WHEN Roger Oakley fled from Antioch on the night of the murder he was
resolved that, happen what might, he would not be taken.
For half an hour he traversed back alleys and grass-grown “side
streets,” seeing no one and unseen, and presently found himself to the
north of the town.
Then he sat down to rest and consider the situation.
He was on the smooth, round top of a hill-side. At his back were woods
and fields, while down in the hollow below him, beyond a middle
space that was neither town nor country, he saw the lights of Antioch
twinkling among the trees. Dannie was there somewhere, wondering why he
did not return. Nearer at hand, across a narrow lane, where the rag-weed
and jimson and pokeberry flourished rankly, was the cemetery.
In the first peaceful month of his stay in Antioch he had walked out
there almost every Sunday afternoon to smoke his pipe and meditate. He
had liked to hear the blackbirds calling overhead in the dark pines, and
he had a more than passing fondness for tombstone literature. Next to
the Bible it seemed about the soundest kind of reading. He would seat
himself beside a grave whose tenant had been singularly pre-eminent as
possessing all the virtues, and, in friendly fellowship with the dead,
watch the shadows marshalled by the distant woodlands grow from short to
long, or listen to the noisy cawing of the crows off in the cornfields.
The night was profoundly still, until suddenly the town bell rang the
alarm. The old convict's face blanched at the sound, and he came slowly
to his feet. The bell rang on. The lights among the trees grew in
number, dogs barked, there was the murmur of voices. He clapped his
hands to his ears and plunged into the woods.
He had no clear idea of where he was going, but all night long he
plodded steadily forward, his one thought to be as far from Antioch
as possible by morning. When at last morning came, with its song of
half-awakened birds and its level streaks of light piercing the gray
dawn, he remembered that he was hungry, and that he had eaten nothing
since noon the day before. He stopped at the first farmhouse he came to
for breakfast, and at his request the farmer's wife put up a lunch for
him to carry away.
It was night again when he reached Barrow's Saw Mills. He ventured
boldly into the one general store and made a number of purchases. The
storekeeper was frankly curious to learn what he was doing and where he
was going, but the old convict met his questions with surly reserve.
When he left the store he took the one road out of the place, and half a
mile farther on forsook the road for the woods.
It was nearly midnight when he went into camp. He built a fire and
toasted some thin strips of bacon. He made his supper of these and a
few crackers. He realized that he must harbor his slender stock of
provisions.
He had told himself over and over that he was not fit to live among
men. He would have to dwell alone like a dangerous animal, shunning his
fellows. The solitude and the loneliness suited him. He would make a
permanent camp somewhere close to the lakes, in the wildest spot he
could find, and end his days there.
He carried in his pocket a small railroad map of the State, and in the
morning, after a careful study of it, marked out his course. That day,
and for several days following, he plodded on and on in a tireless,
patient fashion, and with but the briefest stops at noon for his meagre
lunch. Each morning he was up and on his way with the first glimmer of
light, and he kept his even pace until the glow faded from the sky in
the west.
Beyond Barrow's Saw Mills the pine-woods stretched away to the north in
one unbroken wilderness. At long intervals he passed loggers' camps, and
more rarely a farm in the forest; but he avoided these. Instinct told
him that the news of Ryder's murder had travelled far and wide. In all
that range of country there was no inhabited spot where he dare show his
face.
Now that he had evolved a definite purpose he was quite cheerful
and happy, save for occasional spells of depression and bitter
self-accusation, but the excitement of his flight buoyed him up
amazingly.
He had distanced and outwitted pursuit, and his old pride in his
physical strength and superiority returned. The woods never ceased to
interest him. There was a mighty freedom about them, a freedom he shared
and joyed in. He felt he could tramp on forever, with the scent of the
pines filling his nostrils and the sweep of the wind in his ears. His
muscles seemed of iron. There was cunning and craft, too, in the life he
was living.
The days were sultry August days. No rain had fallen in weeks, and the
earth was a dead, dry brown. A hot haze quivered under the great trees.
Off in the north, against which his face was set, a long, low, black
cloud lay on the horizon. Sometimes the wind lifted it higher, and it
sifted down dark threads of color against the softer blue of the summer
sky. Presently the wind brought the odor of smoke. At first it was
almost imperceptible--a suggestion merely, but by-and-by it was in every
breath he drew. The forest was on fire ahead of him. He judged that the
tide of devastation was rolling nearer, and he veered to the west. Then
one evening he saw what he had not seen before--a dull red light that
shone sullenly above the pines. The next day the smoke was thick in the
woods; the wind, blowing strongly from the north, floated little wisps
and wreaths of it down upon him. It rested like a heavy mist above the
cool surface of the lake, on the shores of which he had made his camp
the night previous, while some thickly grown depressions he crossed were
sour with the stale, rancid odor that clung to his clothes and
rendered breathing difficult. There was a powdering of fine white ashes
everywhere. At first it resembled a hoar-frost, and then a scanty fall
of snow.
