VI

The new chief of the Ancients devoted the first hours of the next

morning to the arrangement of his fire-fighting gear in the front

hall, and when all the items had been suspended, so that they would

be ready to his hand as well as serve as ornament, he went out on

the porch and sunned himself, revelling in a certain snug and

contented sense of importance, such as he hadn't felt since he had

stepped down from the quarter-deck of his own vessel. He even gazed

at the protruding and poignant centre of that rose on his carpet

slipper with milder eyes, and sniffed aromatic whiffs of liniment

with appreciation of its invigorating odor.

It was a particularly peaceful day. From his porch he could view a

wide expanse of rural scenery, and, once in a while, a flash of sun

against steel marked the location of some distant farmer in his

fields. There were no teams in sight on the highway, for the men of

Smyrna were too busily engaged on their acres. He idly watched a trail

of dun smoke that rose from behind a distant ridge and zigzagged

across the blue sky. He admired it as a scenic attraction, without

attaching any importance to it. Even when a woman appeared on the

far-off ridge and flapped her apron and hopped up and down and

appeared to be frantically signalling either the village in the

valley or the men in the fields, he only squinted at her through the

sunlight and wondered what ailed her. A sudden inspiring thought

suggested that perhaps she had struck a hornets' nest. He chuckled.

A little later a ballooning cloud of dust came rolling down the road

toward him and the toll-bridge that led to Smyrna village. He noted

that the core of the cloud was a small boy, running so hard that his

knees almost knocked under his chin. He spun to a halt in front of

the Cap'n's gate and gasped:

"Fi-ah, fi-ah, fi-ah-h-h-h, Chief! Ben Ide's house is a-fi-ah. I'll

holler it in the village and git 'em to ring the bell and start

'Hecla.'" Away he tore.

"Fire!" bawled Cap'n Aaron, starting for the front hall with a scuff,

a hop, a skip, and jump, in order to favor his sprained toe. "Fire

over to Ben Ide's!"

He had his foreman's hat on wrong side to when his wife came bursting

out of the sitting-room into the hall. She, loyal though excited lady

of the castle, shifted her knight's helmet to the right-about and

stuffed his buckets, bag, and bed-wrench into his hands. The cord

of his speaking-trumpet she slung over his neck.

"I helped get father ready once, twenty years ago," she stuttered,

"and I haven't forgot! Oh, Aaron, I wish you hadn't got such a

prejudice against owning a horse and against Marengo when he tried

to sell you that one. Now you've got to wait till some one gives you

a lift. You can't go on that foot to Ide's."

"Hoss!" he snorted. "Marengo! What he tried to sell me would be a

nice thing to git to a fire with! Spavined wusser'n a carpenter's

saw-hoss, and with heaves like a gasoline dory! I can hop there on

one foot quicker'n he could trot that hoss there! But I'll git there.

I'll git there!"

He went limping out of the door, loaded with his equipment.

The Methodist bell had not begun to ring, and it was evident that

the messenger of ill tidings had not pattered into the village as

yet.

But there was a team in sight. It was "Balm o' Joy" Brackett, his

arms akimbo as he fished on the reins to hurry his horse. He was coming

from the direction of the toll-bridge, and had evidently met the boy.

"I've got my lo'd--I've got my lo'd, but I'll leave behind me all

o' the ro'd," he chirped, when the Cap'n went plunging toward him

with the evident intention of getting on board.

"I'm foreman of the Ancients," roared the Cap'n, "and I have the right

to press into service any craft I see passin'. Take me aboard, I say,

dumblast ye!"

"This ain't no high seas," retorted Brackett, trying to lick past.

"You can drive gents out of your dooryard, but you can't do no

press-gang bus'ness on 'em."

It was apparent that even "Balm o' Joy's" bland nature could

entertain resentment.

"'Tain't right to lay up grudges ag'inst a man that was fussed up

like I was, Mister Brackett," pleaded the Cap'n, hopping along beside

the van. "I've got to git to that fire, I tell you. I'm the foreman!

I'll use you right, after this. I will, I tell you. Lemme on board."

"Promus' flies high when it's hot and dry!" twittered the peddler,

still cheerful but obstinate.

"I'll give ye five dollars to take me to Ben Ide's--ten!" he roared,

when Brackett showed no sign of stopping.

