beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the
Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and
get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was
sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely
before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great
limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he
would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind
whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead
of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the
road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander
aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.
Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need
her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw
the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril
from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life.
He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find
him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did
not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the
attempt.
Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home.
For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his
flanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing
like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he
had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the
stroke of the whip to madden him.
Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red
terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not
understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising
excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:
"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way
before, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it.
I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You
can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear,
I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"
She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her
hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw
that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was
going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet
body.
But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that
red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point
just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came?
She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where
the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she
could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting
down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were
whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should
hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The
girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him
so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged
straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.
A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and
reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he
felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on
again, through the smoke and out into the good air.
The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed
them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared,
either.
Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and
turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away
with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already
leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire
from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where
everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with
the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter
much.
Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the
hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her
loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at
the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the
men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted
vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take
revenge in the way of men.
But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and
for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And
she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our
trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive
those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.
The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal
another.
Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire
burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but
a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and
to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole
horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be
coming down upon the whole world.
She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of
herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the
road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out
of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little
moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there
was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost
certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she
could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop
would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom
Bones for his brave best.
* * * * *
The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to
French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the
sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white
smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show
that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the
sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come
to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance
but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.
He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty
sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest
shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he
would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the
fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he
would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through
somehow.
He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran
straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him,
sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading
steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill
before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed
the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill
he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French
Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous
horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and
make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far
from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.
Then he came to the top of the hill.
He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that
same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight
slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran
straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could
see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road.
This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided
the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still
moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the
hill where he stood.
Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than
he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse
and looked.
Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was
marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given
its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not
have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road
clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid
wall of fire.
There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The
way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But
at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the
fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in
entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So,
if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe
again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French
Village.
Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick
upon him.
His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the
shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop
dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the
horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture
land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.
Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have
expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood
stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.
"I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your
best. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this."
He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two
miles away and a thousand feet below.
The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into
the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to
the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any
horse could have been driven.
The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking
mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an
unbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with
a calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to the
west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift
line of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. One
narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the
north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few
minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and
running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With
a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.
With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over
the horse and came heavily to the ground.
"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he
hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.
He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.
"We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again.
Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around
them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.
No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it
was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying
equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran
through the grass by his horse's feet.
One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility
that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned
away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might
be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding
nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this,
the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.
Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a
bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to
be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in
hand.
Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he
would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his
hand.
But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb
and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him,
the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of
the thing than he could see heroism.
He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain
men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was
all. He had meant well. God meant better.
Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently
with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the
Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this
square of fire.
"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought
I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll
follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we
can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But
we won't _burn_!"
Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under
command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to
think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse
followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck
path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath
or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of
what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.
They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom
Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw
that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent
and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down
he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks
below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to
the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the
lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks.
Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.
It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side
of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came
slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop
brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light.
The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing.
But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe
Gadbeau.
The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then
crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck
and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.
The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised
the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips
there came the moan:
_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_
With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which
the French people began the telling of their sins in confession. And
she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.
She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of
Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like--the
Catholic Church always turning up in everything.
She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there
behind that awful veil of red.
VI
THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD
The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it was
possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his
which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country.
But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the
Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know
what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only
continued to mumble the words with which they had begun:
_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--"
Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could
speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of
his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of
these.
Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position of
the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth
with his hat.
Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp
effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he
forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of
encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise,
recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada
have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred
years.
Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked
easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that
time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table of
sins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a
step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the
young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the
sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country
would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in
the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to
spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The
Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times.
But now--_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--there was something more, something
that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It
had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the
feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the
Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just
below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a
wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying
where he fell.
He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled
itself to his mind.
"I die, Mon Pere, I die," he began between gasps. "I die. Since the
afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,
if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain
down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.
"All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I
had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I
breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out
from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run
out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and
fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All
the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire
when I would run out.
"They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the
men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the
fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went
to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale.
"Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were
drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. _Mon
Pere_, I struck no blow. But my knife--my knife was found in the man's
heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that
comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed
the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to
the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to
me he said, 'Some day I may need you.'
"Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was
not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He
would buy the land from the people.
"The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came
again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must
force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You,'
he said, 'I need you.'
"_Mon Pere_, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch
of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do
this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to
my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed
the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came.
He bade me do and I did.
"M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all
sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate.
And hate goes raging to do all sin.
"So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always
the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine.
"Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the
railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into
the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I
would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved
me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go.
"I went. Fear, _Mon Pere_, fear is the father of all. I went because
there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed
into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last
moment. I do not know.
"I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see.
If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be
seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be
punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would
have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak.
"Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of
the seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me.
I knew.
"Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And
his speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay.'
"In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the
fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went
out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other
men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a
lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my
torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the
red flare of the fire running after him.
"Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire
in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" With
a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms,
gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:
"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!"
He fell back as the scream died in his throat.
The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the
well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe
Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips
began to form the words of the Act of Contrition.
As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in
his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.
Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the
flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific
forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This
world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood,
was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the
flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place,
all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south.
Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few
bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out
of which she must get the breath of life.
Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a
rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself
down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the
mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!