Marie stopped, panting, at the hotel piazza. “Mr. Ashe?” she said.
“Where’s Mr. Ashe?”
“Hain’t been gone more ’n couple of minutes. Feller, all excited up,
stopped and says somethin’ to him, and off he goes like somebody was
robbin’ his hen-house.”
She was too late! He was gone! Where? Marie guessed. Somebody else had
warned him, and he was off for Crab Creek Trestle.
“Who was with him? Did he go alone?”
“Just up and rushed off like sixty. Didn’t wait for nothin’ or nobody.”
It was like him. Sudden Jim! He had not paused for help, but had plunged
ahead alone. How futile it was! What could he do alone save rush into
danger? Marie felt there was danger. A business matter Moran had called
it, yet in the heart of the woods that might happen which could not be
considered a business transaction. Jim might come upon Moran’s agents as
they set their fire. What then? Would they pause to consider if here
were business? Would Jim pause to think of business? No. There would be
violence—and Jim alone.
There is a cave-dweller hidden in each of us. At some hour it will
emerge, our varnish of civilization will peel from us, and we shall
stand forth primitive, thinking, functioning as did the remote ancestors
of the race. This was Marie’s hour. Her man was rushing into danger—and
she was not with him.
She did not consider if her presence would help; if she could do better
service otherwise. Her instinct was to be with him, to share what came
to him. She would warn him, delay him, if possible. But that was not the
chief thing. The foremost thought was to stand at his side, to feel his
presence.
Unconscious of the stares of astonishment that followed her, the buzz of
comment and surmise that remained behind, she followed the path Jim had
taken, heading toward the railroad. But she did not follow the rails as
Jim had done. She crossed the track and plunged into a marshy country,
treacherous underfoot, grown thickly with undergrowth that tore at her
garments, scratched her face. She was cutting across a curve in the
railroad, hoping so to overtake Jim.
Now she floundered and fell, was up again to struggle forward. Her feet
sank in marsh ooze; sometimes she waded stagnant water that gurgled
above her shoe-tops. But she stopped for nothing. Another might have
become confused in the blackness of the night, for the moon was hidden
by clouds which promised storm, but Marie had traversed those woods
again and again. She was the daughter of a lumberjack, and woodcraft was
bred into the very fiber of her.
Once her ankle turned under her with a sickening pain; but she forced
herself to rise and limp onward. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” she whispered to
herself over and over again, unconscious that she was whispering. Her
body was not inured to such endeavors, but her will was master of her
body. When exhaustion would have brought her to the ground her will held
her upright, gave her strength to flounder onward, always to the
accompaniment of that hysterical whisper: “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
Her skirts, soggy with the slime of marsh pools, clung to her legs; her
hair hung about her face, caught on projecting branches, to be torn
loose ruthlessly. She seemed not to feel the pain of it. The flesh of
her hands was lacerated; blood oozed from more than one abrasion upon
her cheeks. She was unconscious of it. All of consciousness that
remained was the knowledge that Jim Ashe was there ahead of her
somewhere, going to his death, perhaps; that she could, must warn him,
save him So she floundered on, with the whispered words “Hurry! Hurry!
Hurry!” urging her ahead. Perhaps she heard the words; perhaps they
helped to spur her on. There came a moment when she did hear them, but
fancied they were spoken by another. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
It seemed as if she had been traveling so always, forcing her way
through nightmare obstructions, encountering such vain labors as are
only to be met with in vivid, horrible dreams. Then she tripped, fell,
striking her shoulder against something hard, cold. She felt it with her
hand, and cried aloud. It was the railroad! She had won to the railroad!
Was Jim ahead or behind? There was no time to study. Her mind was in no
condition to reason; there was only the feverish urge that forced her
on. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” She turned up the track, now trying pitifully
to run, now wavering, staggering, but always persevering.
How black it was! She strained her eyes forward. He might be near, very
near, yet she could not see him, and any moment her strength might fail.
She demanded yet another effort from the forces so near exhaustion.
“Jim!” she cried, shrilly, wildly. “Jim! Jim! Wait, oh, wait!”
A hundred yards up the track Jim heard the cry, stopped, listened.
“Jim, wait!” It sounded more faintly. A woman’s voice, here, calling his
name! There was but one woman in Diversity who had ever called him Jim.