"Promus' on the ground can be better found. Whoa!" cried Brackett,

promptly. "I'll take the fare before you climb up! You'll be so busy

when you git to the fire that I wouldn't want to bother you then."

The Cap'n glowered but chewed his lips to prevent retort, pulled his

wallet, and paid. Then he gathered his apparatus and grunted up to

the high seat.

Far behind them the excited clang-clang of the Methodist bell was

pealing its first alarm.

"By the time they git hosses up out of the fields and hitched onto

'Hecla,' and git their buckets and didoes and git started, I reckon

things will be fried on both sides at Ben Ide's," chatted the peddler.

"Lick up! Lick up!" barked the Cap'n. "I'm payin' for a quick ride

and not conversation."

Brackett clapped the reins along his nag's skinny flank, set his

elbows on his knees, and began:

"There was old Hip Huff, who went by freight,

To Newry Corner, in--"

"Luff, luff!" snorted the Cap'n, in disgust.

"Luff, luff?" queried the songster.

"Yes, luff! Avast! Belay! Heave to! I don't like caterwaulin'. You

keep your mind right on drivin' that hoss."

"You must have been a pop'lar man all your life," remarked the peddler,

with a baleful side-glance. "Does politeness come nat'ral to you,

or did you learn it out of a book?"

The Cap'n made no reply. He only hitched himself forward as though

trying to assist the momentum of the cart, and clutched his buckets,

one in each hand.

A woman came flying out of the first house they passed and squalled:

"Where's the fire, Mr. Brackett, and is anybody burnt up, and hadn't

you jest as liv' take my rags now? I've got 'em all sacked and ready

to weigh, and I sha'n't be to home after to-day."

Brackett pulled up.

"Blast your infernal pelt," howled the Cap'n, "you drive on!"

"Bus'ness is bus'ness," muttered the peddler, "and you ain't bought

me and my team with that little old ten dollars of yourn, and you

can't do northin', anyway, till Hecla gits there with the boys, and

when you're there I don't see what you're goin' to amount to with

that sore toe."

He was clearly rebellious. Cap'n Sproul had touched the tenderest

spot in T.W. Brackett's nature by that savage yelp at his vocal

efforts. But the chief of the Ancients had been wounded as cruelly

in his own pride. He stood up and swung a bucket over the crouching

peddler.

"Drive on, you lubber," he howled, "or I'll peg you down through that

seat like I'd drive a tack. Drive on!"

Brackett ducked his head and drove. And the Cap'n, summoning all the

resources of a vocabulary enriched by a sea experience of thirty

years, yelled at him and his horse without ceasing.

When they topped the ridge they were in full view of Ide's doomed

buildings, and saw the red tongues of flame curling through the

rolling smoke.

But a growing clamor behind made the Chief crane his neck and gaze

over the top of the van.

"Hecla" was coming!

Four horses were dragging it, and two-score men were howling along

with it, some riding, but the most of them clinging to the brake-beams

and slamming along through the dust on foot. A man, perched beside

the driver, was bellowing something through a trumpet that sounded

like:

"Goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow!"

The peddler was driving sullenly, and without any particular

enterprise. But this tumult behind made his horse prick up his ears

and snort. When the nag mended his pace and began to lash out with

straddling legs, the Cap'n yelled:

"Let him go! Let him go! They want us to get off the road!"

"Goff-off-errow!" the man still bellowed through the trumpet.

"I've got goods that will break and I'll be cuss-fired if I'll break

'em for you nor the whole Smyrna Fire Department!" screamed Brackett;

but when he tried to pull up his steed, the Cap'n, now wholly beside

himself and intent only on unrestricted speed, banged a leather

bucket down across the driver's hands.

Brackett dropped the reins, with a yell of pain, and they fell into

the dust and dragged. The horse broke into a bunchy, jerky gallop,

and lunged down the hill, the big van swaying wildly with an ominous

rattling and crashing in its mysterious interior.

There were teams coming along a cross-road ahead of them and teams

rattling from the opposite direction toward the fire, approaching

along the highway they were travelling. Collisions seemed inevitable.

But in a moment of inspiration the Cap'n grabbed the trumpet that

hung from its red cord around his neck and began to bellow in his

turn:

"Goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow!" It was as nearly as human voice

could phrase "Get off the road" through the thing.

