ANTIOCH had grown indifferent to forest fires, They were of almost
annual recurrence, and the town had come to expect them each fall. As
the Hon. Jeb Barrows remarked, with cheerful optimism, voicing a popular
belief, if it was intended Antioch should go that way it would have gone
long ago.
But this summer the drought had been of longer duration than usual. The
woods were like tinder, and the inevitable wadding from some careless
hunter's gun, or the scattered embers from some camp-fire far up in the
northern part of the State, had started a conflagration that was licking
up miles of timber and moving steadily south behind a vast curtain of
smoke that darkened half the State. It was only when the burned-out
settlers from the north began to straggle in that Antioch awoke to a
proper sense of its danger.
Quick upon the heels of these fugitives came the news that the
half-dozen families at Barrow's Saw Mills had been forced to flee from
their homes. The fire had encircled the mills in a single night, and
one old man, a trapper and hunter, who lived alone in a cabin in a small
clearing on the outskirts of the settlement, had been burned to death in
his bunk before he could be warned of his danger or help reach him.
It was then that Antioch sent out its first call for help. It needed
fire-engines and hose, and it needed them badly, especially the hose,
for the little reservoir from which the town drew its water supply was
almost empty.
Antioch forgot the murder of Ryder. It forgot Roger Oakley, the strike,
and all lesser affairs. A common danger threatened its homes, perhaps
the lives of its citizens.
A score of angry men were stamping up and down the long platform across
from the shops, or pushing in and out of the ugly little depot, which
had taken on years in apparent age and decay in the two days during
which no trains had been running.
They were abusing Holt, the railroad, and every one connected with it.
For the thousandth time they demanded to know where the promised relief
train was--if it had started from Buckhorn Junction, and, if it _hadn't_
started, the reason of the delay.
The harried assistant-treasurer answered these questions as best he
could.
“Are you going to let the town burn without making a move to save it?”
demanded an excited citizen.
“You don't think I am any more anxious to see it go than you are?”
retorted Holt, angrily.
“Then why don't your damn road do something to prevent it?”
“The road's doing all it can, gentlemen.”
“That's a whole lot, ain't it?”
“We are cut off,” said Holt, helplessly. “Everything's tied up tight.”
“You can wire, can't you?”
“Yes, I can wire; I have wired.”
“Well, where's the relief train, then?”
“It's at the Junction.”
“It's going to do us a lot of good there, ain't it?”
“They'll send it as soon as they can get together a crew.”
“Stir them up again, Holt Tell 'em we got to have that hose and those
engines, or the town's gone. It's a matter of life and death.”
Holt turned back into the depot, and the crowd dispersed.
In the ticket-office he found McClintock, who had just come in from
up-town. The master mechanic's face was unusually grave.
“I have been investigating the water supply with the city engineer.
Things are in awful shape. The mains are about empty, and there isn't
pressure enough from the stand-pipe to throw a thirty-five foot stream.”
“I wish Oakley was here,” muttered Holt.
“So do I. Somehow he had a knack at keeping things moving. I don't mean
but what you've done your level best, Byron,” he added, kindly.
“They've laid down on me at the Junction,” said the younger man,
bitterly.
He stepped to the door, mopping his face with his handkerchief, and
stood looking down the track in the direction of Buckhorn.
“They made it so Oakley couldn't stay, and now they wonder why the
relief train is hung up. All Durks says is that he can't get a crew. I
tell you if Oakley was here he'd _have_ to get one.”
“It was a mistake to send the yard engine up to Parker's Run. If we had
it here now--”
“How in hell was _I_ to know we'd need it? I had to try to save those
ties, and we thought the wind was shifting into the south,” in fierce
justification of his course.
“That's so, all right,” said McClintock. “We did think the danger was
past; only we shouldn't have taken any chances.”
At this point they were joined by Dr. Emory.
“Anything new from Buckhorn?” he inquired, anxiously.
“No, it's the same old story. Durks ain't got anybody to send.”
“Damn his indifference!” muttered McClintock.
The doctor, like Holt, fell to mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“Don't he know our danger? Don't he know we can't fight the fire without
engines and hose?--that our water supply is about exhausted, and that
we'll have to depend on the river?”
Holt nodded wearily.
“It looks as though we were to be left to face this situation as best we
can, without help from the outside,” said the doctor, uneasily.
Holt turned to McClintock.
“Isn't there some method of back-firing?”
“It's too late to try that, and, with this wind blowing, it would have
been too big a risk.”
He glanced moodily across the town to the north, where the black cloud
hung low in the sky. He added:
“I have told my wife to keep the young ones in, no matter what happens.
But Lord! they will be about as well off one place as another, when it
comes to the pinch.”
“I suppose so,” agreed the doctor. “I am at a loss to know what
precautions to take to insure the safety of Mrs. Emory and my daughter.”
It was only four o'clock, but it was already quite dark in the town--a
strange half-light that twisted the accustomed shape of things. The air
was close, stifling; and the wind, which blew in heavy gusts, was
like the breath from a furnace. The sombre twilight carried with it a
horrible sense of depression. Every sound in nature was stilled; silence
reigned supreme. It was the expectant hush of each living thing.
The three men stepped out on the platform. Holt and the doctor were
still mopping their faces with their limp handkerchiefs. McClintock was
fanning himself with his straw hat. When they spoke they unconsciously
dropped their voices to a whisper.
