The sheep were taking their midday rest, and Hugh and Alice exchanged
certain confidences as they kept watch over them, sitting side by side
on a dead log. Always, it seemed to them, they had more to tell each
other than time would possibly permit. There was only one thing, it
seemed to Hugh, that they didn’t talk of: his real station in life
before he came to Smoky Land. He had never told her of his wealth, of
the Old Colonel sitting in the club. For once in his life his
credentials were his own manhood and his own personality, and he wanted
no others. It was the test, and no irrelevant matters must enter in.
And all at once he paused in the middle of a sentence, staring curiously
at the ground. The shadow of their figures in the sunlight was no longer
to be seen.
“Good Lord, Alice,” he exclaimed. “What’s happened to the sun?”
They both looked up at once. And they found it without difficulty. But
it was not that potent orb that the long summer days had taught them to
respect. It was a feeble sun, a mere red disk in the strange, gray-blue
sky.
“Clouds?” Hugh asked. A queer little stir went over his body. It was as
if instinct—not yet dead but only blunted in human beings—had spoken
within his being, giving him knowledge that his conscious self had not
yet grasped. He was angry with himself for the tone. He had tried to
keep all urgency out of it, and yet it seemed so breathless, so charged
with dread.
“No,” the girl answered clearly. “It’s smoke.”
They were silent a breath. Both of them were testing the direction of
the wind. Both of them knew at the same instant that their whole world
depended largely upon this. It was not blowing hard at present, yet
there was wind enough to sweep the fire through the tree-tops. And, more
than anything, they remembered the parched and inflammable condition of
the woods and brush.
Both of them discovered the truth the same instant. “We’re right in its
track,” Hugh said.
They waited a long time, hardly speaking. The sky slowly thickened with
smoke. They saw it rising, in great billowing clouds, toward Bear
Canyon. Listening closely, they heard—at the vague frontier of
hearing—the distant crackle of the fire.
All doubt was past. The time for delay was spent. That age-old terror of
the wilderness, the forest fire, was sweeping toward them. It was yet
distant and they had no inkling of its true origin. And as they
listened, the first of the vanguard of fleeing wild creatures—a
full-grown buck with magnificent horns and soft eyes—swept past them at
top speed.
“You see, Hugh, don’t you?” she said rather quietly. “The whole valley
seems to be afire, and we’ve got to run before it. There’s no way to
hold it off——”
“But won’t the rangers see the smoke and come?”
“They couldn’t come in time. Besides, the high range hides it from the
settlements. Unless a gale starts up—or accidents happen—we can drive
the sheep out before it. As yet there’s no need to leave the sheep.”
“Of course not,” Hugh agreed. “We can’t leave the sheep.”
The girl looked up, a wonderful luster in her dark eyes. She was a
mountain girl, inured to the terror of the flaming forest, and it was
natural that she should retain perfect self-control. But she found
herself wondering at this tenderfoot, this man of cities. There is no
greater test of the spirit than that slow, remorseless advance of the
wall of flame. The sight calls forth dreadful memories from the
labyrinthal depths of the germ plasm; it chokes up the heart with cold
blood and distills a poison in the nerves, yet he seemed as free from
panic as she herself. And he was also the eternal shepherd. He would not
leave the sheep.
“We pass the camp on the walk and I’ll get the horses,” she explained
quickly. “It will be hard to control the flock if the fire gets much
nearer. And I’ll try to take time to snatch a little food to keep us
going through the night.”
“And your father’s lease—it’s all lost?”
“No. The grass will come up after the winter rains. If it were just a
top fire the underbrush would be even heavier.” She turned to the
shepherd dog, who now stood gazing, as if entranced, toward the
billowing wall of smoke behind them. “Get ’em up, Shep, old boy. We’ve
got to start.”
The dog obeyed; they began to drive the flocks in the direction of the
foothills. It was hard work for all three to control them. In the first
place they missed the guidance of Spot,—gone some days before to join
his people. Besides, they were all uneasy and at the very verge of panic
from the increasing sound of the fire behind them.
They reached the camp, and Alice left her place to secure the horses.
One of them, her own riding bay, came quickly to her hand, but the pack
horses were not to be seen. The only explanation was that while her own
animal, true to his trust, had remained for his rider to come, the
others—terrorized by the fire—had fled in the direction of the
foothills. They were hobbled, surely, but by striking down with both
fore feet at once, horses learn to make good time even with hobbles. It
was not a great disaster, yet it cut down—to an appreciable
degree—their chances of saving the flock. It was more difficult for
them to keep the flock closely bunched. And both of them knew, and
neither of them spoke of it, that in case of the “accidents” that all
mountaineers learn—some time in their lives—to expect, it hurt their
own chances of getting out alive. Because it impeded his ease of motion,
Hugh left his rifle in camp, depending on the pistol at his belt for any
emergencies that might arise.
