THE MESSAGE OF "PROPHET ELI"
"And the good, kind skipper and all his crew
Got a purse and some medals, tew,
And a lot o' praise for a-savin' me
From an awful death in the ragin' sea.
And I got jawed 'cause I left that way,
And the boss he docked me tew weeks' pay."
--Hired Man's Sea-song.
Lane's quick ear was the first to catch a new sound. He stopped and
looked down into the Pogey trail. Barrett ceased his wails, and looked
and listened, too.
Men of the woods who knew Prophet Eli of Tumbledick were never surprised
to see him appear anywhere in the Umcolcus region. And it was usually a
time of trouble that he chose for his appearance. In his twenty years'
search of the forest he had found trails and avenues that were hidden to
others. In places where veteran guides wandered and blundered, Prophet
Eli knew a short-cut or detour, and moved with wraithlike swiftness,
enjoying his reputation for surprises with the keen relish of the
shatter-pate.
Those who did not call him "Prophet Eli," his own choice of title,
dubbed him "Old Trouble," for he scented disaster with an elfish sense,
and followed it north, east, and west.
He came down the Pogey Notch on a ding-swingle. It was drawn by his
little white stallion. A ding-swingle is the triangle of a trimmed
tree-crotch, dragged apex forward, its limbs sprawling behind. With peak
mounted on a sapling runner it is the woods vehicle that best conquers
tote roads.
From under the prophet's knitted woollen cap, with its red knob, his
white hair trailed upon his shoulders. His white beard brushed the oddly
checkered jacket, flamboyant with its bizarre colors.
"The Skeets and the Bushees are still running south," he cried at the
two men, in shrill tones. "But I'm around to the front of the trouble,
as usual."
He appeared to have no eyes for the plight of the trussed-up Barrett,
who began to shout desperate appeals to him. He cocked shrewd eyes at
"Ladder" Lane, who, with a muttered oath, started to scramble down the
slope towards him. Perhaps he saw a threat in the madman's face.
He glanced once more at Barrett, as though interested a bit in that
miserable man's frantic urgings, and piped this amazing query, "Don't
you think a stuttering man is an infernal fool to have a name like
McKechnie Connick?"
Then he lashed his long reins against the side of his stallion and sped
away down the valley.
Lane followed him, running.
They left an existent millionaire and a prospective governor helplessly
grinding the skin from his shoulders against a birch-tree, and bellowing
anathema on "lunatics."
* * * * *
The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, sweat pouring down his purple face as he
raged from crew to crew on the fire-line, was not surprised to behold
Prophet Eli emerge from the smoke, riding his ding-swingle. In twenty
years Mr. Britt had often beheld the prophet at troublous junctures. In
his present state of vehement anxiety the king of the Umcolcus felt his
temper flare at sight of this herald of ill-omen.
"Met the Skeets and the Bushees, and they're still running south. Don't
you think a man with pumple-feet is an infernal fool to try to learn to
skate?"
Britt, thrusting past through the underbrush of the tote road, whirled
and poised his foot to kick the inoffensive stallion, as mute expression
of his rage and contempt. But he withheld the kick at the apparition of
"Ladder" Lane. The warden came running. He fairly burst out of the
smoke.
That he was pursuing Prophet Eli for no good to the latter occurred to
the Honorable Pulaski in one startled flash, as he looked at the
warden's savage face. He stepped between the men. But it was not to
protect the prophet, whom he dismissed from his mind as utterly as
though the forest sage were a fugitive rabbit. Mr. Britt had a pregnant
question to ask of Lane on his own account, and he bellowed it at him,
clutching at his arm.
"Where did you leave John Barrett?"
Lane halted at his touch, and glowered on him without reply.
"What's the matter with you, Lane? You look like a crazy man. What did
you want of Mr. Barrett, anyway? What did you drag him out of Barnum
Withee's camp for? Don't try to bluff me. I know about it. Barnum got
here with his crew at daylight to fight fire, and his men have been
talking about it. What right have you got to be bothering John Barrett?
I haven't had time to get facts. I've got something else on my mind
than other folk's troubles. But I know you've picked trouble with
Barrett. Why, great Judas, you long-shanked fool, that man is goin'
to be the next governor of this State! You must have heard of John
Barrett! Trying to arrest John Barrett! What did you take him for--a
game-poacher? Or have you gone clean out of your wits? What have you
done with him?"
During the timber baron's harangue Lane kept his eyes on the prophet,
meeting the latter's blinking regard with sullen threat in his eyes.
"Blast ye! Answer me!" roared the Honorable Pulaski. "Where is Mr.
Barrett? I want to discuss this fire situation with him."
"Then go find him," growled the fire warden.
"Where is he?"
Lane raised his gaunt arm and swung it the circle of the horizon.
