With the opening of spring and the close of the sledding season, work had stopped at Adams’ camp. Rather, the entire plant had been shipped twenty miles deeper into the forest—mill, bunk-house, cook-shed, and such corrugated-iron shacks as were worth carting away.
All that was left on the site of the busy camp were huge heaps of sawdust, piles of slabs, discarded timbers, and the half-burned bricks into which had been built the portable boiler and engine.
And old Judy Mason. She was not considered worth moving to the new site of the camp. She was bedridden with rheumatism. This was the report Tim, the hackman, had brought in.
The old woman’s husband had gone with the outfit to the new camp, for he could not afford to give up his work. Judy had not been so bad when the camp was broken up, but when Tim went over for a load of slabs for summer firewood, he discovered her quite helpless in her bunk and almost starving. The rheumatic attack had become serious.
Amanda Parlow had at once ridden over with Dr. Nugent. Then she had come home for her bag and had insisted on the carpenter’s driving her back to the abandoned camp, proposing to stay with Judy till the old woman was better.
Aunty Rose had one comment to make upon it, and Carolyn May another. Mr. Stagg’s housekeeper said:
“That is just like a parcel of men folks—leaving an old woman to look out for herself. Disgraceful! And Amanda Parlow will not even be thanked for what she does.”
“How brave and helpful it is of Miss Amanda!” Carolyn May cried. “Dear me, when I grow up, I hope I can be a gradjerate nurse like Miss Mandy.”
“I reckon that’s some spell ahead,” chuckled Mr. Parlow, to whom she said this when he picked her up for a drive after taking his daughter to the camp.
“And you’ll come nigh to wantin’ to be a dozen other things ’fore you’re old enough to go to work in a hospital, I shouldn’t wonder. Gid-ap, Cherry!”
Cherry tossed his head and increased his stride. The carpenter had one weakness—that was horseflesh. He was always the owner of a roadster of note.
“That’s a funny name for a horse, Mr. Parlow,” observed Carolyn May.
“Cherry red. That’s his colour.”
“Oh!”
“And I got a cat home that’s cherry colour, too.”
“Why-e-e-e!” exclaimed the little girl, “I’m sure I never saw that one, Mr. Parlow. Your cat is black—all black.”
“Well,” chuckled the old man over the ancient joke, “he’s the colour of a blackheart cherry.”
“Oh, my! I never thought of that,” giggled Carolyn May. She looked up into his hard, dry face with an expression of perplexity in her own. “Mr. Parlow,” she went on seriously, “don’t you think now that Miss Amanda ought to be happy?”
“Happy!” exclaimed the carpenter, startled. “What about, child?”
“Why, about everything. You know, once I asked you about her being happy, and—and you didn’t seem fav’rable. You said ‘Bah!’”
Carolyn May’s imitation of that explosive word as previously used by Mr. Parlow was absolutely funny; but the carpenter only looked at her sidewise, and his face remained grim.
“So I said ‘Bah,’ did I?” he grunted. “And what makes you think I might not say it now?”
“Why,” explained Carolyn May earnestly, “I hoped you’d come to see things like—like I do. You are lots pleasanter than you used to be, Mr. Parlow—indeed, you are. You are happier yourself.”
The old man made no reply for a minute, and Carolyn May had the patience to wait for her suggestion to “sink in.” Finally, he said:
“I dunno but you’re right, Car’lyn May. Not that it matters much, I guess, whether a body’s happy or not in this world,” he added grudgingly.
“Oh, yes, it does, Mr. Parlow! It matters a great deal, I am sure—to us and to other people. If we’re not happy inside of us, how can we be cheerful outside, and so make other people happy? And that is what I mean about Miss Amanda.”
“What about Mandy?”
“She isn’t happy,” sighed Carolyn May. “Not really. She’s just as good as good can be. She is always doing for folks, and helping. But she can’t be real happy.”
“Why not?” growled Mr. Parlow, his face turned away.
“Why—’cause—Well, you know, Mr. Parlow, she can’t be happy as long as she and my Uncle Joe are mad at each other.”
Mr. Parlow uttered another grunt, but the child went bravely on.
“You know very well that’s so. And I don’t know what to do about it. It just seems too awful that they should hardly speak, and yet be so fond of each other deep down.”
“How d’you know they’re so fond of each other—deep down?” Mr. Parlow demanded.
“I know my Uncle Joe likes Miss Mandy, ’cause he always speaks so—so respectful of her. And I can see she likes him, in her eyes,” replied the observant Carolyn May. “Oh, yes, Mr. Parlow, they ought to be happy again, and we ought to make ’em so.”
“You and me. We ought to find some way of doing it. I’m sure we can, if we just think hard about it.”
“Huh!” grunted the carpenter again, turning Cherry into the dooryard. “Huh!”
This was not a very encouraging response. Yet he did think of it. The little girl had started a train of thought in Mr. Parlow’s mind that he could not sidetrack.
He knew very well that what she had said about his daughter and Joseph Stagg was quite true. In his selfishness he had been glad all these years that the hardware merchant was balked of happiness. As for his daughter’s feelings, Mr. Parlow had put them aside as “women’s foolishness.” He had never much considered women in his life.
The carpenter had always been a self-centred individual, desirous of his own comfort, and rather miserly. He had not approved, in the first place, of the intimacy between Joseph Stagg and his daughter Amanda.
“No good’ll come o’ that,” he had told himself.
That is, no good to Jedidiah Parlow. He foresaw at the start the loss of the girl’s help about the house, for his wife was then a helpless invalid.
Then Mrs. Parlow died. This death made plainer still to the carpenter that Mandy’s marriage was bound to bring inconvenience to him. Especially if she married a close-fisted young business man like Joe Stagg would this be true. For, at the reading of his wife’s will, Mr. Parlow discovered that the property they occupied, even the shop in which he worked, which had been given to Mrs. Parlow by her parents, was to be the sole property of her daughter. Mandy was the heir. Mr. Parlow did not possess even a life interest in the estate.