“Those families in the North End should move out of their homes,” said
the doctor. “If they wait until the fire gets here, they will save
nothing but what they have on their backs.”
“Yes, and the houses ought to come down,” added McClintock. “There's
where the fire will get its first grip on the town, and then Heaven help
us!”
Night came, and so imminent seemed the danger that Antioch was roused to
something like activity.
A crowd, composed almost exclusively of men, gathered early on the
square before the court-house.
They had by common consent given up all hope that the relief train would
be sent from Buckhom Junction. The light in the sky told them that they
were completely cut off from the outside world. The town and the woods
immediately adjacent formed an island in the centre of an unbroken sea
of fire. The ragged red line had crept around to the east, west, and
south, but the principal danger would be from the north, where the wind
drove the flames forward with resistless fury. To the south and east
Billup's Fork interposed as a barrier to the progress of the fire, and
on the west was a wide area of cultivated fields.
At regular intervals waves of light flooded the square, as the
freshening gusts fanned the conflagration or whirled across the town
great patches of black smoke. In the intervals of light a number of dark
figures could be seen moving about on the roof of the court-house. Like
the square below, it was crowded with anxious watchers.
The crowd jostled to and fro on the square, restless and excited, and
incapable of physical quiet. Then suddenly a voice was raised and made
itself heard above the tramp of feet. “Those houses in the North End must
come down!” this voice said.
There was silence, and then a many-tongued murmur. Each man present
knew that the residents of the North End had sworn that they would not
sacrifice their homes to the public good. If their homes must go, they
much preferred to have them burn, for then the insurance companies would
have to bear the loss.
“'Those houses must come down!” the voice repeated.
It was McClintock who had spoken.
“Who's going to pull them down?” another voice asked. “They are ready to
fight for them.”
“And we ought to be just as ready to fight, if it comes to that,”
answered the master mechanic. “It's for the common good.”
The crowd was seized with a noisy agitation. Its pent-up feelings found
vent in bitter denunciation of the North End. A man--it was the Hon. Jeb
Barrows--had mounted the court-house steps, and was vainly endeavoring
to make himself heard. He was counselling delay, but no one listened to
him. The houses must be torn down whether their owners wanted it or not.
McClintock turned up the street.
“Fall in!” he shouted, and at least a hundred men fell in behind him,
marching two abreast. Here and there, as they moved along, a man would
forsake the line to disappear into his own gate. When he rejoined his
neighbors he invariably carried an axe, pick, or crowbar.
From the square they turned into Main Street, and from Main Street into
the north road, and presently the head of the procession halted before a
cluster of small frame houses resting in a hollow to their right.
“These must come down first,” said McClintock. “Now we want no noise,
men. We'll pass out their stuff as quietly as we can, and take it back
to the square.”
He swung open a gate as he spoke. “Williams keeps a team. A couple of
you fellows run around to the barn and hook up.”
Just then the front door opened, and Williams himself appeared on the
threshold. A dog barked, other doors opened, lights gleamed in a
score of windows, and the North End threw off its cloak of silence and
darkness.
“Keep quiet, and let me do the talking,” said McClintock over his
shoulder. Then to the figure in the doorway:
“We have come to help you move, John. I take it you will be wanting to
leave here shortly.”
“The hell you have!” responded Williams, roughly.
“We'll give you a hand!” and the master mechanic pushed through the gate
and took a step down the path.
“Hold on!” cried Williams, swinging out an arm. “I got something to say
about that!”
There was a sound as of the clicking, of a lock, and he presented the
muzzle of a shot-gun.
“Oh, say,” said McClintock, gently; “you had better not try to use that.
It will only make matters worse. Your house has got to come down.”
“The hell it has!”
“Yes,” said McClintock, still gently. “We got to save what we can of the
town.”
Williams made no answer to this, but McClintock saw him draw the butt of
the gun up towards his shoulder.
The men at his back were perfectly still. They filled the street, and,
breathing hard, pressed heavily against the picket fence, which bent
beneath the weight of their bodies.
“You'd better be reasonable. We are losing precious time,” urged
McClintock.
“The hell you are!”
It occurred to McClintock afterwards that there had been no great
variety to Williams's remarks.
“In an hour or two this place will be on fire.”
“I've got no kick coming if it burns, but it sha'n't be pulled down.”
“Put up your gun, and we'll give you a lift at getting your stuff out.”
“No, you won't.”
McClintock kept his eyes on the muzzle of the shotgun.
“It ain't the property loss we are thinking of--it's the possible loss
of life,” he said, mildly.
“I'll chance it,” retorted Williams, briefly.
“Well, we won't.”
Williams made no reply; he merely fingered the lock of his gun.
“Put down that gun, John!” commanded McClintock, sternly.
At the same moment he reached around and took an axe from the hands of
the nearest man.
“Put it down,” he repeated, as he stepped quickly towards Williams.
The listening men pressed heavily against the fence in their feverish
anxiety to miss nothing that was said or done. The posts snapped, and
they poured precipitously into the yard. At the same moment the gun
exploded, and a charge of buckshot rattled harmlessly along the pavement
at McClintock's feet.
Then succeeded a sudden pause, deep, breathless, and intense, and then
the crowd gave a cry--a cry that was in answer to a hoarse cheer that
had reached them from the square.
An instant later the trampled front yard was deserted by all save
Williams in the doorway. He still held the smoking gun to his shoulder.