By five o'clock he gained the summit of a low ridge. From its top he was
able to secure an extended view of the fire. A red line--as red as the
reddest sunset--stretched away to the north as far as the eye could see.
He was profoundly impressed by the spectacle. The conflagration was on a
scale so gigantic that it fairly staggered him. He knew millions of feet
of timber must be blazing.
He decided to remain on the ridge and study the course of the fire,
so he lay down to rest. Sleep came over him, for the day had been a
fatiguing one, but at midnight he awoke. A dull, roaring sound was
surging through the forest, and the air was stifling. The fire had
burned closer while he slept. It had reached the ridge opposite, which
was nearly parallel to the one he was on, and was burning along its
northern base. The ridge flattened perceptibly to the west, and already
at this point a single lone line of fire had surmounted the blunt
crest, and was creeping down into the valley which intervened. Presently
tongues, of fire shot upwards. The dark, nearer side of the ridge showed
clearly in the fierce light, and soon the fire rolled over its entire
length, a long, ruddy cataract of flame. As it gained the summit it
seemed to fall forward and catch fresh timber, then it raced down the
slope towards the valley, forming a great red avalanche that roared and
hissed and crackled and sent up vast clouds of smoke into the night.
Clearly any attempt to go farther north would be but a waste of time
and strength. The fire shut him off completely in that quarter. He must
retrace his steps until he was well to the south again. Then he could
go either to the east or west, and perhaps work around into the burned
district. The risk he ran of capture did not worry him. Indeed, he
scarcely considered it. He felt certain the pursuit, if pursuit there
were, had been abandoned days before. He had a shrewd idea that the fire
would give people something else to think of. His only fear was that his
provisions would be exhausted. When they went he knew the chances were
that he would starve, but he put this fear resolutely aside whenever it
obtruded itself. With care his supplies could be made to last many days.
He did not sleep any more that night, but watched the fire eat its way
across the valley. When it reached the slope at his feet he shouldered
his pack and started south. It was noon when he made his first halt. He
rested for two hours and then resumed his march. He was now well beyond
the immediate range of the conflagration. There was only an occasional
faint odor of smoke in the woods. He had crossed several small streams,
and he knew they would be an obstacle in the path of the fire unless the
wind, which was from the north, should freshen.
Night fell. He lighted a camp-fire and scraped together his bed of
pine-needles, and lay down to sleep with the comforting thought that he
had put a sufficient distance between himself and the burning forest.
He would turn to the west when morning came. He trusted to a long day's
journey to carry him out of the menaced territory. It would be easier
travelling, too, for the ridges which cut the face of the country ran
east and west. The sun was in the boughs of the hemlocks when he awoke.
There had been a light rain during the night, and the forest world had
taken on new beauty. But it grew hot and oppressive as the hours passed.
The smoke thickened once more. At first he tried to believe it was only
his fancy. Then the wind shifted into the east, and the woods became
noticeably clearer. He pushed ahead with renewed hope. This change in
the wind was a good sign. If it ever got into the south it would drive
the fire back on itself.
He tramped for half the night and threw himself down and slept
heavily--the sleep of utter exhaustion and weariness. It was broad day
when he opened his eyes. The first sound he heard was the dull roar of
the flames. He turned with a hunted, fugitive look towards the west. A
bright light shone through the trees. The fire was creeping around
and already encircled him on two sides. His feeling was one of bitter
disappointment, fear, too, mingled with it. In the south were Ryder's
friends--Dannie's enemies and his. Of the east he had a horror which
the study of his map did not tend to allay; there were towns there, and
settlements, thickly scattered. Finally he concluded he would go forward
and examine the line of fire. There might be some means by which he
could make his way through it.
A journey of two miles brought him to a small watercourse. The fire
was burning along the opposite bank. It blazed among the scrub and
underbrush and leaped from tree to tree; first to shrivel their foliage
to a dead, dry brown, and then envelop them in sheets of flame. The
crackling was like the report of musketry.
Roger Oakley was awed by the sight. In spite of the smoke and heat he
sat down on the trunk of a fallen pine to rest. Some birds fluttered out
of the rolling masses of smoke above his head and flew south with shrill
cries of alarm. A deer crossed the stream, not two hundred yards from
where he sat, at a single bound. Next, two large timber wolves entered
the water. They landed within a stone's throw of him, and trotted
leisurely off. The heat soon drove him from his position, and he, too,
sought refuge in the south. The wall of flame cut him off from the north
and west, and to the east he would not go.