It was a blow to the carpenter. He made a good income and had money in bank, but he loved money too well to wish to spend it after he had made it. He did not want to give up the place. If Mandy remained unmarried there would never be any question between them of rent or the like.
Therefore, if he was not actually the cause of the difference that arose between the two young people, he seized and enlarged upon it and did all in his power to make a mere misunderstanding grow into a quarrel that neither of the proud, high-spirited lovers would bridge.
Jedidiah Parlow knew why Joe Stagg had taken that other girl to Faith Camp Meeting. The young man had stopped at the Parlow place when Amanda was absent and explained to the girl’s father. But the latter had never mentioned this fact to his daughter.
Instead, he had made Joe’s supposed offense the greater by suggestion and innuendo. And it was he, too, who had urged the hurt Mandy to retaliate by going to the dance with another young man. Meeting Joe Stagg later, the carpenter had said bitter things to him, purporting to come from Mandy. It was all mean and vile; the old man knew it now—as he had known it then.
All these years he had tried to add fuel to the fire of his daughter’s anger against Joe Stagg. And he believed he had benefited thereby. But, somehow, during the past few months, he had begun to wonder if, after all, “the game was worth the candle.”
Suddenly he had gained a vision of what Amanda Parlow’s empty life meant to her. And it was empty, he knew—empty of that love which every woman craves; empty of the greatest thing that can come into her life.
Mr. Parlow had realised what had been denied his daughter when he had first seen Carolyn May in Mandy’s arms. That was the thing lacking. The love of children, the right to care for children of her own. He had been practically the cause of this denial. Sometimes, when he thought of it, the carpenter was rather shaken. Suppose he should be called to account for his daughter’s loss?
Carolyn May, interested only in seeing her friends made happy, had no idea of the turmoil she had created in Mr. Parlow’s mind. She went her way as usual, scattering sunshine, and hiding as much as she could the trouble that gnawed in her own heart.
The love of Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose and Miss Amanda and Mr. Driggs and the host of her other friends at The Corners and in Sunrise Cove could not take the place in faithful little Carolyn May’s heart of that parental affection which had been so lavished on her all the days of her life, until the sailing of the Dunraven.
Had the little girl possessed brothers and sisters, it might have been different. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron could not, in that case, have devoted themselves so entirely to the little girl.
She had been her mother’s close companion and her father’s chum. True, it had made her “old-fashioned”—old in speech and in her attitude towards many things in life, but she was none the less charming because of this difference between her and other children.
Her upbringing had indeed made her what she was. She thought more deeply than other children of her age. Her nature was the logical outgrowth of such training as she had received from associating with older people.
She was seriously desirous of seeing Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda made happy in their love for each other. She was a born matchmaker—there was no doubt of that.
During the time that the nurse was at the abandoned lumber camp caring for Judy Mason, Carolyn May hoped that something might take Uncle Joe there. She even tried to get him to drive her over to see Miss Amanda on Sunday afternoon. But Uncle Joe did not keep a horse himself, and he would not be coaxed into hiring one for any such excursion.
“Besides, what would your Aunty Rose say?” he asked his little niece. “She would not approve of our doing such a thing on the Lord’s Day, I am sure.”
Nevertheless, he was as eager as a boy to do it. It was because he shrank from having the neighbours comment on his doing the very thing he desired to do that he so sternly refused to consider Carolyn May’s suggestion. Those neighbours might think that he was deliberately going to call on Miss Amanda!
The next Friday, after school was out, Miss Amanda appeared at the Stagg home and suggested taking Carolyn May into the woods with her, “for the week-end,” as she laughingly said. Tim, the hackman, had brought the nurse home for a few hours and would take her back to Judy’s cabin.
“Poor old Judy is much better, but she is still suffering and cannot be left alone for long,” Miss Amanda said. “Carolyn May will cheer her up.”
Delighted, Carolyn May ran to get ready. Spring was far advanced and the woods were very beautiful. And to stay all night—two whole nights—in a log cabin seemed wonderfully attractive to the little girl.
Aunty Rose let her go because she knew that Uncle Joe would approve of it. Indeed, they had talked the matter over already. Carolyn May missed Miss Amanda so that the hardware dealer had already agreed to some such arrangement as this. Mr. Parlow would drive over on Sunday afternoon and bring the little girl home. Of course, Prince had to go along.
That Friday evening at supper matters in the big kitchen of the Stagg house were really at a serious pass. Joseph Stagg sat down to the table visibly without appetite. Aunty Rose drank one cup of tea after another without putting a crumb between her lips.
“What’s the matter with you to-night, Joseph Stagg?” his housekeeper finally demanded. “Aren’t the victuals good enough for you?”
“No,” said Mr. Stagg drily, “I think they’re poisoned. You don’t expect me to eat if you don’t set an example, do you?”
“What I do has nothing to do with you, Joseph Stagg,” said Mrs. Kennedy, bridling. “I’m pecking and tasting at victuals all day long. I get so I despise ’em.”
“Yes,” returned Mr. Stagg. “And if Hannah’s Car’lyn don’t come back, I shall get to despise ’em, too.”
“Ha!” ejaculated the old lady. “You do miss the little thing.”
“Miss her? Bless me! I wouldn’t believe it made so much difference having her about. It’s knowing she really is away, and is going to be gone for a couple of days, that’s the matter, I s’pose. Say, Aunty Rose!”
“What is it, Joseph Stagg?”
“What under the sun did we do before Hannah’s Car’lyn came here, anyway? Seems to me we didn’t really live, did we?”
Aunty Rose had no answer to make to these questions.
Uncle Joe missed kissing the little girl good-night. He even missed the rattle of Prince’s chain at the dog-house when he came back from the store late in the evening.
