Carrigan turned slowly and looked about his room. There was no other
door except one opening into a closet, and but two windows. Curtains
were drawn at these windows, and he raised them. A grim smile came to
his lips when he saw the white bars of tough birch nailed across each
of them, outside the glass. He could see the birch had been freshly
stripped of bark and had probably been nailed there that day. Carmin
Fanchet and Black Roger had welcomed him to Chateau Boulain, but they
were evidently taking no chances with their prisoner. And where was
Marie-Anne?
The question was insistent, and with it remained that cold grip of
something in his heart that had come with the sight of Carmin Fanchet
below. Was it possible that Carmin's hatred still lived, deadlier than
ever, and that with Black Roger she had plotted to bring him here so
that her vengeance might be more complete--and a greater torture to
him? Were they smiling and offering him their hands, even as they knew
he was about to die? And if that was conceivable, what had they done
with Marie-Anne?
He looked about the room. It was singularly bare, in an unusual sort of
way, he thought. There were rich rugs on the floor--three magnificent
black bearskins, and two wolf. The heads of two bucks and a splendid
caribou hung against the walls. He could see, from marks on the floor,
where a bed had stood, but this bed was now replaced by a couch made up
comfortably for one inclined to sleep. The significance of the thing
was clear--nowhere in the room could he lay his hand upon an object
that might be used as a weapon!
His eyes again sought the white-birch bars of his prison, and he raised
the two windows so that the cool, sweet breath of the forests reached
in to him. It was then that he noticed the mosquito-proof screening
nailed outside the bars. It was rather odd, this thinking of his
comfort even as they planned to kill him!
If there was truth to this new suspicion that Black Roger and his
mistress were plotting both vengeance and murder, their plans must also
involve Marie-Anne. Suddenly his mind shot back to the raft. Had Black
Roger turned a clever coup by leaving his wife there, while he came on
ahead of the bateau with Carmin Fanchet? It would be several weeks
before the raft reached the Yellowknife, and in that time many things
might happen. The thought worried him. He was not afraid for himself.
Danger, the combating of physical forces, was his business. His fear
was for Marie-Anne. He had seen enough to know that Black Roger was
hopelessly infatuated with Carmin Fanchet. And several things might
happen aboard the raft, planned by agents as black-souled as himself.
If they killed Marie-Anne--
His hand gripped the knob of the door, and for a moment he was filled
with the impulse to shout for Black Roger and face him with what was in
his mind. And as he stood there, every muscle in his body ready to
fight, there came to him faintly the sound of music. He heard the piano
first, and then a woman's voice singing. Soon a man's voice joined the
woman's, and he knew it was Black Roger, singing with Carmin Fanchet.
Suddenly the mad impulse in his heart went out, and he leaned his head
nearer to the crack of the door, and strained his ears to hear. He
could make out no word of the song, yet the singing came to him with a
thrill that set his lips apart and brought a staring wonder into his
eyes. In the room below him, fifteen hundred miles from civilization,
Black Roger and Carmin Fanchet were singing "Home, Sweet Home!"
An hour later David looked through one of the barred windows upon a
world lighted by a splendid moon. He could see the dark edge of the
distant forest that rimmed in the chateau, and about him seemed to be a
level meadow, with here and there the shadow of a building in which the
lights were out. Stars were thick in the sky, and a strange quietness
hovered over the world he looked upon. From below him floated up now
and then a perfume of tobacco smoke. The guard under his window was
awake, but he made no sound.
A little later he undressed, put out the two lights in his room, and
stretched himself between the cool, white sheets on the couch. After a
time he slept, but it was a restless slumber filled with troubled
dreams. Twice he was half awake, and the second time it seemed to him
his nostrils sensed a sharper tang of smoke than that of burning
tobacco, yet he did not fully rouse himself, and the hours passed, and
new sounds and smells that rose in the night impinged themselves upon
him only as a part of the troublous fabric of his dreams. But at last
there came a shock, something which beat over these things which
chained him, and seized upon his consciousness, demanding that he rouse
himself, open his eyes, and get up.
He obeyed the command, and before he was fully awake, found himself on
his feet. It was still dark, but he heard voices, voices no longer
subdued, but filled with a wild note of excitement and command. And
what he smelled was not the smell of tobacco smoke! It was heavy in his
room. It filled his lungs. His eyes were smarting with the sting of it.
Then came vision, and with a startled cry he leaped to a window. To the
north and east he looked out upon a flaming world!
With his fist he rubbed his smarting eyes. The moon was gone. The gray
he saw outside must be the coming of dawn, ghostly with that mist of
smoke that had come into his room. He could see shadowy figures of men
running swiftly in and out and disappearing, and he could hear the
voices of women and children, and from beyond the edge of the forest to
the west came the howling of many dogs. One voice rose above the
others. It was Black Roger's, and at its commands little groups of
figures shot out into the gray smoke-gloom and did not appear again.