"There!" he snarled. He still kept his gaze on the prophet, as though to
note the least intention to betray him. But it appeared that the sage of
Tumbledick was in no mood for dangerous revelations. He thrust up one
grimy finger.
"May be there!" he remarked. He pointed the finger straight down. "May
be there!" He jumped his stallion ahead with a crack of his reins and
disappeared in the smoke. Lane cast after him a look baleful, but
relieved, and whirled and made away in the direction of Jerusalem.
"Me standing here wasting my time on a couple of whiffle-heads with that
fire waltzing into my black growth!" Britt muttered, turning his wrath
on himself, since there was no one else in sight. "It must be only some
fool scare about Barrett. A man like him can take care of himself."
He stumped on, turning to climb a spur of ledge from which, as
commander-in-chief, he might take an observation. Less than a mile to
the south, he spied the thing that he had been dreading.
The ground fire, lashed by the rising wind of the morning, had leaped
off the earth and become a crown fire. It had entered the edge of the
black growth.
One after the other the green tops of the hemlocks and spruces burst
into the horrid bloom of conflagration. They flowered. They seeded. And
the seeds were fire-brands that scaled down the wind, dropping, rooting
instantly, and blossoming into new destruction.
"She can't be stopped! She can't be stopped!" moaned Britt. "She's
headed for the Notch, and then tophet's let loose!"
But with the persistence of his nature he set off to rally the crew to a
flank movement.
With the inadequate force it was rather a skirmish than a battle for
those who fought in the face of the great fire.
Through the night, with shovels and green boughs they had attacked the
conflagration's outposts. The red army of destruction took this
punishment sullenly. The main fire seemed to crouch and doze in the
night, dulled by the condensation of dews and lacking the spur of the
winds.
At daylight Barnum Withee had arrived with his men and set them to
trenching along the tote road parallel with the advance of the fire. He
had not reconsidered his bitterness against his tyrant John Barrett. But
the unconquerable instinct of the veteran woodsman, anxious to save his
forest, had driven him to the scene.
To Barnum Withee's crew Dwight Wade and Christopher Straight attached
themselves by entirely natural selection, having excellent personal
reasons for avoiding the direct commands of the Honorable Pulaski Britt.
And to Wade, struggling with blistered hands to drive his mattock
through roots and vegetable mould to the mineral earth, appeared
Prophet Eli on his ding-swingle. The prophet surveyed him with almost
arch look, and piped, in his shrill tones:
"Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountain,
Shang-roango, whey?"
Wade stared at him with a vivid recollection of the first time he had
seen that strange figure and had heard that song.
"So you didn't think I knew how to mend bones, eh, young man? Never
heard of Prophet Eli, the charmer-man, the mediator between the higher
and lower forces, natural healer and regulator of the weather? Don't you
think a man an infernal fool to dig a hole out of the dirt when it is so
much easier to dig a hole out of the air and put dirt around it?"
Wade, not feeling inclined towards a discussion of this sort, fell to
his labor again.
"If John Barrett's daughter set this fire, why ain't John Barrett here
to help put it out?" shrilled the prophet, and Barnum Withee hearing the
amazing query, came hurrying out of the smoke. He found Wade staring at
the man with astonished inquiry in his face.
"You heard him say that, did you, Mr. Wade?" demanded Withee, with an
emotion the young man could not understand.
It was the bare mention of John Barrett's daughter that had stirred
Dwight Wade; for in his soul's eye but one picture rose when she was
mentioned--Elva Barrett of the glorious eyes and the loving heart--the
one woman in the world for him--denied to him by the father who ruled
her.
"I heard him--yes," said Wade; "but what kind of lunatic's raving is
it?"
"It may not be a lunatic's raving, Mr. Wade," returned Withee,
enigmatically, his face grave.
The prophet cast a look about, striving to peer into the smoke, as
though apprehensive that some one whom he didn't want in his confidence
might be listening. In a lower tone he went on:
"If a man has got a daughter and is tied to a tree, how much will
'Ladder' Lane scale to be cut up into bean poles?"
There was alarm on Withee's features now. He took Wade by the arm and
led him aside a few steps.
"That old fellow has got something on his mind, Mr. Wade," he said,
earnestly, "and it may be bad business. My men have been talking here
to-day, as men will talk, though I advised them to keep their mouths
shut. It may bring the 'Lazy Tom' crowd into the thing. If there's bad
business on, I want you to be able to say outside that I haven't messed
into affairs that wa'n't mine. It may have to be proved in court, and
the word of a gentleman like you is worth that of fifty rattle-brained
choppers."
"I don't understand, Mr. Withee. I can't appear as witness in matters I
haven't seen."
"You can say I was here on the fire-line attendin' to my own business
when it happened--if it has happened," cried Withee. "You can say that I
had no hand in it. It's this way, Mr. Wade, if you haven't heard. Did
any of my men tell you that John Barrett--you've heard of 'Stumpage
John' Barrett--was at my camp last night?"