The air had grown heavy and close, and he stood on the porch for a minute and snuffed knowingly at the odour a good deal as the dog might.
“There’s a fire over the mountain, I guess,” he said to Aunty Rose when he entered the house. “We’re having a dry spring.”
They went to bed. In the morning there was a smoky fog over everything—a fog that the sun did not dissipate, and behind which it looked like an enormous saffron ball.
Mr. Stagg went down to the store as usual. On the way he passed the Parlow place, and he saw the carpenter in his shop door. Parlow was gazing with seeming anxiety into the fog cloud, his face turned towards the forest. Joseph Stagg did not know that, in all the years of their estrangement, the carpenter had never been so near speaking to the hardware dealer.
The smoky tang in the air was as strong in Sunrise Cove as out in the country. The shopkeepers were talking about the fire. News had come over the long-distance wires that thousands of acres of woodland were burning, that the forest reserves were out, and that the farmers of an entire township on the far side of the mountain were engaged in trying to make a barrier over which the flames would not leap. It was the consensus of opinion, however, that the fire would not cross the range. It never had on former occasions, and the wind was against such an advance. The top of the ridge was covered with boulders and the vegetation was scant.
“Scarcely any chance of its swooping down on us,” decided Mr. Stagg. “Reckon I won’t have to go home to plough fire furrows.”
At the usual hour he started for The Corners for dinner. Having remained in the store all the morning, he had not realised how much stronger the smell of smoke was than it had been at breakfast time. Quite involuntarily he quickened his pace.
The fog and smoke overcast the sky thickly and made it of a brassy colour, just as though a huge copper pot had been overturned over the earth. Women stood at their doors, talking back and forth together in low tones. There was a spirit of expectancy in the air. Every person he saw was affected by it.
There seemed scarcely any danger of a forest fire sweeping in upon Sunrise Cove, or even upon The Corners. There was too much cleared land surrounding the town. But what was happening on the other side of the mountain? The peril that other people were in moved his neighbours. Joseph Stagg was affected himself. And for another reason.
Down in the thick woods, ten miles away, were two women and a child in a cabin. Suppose the fire should cross the range?
The hardware merchant was striding along at a quick pace when he came to the Parlow place; but he was not going so fast that he did not hear the carpenter hailing him in his cracked voice.
“Hey, you, Joe Stagg! Hey, you!”
Amazed, Mr. Stagg turned to look. Parlow was hobbling from the rear premises, groaning at every step, scarcely able to walk.
“That sciatica’s got me ag’in,” he snarled. “I’m a’most doubled up. Couldn’t climb into a carriage to save my soul.”
“What d’you want to climb into a carriage for?” demanded Mr. Stagg.
“’Cause somebody’s got to go for that gal of mine—and little Car’lyn May. Ain’t you heard—or is your mind so sot on makin’ money down there to your store that you don’t know nothin’ else?”
“Haven’t I heard what?” returned the other with fine restraint, for he saw the old man was in pain.
“The fire’s come over to this side. I saw the flames myself. And Aaron Crummit drove through and says that you can’t git by on the main road. The fire’s followed the West Brook right down and is betwixt us and Adams’ old camp.”
“Bless me!” gasped the hardware dealer, paling under his tan.
“Wal?” snarled Parlow. “Goin’ to stand there chatterin’ all day, or be you goin’ to do something?”
“Somebody must get over to that cabin and bring them out,” Joseph Stagg said, without taking offence at the crabbed old carpenter.
“Wal!” exclaimed Parlow, “glad ter see you’re awake.”
“Oh, I’m awake,” the other returned shortly. “I was just figuring on who’s got the best horse.”
“I have,” snapped Parlow.
“Yes. And I’d decided on taking Cherry, too,” the hardware dealer added, and swung into the lane towards the carpenter’s barn.
“Hey, you! Needn’t be so brash about it,” growled the carpenter. “He’s my hoss, I s’pose?”
Joseph Stagg went straight ahead, and without answering. Having once decided on his course, he wasted no time.
He rolled back the big door and saw Cherry already harnessed in his boxstall. Mr. Parlow had got that far, but knew that he could not attempt putting the spirited creature into the shafts of the light buckboard that was drawn out on the barn floor.
“You be as easy as ye can be with him, Joe Stagg,” groaned the carpenter, hanging to the doorframe. “He’s touchy-and I don’t want him abused.”
“You’ve never driven a better horse than I have, Jedidiah Parlow,” snapped the hardware merchant as he led Cherry out of the stall.
Together they backed the animal between the shafts, fastened the traces, and Mr. Stagg leaped quickly to the seat and gathered up the reins.
“You’ll hafter take the Fallow Road,” the carpenter shouted after him. “And have a care drivin’ Cherry——”
Horse and buckboard whirled out of the yard and his voice was lost to the hardware merchant. The latter looked neither to the right nor the left as he drove through The Corners. On the store porch a dozen idle men were congregated, but he had no time for them. He did not even stop to warn Aunty Rose.
Cherry stepped out splendidly, and they left a cloud of dust behind them as they rolled up the pike, not in the direction of the abandoned camp. Forewarned, he did not seek to take the shortest way to the cabin where Amanda Parlow and Carolyn May were perhaps even now threatened by the forest fire. The Fallow Road turned north from the pike three miles from The Corners.
Flecks of foam began to appear on Cherry’s glossy coat almost at once. The air was very oppressive, and there was no breeze.
This last fact Mr. Stagg considered a blessing. With no movement of the air, the fire could not spread rapidly.
The streak of flame that had followed down the banks of West Brook moved mysteriously. He could see the smoke of it now, hanging in a thick cloud above the ravine through which the watercourse flowed. He was tempted to believe that this was a fire set on this side of the mountain ridge. Yet Parlow had said he had seen the flames when the fire crossed the summit.
