By afternoon they had not found the end of the underground fire. The
live trail had been followed and the creeping terror exterminated for
half a mile; yet, although two ditches had been dug to cut the fire off
from farther progress, always ahead the haze hung motionless, stretching
away westward through the pines.
Now a third trench was started--far enough forward this time, for there
was no blue haze visible beyond the young hemlock growth.
The sweating men, stripped to their undershirts, swung pick and axe and
drove home their heavy shovels. Burleson, his gray flannel shirt open at
the throat, arms bared to the shoulder, worked steadily among his men;
on a knoll above, the fire-warden sat cross-legged on the pine-needles,
her straight young back against a tree. On her knees were a plate and a
napkin. She ate bits of cold partridge at intervals; at intervals she
sipped a glass of claret and regarded Burleson dreamily.
To make certain, she had set a gang of men to clear the woods in a belt
behind the third ditch; a young growth of hemlock was being sacrificed,
and the forest rang with axe-strokes, the cries of men, the splintering
crash of the trees.
"I think," said Burleson to Rolfe, who had just come up, "that we are
ahead of the trouble now. Did you give my peaceful message to Abe
Storm?"
"No, sir; he wasn't to home--damn him!"
The young man looked up quickly. "What's the trouble now?" he asked.
"There's plenty more trouble ahead," said the keeper, in a low voice.
"Look at this belt, sir!" and he drew from his pocket a leather belt,
unrolled it, and pointed at a name scratched on the buckle. The name was
"Abe Storm."
"Where did that come from?" demanded Burleson.
"The man that fired the vlaie grass dropped it. Barry picked it up on
patrol. There's the evidence, sir. The belt lay on the edge of the
burning grass."
"You mean he dropped it last night, and Barry found it where the grass
had been afire?"
"No, sir; that belt was dropped two hours since. _The grass was afire
again._"
The color left Burleson's face, then came surging back through the
tightening skin of the set jaws.
"Barry put out the blaze, sir. He's on duty there now with Chase and
Connor. God help Abe Storm if they get him over the sights, Mr.
Burleson."
Burleson's self-command was shaken. He reached out his hand for the
belt, flung away his axe, and walked up the slope of the knoll where the
fire-warden sat calmly watching him.
For a few moments he stood before her, teeth set, in silent battle with
that devil's own temper which had never been killed in him, which he
knew now could never be ripped out and exterminated, which must, _must_
lie chained--chained while he himself stood tireless guard, knowing that
chains may break.
After a while he dropped to the ground beside her, like a man dead
tired. "Tell me about these people," he said.
"What people, Mr. Burleson? My own?"
Her sensitive instinct had followed the little drama from her
vantage-seat on the knoll; she had seen the patrol display the belt; she
had watched the color die out and then flood the young man's face and
neck; and she had read the surface signs of the murderous fury that
altered his own visage to a mask set with a pair of blazing eyes. And
suddenly, as he dropped to the ground beside her, his question had swept
aside formality, leaving them on the very edge of an intimacy which she
had accepted, unconsciously, with her low-voiced answer.
"Yes--your own people. Tell what I should know I want to live in peace
among them if they'll let me."
She gathered her knees in her clasped fingers and looked out into the
forest. "Mr. Burleson," she said, "for every mental, every moral
deformity, man is answerable to man. You dwellers in the pleasant places
of the world are pitiless in your judgment of the sullen, suspicious,
narrow life you find edging forests, clinging to mountain flanks, or
stupidly stifling in the heart of some vast plain. I cannot understand
the mental cruelty which condemns with contempt human creatures who have
had no chance--not one single chance. Are they ignorant? Then bear with
them for shame! Are they envious, grasping, narrow? Do they gossip about
neighbors, do they slander without mercy? What can you expect from
starved minds, human intellects unnourished by all that you find so
wholesome? Man's progress only inspires man; man's mind alone stimulates
man's mind. Where civilization is, there are many men; where is the
greatest culture, the broadest thought, the sweetest toleration, there
men are many, teaching one another unconsciously, consciously, always
advancing, always uplifting, spite of the shallow tide of sin which
flows in the footsteps of all progress--"
She ceased; her delicate, earnest face relaxed, and a smile glimmered
for a moment in her eyes, in the pretty curled corners of her parted
lips.
"I'm talking very like a school-marm," she said. "I am one, by-the-way,
and I teach the children of these people--_my_ people," she added, with
an exquisite hint of defiance in her smile.
She rested her weight on one arm and leaned towards him a trifle.