There was something tragic in this blocking of his way. He wondered if
it was not the Lord's wish, after all, that he should be taken. This
thought had been troubling him for some time. Then he remembered Dannie.
Dannie, to whom he had brought only shame and sorrow. He set his lips
with grim determination. Right or wrong, the Lord's vengeance would have
to wait. Perhaps He would understand the situation. He prayed that He
might.
Twenty-four hours later and he had turned westward, with the desperate
hope that he could cross out of the path of the fire, but the hope
proved futile. There was no help for it. To the east he must go if he
would escape.
It was the towns and settlements he feared most, and the people; perhaps
they still continued the search. When he left the wilderness the one
precaution he could take would be to travel only by night. This plan,
when it was firmly fixed in his mind, greatly encouraged him. But at
the end of ten hours of steady tramping he discovered that the fire
surrounded him on three sides. Still he did not despair. For two days he
dodged from east to west, and each day the wall of flame and smoke drew
closer about him, and the distances in which he moved became less and
less. And now a great fear of Antioch possessed him. The railroad ran
nearly due east and west from Buckhom Junction to Harrison, a distance
of ninety-five miles. Beyond the road the country was well settled.
There were thriving farms and villages. To pass through such a country
without being seen was next to impossible. He felt a measure of his
strength fail him, and with it went his courage. It was only the thought
of Dannie that kept him on the alert. Happen what might, he would not
be taken. It should go hard with the man or men who made the attempt. He
told himself this, not boastfully, but with quiet conviction. In so far
as he could, as the fire crowded him back, he avoided the vicinity of
Antioch and inclined towards Buckhorn Junction.
There was need of constant vigilance now, as he was in a sparsely
settled section. One night some men passed quite near to the fringe of
tamarack swamp where he was camped. Luckily the undergrowth was dense,
and his fire had burned to a few red embers. On another occasion, just
at dusk, he stumbled into a small clearing, and within plain view of the
windows of a log-cabin. As he leaped back into the woods a man with a
cob-pipe in his mouth came to the door of the cabin.
Roger Oakley, with the hickory staff which he had cut that day held
firmly in his hands, and a fierce, wild look on his face, watched him
from his cover. Presently the man turned back into the house, closing
the door after him.
These experiences startled and alarmed him. He grew gaunt and haggard;
a terrible weariness oppressed him; his mind became confused, and a sort
of panic seized him. His provisions had failed him, but an occasional
cultivated field furnished corn and potatoes, in spite of the serious
misgivings he felt concerning the moral aspect of these nightly
depredations. When he raided a spring-house, and carried off eggs and
butter and milk, he was able to leave money behind. He conducted these
transactions with scrupulous honesty.
He had been living in the wilderness three weeks, when at last the fire
drove him from cover at Buck-horn Junction. As a town the Junction was
largely a fiction. There was a railroad crossing, a freight-shed, and
the depot, and perhaps a score of houses scattered along a sandy stretch
of country road.
The B. & A. had its connection with the M. & W. at this point. It was
also the beginning of a rich agricultural district, and the woods gave
place to cultivated fields and farm-lands.
It was late afternoon as Roger Oakley approached Buckhorn. When it was
dark he would cross the railroad and take his chance there. He judged
from the light in the sky that the fire had already burned in between
Buckhom and Antioch. This gave him a certain sense of security. Indeed,
the fire surrounded Buckhorn in every quarter except the south. Where
there was no timber or brush it crept along the rail-fences, or ran
with tiny spurts of flame through the dry weeds and dead stubble which
covered much of the cleared land.
He could see a number of people moving about, a quarter of a mile
west of the depot. They were tearing down a burning fence that was in
perilous proximity to some straw-stacks and a barn.
He heard and saw the 6.50 on the M. & W. pull in. This was the Chicago
express; and the Huckleberry's local, which was due at Antioch at
midnight, connected with it. This connection involved a wait of three
hours at Buckhom. Only one passenger left the train. He disappeared into
the depot.
Roger Oakley waited until it was quite dark, and then, leaving the
strip of woods just back of the depot, where he had been hiding, stole
cautiously down to the track. He had noticed that there was an engine
and some freight cars on one of the sidings. He moved among them,
keeping well in the shadow. Suddenly he paused. Two men emerged from the
depot. They came down the platform in the direction of the cars. They
were talking earnestly together. One swung himself up into the engine
and lighted a torch.
He wondered what they were doing, and stole nearer.
They were standing on the platform now, and the man who held the torch
had his back to him. His companion was saying something about the wires
being down.
He listened intently.
Antioch was in danger, and if Antioch was in danger--Dannie--
All at once the man with the torch turned and its light Suffused his
face.
It was Dan Oakley.