The sweating horse kept up his unbroken stride, and the buckboard—a frail-looking, but strongly built, vehicle—bounded over the rough road at a pace to distract one unused to such riding. But Joseph Stagg cared nothing for the jolting. His thought was wholly fixed on the fire and on those who might be imperiled by it.
Amanda Parlow and his niece might even now be threatened by the flames! The thought shook the hardware dealer to his depths.
He was not a demonstrative man, that was true. His strongest feelings he hid away in his heart; and the world at large—even those nearest to him—suspected little of the emotions that seethed in Joseph Stagg’s heart and brain.
Towards Carolyn May he had finally shown something of this deeper feeling. She had fairly forced him to do this.
And his very soul hungered for Amanda Parlow. But she was denied to him, and he shrank, as a man with a raw wound shrinks from unskilful touch, from letting anybody suspect his feeling for the carpenter’s daughter.
Of late, since Amanda had spoken to him, since the day when Caroline May and Chet Gormley had been lost out on the ice and the nurse had so courageously rung the chapel bell, Joseph Stagg’s mind had been less on business than at any time in twenty years.
He thought of Amanda Parlow. He saw her while bending over the big ledger in the back office. In his memory rang the low, mellow tones of her voice. He even heard her laugh, although it had been a score of years since he had actually been within sound of her laughter.
Now that danger threatened the woman he had loved all these years, it seemed as though his mind and heart were numbed. He was terrified beyond expression—terrified for her safety, and terrified for fear that somebody, even Jedidiah Parlow, should suspect just how he felt about it.
From the very first instant he had known the danger of the women and the child, Joseph Stagg had determined to get to them and save them. The barrier of the fire itself should not keep him back.
The stillness and oppressiveness of the atmosphere finally made an impression on his mind. He noted that already the animal life of the forest seemed to have taken fright and to have escaped. Not a rabbit, not a squirrel, was in evidence. A single jay winged his way through the wood, shrieking discordantly. Although it was the height of the mating season, the song birds were dumb.
The smoke grew heavier as he pushed on. It was sharp in his nostrils, and his breathing became laboured.
Cherry showed that he felt the stifling atmosphere, too. He tossed his proud head and snorted. Long strings of froth dripped from his bit, and his whole body had turned dark with sweat. Mr. Parlow might have felt doubtful of the horse’s well-being had he seen Cherry now.
The hardware dealer drove straight on. He looked out for the horse’s pace, for he was a careful driver, but he was out for no pleasure jaunt. There was work for the horse to do.
Joseph Stagg knew the country hereabout perfectly. From boyhood he had hunted, fished, and tramped all over the township. He was still five miles from the camp, approaching it by a roundabout way.
The horse’s hoofs rang sharply over the stony path. Presently they capped a little ridge and started down into a hollow. Not until they were over the ridge was Mr. Stagg aware that the hollow was filled, chokingly filled, with billowy white smoke.
There was, too, a crackling sound in the air. V-points of red and yellow flame suddenly flecked the bole of a tall, dead pine beside the path, and right ahead.
Another man—one as cautious as the hardware merchant notoriously was—would have pulled the horse down to a walk. But Joseph Stagg’s cautiousness had been flung to the winds. Instead, he shouted to Cherry, and the beast increased his stride.
The man knew that hollow well. At the bottom flowed Codler’s Creek, a larger stream than West Brook. Indeed, West Brook joined its waters with Codler’s Creek. The fire must have come into this cut, too. Then, in all probability, a couple of thousand acres of standing timber were afire on this side of the mountain!
Ten rods further on the horse snorted, stumbled, and tried to stop. A writhing, flaming snake—a burning branch—plunged down through the smoke directly ahead.
“Go on!” shouted Joseph Stagg, with a sharpness that would ordinarily have set Cherry off at a gallop.
But, as the snorting creature still shied, the man seized the whip and lashed poor Cherry cruelly along his flank.
At that the horse went mad. He plunged forward, leaped the blazing brand, and galloped down the road at a perilous gait. The man tried neither to soothe him nor to retard the pace.
The smoke swirled around them. The driver could not see ten feet beyond the horse’s nose. If a tree should fall across the track, disaster was certain.
But this catastrophe did not occur. Within a few furlongs, however, flames danced ahead on either side of the road.
“The bridge!” gasped Joseph Stagg.
The bridge over the creek was a wooden structure with a rustic railing on either hand. Flames had seized upon this and were streaming up from the rails.
It was fortunate that there was so little wind. The flames were perpendicular and rose, as Joseph Stagg sat in the buckboard, higher than his head.
The man leaned forward and once more laid the whip along Cherry’s flank. Later, Mr. Parlow was destined to mark both those welts and to vow that “Joseph Stagg did not know how to treat a horse!”
Now, however, there was no thought in Joseph Stagg’s mind regarding what Mr. Parlow might say or think. He had to get over that blazing bridge!
Cherry took the platform in great leaps. The bridge swung, sank, fire spurted through the planks almost under the horse’s heels, and then, just as the wheels left the shaking structure, the rear end of the bridge slipped off the abutments. The fire must have been eating out the heart of the timbers for two hours.
Cherry ran madly. The smoke, the smarting of several small burns, the loud crash of the falling bridge maddened the horse to such a degree that Joseph Stagg could scarcely hold him. Ten minutes later they rattled down into the straight road, and then, very soon, indeed, were at the abandoned camp.
The fire was near, but it had not reached this place. There was no sign of life about.
The man knew which was Judy’s cabin. He leaped from the vehicle, leaving the panting Cherry unhitched, and ran to the hut.
The door swung open. The poor furniture was in place. Even the bedclothing was rumpled in the old woman’s bunk. But neither she nor Amanda Parlow nor little Carolyn May was there.
The heart of the man was like a weight in his bosom. With so many hundred acres of forest on fire, and that, too, between the abandoned camp and The Corners and Sunrise Cove, how would Amanda Parlow and Carolyn May know where to go?