In this moment, a moment he knew was weighted with danger to him, came
her voice out of the black mystery that lay behind him. It was
startling, unbelievable. He asked himself if much worry, much travail of
heart, had not deranged some spring or cog in his imagination, so that
he heard things which were not. If it really were Marie, what was she
doing there? She had betrayed him once; was this another act in tune
with her betrayal? He braced himself against a fresh danger, an
unforeseen danger, and waited.
She tottered up to him out of the black blanket of night; tottered,
hands fumbling before her, his name on her lips, his name and that other
word which her will had set there so that it was repeated endlessly
without volition: “Jim, hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
Her fingers touched him before she was aware of his presence; touched
him, clung to him. She cried aloud, inarticulately. Panting, sobbing,
she tried to speak, but only repeated over and over that one word:
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
He felt her fingers slipping from him, felt her body sagging, falling.
His arm passed round her, sustaining her. Her head sank in the hollow of
her arm and she sighed with weary contentment.
“Marie, what is it?”
“Hurry!” she muttered.
But he shook her, not roughly, but with boyish impatience, boyish alarm.
“No, no! Why are you here? What is the matter?”
Her mind cleared slowly; her will that had set on one determination, to
reach him—set so it could not loose its hold—relaxed. She breathed
deeply, pushed against him in an effort to stand free.
“Crab Creek Trestle,” she said. “He’s—going to burn it. He warned
you—to get you—out here.”
His suspicion reared itself between them.
“How do you know? What are you doing here? Did he send you?”
She quivered, sobbed dryly—then she shoved him away.
“I know because he boasted of it. That—and other things. To-morrow
that—note. The bank will make you pay it. He—said he—would be making
clothespins—in your mill—”
“But you—why are you here? What do you want?”
She summoned her strength and her pride.
“It doesn’t—matter why—I am here. You must go back. You mustn’t go
on.”
“So that’s it,” he said, bitterly. “He sent you to hold me back till
they could do the work.”
He turned and began to stride away.
“No!” she cried. “You mustn’t go!”
“Go back to town, Marie,” he said, his voice quivering, not with wrath,
but with pain. “Go back. I’m going on.”
“You mustn’t!” She took one tottering step toward him and sank until she
was on her knees. He would not believe her. He would not be warned.
What she had suffered, the things she had just done, had been in vain.
“Go back,” he said, dully. “It isn’t safe out there. Go back.”
“It isn’t safe for you—for _you_. It’s planned to have you
come—alone.”
He moved away from her. She forced herself to rise.
“Then I’ll go with you,” she said.
“Go back!” he commanded.
“No,” she said, and tottered on.
He set his teeth, turned his face away from her, and went on, unmindful
of her sobbing, gasping breaths. At one moment they saw a redness in the
sky; saw the darkness ahead fluttering like a waved cloth.
“Fire,” Jim muttered, and began to run. He was too late—Crab Creek
Trestle was in names!
As best she could Marie followed. He gained, but she did not falter,
urged herself to her utmost. Ahead of them the trestle came into view,
wreathed in flames, flames that leaped and writhed and strained upward
as if seeking to be released from bonds that held them to earth. The
trees and bushes about seemed to rise and fall with the swelling of the
tongues of fire. In the midst the framework of the trestle stood black,
stark, startlingly vivid.
For a moment Jim stood where bank and trestle met, stood undecided.
There was nothing to do, yet he must do something, for it was his nature
to do something. Nothing would save the trestle. He perceived that,
though he hesitated to admit it. He saw that the work of incendiarism
had been done efficiently; timbers had been well soaked with oil, and
the match applied not in one spot but in scores of places. Except for a
matter of thirty feet at the end where Jim stood the whole structure was
flame-wrapped. From the very brook fire seemed to flow upward; here and
there, twenty feet below, marsh grass burst into ruddy, living flower.
Without plan or reason Jim started forward upon the trestle, as if to
plunge headlong into the dancing, undulating, seething mass of
destruction and stifle it with his hands.
Marie, now at his side, clutched his arm to restrain him. He shook her
off ungently, sprang forward. She kept at his side. Again he was forced
to pause, shading his face from the heat that reached out to meet him.
His eyes were for nothing but the fire; saw nothing aside from it.