"I heard nothing of it," said Wade. He leaned forward with excitement in
his face, for the tone and the air of the lumberman were ominous.
"He was at my camp, and Lane, the Jerusalem warden, after having words
with him over an old matter between them, made Mr. Barrett go away into
the woods with him--and I think Lane was about half crazy at the time."
"And you let an insane man force Mr. Barrett into the woods?" demanded
Wade, indignantly.
Withee straightened, and his face took on a sort of sullen pride. "It's
on that point that I want to explain to you, for my own sake. I don't
know whether you're a friend of John Barrett's or whether you ain't. But
when I hear him confess right before me that he has stolen away another
man's wife and broken up that man's home forever, and has never done
anything to square himself, then I let that matter alone, for it's a
matter between man and man. And my men and I let John Barrett and Linus
Lane settle their own business."
"How?" cried Wade, his face pale. "My God, man, it can't be that John
Barrett did a thing like--"
"I heard him own to it," persisted Withee. "And what's more, it's John
Barrett's daughter that lived with the Skeets and the Bushees, abandoned
by him. And when I know a thing like that about a man, Mr. Wade, he
can't look to Barn Withee to stand behind him."
Dwight Wade staggered back against the tree and put his arms around it
to steady himself. Had he not seen the girl he might have scorned to
believe such a story. But all his first emotions at sight of her there
in her squalid surroundings rushed back upon him now. He had seen in
this forest waif too many suggestions of Elva Barrett, and had been
ashamed to own to himself that his heart confessed as much, as though it
were an insult to the girl who reigned in his heart.
"So, I say," repeated Withee, as if to reassure himself, "I let them
settle their own business."
"But how?" gasped the young man.
"You can prove nothing by me," said the lumberman, with a toss of
his hand and wag of his head, pregnant gestures of disclaimed
responsibility. "But that old fellow sitting on that ding-swingle never
put those hints together without havin' something about it on his mind.
I never knew trouble to happen in these woods unless he was there to see
some part of it."
"What have you seen, old man?" demanded Wade, impetuously.
"Saw the crow catch the hen-hawk. Isn't a man with a harelip an infernal
fool to learn to play a fife?"
But Wade, coming close to the sage, noted a strange twinkle in the blue
eyes under the knots of gray brow. It was a glance so sane, so
significant, so calculating, that the young man had no voice to utter
the angry retort on his lips. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps
Prophet Eli of Tumbledick had not always been understood by those who
jeered him. The keen glance noted Wade's changing expression and
understood it.
"It was Rodburd Ide said it to me," the prophet stated, lowering his
tone. "He said it was between you and John Barrett's pretty girl until
old John drove you into the woods. Hey?" The young man's face flushed
redly and he was about to reply, but the prophet put up a protesting
hand. "It was Rodburd Ide said to me that John Barrett didn't think you
were good enough for his daughter. Now you follow me! I want to hear
John Barrett whine. I want to see John Barrett squirm. Coals of fire!
Coals of fire, young man! What is Prophet Eli's mission? Coals of fire!
I cure those who have mocked me, don't I? I like to hear 'em whine. I
want to see them squirm. You follow me. Coals of fire!"
[Illustration: "WRITHING AT HIS BONDS, HIS CONTORTED FACE TOWARDS THE
RED FLAMES GALLOPING UP THE VALLEY"]
And singing this over and over to himself, he whirled his stallion and
hurried away. Wade ran behind him without question, for he guessed while
he feared. Withee started, but turned back to his men with a sullen
oath.
It was a long and a bitter chase through the smother of the smoke, and
in the very forefront of the racing conflagration. At last Pogey Notch
had begun to suck at the raging fires with its granite lips. It was the
chimney-flue of the amphitheatre of Misery. The flames roared from tree
to tree. Wade ran, stooping forward, clutching at the cross-bar of the
ding-swingle. Without that help he never would have been able to reach
the spot where at last he found John Barrett, writhing at his bonds,
squealing like an animal--his contorted face towards the red flames
galloping up the valley.
The prophet had left his vehicle to guide the rescuer up the slope. He
stood by, grinning with enjoyment, when the two men faced each other. He
chuckled when Wade cut the bonds. He laughed boisterously when Barrett,
weeping like a child, threw his arms around the young man's neck.
"Coals of fire!" he shrilled. "Heap 'em on! They're hotter than the
other kind that are dropping on you!"
Then he ran from them a few steps and rapped his skinny knuckles on a
scar breast high on a tree.
"Your trail!" he cried. "It's here! It's blazed clear to the bald head
of old Jerusalem. Get up there on the granite. Then sit down and talk it
over! Coals of fire!"
They heard him shrieking it back at them as he fled up the Notch. And
the two men took the trail, strangling, gasping, feeling their direction
from blaze to blaze on the trees, fighting their way up from the Gehenna
of Pogey.