In what direction would they run? There was no stream of any size near this camp. Water had been obtained from easily driven wells. Mr. Stagg could not imagine in that first few minutes of alarm how the fugitives could have got away from the camp.
Smoke hung in a heavy cloud over the clearing. The smell of burning wood was very strong.
To go was, perhaps, the wisest thing Amanda and her charges could have done, for once the fire got into this opening the place would soon become a raging furnace.
The great heaps of sawdust and rubbish, as dry as tinder, offered fuel for the flames unsurpassed elsewhere in the forest. This clearing, three or four acres in extent, would be the hottest part of the fire, if once the wind rose and blew the conflagration in its direction. Mr. Stagg climbed to the roof of the cabin to look over the open space. He shouted at the top of his voice. But he neither saw nor heard anything. His voice came back in a flat echo from the forest wall across the clearing—that was all.
There was no way of trailing the fugitives—he knew that well enough. Of course, there were plenty of cartwheel tracks; but they told nothing of interest to the troubled hardware dealer.
He slid down from the roof and went again into the cabin. Certainly the place must have been deserted in haste. There was Carolyn May’s coat. The man caught it up and stared around, as though expecting the child to be within sight.
The old woman’s clothing was scattered about, too. It did not look as though anything had been removed from the hut. Coming out, he found another article on the threshold—one of Amanda’s gloves.
Joseph Stagg picked it up eagerly and stood for a moment or two holding it in his hand as he gazed from the doorway upon the empty prospect. Then he lifted the crumpled glove to his lips.
“Oh, God, spare her!” he burst forth. “Spare them both!”
Then he kissed the glove again and hid it away in the inner pocket of his vest.
The hardware dealer tried to think of just what the fugitives might have done when they escaped from the cabin. Surely, they would not start for The Corners by the main road—that would take them directly towards the fire. Joseph Stagg had too good an opinion of Amanda Parlow’s common sense to believe that.
And what would they do with the sick woman—how take her with them? She was crippled and could travel neither far nor fast.
This disappearance suggested to the man’s mind one certain fact: Something had already happened to the fugitives; some accident had befallen them.
The thought almost overpowered him. He was chilled to the heart. Despair made him helpless for the moment. He could think of nothing further to do. He seemed to have come to an impassable barrier.
The sight of poor Cherry, standing with heaving sides and hanging head, awoke him. He started into action once more and hurried to the horse. Taking him out of the harness, he rubbed him down with a coarse sack. Then he found a pail at the cabin and brought the animal a drink. Once more he put him back into the shafts and prepared to move on.
If it were true that Amanda would not run towards the fire, then she more than likely had taken the opposite direction on leaving the cabin. Therefore, Joseph Stagg went that way—setting off down the tote road, leading Cherry by his bridle.
Suddenly he remembered calling Prince the day Carolyn May had been lost on the ice. He raised his voice in a mighty shout for the dog now.
“Prince! Princey, old boy! where are you?”
Again and again he called, but there was no reply. The smoke was more stifling and the heat more intense every minute. As he reached the far edge of the clearing he looked back to see a huge tree break into flame on the opposite side of the open space.
The camp would soon be a furnace of flame!
Joseph Stagg was not fearful for himself. He knew a dozen paths out of this part of the forest. But he could not leave without finding the fugitives or learning the way of their departure.
The forest here was like a jungle on both sides of the tote road. Once let the fire get into it, it would burn with the intense heat of a blast furnace. Mr. Stagg realised that he must get out quickly if he would save himself and the horse.
He had just stepped into the buckboard again, when there was an excited scrambling in the underbrush, and a welcoming bark was given.
“Prince! Good boy!” the man shouted. “Where are they?”
The excited dog flew at him, leaping on the buckboard so as to reach him. The mongrel was delighted, and showed it as plainly as a dumb brute could.
But he was anxious, too. He leaped back to the ground, ran a little ahead, and then looked back to see if the man was following. The hardware dealer shouted to him again:
“Go ahead, Princey! We’re coming!”
He picked up the reins and Cherry started. The dog, barking his satisfaction, ran on ahead and struck into a side path which led down a glade. Joseph Stagg knew immediately where this path led to. There was a spring and a small morass in the bottom of the hollow.
“Bless me!” he thought, “once this fire gets to going, the heat will lick up that spring in a mouthful.”
He forced Cherry into the path. It was somewhat difficult to push through with the buckboard. Prince still barked, running ahead.
“Go on! Good dog!” cried Mr. Stagg. “Lead the way to Hannah’s Car’lyn!”
He heard the little girl screaming: “Oh, Uncle Joe! Oh, Uncle Joe! Here we are!”
Cherry rattled the buckboard down to the bottom of the hollow and stopped. There was some smoke here, but not much. The man leaped to the ground when he saw a figure rise up from the foot of a tree by the spring—a figure in brown.
“Joseph! Thank God!” murmured Amanda.
The hardware dealer strode to her. She had put out both her hands to him, and he saw that they were trembling, and that tears filled her great brown eyes.
“Oh, Joe!” she said, “I feared you would come too late!”
“But I’m here, Mandy, and I’m not too late!” he cried; and, somehow—neither of them could, perhaps, have explained just how—his arms went around her and her hands rested on his shoulders, while she looked earnestly into his face.
“Oh, Joe! Joe!” It was like a surrendering sob.
“It’s not too late, is it, Mandy? Say it isn’t too late!” he pleaded.
“No, it’s not too late,” she whispered. “If—if we’re not too old.”
“Old!” almost shouted Joseph Stagg. “I don’t remember of ever feeling so young as I do right now!” and suddenly he stooped and kissed her. “Bless me! what fools we’ve been all this time!”
“Oh, Uncle Joe! Oh, Miss Amanda!” cried Carolyn May, standing before them, and pointing with a rather grimy index finger. “You aren’t mad at each other any more, are you? Oh, I am so glad! so glad!” and her face showed her pleasure.
