Cedar Creek Part 29

Mr. Reginald Armytage volunteered to be grog-bos, an office which suited his 'loafing' propensities, since his duties consisted in carrying about a pail of water and a bottle of whisky to the knots of workmen. His worthy father's position was almost as ornamental, for after one or two feeble efforts with a handspike, he went to talk with Mr. Wynn the elder--chiefly of a notable plan which he had for clearing a belt of wood lying between his farmhouse and the lake, and which quite shut out all view.

'You see that Scotch fellow had no taste about his place, eh? He just thought of the vulgar utilitarian facts of the farm as it were; but for the cultivation of the eye, the glorious influence of landscape, he had no thought. Daisy Burn might as well be in the bottom of a pit; all one can see is the sky and the walls of forest outside the clearing. Now my plan is--Reginald, my boy,' as the grog-bos pa.s.sed within hearing distance, 'give me the cup. The day is sultry to an extreme, eh?' Having refreshed his throat, he proceeded: 'My plan is, to set on fire that strip of forest, eh? I never could abide the slow work of the axe. With proper precautions, such as engineers use along the new rail-lines, the burning might be kept within bounds, eh?'

Mr. Wynn, who knew nothing at all about the matter, courteously a.s.sented.

'Just look at my father, the glorious old gentleman, how he stands like a general overseeing a lot of pioneers,' said Robert to Arthur, as they pa.s.sed one another. 'Wonder what he and that drone are conversing about so long.'

'I heard Armytage saying he would clear the belt of his forest on the lake with fire,' was the reply. 'In which case we may look out.'

'Whew!' Robert whistled a long note. But his gang of teamsters wanted him and his handspike, so he went on. Each yoke of oxen had four men attached to it, for the purpose of rolling the logs on top of each other, and picking the ground clear after them; which last means gathering all chips and sticks into the pile likewise. An acre to each team is considered a fair day's work. Robert was so busy as quite to forget the captain and his alarming method of clearing, thenceforth.

By evening something had been done towards disentangling Cedar Creek.

The trees, which had lain about at every conceivable angle, in the wildest disorder, were rolled into ma.s.ses ready for burning, through six acres of the clearing. The men had worthily earned their supper. In the old shanty it was laid out, on boards and tressels from end to end. The dignified Mr. Wynn of Dunore took the chair; Captain Armytage was vice, or croupier. As to attendance, the Irish damsel struck work at the most critical juncture, and refused to minister to them in the article of tea. The ever-ready Andy, just in with blackened hands from his long day's field-work, washed them hurriedly, and became waiter for the nonce, having first energetically declared that if he was Biddy Murphy, he'd be 'shamed to ate the bread he didn't airn; and that she might go home to her mother as soon as she liked, for an iligant young lady as she was. Zack Bunting overheard the strife, and the same night, on his return home, dropped a hint to the girl Libby--short for Liberia--his wife's orphan and penniless niece, who dwelt with them as a servant, and whose support they were anxious to get off their hands; and so, to her own prodigious astonishment, the recalcitrant Biddy found herself superseded, and the American help hired a day or two afterwards.

'The whole affair of the bee was not so formidable as you thought,' said Robert to his sister subsequently. They were together in a canoe upon the pond, enjoying a tranquil afternoon, and ostensibly fis.h.i.+ng.

'Oh no, not so bad. You know I saw very little of your hive, except indeed the storekeeper's son, who was dressed so fantastically, and who would come offering his help in my cookery.'

'I saw you talking to Jackey Dubois. Could you make anything of his French?'

'Well, I tried, and of course could understand him; but the accent is very queer. He calls Canada always Conodo; in fact, he puts "o" for "a"

and "i" constantly. The article "la" turns into "lo," "voir" becomes "voar." That puzzles one--and the nasal tw.a.n.g besides. I wonder why _that_ is so universal. Even your nice friend Mr. Holt is affected by it, though slightly.'

'He told me once that it is a national peculiarity; and no matter what pains a man takes to preserve himself or his children from it, insensibly it grows in the p.r.o.nunciation. He believes that something in the climate affects the nasal organs; he predicts it for me, and I suppose for all of us.'

'I hope not. Robert, I think the foliage on the sh.o.r.es is changing colour already.'

'I daresay; the maple blushes scarlet very early. Ah, wait till you see the Indian summer, with its gorgeous tinting and soft pink mists.'

And here Robert jerked into the boat a fine speckled trout caught by the bait of a garden worm. He had captured half-a-dozen in half-an-hour.

'One would think the mists were come already,' said Linda, still gazing at the waved outline of the sh.o.r.e. 'There seems to be fog away yonder.'

'The captain burning his fallow, I presume,' said Robert, raising his eyes from his hook. But the smoke was larger than that would account for.

'We will paddle a little nearer and investigate,' said he, laying down his tackle. A dread of suspicion stole into his mind, which whitened his very lips.

They approached and coasted; the smell of burning wood becoming stronger--the smoke hanging over those headlands denser.

It was as he feared--the forest was on fire.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE FOREST ON FIRE.

Robert drew his paddle into the canoe, and sat perfectly still for some moments, gazing towards the fire and taking in its circ.u.mstances. They could hear the dull roar of the blaze distinctly, and even caught a glimpse of its crimson glare through an opening in the tall pines fringing the lake. It must have been burning a couple of hours to have attained such mastery. Dark resinous smoke hung heavily in the air: a hot stifling gust of it swept down on the canoe.

'The wind is towards the pond, most providentially,' said Robert, taking up his paddle, and beginning to stroke the water vigorously towards home.

'The burning _may_ do no harm; but fire is a fearful agent to set afoot.

I'm sure the captain heartily wishes his kindling undone by this time.'

