King Spruce Part 27

"She can't be stopped! She can't be stopped!" moaned Britt. "She's headed for the Notch, and then tophet's let loose!"

But with the persistence of his nature he set off to rally the crew to a flank movement.

With the inadequate force it was rather a skirmish than a battle for those who fought in the face of the great fire.

Through the night, with shovels and green boughs they had attacked the conflagration's outposts. The red army of destruction took this punishment sullenly. The main fire seemed to crouch and doze in the night, dulled by the condensation of dews and lacking the spur of the winds.

At daylight Barnum Withee had arrived with his men and set them to trenching along the tote road parallel with the advance of the fire. He had not reconsidered his bitterness against his tyrant John Barrett. But the unconquerable instinct of the veteran woodsman, anxious to save his forest, had driven him to the scene.

To Barnum Withee's crew Dwight Wade and Christopher Straight attached themselves by entirely natural selection, having excellent personal reasons for avoiding the direct commands of the Honorable Pulaski Britt.

And to Wade, struggling with blistered hands to drive his mattock through roots and vegetable mould to the mineral earth, appeared Prophet Eli on his ding-swingle. The prophet surveyed him with almost arch look, and piped, in his shrill tones:

"Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountain, Shang-roango, whey?"

Wade stared at him with a vivid recollection of the first time he had seen that strange figure and had heard that song.

"So you didn't think I knew how to mend bones, eh, young man? Never heard of Prophet Eli, the charmer-man, the mediator between the higher and lower forces, natural healer and regulator of the weather? Don't you think a man an infernal fool to dig a hole out of the dirt when it is so much easier to dig a hole out of the air and put dirt around it?"

Wade, not feeling inclined towards a discussion of this sort, fell to his labor again.

"If John Barrett's daughter set this fire, why ain't John Barrett here to help put it out?" shrilled the prophet, and Barnum Withee hearing the amazing query, came hurrying out of the smoke. He found Wade staring at the man with astonished inquiry in his face.

"You heard him say that, did you, Mr. Wade?" demanded Withee, with an emotion the young man could not understand.

It was the bare mention of John Barrett's daughter that had stirred Dwight Wade; for in his soul's eye but one picture rose when she was mentioned--Elva Barrett of the glorious eyes and the loving heart--the one woman in the world for him--denied to him by the father who ruled her.

"I heard him--yes," said Wade; "but what kind of lunatic's raving is it?"

"It may not be a lunatic's raving, Mr. Wade," returned Withee, enigmatically, his face grave.

The prophet cast a look about, striving to peer into the smoke, as though apprehensive that some one whom he didn't want in his confidence might be listening. In a lower tone he went on:

"If a man has got a daughter and is tied to a tree, how much will 'Ladder' Lane scale to be cut up into bean poles?"

There was alarm on Withee's features now. He took Wade by the arm and led him aside a few steps.

"That old fellow has got something on his mind, Mr. Wade," he said, earnestly, "and it may be bad business. My men have been talking here to-day, as men will talk, though I advised them to keep their mouths shut. It may bring the 'Lazy Tom' crowd into the thing. If there's bad business on, I want you to be able to say outside that I haven't messed into affairs that wa'n't mine. It may have to be proved in court, and the word of a gentleman like you is worth that of fifty rattle-brained choppers."

"I don't understand, Mr. Withee. I can't appear as witness in matters I haven't seen."

"You can say I was here on the fire-line attendin' to my own business when it happened--if it has happened," cried Withee. "You can say that I had no hand in it. It's this way, Mr. Wade, if you haven't heard. Did any of my men tell you that John Barrett--you've heard of 'Stumpage John' Barrett--was at my camp last night?"

"I heard nothing of it," said Wade. He leaned forward with excitement in his face, for the tone and the air of the lumberman were ominous.

"He was at my camp, and Lane, the Jerusalem warden, after having words with him over an old matter between them, made Mr. Barrett go away into the woods with him--and I think Lane was about half crazy at the time."

"And you let an insane man force Mr. Barrett into the woods?" demanded Wade, indignantly.

Withee straightened, and his face took on a sort of sullen pride. "It's on that point that I want to explain to you, for my own sake. I don't know whether you're a friend of John Barrett's or whether you ain't. But when I hear him confess right before me that he has stolen away another man's wife and broken up that man's home forever, and has never done anything to square himself, then I let that matter alone, for it's a matter between man and man. And my men and I let John Barrett and Linus Lane settle their own business."