But the situation was too difficult to allow of much but practical thoughts.
“Where’s the old woman?” asked Joseph Stagg quickly.
“Her husband came with a horse and buggy late last night and took her over to the new camp,” was the reply. “Of course, there was not room for Carolyn May and me—and we did not wish to go, anyway.
“Judy is much better, poor soul, and I was glad to be relieved of her care. Mr. Mason warned me there was a big fire over the mountain, but I had no idea it would come this way.”
“No. And nobody else,” grumbled Mr. Stagg. “But it has come—and it’s moving mighty quick now. How came you down here, Mandy—you and Hannah’s Car’lyn?”
“We were really badly frightened, Joe,” she replied, smiling up at him. “I’m afraid I became panic-stricken when I saw a tall tree on fire not far from the camp, and we ran down here where there was water, leaving everything at the cabin.”
“But there isn’t water enough,” declared the man fretfully. “That’s the trouble with this place. We can’t stay here.”
“You know best, Joe,” said Amanda Parlow, with a loving woman’s logic.
“What you’ve left at the cabin will have to stay there,” he said. “We can’t go back. I tell you, the fire was coming into the camp when I left.”
“Oh, Joe, we must hurry, then!” she murmured simply.
“We aren’t going to be burned up now, when Uncle Joe is here, Miss Mandy,” Carolyn May declared with confidence. “See how nice he and Prince found us? Why, they are reg’lar heroes, aren’t they?”
“They are, indeed, child,” agreed the woman. She turned to Joseph Stagg, happiness shining in her eyes, and looking prettier than ever before in her life, he thought.
The hollow was rapidly becoming filled with smoke. The man did not understand this, but it foreboded trouble. He turned Cherry and the buckboard around, and then he helped Amanda into the seat.
“Up you go, too, Car’lyn May,” he said, lifting the little girl into the rear of the buckboard. “Hang on, there! Don’t dare fall off!”
“Oh, I’ll be all right, Uncle Joe,” she declared, laughing gaily. Then she said to Prince. “Don’t run off, Princey. You mustn’t get lost from us now, for the fire is coming.”
Joseph Stagg felt very serious as he seated himself by Amanda’s side and picked up the reins. The horse quickly retraced his steps up the hill to the tote road. As they came out into this broader path they saw the smoke pouring through it in a choking cloud. The road was like a tunnel through the thick forest, and the breeze, which was rising, drove the smoke on. Behind, there was a subdued murmur and crackling.
“Oh, Joe,” gasped Amanda, “it’s coming!”
“It surely is,” agreed the hardware merchant. “We’re in a hot corner, my girl. But trust to me——”
“Oh, I do, Joe!” she exclaimed, squeezing his arm. “I am sure you know what is best to do.”
“I’ll try to prove that so,” he said with a subdued chuckle.
“Oh, Uncle Joe!” cried Carolyn May suddenly, “can’t we get out of this awful smoke? It—it chokes me!”
“Wait,” whispered Amanda to the man. “I’ll lift her over the back of the seat. I think she had better be in my lap.”
“P’r’aps that’s so,” he agreed, and he held in the nervous Cherry for a moment till the change was accomplished.
Poor little Carolyn May’s eyes had begun to water, and she complained of a pain in her chest from swallowing the smoke.
“I—I thought this was going to be an—an awfully exciting adventure; but I don’t like it a bit now!” the little girl sobbed.
Miss Amanda held her close, and Uncle Joe drove on as rapidly as possible. The way was rough and they were jolted a good deal. Prince trotted on behind them, his tongue out, and occasionally coughing; but he was better off than his human friends, for he was nearer the ground, where the smoke was not so heavy.
There was just wind enough, and coming from the right direction, to drive the smoke through the tunnel of the wagon road. The fire itself was not yet near. Joseph Stagg, nevertheless, was seriously troubled by the situation.
Following the direction this road led, they would be going farther and farther from home. And, if the wind increased, it was very doubtful if they could keep ahead of the fire for long.
However, he did not display his knowledge of these troublesome facts to his companions. As for Amanda Parlow, she hugged the little girl tightly and kept up a show of cheerful spirits.
Prince whined and yapped pleadingly, and the man stopped for a moment to let the dog leap to the rear of the buckboard, where he crouched, panting.
It would not be wise for them to halt often, nor for long. The wind, although steady, was rising. The roaring of the fire grew louder and louder in their ears.
Suddenly Joseph Stagg dragged Cherry’s head around. The horse snorted and hesitated, for the smoke was blinding him.
“I pretty near missed these forks!” exclaimed the hardware merchant. “This left road takes us towards the lake.”
“Oh, Joe, can we reach it?” whispered Amanda.
“We’ve got to!” he returned grimly. “It’s three miles, if it’s an inch, but Cherry has got to make it.”
They were relieved after a minute or two in this new road. The smoke had not so completely filled it. But it was a rougher way, and the buckboard bounced until Carolyn May cried out in fear and the mongrel whined and sprawled all over the rear platform.
“You want to hang on, dog, with teeth and toenails,” said Joseph Stagg grimly. “We can’t stop for you if you fall off.”
Prince seemed to know that, for never did animal cling more faithfully to an uneasy situation. Once or twice he came near to being pitched clear of the wagon body.
They drove over a little hillock that raised them higher than the tote road had done. Amanda clutched Mr. Stagg’s arm again and uttered a half-stifled “Oh!”
He shot a glance to the left. A mass of flame broke out in the wood not far off this trail—the top of a great tree was on fire.
“The wind is carrying brands this way,” muttered the man. “A dozen new fires will be started. Well, gid-ap, Cherry!” and he seized the whip again.
The horse was well spent now, but he was plucky. He tried to increase his stride. A hot breath of wind came rushing through the forest, bending the branches and shaking the leafy foliage. The wind seemed fairly to scorch the fugitives.