"In Fox Cross-roads there is much that is hopeless, much that is
sorrowful, Mr. Burleson; there is hunger, bodily hunger; there is
sickness unsolaced by spiritual or bodily comfort--not even the comfort
of death! Ah, you should see them--_once_! Once would be enough! And no
physician, nobody that knows, I tell you--nobody through the long,
dusty, stifling summers--nobody through the lengthening bitterness of
the black winters--nobody except myself. Mr. Burleson, old man Storm
died craving a taste of broth; and Abe Storm trapped a partridge for
him, and Rolfe caught him and Grier jailed him--and confiscated the
miserable, half-plucked bird!"
The hand which supported her weight was clinched; she was not looking at
the man beside her, but his eyes never left hers.
"You talk angrily of market hunting, and the law forbids it. You say you
can respect a poacher who shoots for the love of it, but you have only
contempt for the market hunter. And you are right sometimes--" She
looked him in the eyes. "Old Santry's little girl is bedridden. Santry
shot and sold a deer--and bought his child a patent bed. She sleeps
almost a whole hour now without much pain."
Burleson, eyes fixed on her, did not stir. The fire-warden leaned
forward, picked up the belt, and read the name scratched with a
hunting-knife on the brass buckle.
"Before Grier came," she said, thoughtfully, "there was misery enough
here--cold, hunger, disease--oh, plenty of disease always. Their
starved lands of sand and rock gave them a little return for
heart-breaking labor, but not enough. Their rifles helped them to keep
alive; timber was free; they existed. Then suddenly forest, game, vlaie,
and lake were taken from them--fenced off, closed to these people whose
fathers' fathers had established free thoroughfare where posted warnings
and shot-gun patrols now block every trodden trail! What is the sure
result?--and Grier was brutal! What could be expected? Why, Mr.
Burleson, these people are Americans!--dwarfed mentally, stunted
morally, year by year reverting to primal type--yet the fire in their
blood set their grandfathers marching on Saratoga!--marching to
accomplish the destruction of all kings! And Grier drove down here with
a coachman and footman in livery and furs, and summoned the constable
from Brier Bridge, and arrested old man Santry at his child's
bedside--the new bed paid for with Grier's buck...."
She paused; then, with a long breath, she straightened up and leaned
back once more against the tree.
"They are not born criminals," she said. "See what you can do with
them--see what you can do for them, Mr. Burleson. The relative values of
a deer and a man have changed since they hanged poachers in England."
They sat silent for a while, watching the men below.
"Miss Elliott," he said, impulsively, "may I not know your father?"
She flushed and turned towards him as though unpleasantly startled. That
was only instinct, for almost at the same moment she leaned back quietly
against the tree.
"I think my father would like to know you," she said. "He seldom sees
men--men like himself."
"Perhaps you would let me smoke a cigarette, Miss Elliott?" he ventured.
"You were very silly not to ask me before," she said, unconsciously
falling into his commonplace vein of easy deference.
"I wonder," he went on, lazily, "what that debris is on the land which
runs back from the store at Fox Cross-roads. It can't be that anybody
was simple enough to go boring for oil."
She winced; but the smile remained on her face, and she met his eyes
quite calmly.
"That pile of debris," she said, "is, I fancy, the wreck of the house of
Elliott. My father did bore for oil and found it--about a pint, I
believe."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," cried Burleson, red as a pippin.
"I am not a bit sensitive," she said. Her mouth, the white, heavy lids
of her eyes, contradicted her.
"There was a very dreadful smash-up of the house of Elliott, Mr.
Burleson. If you feel a bit friendly towards that house, you will advise
me how I may sell 'The Witch.' I don't mind telling you why. My father
has simply got to go to some place where rheumatism can be helped--be
made bearable. I know that I could easily dispose of the mare if I were
in a civilized region; even Grier offered half her value. If you know of
any people who care for that sort of horse, I'll be delighted to enter
into brisk correspondence with them."
"I know a man," observed Burleson, deliberately, "who would buy that
mare in about nine-tenths of a second."
"Oh, I'll concede him the other tenth!" cried the girl, laughing. It was
the first clear, care-free laugh he had heard from her--and so
fascinating, so delicious, that he sat there silent in entranced
surprise.
"About the value of the mare," she suggested, diffidently, "you may tell
your friend that she is only worth what father paid for her--"
"Good Lord!" he said, "that's not the way to sell a horse!"
"Why not? Isn't she worth that much?"
"What did your father pay for her?"