North and east the sky was flaming sullen red, and a breath of air
blowing gently in David's face told him the direction of the wind. The
chateau lay almost in the center of the growing line of conflagration.
He dressed himself and went again to the window. Quite distinctly now,
he could make out Joe Clamart under his window, running toward the edge
of the forest at the head of half a dozen men and boys who carried axes
and cross-cut saws over their shoulders. It was the last of Black
Roger's people that he saw for some time in the open meadow, but from
the front of the chateau he could hear many voices, chiefly of women
and children, and guessed it was from there that the final operations
against the fire were being directed. The wind was blowing stronger in
his face. With it came a sharper tang of smoke, and the widening light
of day was fighting to hold its own against the deepening pall of
flame-lit gloom advancing with the wind.
There seemed to come a low and distant sound with that wind, so
indistinct that to David's ears it was like a murmur a thousand miles
away. He strained his ears to hear, and as he listened, there came
another sound--a moaning, sobbing voice below his window! It was grief
he heard now, something that went to his heart and held him cold and
still. The voice was sobbing like that of a child, yet he knew it was
not a child's. Nor was it a woman's. A figure came out slowly in his
view, humped over, twisted in its shape, and he recognized Andre, the
Broken Man. David could see that he was crying like a child, and he was
facing the flaming forests, with his arms reaching out to them in his
moaning. Then, of a sudden, he gave a strange cry, as if defiance had
taken the place of grief, and he hurried across the meadow and
disappeared into the timber where a great lightning-riven spruce
gleamed dully white through the settling veil of smoke-mist.
For a space David looked after him, a strange beating in his heart. It
was as if he had seen a little child going into the face of a deadly
peril, and at last he shouted out for some one to bring back the Broken
Man. But there was no answer from under his window. The guard was gone.
Nothing lay between him and escape--if he could force the white birch
bars from the window.
He thrust himself against them, using his shoulder as a battering-ram.
Not the thousandth part of an inch could he feel them give, yet he
worked until his shoulder was sore. Then he paused and studied the bars
more carefully. Only one thing would avail him, and that was some
object which he might use as a lever.
He looked about him, and not a thing was there in the room to answer
the purpose. Then his eyes fell on the splendid horns of the caribou
head. Black Roger's discretion had failed him there, and eagerly David
pulled the head down from the wall. He knew the woodsman's trick of
breaking off a horn from the skull, yet in this room, without log or
root to help him, the task was difficult, and it was a quarter of an
hour after he had last seen the Broken Man before he stood again at the
window with the caribou horn in his hands. He no longer had to hold his
breath to hear the low moaning in the wind, and where there had been
smoke-gloom before there were now black clouds rolling and twisting up
over the tops of the north and eastern forests, as if mighty breaths
were playing with them from behind.
David thrust the big end of the caribou horn between two of the
white-birch bars, but before he had put his weight to the lever he
heard a great voice coming round the end of the chateau, and it was
calling for Andre, the Broken Man. In a moment it was followed by Black
Roger Audemard, who ran under the window and faced the lightning-struck
spruce as he shouted Andre's name again.
Suddenly David called down to him, and Black Roger turned and looked up
through the smoke-gloom, his head bare, his arms naked, and his eyes
gleaming wildly as he listened.
"He went that way twenty minutes ago," David shouted. "He disappeared
into the forest where you see the dead spruce yonder. And he was
crying, Black Roger--he was crying like a child."
If there had been other words to finish, Black Roger would not have
heard them. He was running toward the old spruce, and David saw him
disappear where the Broken Man had gone. Then he put his weight on the
horn, and one of the tough birch bars gave way slowly, and after that a
second was wrenched loose, and a third, until the lower half of the
window was free of them entirely. He thrust out his head and found no
one within the range of his vision. Then he worked his way through the
window, feet first, and hanging the length of arms and body from the
lower sill, dropped to the ground.
Instantly he faced the direction taken by Roger Audemard, it was HIS
turn now, and he felt a savage thrill in his blood. For an instant he
hesitated, held by the impulse to rush to Carmin Fanchet and with his
fingers at her throat, demand what she and her paramour had done with
Marie-Anne. But the mighty determination to settle it all with Black
Roger himself overwhelmed that impulse like an inundation. Black Roger
had gone into the forest. He was separated from his people, and the
opportunity was at hand.
Positive that Marie-Anne had been left with the raft, the thought that
the Chateau Boulain might be devoured by the onrushing conflagration
did not appal David. The chateau held little interest for him now. It
was Black Roger he wanted. As he ran toward the old spruce, he picked
up a club that lay in the path.