Carolyn May had hidden her face on Miss Amanda’s shoulder and was sobbing quietly. Both of her human companions were painfully aware that breathing the smoke-filled air was hurting them.
Mr. Stagg hurried the labouring horse on as rapidly as he dared. Cherry coughed every few steps; the man did not want to bring the horse to his knees. Their very lives depended on the animal.
The roaring of the fire increased. Through the more open woods which bordered this path they saw the smoke advancing in a thicker wall—and one as high as the tree tops. Through the curtain of this smoke cloud red tongues of flame leaped forward to lick up hungrily patches of underbrush or to fasten on certain trees.
“You’ve got to make it, old boy,” muttered Joseph Stagg, and he lashed the horse again.
The spirited Cherry leaped forward, both the woman and the child screaming.
“Hang on,” advised Mr. Stagg. “The road makes a turn just ahead, and that’s mighty lucky for us.”
For he knew that the fire was roaring down toward them, the wind having risen to a gale. The crash of falling trees and the snapping of the fire was like the sound from a battlefront. The noise was almost deafening.
“Is it far? Is it far?” gasped Amanda in his ear.
“Too far for comfort. But keep your heart up.”
As the man spoke, a blazing brand swung through the air and came down, right on Amanda’s shoulders. Carolyn May shrieked. Joseph Stagg brushed off the burning stick.
Cherry mounted another small ridge and then they clattered down into a little hollow where there was a slough beside the road. The water was green and stagnant, but it was water.
The man pulled in the hard-pressed horse and leaped down, passing the reins to Amanda. He whipped off his coat and dipped it in the mudhole. He drew it out dripping with water and slime.
“Look out, here! Have to shut your eyes!” he warned his two companions on the seat of the buckboard, and threw the saturated coat over Miss Amanda’s head. The dripping garment sheltered Carolyn May as well.
“Now, good horse!” he yelled to Cherry, leaping back to the seat. “Gid-ap!”
The horse started up the slope. Another swirling brand came down upon them. Joseph Stagg fought it off with his bare hand. His shirt sleeve caught fire and he was painfully burned on the forearm before he could smother the blaze.
It was growing so hot now that the leaves on the trees curled and were blasted before the flames actually reached them. Behind the fleeing buckboard the conflagration was on both sides of the narrow path. They were barely keeping ahead of the enemy.
Another flaming brand fell, landing on Cherry’s back. The horse squealed and leaped forward at a pace which Mr. Stagg could not control. Maddened by the burn, Cherry had taken the bit in his teeth and was running away.
The man threw down the reins. He could do nothing towards retarding the frightened horse’s pace. Indeed, he did not want to stop him.
His left arm he flung around Miss Amanda and the child, and with his right hand clung to the rocking seat of the careening buckboard.
The wet steaming coat saved the woman and the child from injury. More than one brand settled on it, and the garment only smoked. But Joseph Stagg was painfully burned.
On and on dashed the maddened horse. It was a mercy, indeed, that the buckboard was not overturned.
Sparks rose from burning brush clumps and flew over them in a shower. Prince yelped and whined pitifully, but, like Mr. Stagg, he hung on.
The burning and smouldering brands showered upon them. Bushes broke out into flame in advance, and on either side of the path. It was as though the combustion was spontaneous.
With a roaring like the charge of a field of artillery, a great mass of flame flew high over their heads. The tall trees were on fire on all sides. They were in the heart of the conflagration!
Joseph Stagg had lost all count of time. The forest road might still extend ahead of them for a mile, for all he knew.
But suddenly they broke cover, Cherry still galloping wildly, and plunged down an open ravine to the edge of a lake of sparkling water.
“Bless me! The lake! the lake!” hoarsely shouted the man.
The walls of the ravine sheltered them from smoke and fire for a moment, but the brands still fell. Cherry had halted on the edge of the lake, but Joseph Stagg urged him on into the water, flank deep. The shore was narrow and afforded little space for refuge. He lifted Amanda and the child bodily from the seat and dropped them into the water.
“We’re safe now,” he said hoarsely, jumping in himself, and holding Carolyn May and Amanda. “We’ve got water enough here, thanks be! Hang on to me, Mandy. I’m not going to let you get away—no more, never!”
And by the way in which the woman clung to his arm it was evident that she did not propose to lose him.
They looked back at the roaring wall of flame. The forest was a seething furnace. Smoke drifted out over the lake in a heavy cloud. Dead embers showered about them. Prince rolled and burrowed in the damp sand at the edge of the water. Cherry filled his throat with a long, cool, satisfying draught.
“My, Uncle Joe! you are just the bravest man!” declared Carolyn May, finding her voice. “Isn’t he, Miss Mandy? And, see, his arm is all burned. Dear me, we must get home to Aunty Rose and let her do it up for him.”
Towards the east the forest tract was completely burned to the banks of Codler’s Creek. As the wind which had sprung up had driven the fire westward, there was little danger of the flames pressing nearer than the creek to Sunrise Cove and The Corners.
Joseph Stagg led the horse out of the water and advised Miss Amanda and Carolyn May to get into the seat of the buckboard again. Then he set forth, leading the horse along the narrow beach, while Prince followed wearily in the rear.
It was a rough route they followed, but the blackened forest was still too hot for them to pass through, had they been able to find a path. This was a lonely strip of shore and they saw no living soul but themselves.
Some trees were still smouldering along the creek banks. They could see these fires when they crossed the mouth of the stream, for the dusk had fallen and the flames sparkled like fireflies.
It was a long tramp, and the horse, the dog, and the man were alike wearied. Carolyn May went fast asleep with her head pillowed in Miss Amanda’s lap.
The latter and Joseph Stagg talked much. Indeed, there was much for them to say after all these years of silence.
