A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories Part 26

"Why strip poetry from anything?" he asked, laughing.

She rode on in silence for a while, the bright smile fading from lips and eyes.

"Oh, you are quite right," she said; "let us leave what romance there may be in the world. My horse loves me like a dog. I am very happy to believe it, Mr. Burleson."

From the luminous shadow of her sombrero she looked out across the stretch of marsh, where from unseen pools the wild-duck were rising, disturbed by the sound of their approach. And now the snipe began to dart skyward from under their horses' feet, filling the noon silence with their harsh "squak! squak!"

"It's along here somewhere," said Burleson, leaning forward in his saddle to scan the swale-gra.s.s. A moment later he said, "Look there, Miss Elliott!"

In the tall, blanched gra.s.ses a velvety black s.p.a.ce marked the ashes of a fire, which had burned in a semi-circle, then westward to the water's edge.

"You see," he said, "it was started to sweep the vlaie to the pine timber. The wind changed, and held it until the fire was quenched at the sh.o.r.e."

"I see," she said.

He touched his horse, and they pressed forward along the bog's edge.

"Here," he pointed out, "they fired the gra.s.s again, you see, always counting on the west wind; and here again, and yonder too, and beyond that, Miss Elliott--in a dozen places they set the gra.s.s afire. If that wet east wind had not come up, nothing on earth could have saved a thousand acres of white pine--and I'm afraid to say how many deer and partridges and woodc.o.c.k.... It was a savage bit of business, was it not, Miss Elliott?"

She sat her horse, silent, motionless, pretty head bent, studying the course of the fire in the swale. There was no mistaking the signs; a gra.s.s fire had been started, which, had the west wind held, must have become a brush fire, and then the most dreaded scourge of the north, a full-fledged forest-fire in tall timber. After a little while she raised her head and looked full at Burleson, then, without comment, she wheeled her mare eastward across the vlaie towards the pines.

"What do you make of it?" he asked, pus.h.i.+ng his horse forward alongside of her mare.

"The signs are perfectly plain," she said. "Whom do you suspect?"

He waited a moment, then shook his head.

"You suspect n.o.body?"

"I haven't been here long enough. I don't exactly know what to do about this. It is comparatively easy to settle cases of simple trespa.s.s or deer-shooting, but, to tell the truth, Miss Elliott, fire scares me. I don't know how to meet this sort of thing."

She was silent.

"So," he added, "I sent for the fire-warden. I don't know just what the warden's duties may be."

"I do," she said, quietly. Her mare struck solid ground; she sent her forward at a gallop, which broke into a dead run. Burleson came pounding along behind, amused, interested at this new caprice. She drew bridle at the edge of the birches, half turned in her saddle, bidding him follow with a gesture, and rode straight into the covert, now bending to avoid branches, now pus.h.i.+ng intrusive limbs aside with both gloved hands.

Out of the low bush pines, heirs of the white birches' heritage, rabbits hopped away; sometimes a c.o.c.k grouse, running like a rat, fled, crested head erect; twice twittering woodc.o.c.k whirred upward, beating wings tangled for a moment in the birches, fluttering like great moths caught in a net.

And now they had waded through the silver-birches which fringed the pines as foam fringes a green sea; and before them towered the tall timber, illuminated by the sun.

In the transparent green shadows they drew bridle; she leaned forward, clearing the thick tendrils of hair from her forehead, and sat stock-still, intent, every exquisite line and contour in full relief against the pines.

At first he thought she was listening, nerves keyed to sense sounds inaudible to him. Then, as he sat, fascinated, scarcely breathing lest the enchantment break, leaving him alone in the forest with the memory of a dream, a faint aromatic odor seemed to grow in the air; not the close scent of the pines, but something less subtle.

"Smoke!" he said, aloud.

She touched her mare forward, riding into the wind, delicate nostrils dilated; and he followed over the soundless cus.h.i.+on of brown needles, down aisles flanked by pillared pines whose crests swam in the upper breezes, filling all the forest with harmony.

And here, deep in the splendid forest, there was fire,--at first nothing but a thin, serpentine trail of ashes through moss and bedded needles; then, scarcely six inches in width, a smouldering, sinuous path from which fine threads of smoke rose straight upward, vanis.h.i.+ng in the woodland half-light.

He sprang from his horse and tore away a bed of green moss through which filaments of blue smoke stole; and deep in the forest mould, spreading like veins in an autumn leaf, fire ran underground, its almost invisible vapor curling up through lichens and the brown carpet of pine-needles.

At first, for it was so feeble a fire, scarcely alive, he strove to stamp it out, then to smother it with damp mould. But as he followed its wormlike course, always ahead he saw the thin, blue signals rising through living moss--everywhere the attenuated spirals creeping from the ground underfoot.

"I could summon every man in this town if necessary," she said; "I am empowered by law to do so; but--I shall not--yet. Where could we find a keeper--the nearest patrol?"

"Please follow me," he said, mounting his horse and wheeling eastward.

In a few moments they came to a foot-trail, and turned into it at a canter, skirting the Spirit Water, which stretched away between two mountains glittering in the sun.

"How many men can you get?" she called forward.

"I don't know; there's a gang of men terracing below the lodge--"

"Call them all; let every man bring a pick and shovel. There is a guard now!"

Burleson pulled up short and shouted, "Murphy!"

The patrol turned around.

"Get the men who are terracing the lodge. Bring picks, shovels, and axes, and meet me here. Run for it!"

The fire-warden's horse walked up leisurely; the girl had relinquished the bridle and was guiding the mare with the slightest pressure of knee and heel. She sat at ease, head lowered, absently retying the ribbon on the hair at her neck. When it was adjusted to her satisfaction she pa.s.sed a hat-pin through her sombrero, touched the bright, thick hair above her forehead, straightened out, stretching her legs in the stirrups. Then she drew off her right gauntlet, and very discreetly stifled the daintiest of yawns.

"You evidently don't believe there is much danger," said Burleson, with a smile which seemed to relieve the tension he had labored under.

"Yes, there is danger," she said.

After a silence she added, "I think I hear your men coming."

He listened in vain; he heard the wind above filtering through the pines; he heard the breathing of their horses, and his own heart-beats, too. Then very far away a sound broke out.

"What wonderful ears you have!" he said--not thinking of their beauty until his eye fell on their lovely contour. And as he gazed the little, clean-cut ear next to him turned pink, and its owner touched her mare forward--apparently in aimless caprice, for she circled and came straight back, meeting his gaze with her pure, fearless gray eyes.

There must have been something not only perfectly inoffensive, but also well-bred, in Burleson's lean, bronzed face, for her own face softened into an amiable expression, and she wheeled the mare up beside his mount, confidently exposing the small ear again.

The men were coming; there could be no mistake this time. And there came Murphy, too, and Rolfe, with his great, swinging stride, gun on one shoulder, a bundle of axes on the other.

"This way," said Burleson, briefly; but the fire-warden cut in ahead, cantering forward up the trail, nonchalantly breaking off a twig of aromatic black birch, as she rode, to place between her red lips.

Murphy, arriving in the lead, scanned the haze which hung along the living moss.

"Sure, it's a foolish fire, sorr," he muttered, "burrowing like a mole gone mad. Rest aisy, Misther Burleson; we'll scotch the divil that done this night's worruk!--bad cess to the dhirrty scut!"

"Never mind that, Murphy. Miss Elliott, are they to dig it out?"

She nodded.