the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by
them on its way.
Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had
caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their
instinct to hunt water.
The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were
five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must
follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at
their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of
the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from
spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire
shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what
these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they
hung on in desperation.
Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire
back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something.
And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind
and around them so that they had to race for life.
Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among
the broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knew
it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being
cut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep any
steady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied and
whirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every direction
and with it the fire ran apparently at will.
When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were just
beginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind would
send a ring of fire around to the other side so that they saw
themselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off.
Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the north
side of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly
east and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions.
If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save the
southern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north of
the lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did not
enter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have had
plenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men were
fighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is the
way of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with the
fire.
They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longer
an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a
cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its
eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and
bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the
roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips
were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it.
They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them
had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night
and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those
other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into
the hills to do this thing.
Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the
fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight
of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He
fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until
there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his
brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter
given or asked with the demon of the fire.
Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and
joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where
the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could hold
the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the
north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be
safe.
The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The
five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen
tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength
from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down
the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with
charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it.
They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their
work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God
in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it!
To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and
_drink_!
Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here
was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,
fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of
the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the
fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They
had won! It could not beat them now!
As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the
placid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raised
a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice
croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph.
But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had
safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry,
flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames
went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out
around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the
thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames
went roaring to the top of it.
The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get
themselves out of that encircling death.
When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the
full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of
victory.
Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain--but they
themselves could not get near the lake.
Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could
not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between
them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in
the lake.
Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, according
to the nature that was in each.
Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men
pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke
and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not
men of the hills.
They were!--They were the real enemy!--They were two of those who had
set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed
straight for the lake and had gotten there. _They_ were safe. And
_they_ had _water_!
All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire
fury of the day, rushed back upon him.
He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had
not.
Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those
two there in the water. _In the water!_
He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the
fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,
his face buried in a patch of bare earth.
Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When
they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him
with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he
understood, he turned on his face moaning:
"I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had--I wish I had."
And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west.
* * * * *
The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the
intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal
and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the
morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four
hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash
and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he
querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and
dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had
found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle
philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the
faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at
the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph
Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop.
But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in
Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had
appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the
conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the
U. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills from
their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then
the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its
business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public
would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a
mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days
at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the
railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind
it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results.
He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike
in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand
that struck.
Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the
first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the
mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue
of the sky behind them.
Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old
Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the
divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day
was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that
morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early
morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now.
Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey
up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair
day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top
of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember
that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square
miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking
posts.
Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from
the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to
the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and
around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by
Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the
mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of
his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south
and west.
He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled,
perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he
went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.
Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he
knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had
recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain
had suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat and
sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole
contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very
eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth
skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should
have been.
He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind,
and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of
Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart
whose passions ran deep below a placid surface.
At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and
hurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down the
wire of a fire in the hills.
Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in"
with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over
the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company,
between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office
at Steuben.
The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.
Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:
"This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy."
The Bishop stood quiet a moment.
Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window was
the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of
certain things.
Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He
grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:
"I--I'm sorry, Bishop! I--I--didn't hear what you said."
The Bishop--if one might say it--grinned. Then he said quickly:
"I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything
on the wire?"
Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet red
colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were
coming back. He was now coherent.
No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the
wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed
abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call."
Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited
a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call
everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the
benefit of the Bishop.
"It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--"
But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing
train.
At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house.
Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the
housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's
saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the
hills.
It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no
telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a
half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among
the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated
country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's
clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the
matter no more than a mild wonder.
For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road
over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the
winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He
thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on
that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But
more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up
there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.
He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started
accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men
into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were
caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody
justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's
horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his
well fed life.
Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther.
Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of
keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a
fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just
slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in the
hills--which was vague, and his business--which was still more vague.
He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole
matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the
fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.
The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben
believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the
diocese. Corben did not believe that.
In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to
believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in
his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.
Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road.
But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe
of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the
origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond
that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.
Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones,
and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask
a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the
situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning
by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the
children. That was all they could tell.
As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones
escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew
without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women
would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.
In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory
authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to
the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea
that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself
in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the
mere argument that he was a man.
The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what
she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road
yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in
the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald
Mountain.
The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched.
He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the
breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and
futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of
that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even
than the one of the fire itself.
"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth
had to tell.
"Yes. We had just read it."
"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly.
"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered
simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer
implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.
"They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop
slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills.
Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road
from here there, is it open, do you know?"
"No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the
people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the
lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road
certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes
down."
"I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins.
"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be
trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a
few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot
go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost."
"Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his
horse up the hill.
"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after
him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the
road!"
But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he
heard or not, he did not answer or look back.
Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know
whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a
quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not
drive him back. She knew that.
She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which
he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be
driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted
alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills
would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside
it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and
the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be
trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek
safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death
just as certain but which they would prefer to face.
The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was
riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be
among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.
But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and
before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.
"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs.
Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will
catch you before long."
"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you.
Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet,
and won't be for some time."
Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day
long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did
not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to
run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run
very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the
hill.
But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him.
When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile
away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.
She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all
against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances
stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the
chances and was ready to measure himself against them.
"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up
the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too
late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid.
Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a
man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all
about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's
business. I wonder."
Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of
the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a
pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from
the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that
he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he
disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into
the sky.
Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to
the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming,
sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward
her home.
All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had
passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present
among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting
to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never
before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.
For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a
living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined
course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down
the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open
chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and
surround them.
While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but
the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This
was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep
in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the
level lands and safety.