The long afternoon drew to twilight. The fire slowly gained. It came
with a rush up the ridges, a veritable charge that drove the wild beasts
before it, but it crept like a snail as it descended. The crackle was no
longer just a whisper in the air to be drowned out by the slightest
sound. It had swollen until it filled the forest, and it had begun to
have a strange, roaring quality that fire fighters learn to dread. It
meant but one thing: an all-consuming forest and brush fire in which
great sheets of flame spring from tree to tree, wherein no living thing
may survive. Already a pronounced heat was in the air. The twilight did
not fall soft and cool as usual. Worst of all, the wind had begun to
increase.
They didn’t pause to eat. The girl shared with him the little food she
had snatched from the tent—a handful of jerked venison and a few pieces
of bread—and they ate it on the march. As the dog worked near her, she
slipped scraps of the dried meat into his mouth. This was no time to
neglect Shep. The success of their flight depended on his strength and
skill.
The shadows lengthened, the sun declined and set, and an ominous glare
spread over the sky behind them. And the impression began to grow on
both of them that the sheep were constantly more hard to control. They
kept dipping into the little glens and draws on each side of their
valley; they bunched uneasily, then spread out into little scurrying
groups. Their sense of unity seemed lost, and more than once only a
quick word, a sharp command, a swift dash about the flanks of the flock
kept them from a panic. They did not keep the even gait by which sheep
usually move. Sometimes they ran and sometimes stopped, milling.
“I don’t understand,” Alice told Hugh, in an instant when they were
within speaking range of each other. “Sheep usually know what to do
better than their herders. And it looks as if they’d run straight away
from the fire.”
It was true. Even the domestic sheep have not lost all their powers of
instinct, and every herder knows that this inner knowledge is often more
to be relied upon than his own intelligence. The flocks usually know
what is best for them. And many a time a wise and experienced herder
will come racing his flocks down from the higher levels just in time to
escape a blizzard—without a word of forecast from the weather man. He
has simply followed the sheep who in turn have obeyed their own
instincts. And Hugh, too, found himself wondering why the flocks seemed
so reluctant to flee down into the valley. It was true that their course
led them to a narrow pass, bound on each side by steep cliffs and
impassable walls of brush, but the flock could pass through with ease.
It looked to him as if the sheep did not themselves know where they
wished to go, but were undeniably uneasy and vacillating. The thought
haunted Hugh, returning again and again, and filling him with a vague
discomfort and dread.
There would be light to travel by to-night. The glare in the sky behind
them ever brightened, and the eyes kept seeking it with an irresistible
apprehension. It cast a red glow over the whole forest world. The warm
color deepened as the night encroached upon the twilight, and all
semblance of reality faded from the land. It was as if it had been
dipped in red wine. The great trees were incarnadine, the canyons swam
in red vapor, even the sheep had red wool. No longer was this the green
and lovely mountain realm they had known. Rather it was an inferno of
mythology, an underworld lighted by sulphurous fires.
From time to time, through the long afternoon, they beheld the march of
the wild creatures. All manner of the forest people passed them,
sometimes in little groups, sometimes one by one. Often the deer sped
by, seemingly almost flying in the long tree-lanes; once a coyote ran
yapping, his fur singed by the fire, and once a great bull elk stalked
soberly past. He seemed to give no thought to the man that walked behind
the sheep,—the same form that had terrorized him that summer day beside
the spring. Once a porcupine rattled his quills on a nearby hillside,
and far away the brush crinkled and popped as a cougar passed through.
And now—in the early night—a magnificent grizzly—that ancient and
mystic nobleman of the forest—ambled past him at an awkward run.
But he was no longer gray. The red radiance was upon him, too. Hugh
watched him, but for once the sheep paid him no heed. The terror behind
them left no room for their usual fears. And the bear slowly reduced his
pace to a walk and then stopped altogether.
Hugh couldn’t have told why he kept his eyes upon the old bear with such
entranced attention. For an instant he forgot his task, the dreadful
beauty of the fire-lighted forest, and even Alice, riding back and forth
on her horse. He seemed to know that from this shaggy forest creature he
was to receive a sign that must not be ignored or missed. “The wild folk
show the way,” is one of the oldest maxims of the forest, and Hugh had
learned his lesson. He was the shepherd, but also he was the forester.
And the simple faith, the humbleness, the sure and inner knowledge of
the Indian had come to him at last.
The bear seemed distressed. For a moment he stood quite still, then
turned his great head this way and that. And then he turned back,
running at top speed, toward the fire.
Even before his senses made verification, Hugh knew beyond all question
what the sign betokened. While he took one breath he stood strangely
silent and bowed, the lines of his face graven deep, his eyes darkened
with shadows. Then he straightened. The eyes cleared and looked out
straight. The lips set, the muscles seemed to gather and bunch beneath
his brown skin,—as if for some crucial test.
Strength was upon him. The dog circled by, seemed to sense it, and
paused for an instant at his feet. Hugh listened. The air was charged
full with the roar of the fire behind, but there was a new sound too.
And far ahead a gray haze lay over the trees.
He signaled to the girl, then motioned toward it. He watched her face,
and a great weight came upon his heart when he read in her expression
the fact that she also had discerned the truth.
“We can’t go on,” he said simply. “There’s a fire in front, too.”