Waves of heat surged against him, forced him to draw back, and the very
action of retreating cleared his head, restored him to something
resembling calm. Instinct, impulse withdrew, leaving intellect in
command. He thought of his father. What he saw before him was his
father’s—Clothespin Jimmy’s—life-work disappearing in flames. He had
been given his father’s shoes. How had he filled them? The destruction
of this trestle was the destruction of the Ashe Clothespin Company. He
should have foreseen this danger, guarded against it adequately. In that
he had failed.
Again Marie was at his side. “Come back,” she said. “You can do no
good.”
He did not notice her, but stepped forward again, forcing himself
against the heat. She clung to him.
“You can’t put it out,” she said again. “Come back out of danger.”
He turned on her, eyes flashing, jaw set.
“Put it out!” he said, harshly. “I’m not thinking about putting it out.
It’s gone!” He was Sudden Jim now, not defeated, still fighting.
“Go back and tell Moran you left me figuring how to get logs from there
to here. And tell him I’m going to do it. Tell him if he’d burned the
woods I’d find some way to make logs out of the ashes.”
Presently he spoke again—to himself.
“I wish Nelson was here,” he said. He was trying to figure construction,
needed his millwright’s advice.
In that moment Clothespin Jimmy might have felt satisfaction in his son,
for young Jim had forgotten the blow just dealt him, had forgotten the
fire that raged at his feet. His thoughts dealt only with the future. He
wasted no moment in discouragement, though he might well have been
discouraged. One thought he held: Logs must cross the gap before him.
But how? His fingers doubled into determined fists.
“It can be done,” he said, “and I’ll find the way!”
An older woodsman than Jim, a man experienced in the handling of logs,
would have shaken his head. Such a man would have seen the difficulties
of the task; would have declared it impossible to haul timber across
that swamp before winter.
Jim’s inexperience refused to be daunted.
His head was clear now; he was himself. Marie—she had been there. He
turned upon her.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, fiercely, but she was not
upright before him. She lay upon the cross-ties, one arm dangling limply
through, the garish light exaggerating the pallor of her face.
“Marie!” he whispered, hoarsely.
She did not stir or answer. Her endurance had been urged to the point of
breakage, had given way. He was on his knees beside her, his heart
gripped by fear, for he had never seen a woman faint. He lifted her. Her
head lopped grotesquely to one side as he moved her, and this multiplied
his fright. He had loved her, and she was dead. She had not been worth a
man’s love; had been treacherous; had betrayed him; but he had given her
all of his love. Her breast lifted laboriously. He was conscious of a
feeling of relief, not of gladness. So this would not be the end of
things between them. They would continue to inhabit the same world. To
him it seemed the world was oversmall to house them both.
Whatever she had done, he could not leave her so. He strained until she
lay partly across his shoulder—a weight it would have been joy for him
to bear a few short hours before—and so, staggering under his burden,
he strove toward Diversity.
Long miles lay between him and town; no help was nearer; no shelter for
Marie. He found himself near the point of exhaustion. But he labored on.
After a length of time that seemed to have stretched into hours Jim was
aware of the dark figure of a man standing between the tracks before
him.
Somehow Jim was not interested in it, was not interested in anything
save the effort to keep on his feet and make progress. The man spoke
with a voice Jim knew but did not identify.
“Who are you?” Jim asked, in a whisper.
“Gilders,” said the man. “Here, I’ll take her. You carry my rifle.
You’ve lugged her about as far as you can, hain’t you?”
“All of that,” Jim said, surrendering his burden and sitting down
abruptly.
“Rest a bit,” said Gilders. “When you’re ready, say so. We’ll take her
to my place—it’s nearer ’n Diversity.”
Presently Jim got to his feet.
“All right,” he said.
Gilders raised Marie without effort and strode away with her in his
arms. Jim followed. At times Gilders waited to permit Jim to rest, for
Jim could not equal the woodsman’s pace, indeed could not have sustained
any pace at all without frequent stops.
That last tramp was a thing of vagueness to Jim. How long it was, how
many minutes, hours, days it required to traverse the distance, he did
not know. It was a hades of blackness and weariness and pain. At last
they arrived at Gilders’s shanty. Steve laid Marie on his bed. Jim
waited for no bed, but sank to the floor, and the night held no further
consciousness for him.
Somehow Steve procured a neighbor woman who gave of her kindliness and
skill to Marie, ministering, watching through the night. Steve let Jim
lie as he had fallen. Sleep, he knew, would work its own reviving
miracle.