurry up, Miss
Allan.”
But Cynthy sat down in a forlorn heap on the step, rocking her arms,
and crying, piteously.
“Oh, I never, never can leave them, my poor, precious darlings. Can’t
you get them for me? There’s General Washington and Ethan Allen, Betsey
Ross and Pocahontas, and there’s three new kittens in my yarn basket in
the old garret over the ell.”
Jean surmised that she meant her pet cats, dearer to her probably than
any human being in the world. Supporting her gently, she got her out
of the house, promising her she would find the cats. For the next five
minutes, just at the most crucial moment, she hunted for the cats,
and finally succeeded in coaxing all of them into meal bags. Every
scurrying breeze brought down fluttering wisps of half-burned leaves
from the burning woods. The shouts of the men could be plainly heard
calling to each other as they worked to keep the fire back from the
valuable timber along the river front.
“I think we’ve just about time to get by before the fire breaks
through,” said Mrs. Ellis calmly. Jean was on the back seat, one arm
supporting old Cynthy, her other hand pacifying the rebellious captives
in the bags.
Not a word was said as Becky turned the car toward home, but they had
not gone far before the wind changed suddenly. The full force of the
smoke from the fire-swept area poured over them suffocatingly. Cynthy
half-rose to her feet in terror, Jean’s arm around her waist trying to
hold her down as she screamed.
“For land’s sakes, Cynthy, keep your head,” called Mrs. Ellis. “If it’s
the Lord’s will that we should all go up in a chariot of fire, don’t
squeal out like a stuck pig. Hold her close, Jean. I’m going to drive
into the river.”
15. Fire!
At the bend of the road the land sloped suddenly straight for the river
brink. A quarter of a mile below was the dam, above Mr. Rudemeir’s red
sawmill. Little River widened at this point, and swept in curves around
a little island. There were no buildings on it, only broad low lush
meadows that provided a home for muskrats and waterfowl. Late in the
fall fat otters could be seen circling around the still waters, and
wild geese and ducks made it a port of call in their flights north and
south.
As Becky started to drive the car into the water, Jean asked just one
question.
“Do you know how deep it is here?”
“No, it varies in spots,” answered Becky cheerfully. Her chin was
up, her firm lips set in an unswerving smile. She was holding the
steering wheel tightly. To Jean she had never seemed more resourceful
or fearless. “There’s some pretty deep holes, here and there, but we’ll
trust that we don’t hit them.”
Becky edged the car along slowly and inch by inch they moved across the
river. Out in midstream, the car stalled once and for a minute or two,
danger seemed imminent. By a stroke of luck, the car started again and
Becky gave a quick look over her shoulder.
Jean was hanging on grimly to the cats and Cynthy. It was hard saying
which of the two was proving the more difficult to manage. The car
lurched perilously, but Becky held steady, and suddenly they felt the
rise of the shore line again. Overhead, there had flown a vanguard of
frightened birds, flying ahead of the smothering clouds of smoke that
poured now in blinding masses down from the burning woods. The faint
cries and calls of the men working along the back fire line reached the
little group on the far shore.
As the car jolted up the bank, Doris glanced back over her shoulder at
the way they had come. Cynthy gave one look too, and covered her face
with her hands. The flames had swept straight down over her little
home, and she cried out in anguish.
“Pity’s sakes, Cynthy, praise God that the two of us aren’t burning up
this minute with those old shingles and rafters,” cried Mrs. Ellis,
joyfully.
“Oh, and Miss Allan, not one of the cats got wet even,” Doris
exclaimed, laughing almost hysterically. “You should be thankful for
that.”
The flames had reached the opposite shore, but while the smoke billowed
across, Little River left them high and dry in the safety zone.
“I guess we’d better be making for home as quick as we can,” said
Becky. Except for a little pallor around her lips, and an extra
brightness to her eyes, no one could have told that she had just fought
a winning battle with death. She stepped on the starter and headed
toward home.
The Judge was watching anxiously, pacing up and down the long porch
with Billie sitting in his chair bolstered up with pillows beside him.
He had telephoned repeatedly down to Woodhow, but they were all quite
as anxious now as himself. It was Billie who first caught sight of the
car and its occupants.
Kit had gone out to the kitchen to start lunch going. She had refused
to believe that any harm could come to Becky or anyone under her care,
and at the sound of Billie’s voice, she glanced from the window and
caught sight of Jean’s coat.
“Land alive, don’t hug me to death, all of you,” exclaimed Becky.
“Jean, you go and telephone your mother right away and relieve her
anxiety. Like enough, she thinks we’re all burned to cinders by this
time, and tell her she’d better have plenty of coffee and sandwiches
made up to send over to the men in the woods. All us women will have
our night’s work cut out for us.”
It was the Craigs’ first experience with a country forest fire. All
through the afternoon fresh relays of men kept arriving from the nearby
villages, and outlying farms, ready to relieve those who had been
working through the morning.
There was but little sleep for any members of the family that night.
Jean never forgot the thrill of watching the fire from the upstairs
windows, and when she wasn’t preparing food with the others, she spent
most of the time up there until daybreak. There was a fascination in
seeing that battle from afar, and realizing how the little puny efforts
of a handful of men could hold in check such a devastating force. Only
country dwellers could appreciate the peril of having all one owned
in the world, all that was dear and precious, and comprised the word
“home,” swept away in the path of the flames.
“Poor old Cynthy,” said Jean. “I’m so glad she has her cats. I shall
never forget her face when she looked back. Just think of losing all
the little keepsakes of a lifetime.”
It was nearly five o’clock when Tommy returned. Even though he was only
twelve, he had certainly done a man-sized job that day. He was grimy
and smoky, but exuberant.