'Is there no danger to the farm, Robert?' asked his sister, who had become blanched with fear. 'I never heard such a terrible sound as that raging and crackling.'

'To Daisy Burn none, I should say; for, of course, the man had sense enough to fire the bush only a long way down in front, an extensive clearing rather round the house, and the breeze will keep away the blaze.'

'Thank G.o.d,' fervently e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Linda. 'I wish we could bring Miss Armytage and little Jay to the Creek while it lasts. Wouldn't you go across for them, Bob? I know they must be frightened.'

Robert hardly heard her, and certainly did not take in the import of her words. With some wonder at his set face and earnest watch along sh.o.r.e, she did not press her wish. He was looking at the belt of fat resinous pines and balsams, dry as chips from the long summer droughts and tropical heats, which extended along from the foot of Armytage's farm even to the cedar swamp; he was feeling that the slight wind was blowing in a fair direction for the burning of this most inflammable fuel, and consequently the endangering of his property on the creek. A point or two from the east of south it blew; proved by the strong resinous smell wafted towards the landing cove.

'Bob, you're forgetting the trout and the tackle,' as he jumped ash.o.r.e, helped her out, and hurried up the beaten path beside the beaver meadow.

'Never mind; I want to see Holt,' was his answer. 'If any man can help, 'tis he.'

'Then there is danger!' She still thought of the Daisy Burn people.

Before they reached the house, they met Mr. Holt and half-a-dozen Indians.

'We must burn a patch of brushwood, to deprive the fire of fuel,' said the former. 'These Indians have done the like on the prairies westward.

It is worth trying, at all events.'

'Go up to my mother, Linda; there's nothing to be much alarmed for as yet; I hope this plan of Holt's may stop its progress. I'll be at the house as soon as I can, tell her;' and he ran after the others, down to the mouth of the creek, where a strip of alluvial land, covered with bushes and rank gra.s.s, interrupted the belt of firs and cedars. Calling in fire as an ally against itself seemed to Robert very perilous; but the calm Indians, accustomed to wilderness exigencies, set about the protective burning at once. The flame easily ran through the dry brushwood; it was kept within bounds by cutting down the shrubs where it might spread farther than was desirable. Soon a broad blackened belt lay beside the creek, containing nothing upon which the fire could fasten.

Axes were at work to widen it still further.

'The wind has risen very much, Holt,' said Robert, as they felt hot currents of air sweep past them.

'Just the result of the rarified atmosphere over the flames,' he answered. They spoke little: the impending risk was too awful. For once, the white man submitted himself to the guidance of the red. To prevent the fire from crossing the creek was the great object. The water itself, perhaps a hundred feet wide, would be an ineffectual barrier; such fierce flame would overleap it. Therefore the Indians had burned the left bank, and now proceeded to burn the right. Indomitably self-possessed, cool and silent, they did precisely what met the emergency, without flurry or confusion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOREST ON FIRE.]

All this time the fire was advancing behind the green veil of woods.

Volumes of thick smoke were borne off across the pond, alarming the dwellers in distant shanties and oases of clearing, with suggestion of the most terrific danger that can befall a settler in the bush.

Before sunset the conflagration came in sight of Cedar Creek. Marching resistlessly onward, to the sound of great detonations of cras.h.i.+ng and crackling timber, and its own vast devouring roar, the mighty fire presented a front of flame thirty feet higher than the tree-tops.

Daylight went down before that huge glare. The low hanging clouds were crimsoned with a glow, not from the sinking sun, but from the billows of blaze beneath. As the dusk deepened, the terrors of the scene intensified by contrast, though in reality the triumphant fire recoiled from that blackened s.p.a.ce fringing the stream, where it must die for want of fuel.

To prevent its spreading up to the concession line, and catching the forest there, and perhaps destroying the whole towns.h.i.+p, all the men in the neighbourhood had a.s.sembled to cut down trees, and leave a barrier of vacancy. If the wind had not been blowing from that direction, it is improbable that their endeavours would have been sufficient to keep back the burning. The crestfallen Captain Armytage, author of all the mischief, wielded an axe among them. Truly he had created a view of black smoking poles and cheerful charcoal vistas before his dwelling.

Whether that were better than the utilitarian Scotchman's green woods, he did not say just now, nor have spirit even to answer Davidson's sarcastic remarks on his 'muckle clearin'.'

Far into the night, the great gaunt boles of trees stood amid wreathing flame. When all risk was over that it would communicate further, and destroy the garden or the house, Robert and the rest could admire its magnificence, and Sam Holt could tell of other forest-burnings of which he had heard, especially of the great fire which occurred in the year 1825, and consumed about two hundred square miles of woods on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, left fourteen houses standing in the town of Newcastle, and destroyed five hundred people. Two thousand were thus reduced to pauperism.

'Such things are never heard of in Europe. Why are these forests more inflammable than those in the old world?' asked Mr. Wynn the elder.

'Because the drought and heat of the climate are so much greater,'

answered Sam Holt; 'and the preponderance of pines, loaded to the end of every leaf and twig with pitch and resin, affords uncommon food for fire.'

Then as to the cause; he considered it could never be spontaneous combustion, but always accident, unless, indeed, in an exceptional case like the present, said Mr. Holt _sotto voce_. Settlers, burning brush heaps, or logging, sometimes permit the flame to run along the ground into the bush; and in dry weather entrance was sufficient. The boundary fences of farms were often consumed in this way, and more extensive mischief might follow.

For days the charred chaos of timber poles and fallen trunks gave forth such heat and flickering flames as to be unapproachable. Zack's Yankee brain had a scheme for utilizing the ashes, if only he had machinery big enough for converting all into potash and pearlash. This man was old Mr.