THE EYES OF THE HILLS
The thunder roared without intermission. It rose and fell, that was
all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to
find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less
of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth.
The electric fires rifting the darkness of this out-world night were
beyond compare in their terror. The radiance of sunlight might well
have been less than the blaze of a rush candle before the staggering
brilliancy. It was wild, wild and fearsome. It was vicious and utterly
terrifying.
Below the quaking earth was in little better case. Only was the scene
here in closer touch with human understanding. Here the terror was of
earth, here disaster was of human making. Here the rack of heart was
in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only
insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements,
flames licked up and devoured with ravening appetites the tinder-like
structures of Joan's farm.
The girl was standing in the open. A confined enough open space almost
completely surrounded by fire. Before her were the blazing farm
buildings, behind her was the raging furnace that once had been her
home. And on one side of her the flames commingled so as to be
impassable. Her head was bowed and her eyes were closed, her hands
were pressed tight over her ears in a vain attempt to shut out
cognizance of the terror that reigned about and above her. She stood
thus despairing. She was afraid, terribly afraid.
Beside her was her aunt, that strange creature whose brain had
always risen superior to the sufferings of the human body. Now
she was crushed to earth in mute submission to the powers which
overwhelmed her. She lay huddled upon the ground utterly lost to all
consciousness. Terror had mercifully saved her from a contemplation of
those things which had inspired it.
These two were alone. The other woman had gone, fled at the first
coming of that dreaded fiend--fire. And those others, those wretched,
besotted creatures whose mischief had brought about this wanton
destruction, they too had fled. But their flight was in answer to the
wrathful voice of the heavens which they feared and dreaded above all
things in the wild world to which they belonged.
Alone, helpless, almost nerveless, Joan waited that end which she felt
could not long be delayed. She did not know, she could not understand.
On every hand was a threat so terrible that in her weakness she
believed that life could not long last. The din in the heavens, the
torturing heat so fierce and painful. The glare of light which
penetrated even her closed eyelids, the choking gasps of smoke-laden,
scorching air with which she struggled. Death itself must come, nor
could it be far from her now.
The wind rushed madly down from the hilltops. It swept over forest and
plain, it howled through canyon and crevasse in its eager haste to
reach the centre of the battle of elements. It pounced upon the
blinding smoke-cloud and swept it from its path and plunged to the
heart of the conflagration with a shriek and roar of cruel delight.
One breath, like the breath of a tornado, and its boisterous lungs
had sent its mischief broadcast in the flash of an eye. With a howl of
delight it tore out the blazing roof of the house, and, lifting it
bodily, hurled it like a molten meteor against the dark walls of the
adjacent pine forest.
Joan saw nothing of this, she understood nothing. She was blind and
deaf to every added terror. All she felt, all she understood was
storm, storm, always storm. Her poor weary brain was reeling, her
heart was faint with terror. She was alive, she was conscious, but she
might well have been neither in the paralysis that held her. It meant
no more that that avalanche of fire, hurled amidst the resinous woods,
had suddenly brought into existence the greatest earthly terror that
could visit the mountain world; it meant no more to her that an added
roar of wind could create a greater peril; it meant no more to her
that, in a moment, the whole world about her would be in a blaze so
that the burning sacrifice should be complete. Nothing could possibly
mean more to her, for she was at the limit of human endurance.
But other eyes, other brains were alive to all these things, eyes and
minds trained by a knowledge which only that mountain world could
teach. To them the significance was all absorbing. To them this new
terror was a thousandfold more appalling than all other storm and
tempest. With the forest afire there was safety for neither human nor
beast. With that forest afire flight was well-nigh impossible. With
that forest afire to save any living creature would be well-nigh a
miracle, and miracles had no place in their thoughts.
Yet those eyes, so watchful, remained unchanged. Those straining
brains only strained the harder. Those eager hearts knew no flinching
from their purpose, and if they quailed it was merely at the natural
dread for those whom they were seeking to succor.
Even in face of the added peril their purpose remained. The heavens
might roar their thunders, the lightnings might blind their staring
eyes, the howling gale might strew their path with every obstruction,
nothing could change them, nothing could stop them but death itself.
So with horses a-lather they swept along. Their blood-stained spurs
told their tale of invincible determination. These two men no longer
sat in their saddles, they were leaning far out of them over their
racing horses' necks, urging them and easing them by every trick in a
horseman's understanding. They were making a trail which soon they
knew would be a path of fire. They knew that with every stride of the
stalwart creatures under them they were possibly cutting off the last
hope of a retreat to safety. They knew, none better, that once amidst
that furnace which lay directly ahead it was something worse than an
even chance of life.
Buck wiped the dripping sweat out of his eyes that he might get a
clearer view. The blaze of lightning was of no use to him. It only
helped to make obscure that which the earthly fires were struggling to
reveal. The Padre's horse was abreast of his saddle. The sturdy brute
was leaving Caesar to make the pace while she doggedly pursued.
"We'll make it yet!" shouted Buck, over his shoulder, amidst the roar
of thunder.
The Padre made no attempt at response. He deemed it useless.
Buck slashed Caesar's flanks with ruthless force.
The blazing farm was just ahead, as was also the roaring fire of the
forest. It was the latter on which both men were concentrating their
attention. For the moment its path lay eastward, away to the right of
the trail. But this they knew was merely the howling force of the
wind. With a shift of direction by half a point and the gale would
drive it straight down the trail they were on.
The trail bent away to the left. And as they swung past the turn Buck
again shouted.
"Now for it!"
He dashed his spurs again at the flanks of his horse, and the great
beast stretched out for a final burst across the bridge over the
narrow creek.