Into the stream Carrigan plunged and found it only waist-deep in
crossing. He saw where Black Roger had come out of the water and where
his feet had plowed deep in the ash and char and smoldering debris
ahead. This trail he followed. The air he breathed was hot and filled
with stifling clouds of ash and char-dust and smoke. His feet struck
red-hot embers under the ash, and he smelled burning leather. A forest
of spruce and cedar skeletons still crackled and snapped and burst out
into sudden tongues of flame about him, and the air he breathed grew
hotter, and his face burned, and into his eyes came a smarting
pain--when ahead of him he saw Black Roger. He was no longer calling
out the Broken Man's name, but was crashing through the smoking chaos
like a great beast that had gone both blind and mad. Twice David turned
aside where Black Roger had rushed through burning debris, and a third
time, following where Audemard had gone, his feet felt the sudden stab
of living coals. In another moment he would have shouted Black Roger's
name, but even as the words were on his lips, mingled with a gasp of
pain, the giant river-man stopped where the forest seemed suddenly to
end in a ghostly, smoke-filled space, and when David came up behind
him, he was standing at the black edge of a cliff which leaped off into
a smoldering valley below.
Out of this narrow valley between two ridges, an hour ago choked with
living spruce and cedar, rose up a swirling, terrifying heat. Down into
this pit of death Black Roger stood looking, and David heard a strange
moaning coming in his breath. His great, bare arms were black and
scarred with heat; his hair was burned; his shirt was torn from his
shoulders. When David spoke--and Black Roger turned at the sound--his
eyes glared wildly out of a face that was like a black mask. And when
he saw it was David who had spoken, his great body seemed to sag, and
with an unintelligible cry he pointed down.
David, staring, saw nothing with his half-blind eyes, but under his
feet he felt a sudden giving way, and the fire-eaten tangle of earth
and roots broke off like a rotten ledge, and with it both he and Black
Roger went crashing into the depths below, smothered in an avalanche of
ash and sizzling earth. At the bottom David lay for a moment, partly
stunned. Then his fingers clutched a bit of living fire, and with a
savage cry he staggered to his feet and looked to see Black Roger. For
a space his eyes were blinded, and when at last he could see, he made
out Black Roger, fifty feet away, dragging himself on his hands and
knees through the blistering muck of the fire. And then, as he stared,
the stricken giant came to the charred remnant of a stump and crumpled
over it with a great cry, moaning again that name--
"Andre--Andre--"
David hurried to him, and as he put his hands under Black Roger's arms
to help him to his feet, he saw that the charred stump was not a stump,
but the fire-shriveled corpse of Andre, the Broken Man!
Horror choked back speech on his own lips. Black Roger looked up at
him, and a great breath came in a sob out of his body. Then, suddenly,
he seemed to get grip of himself, and his burned and bleeding fingers
closed about David's hand at his shoulder.
"I knew he was coming here," he said, the words forcing themselves with
an effort through his swollen lips. "He came home--to die."
"Home--?"
"Yes. His mother and father were buried here nearly thirty years ago,
and he worshiped them. Look at him, Carrigan. Look at him closely. For
he is the man you have wanted all these years, the finest man God ever
made, Roger Audemard! When he saw the fire, he came to shield their
graves from the flames. And now he is dead!"
A moan came to his lips, and the weight of his body grew so heavy that
David had to exert his strength to keep him from falling.
"And YOU?" he cried. "For God's sake, Audemard--tell me--"
"I, m'sieu? Why, I am only St. Pierre Audemard, his brother."
And with that his head dropped heavily, and he was like a dead man in
David's arms.
How at last David came to the edge of the stream again, with the weight
of St. Pierre Audemard on his shoulders, was a torturing nightmare
which would never be quite clear in his brain. The details were
obliterated in the vast agony of the thing. He knew that he fought as
he had never fought before; that he stumbled again and again in the
fire-muck; that he was burned, and blinded, and his brain was sick. But
he held to St. Pierre, with his twisted, broken leg, knowing that he
would die if he dropped him into the flesh-devouring heat of the
smoldering debris under his feet. Toward the end he was conscious of
St. Pierre's moaning, and then of his voice speaking to him. After that
he came to the water and fell down in the edge of it with St. Pierre,
and inside his head everything went as black as the world over which
the fire had swept.
He did not know how terribly he was hurt. He did not feel pain after
the darkness came. Yet he sensed certain things. He knew that over him
St. Pierre was shouting. For days, it seemed, he could hear nothing but
that great voice bellowing away in the interminable distance. And then
came other voices, now near and now far, and after that he seemed to
rise up and float among the clouds, and for a long time he heard no
other sound and felt no movement, but was like one dead.
Something soft and gentle and comforting roused him out of darkness. He
did not move, he did not open his eyes for a time, while reason came to
him. He heard a voice, and it was a woman's voice, speaking softly, and
another voice replied to it. Then he heard gentle movement, and some
one went away from him, and he heard the almost noiseless opening and
closing of a door. A very little he began to see. He was in a room,
with a patch of sunlight on the wall. Also, he was in a bed. And that
gentle, comforting hand was still stroking his forehead and hair, light
as thistledown. He opened his eyes wider and looked up. His heart gave
a great throb. Over him was a glorious, tender face smiling like an
angel into his widening eyes. And it was the face of Carmin Fanchet!
He made an effort, as if to speak.
"Hush," she whispered, and he saw something shining in her eyes, and
something wet fell upon his face. "She is returning--and I will go. For
three days and nights she has not slept, and she must be the first to
see you open your eyes."
She bent over him. Her soft lips touched his forehead, and he heard her
sobbing breath.
"God bless you, David Carrigan!"
Then she was going to the door, and his eyes dropped shut again. He
began to experience pain now, a hot, consuming pain all over him, and
he remembered the fight through the path of the fire. Then the door
opened very softly once more, and some one came in, and knelt down at
his side, and was so quiet that she scarcely seemed to breathe. He
wanted to open his eyes, to cry out a name, but he waited, and lips
soft as velvet touched his own. They lay there for a moment, then moved
to his closed eyes, his forehead, his hair--and after that something
rested gently against him.
His eyes shot open. It was Marie-Anne, with her head nestled in the
crook of his arm as she knelt there beside him on the floor. He could
see only a bit of her face, but her hair was very near, crumpled
gloriously on his breast, and he could see the tips of her long lashes
as she remained very still, seeming not to breathe. She did not know he
had roused from his sleep--the first sleep of those three days of
torture which he could not remember now; and he, looking at her, made
no movement to tell her he was awake. One of his hands lay over the
edge of the bed, and so lightly he could scarce feel the weight of her
fingers she laid one of her own upon it, and a little at a time drew it
to her, until the bandaged thing was against her lips. It was strange
she did not hear his heart, which seemed all at once to beat like a
drum inside him!
Suddenly he sensed the fact that his other hand was not bandaged. He
was lying on his side, with his right arm partly under him, and against
that hand he felt the softness of Marie-Anne's cheek, the velvety crush
of her hair!