The terrifying bulk of the big van cleared the way ahead, even though

people desperately risked tip-ups in the gutter. As it tore along,

horses climbed fences with heads and tails up. There were men

floundering in bushes and women squalling from the tops of

rock-heaps.

The Chief of the Ancients did not halt to attend to his duties at

the fire. He went howling past on the high seat of the van, over the

next ridge and out of sight.

"We're goin' to tophet, and you done it, and you've got to pay for

it," Brackett wailed over and over, bobbing about on the seat. But

the Cap'n did not reply. Teams kept coming into sight ahead, and he

had thought only for his monotonous bellow of "Goff-off-errow!"

Disaster--the certain disaster that they had despairingly

accepted--met them at the foot of Rines' hill, two miles beyond Ide's.

The road curved sharply there to avoid "the Pugwash," as a

particularly mushy and malodorous bog was called in local

terminology.

At the foot of the hill the van toppled over with a crash and anchored

the steaming horse, already staggering in his exhaustion. Both men

had scrambled to the top of the van, ready to jump into the Pugwash

as they passed. The Cap'n still carried his equipment, both buckets

slung upon one arm, and even in this imminent peril it never occurred

to him to drop them. Lucky fate made their desperate leap for life

a tame affair. When the van toppled they were tossed over the roadside

into the bog, lighted on their hands and knees, and sank slowly into

its mushiness like two Brobdingnagian frogs.

It was another queer play of fate that the next passer was Marengo

Todd, whipping his way to the fire behind a horse that had a bit of

wire pinched over his nose to stifle his "whistling."

Marengo Todd leaped out and presented the end of a fence-rail to

Brackett first, and pulled him out.

When he stuck the end of the rail under the Cap'n's nose the Cap'n

pushed it away with mud-smeared hands.

"I don't, myself, nuss grudges in times of distress, Cap Sproul,"

shouted Todd. "You kicked me. I know that. But you was in the wrong,

and you got the wu'st of it. Proverdunce has allus settled my grudges

for me in jest that way. I forgive and pass on, but Proverdunce don't.

Take that fence-rail. It sha'n't ever be said by man that Marengo

Todd nussed a grudge."

When the Cap'n was once more on solid ground, Todd, still iterating

his forgiveness of past injuries, picked up a tin pie-plate that had

been jarred out of the van among other litter, and began to scrape

the black mud off the foreman of the Ancients in as matter-of-fact

a way as though he were currycombing a horse.

The spirit of the doughty mariner seemed broken at last. He looked

down at himself, at the mud-clogged buckets and his unspeakable

bedragglement.

"I've only got one word to say to you right here and now, Cap'n,"

went on Todd, meekly, "and it's this, that no man ever gits jest where

he wants to git, unless he has a ree-li'ble hoss. I've tried to tell

you so before, but--but, well, you didn't listen to me the way you

ought to." He continued to scrape, and the Cap'n stared mutely down

at the foot that was encased in a muddy slipper.

"Now, there's a hoss standin' there--" pursued Todd.

"What will you take for that team jest as it stands?" blurted the

mariner, desperately. The fire, the smoke of which was rolling up

above the distant tree-tops, and his duty there made him reckless.

As he looked down on Todd he hadn't the heart to demand of that meek

and injured person that he should forget and forgive sufficiently

to take him in and put him down at Ide's. It seemed like crowding

the mourners. Furthermore, Cap'n Aaron Sproul was not a man who

traded in humble apologies. His independence demanded a different

footing with Todd, and the bitter need of the moment eclipsed economy.

"Name your price!"

"A hundred and thutty, ev'rything throwed in, and I'll drive you

there a mile a minit," gasped Todd, grasping the situation.

With muddy hands, trembling in haste, the Cap'n drew his long, fat

wallet and counted out the bills. Brackett eyed him hungrily.

"You might jest as well settle with me now as later through the law,"

he cried.

But the Cap'n butted him aside, with an oath, and climbed into the

wagon.

"You drive as though the devil had kicked ye," he yelled to Todd.

"It's my hoss, and I don't care if you run the four legs off'm him."

Half-way to Ide's, a man leaped the roadside fence and jumped up and

down before them in the highway. He had a shotgun in his hands.

"It's my brother--Voltaire," shouted Marengo, pulling up, though

Cap'n Sproul swore tempestuously. "You've got to take him on. He

b'longs to your fire comp'ny."