"How?" cried Wade, his face pale. "My G.o.d, man, it can't be that John Barrett did a thing like--"

"I heard him own to it," persisted Withee. "And what's more, it's John Barrett's daughter that lived with the Skeets and the Bushees, abandoned by him. And when I know a thing like that about a man, Mr. Wade, he can't look to Barn Withee to stand behind him."

Dwight Wade staggered back against the tree and put his arms around it to steady himself. Had he not seen the girl he might have scorned to believe such a story. But all his first emotions at sight of her there in her squalid surroundings rushed back upon him now. He had seen in this forest waif too many suggestions of Elva Barrett, and had been ashamed to own to himself that his heart confessed as much, as though it were an insult to the girl who reigned in his heart.

"So, I say," repeated Withee, as if to rea.s.sure himself, "I let them settle their own business."

"But how?" gasped the young man.

"You can prove nothing by me," said the lumberman, with a toss of his hand and wag of his head, pregnant gestures of disclaimed responsibility. "But that old fellow sitting on that ding-swingle never put those hints together without havin' something about it on his mind.

I never knew trouble to happen in these woods unless he was there to see some part of it."

"What have you seen, old man?" demanded Wade, impetuously.

"Saw the crow catch the hen-hawk. Isn't a man with a harelip an infernal fool to learn to play a fife?"

But Wade, coming close to the sage, noted a strange twinkle in the blue eyes under the knots of gray brow. It was a glance so sane, so significant, so calculating, that the young man had no voice to utter the angry retort on his lips. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Prophet Eli of Tumbled.i.c.k had not always been understood by those who jeered him. The keen glance noted Wade's changing expression and understood it.

"It was Rodburd Ide said it to me," the prophet stated, lowering his tone. "He said it was between you and John Barrett's pretty girl until old John drove you into the woods. Hey?" The young man's face flushed redly and he was about to reply, but the prophet put up a protesting hand. "It was Rodburd Ide said to me that John Barrett didn't think you were good enough for his daughter. Now you follow me! I want to hear John Barrett whine. I want to see John Barrett squirm. Coals of fire!

Coals of fire, young man! What is Prophet Eli's mission? Coals of fire!

I cure those who have mocked me, don't I? I like to hear 'em whine. I want to see them squirm. You follow me. Coals of fire!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WRITHING AT HIS BONDS, HIS CONTORTED FACE TOWARDS THE RED FLAMES GALLOPING UP THE VALLEY"]

And singing this over and over to himself, he whirled his stallion and hurried away. Wade ran behind him without question, for he guessed while he feared. Withee started, but turned back to his men with a sullen oath.

It was a long and a bitter chase through the smother of the smoke, and in the very forefront of the racing conflagration. At last Pogey Notch had begun to suck at the raging fires with its granite lips. It was the chimney-flue of the amphitheatre of Misery. The flames roared from tree to tree. Wade ran, stooping forward, clutching at the cross-bar of the ding-swingle. Without that help he never would have been able to reach the spot where at last he found John Barrett, writhing at his bonds, squealing like an animal--his contorted face towards the red flames galloping up the valley.

The prophet had left his vehicle to guide the rescuer up the slope. He stood by, grinning with enjoyment, when the two men faced each other. He chuckled when Wade cut the bonds. He laughed boisterously when Barrett, weeping like a child, threw his arms around the young man's neck.

"Coals of fire!" he shrilled. "Heap 'em on! They're hotter than the other kind that are dropping on you!"

Then he ran from them a few steps and rapped his skinny knuckles on a scar breast high on a tree.

"Your trail!" he cried. "It's here! It's blazed clear to the bald head of old Jerusalem. Get up there on the granite. Then sit down and talk it over! Coals of fire!"

They heard him shrieking it back at them as he fled up the Notch. And the two men took the trail, strangling, gasping, feeling their direction from blaze to blaze on the trees, fighting their way up from the Gehenna of Pogey.

CHAPTER XV

BETWEEN TWO ON JERUSALEM

"So he didn't have no doctor but a bowl o' ginger tea, And it didn't seem to help him, not so far as we could see."