This path was a faintly-worn trail where it entered the forest beyond
the spruce, very narrow, and with brush hanging close to the sides of
it, so that David knew it was not in general use and that but few feet
had ever used it. He followed swiftly, and in five minutes came
suddenly out into a great open thick with smoke, and here he saw why
Chateau Boulain would not burn. The break in the forest was a clearing
a rifle-shot in width, free of brush and grass, and partly tilled; and
it ran in a semi-circle as far as he could see through the smoke in
both directions. Thus had Black Roger safeguarded his wilderness
castle, while providing tillable fields for his people; and as David
followed the faintly beaten path, he saw green stuffs growing on both
sides of him, and through the center of the clearing a long strip of
wheat, green and very thick. Up and down through the fog of smoke he
could hear voices, and he knew it was this great, circular
fire-clearing the people of Chateau Boulain were watching and guarding.
But he saw no one as he trailed across the open. In soft patches of the
earth he found footprints deeply made and wide apart, the footprints of
hurrying men, telling him Black Roger and the Broken Man were both
ahead of him, and that Black Roger was running when he crossed the
clearing.
The footprints led him to a still more indistinct trail in the farther
forest, a trail which went straight into the face of the fire ahead. He
followed it. The distant murmur had grown into a low moaning over the
tree-tops, and with it the wind was coming stronger, and the smoke
thicker. For a mile he continued along the path, and then he stopped,
knowing he had come to the dead-line. Over him was a swirling chaos.
The fire-wind had grown into a roar before which the tree-tops bent as
if struck by a gale, and in the air he breathed he could feel a swiftly
growing heat. For a space he stood there, breathing quickly in the face
of a mighty peril. Where had Black Roger and the Broken Man gone? What
mad impulse could it be that dragged them still farther into the path
of death? Or had they struck aside from the trail? Was he alone in
danger?
As if in answer to the questions there came from far ahead of him a
loud cry. It was Black Roger's voice, and as he listened, it called
over and over again the Broken Man's name,
"Andre--Andre--Andre--"
Something in the cry held Carrigan. There was a note of terror in it, a
wild entreaty that was almost drowned in the trembling wind and the
moaning that was in the air. David was ready to turn back. He had
already approached too near to the red line of death, yet that cry of
Black Roger urged him on like the lash of a whip. He plunged ahead into
the chaos of smoke, no longer able to distinguish a trail under his
feet. Twice again in as many minutes he heard Black Roger's voice, and
ran straight toward it. The blood of the hunter rushed over all other
things in his veins. The man he wanted was ahead of him and the moment
had passed when danger or fear of death could drive him back. Where
Black Roger lived, he could live, and he gripped his club and ran
through the low brush that whipped in stinging lashes against his face
and hands.
He came to the foot of a ridge, and from the top of this he knew Black
Roger had called. It was a huge hog's-back, rising a hundred feet up
out of the forest, and when he reached the top of it, he was panting
for breath. It was as if he had come suddenly within the blast of a hot
furnace. North and east the forest lay under him, and only the smoke
obstructed his vision. But through this smoke he could make out a thing
that made him rub his eyes in a fierce desire to see more clearly. A
mile away, perhaps two, the conflagration seemed to be splitting itself
against the tip of a mighty wedge. He could hear the roar of it to the
right of him and to the left, but dead ahead there was only a moaning
whirlpool of fire-heated wind and smoke. And out of this, as he looked,
came again the cry,
"Andre--Andre--Andre!"
Again he stared north and south through the smoke-gloom. Mountains of
resinous clouds, black as ink, were swirling skyward along the two
sides of the giant wedge. Under that death-pall the flames were
sweeping through the spruce and cedar tops like race-horses, hidden
from his eyes. If they closed in there could be no escape; in fifteen
minutes they would inundate him, and it would take him half an hour to
reach the safety of the clearing.
His heart thumped against his ribs as he hurried down the ridge in the
direction of Black Roger's voice. The giant wedge of the forest was not
burning--yet, and Audemard was hurrying like mad toward the tip of that
wedge, crying out now and then the name of the Broken Man. And always
he kept ahead, until at last--a mile from the ridge--David came to the
edge of a wide stream and saw what it was that made the wedge of
forest. For under his eyes the stream split, and two arms of it widened
out, and along each shore of the two streams was a wide fire-clearing
made by the axes of Black Roger's people, who had foreseen this day
when fire might sweep their world.
Carrigan dashed water into his eyes, and it was warm. Then he looked
across. The fire had passed, the pall of smoke was clearing away, and
what he saw was the black corpse of a world that had been green. It was
smoldering; the deep mold was afire. Little tongues of flame still
licked at ten thousand stubs charred by the fire-death--and there was
no wind here, and only the whisper of a distant moaning sweeping
farther and farther away.
And then, out of that waste across the river, David heard a terrible
cry. It was Black Roger, still calling--even in that place of hopeless
death--for Andre, the Broken Man!