"I was out huntin' when I heard the bell," bellowed the new passenger,

when he had scrambled to a place behind the wagon-seat, his back

toward them and his legs hanging down. "I'm fu'st hoseman, and it's

lucky you came along and giv' me a lift." He set his gun-butt down

between his knees, the muzzle pointing up.

Cap'n Sproul had his teeth set hard upon a hank of his grizzled

whiskers, and his eyes on the smoke ahead. Todd ran his wheezing horse

up the ridge, and when they topped it they beheld the whole moving

scene below them.

Men were running out of the burning house, throwing armfuls of goods

right and left. The "Hecla" was a-straddle of the well, and rows of

men were tossing at her brake-beams.

"Give her tar, give her tar!" yelled the man behind, craning his thin

neck. Todd lashed at the horse and sent him running down the slope.

At the foot of the declivity, just before they came to the lane

leading into Ide's place, there was a culvert where the road crossed

a brook.

The boarding in the culvert made a jog in the road, and when the wagon

struck this at top speed its body flipped behind like the tongue of

a catapult.

The man with the gun, having eyes and senses only for the fire and

his toiling fellow-Ancients, was unprepared. He went up, out, and

down in the dust, doggedly clinging to his gun. He struck the ground

with it still between his knees. The impact of the butt discharged

both barrels straight into the air.

Flanked by a roaring fire and howling crowd, and bombarded in the

rear, even a horse with a bone spavin and the heaves will exhibit

the spirit of Bucephalus. One of the rotten reins broke at Marengo's

first terrified tug. In less time than it takes to tell, Cap'n Aaron

Sproul, desperate and beholding only one resource--the tail

flaunting over the dasher--seized it and gave a seaman's sturdy pull.

The tail came away in his hands and left only a wildly brandishing

stump. Even in that moment of horror, the Cap'n had eyes to see and

wit to understand that this false tail was more of Marengo Todd's

horse-jockey guile. The look that he turned on the enterprising

doctor of caudal baldness was so perfectly diabolical that Marengo

chose what seemed the lesser of two evils. He precipitated himself

over the back of the seat, dropped to the ground as lightly as a cat,

ran wildly until he lost his footing, and dove into some wayside

alders. Cap'n Aaron Sproul was left alone with his newly acquired

property!

When he hove in sight of his own house he saw Louada Murilla on the

porch, gazing off at the smoke of the fire and evidently luxuriating

in the consciousness that it was her husband who was that day leading

the gallant forces of the Ancients.

As he stared wildly, home seemed his haven and the old house his rock

of safety. He did not understand enough about the vagaries of horses

and wagons to appreciate the risk. One rein still hung over the

dasher.

"Only one jib down-haul left of all the riggin'," he groaned, and

then grabbed it and surged on it.

The horse swung out of the road, the wagon careering wildly on two

wheels. Sproul crossed the corner of some ploughed land, swept down

a length of picket-fence, and came into his own lane, up which the

horse staggered, near the end of his endurance. The wagon swung and

came to grief against the stone hitching-post at the corner of the

porch. Cap'n Sproul, encumbered still with buckets and bag and

trumpet, floundered over the porch rail, through a tangled mass of

woodbine vines, and into the arms of his distracted wife.

For five minutes after she had supported him to a chair she could

do nothing but stare at him, with her hands clasped and her eyes

goggling, and cry, "Aaron, Aaron, dear!" in crescendo. His sole

replies to her were hollow sounds in his throat that sounded like

"unk!"

"Where have you been?" she cried. "All gurry, and wet as sop? If you

are hurt what made 'em let their Chief come home all alone with that

wild hoss? Aaron, can't you speak?"

He only flapped a muddy hand at her, and seemed to be beyond speech.

There was a dull, wondering look in his eyes, as though he were trying

to figure out some abstruse problem. He did not brighten until a team

came tearing up to the gate, and a man with a scoop fireman's hat

on came running to the porch. The man saluted.

"Chief," he said, with the air of an aide reporting on the field of

battle, "that house and barn got away from us, but we fit well for

'em--yas s'r, we fit well! It is thought queer in some quarters that

you wasn't there to take charge, but I told the boys that you'd

prob'ly got good reasons, and they'll git over their mad, all right.

You needn't worry none about that!"