The woman, worn and scorched of face, looked down on the smutted and sweating man with an expression in her eyes that warmed him to the marrow. She was proud of him. And the gaze of love and longing that the hardware merchant turned upon Amanda Parlow would have amazed those people that believed he had consideration and thought only for business.
In these few hours of alarm and close intimacy the man and the woman had leaped all the barriers time and pride had set up. Nothing further could keep Joseph Stagg and Amanda Parlow apart. And yet they never for one instant discussed the original cause of their estrangement. That was a dead issue.
The refugees reached The Corners about nine o’clock. Jedidiah Parlow had hobbled up to the store and was just then organising a party of searchers to go to the rescue of the hardware dealer and those of whom he had set out in search.
The village turned out en masse to welcome the trio who had so miraculously escaped the fire. Aunty Rose’s relief knew no bounds. Mr. Parlow was undeniably glad to see his daughter safe; otherwise, he would never have overlooked the pitiable state his horse was in. Poor Cherry would never be the same unblemished animal again.
“Well, I vum” he said to Joseph Stagg, “you done it! Better’n I could, too, I reckon. I’ll take the hoss home. You comin’ with me, Mandy?” Then he saw the burns on the younger man’s shoulders and arms. “The good land of Jehoshaphat! here’s work for you to do, Mandy. If you air any sort of a nurse, I reckon you got your hands full right here with Joe Stagg,” he added, with some pride in his daughter’s ability. “Phew! them’s bad-lookin’ burns!”
“They are indeed,” agreed Aunty Rose.
It was a fact that Mr. Stagg was in a bad state. Carolyn May had suggested that Aunty Rose would dress his burns, but Miss Amanda would allow nobody to do that but herself.
When the curious and sympathetic neighbours had gone and Miss Amanda was still busy making Joseph Stagg comfortable in the sitting-room, Aunty Rose came out into the kitchen, where she had already bathed and helped Carolyn May to undress, and where the little girl was now sleepily eating her supper of bread and milk.
“Well, wonders don’t ever cease, I guess,” she said, more to herself than to her little confidant. “Who’d have thought it!”
“Who’d have thought what, Aunty Rose?” inquired Carolyn May.
“Your uncle and Mandy Parlow have made it up,” breathed the woman, evidently much impressed by the wonder of it.
“Yes, indeed!” cried the child. “Isn’t it nice? They aren’t mad at each other any more.”
“No, I should say they’re not,” Aunty Rose observed with grimness. “Far from it. It’s a fact! I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. They haven’t got eyes for anybody but each other.”
“Oh! Haven’t they, Aunty Rose?” queried Carolyn May with sudden earnestness.
“I should say not, child! Holding hands in there like a pair of—Well, do you know what it means, Carolyn May?”
“That they love each other,” the child said boldly. “And I’m so glad for them!”
“So am I,” declared the woman, still in a whisper. “But it means changes here. Things won’t be the same for long. I know Joseph Stagg for what he is.”
“What is he, Aunty Rose?” asked Carolyn May in some trepidation, for the housekeeper seemed to be much moved.
“He’s a very determined man. Once he gets set in a way, he carries everything before him. Mandy Parlow is going to be made Mrs. Joseph Stagg so quick that it’ll astonish her. Now, you believe me, Carolyn May.”
“Oh!” was the little girl’s comment.
“There’ll be changes here very sudden. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd,’ Carolyn May. Never was a truer saying. Those two will want just each other—and nobody else.”
“Oh, Aunty Rose!” murmured the little girl faintly. She had stopped eating the bread and milk. The housekeeper was too deeply interested in her own cogitations to notice how the child was being affected by her speech.
“I’ve told him a thousand times he should be married,” concluded Aunty Rose. “And if Mandy Parlow’s the woman for him, then it’s all right. Whether she is or not, he’ll marry her. Jedidiah or a thousand others couldn’t stop Joseph Stagg now. I know what it means with him when he once makes up his mind.
“But there’ll be no room here for anybody but those two, with their billing and cooing. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd.’
“Well, Carolyn May, if you’ve finished your supper, we’d better go up to bed. It’s long past your bedtime.”
“Yes, Aunty Rose,” said the little girl in a muffled voice.
Aunty Rose did not notice that Carolyn May did not venture to the door of the sitting-room to bid either Uncle Joe or Miss Amanda good-night. The child followed the woman upstairs with faltering steps, and in the unlighted bedroom that had been Hannah Stagg’s she knelt at Aunty Rose’s knee and murmured her usual petitions.
“Do bless Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda, now they’re so happy,” was a phrase that might have thrilled Aunty Rose at another time. But she was so deep in her own thoughts that she heard what Carolyn May said perfunctorily.
With her customary kiss, she left the little girl and went downstairs. Carolyn May had seen so much excitement during the day that she might have been expected to sleep at once, and that soundly. But it was not so.
The little girl lay with wide-open eyes, her imagination at work.
“Two’s company, three’s a crowd.” She took that trite saying, in which Aunty Rose had expressed her own feelings, to herself. If Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda were going to be married, they would not want anybody else around! Of course not!
Somewhere, somehow, in listening to older people talk, Carolyn May had obtained the impression that all couples desired to be by themselves just as soon as they were married. They had no need nor desire for other people. Her idea was that the so-called “honeymoon” extended over long, long months.
“And what will become of me?” thought Carolyn May chokingly.
All the “emptiness” of the last few months swept over the soul of the little child in a wave that her natural cheerfulness could not withstand. Her anchorage in the love of Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda was swept away.
She was going to be alone again. There would be nobody whose right it was to care for her. With her mother and father drowned in a foreign sea and Uncle Joe utterly taken up with the “lovely lady” he loved, who was there to care for Carolyn May?
The heart of the little child swelled. Her eyes overflowed. She sobbed herself to sleep, the pillow muffling the sounds, more forlorn than ever before since she had come to The Corners.