V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE

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Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the fire raved exultingly, leaping and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisoner released from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was a spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down a valley. It was a maniac at large.

The broad base of the mountain where it sat upon the backs of the lower hills spread out fanwise to a width of five miles. The fire spread its wings as it came down until it swept the whole apron of the mountain. A five-mile wave of solid flame rolled down upon the hills.

Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early browse missed the juicy dew from the grass. They looked to where the sun should be coming over the mountain and instead they saw the sun coming down the side of the mountain in a blanket of white smoke. They left their feed and began to huddle together, mooing nervously to each other about this thing and sniffing the air and pawing the earth.

Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle 138 in to milking looked blinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb minds understood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting back to the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking down lengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in their hearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fled down the roads to the west. For the hireling flees because he is a hireling.

Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children came tumbling out of the houses, to look up at the death that was coming down to them. Some cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and shook foolish fists at the oncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or her treasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in its crib, or a little rifle, or a dolly of rags.

Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm wagons. The treasures were quickly bundled in. Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of the sweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and took the reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses, they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and, incidentally, of themselves in their hands. But they were capable 139 hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother hearts that went with them.

They would have preferred to stay with the men, these women. But it was the law that they should take the brood and run to safety.

Men stood watching the wagons until they shot out of sight behind the trees of the road. Then they turned back to the hopeless, probably useless fight. They could do little or nothing. But it was the law that men must stay and make the fight. They must go out with shovels to the very edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of new earth which the running fire could not cross. Thus they might divert the fire a little. They might even divide it, if the wind died down a little, so that it would roll on to either side of their homes.

This was their business. There was little chance that they would succeed. Probably they would have to drop shovels at the last moment and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But this was the law, that every man must stay and try to make his own little clearing the point of an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, no ten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities, some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground, or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sector might be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten. And so 140 something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled and blinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ran past their already smoking homes and down the wind for life.

Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake of four other men down a long spiral course towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he would have ridden at their head. He would have taken the place of leadership and command among them which he had for months been taking in the fight against the railroad. Probably he could still have had that place among them if he had tried to assert himself, for men had come to have a habit of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear, dispirited and miserable.

They were trying to get around the fire, so that they might hang upon its flank and beat it in upon itself. There was no thought now of getting ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm. That rolling curtain of smoke would have already aroused every living thing ahead of it. They could only hope to get to the end of the line of fire and fight it inch by inch to narrow the path of destruction that it was making for itself.

If the wind had held stiff and straight down the mountain it would have driven the fire ahead in a line only a little wider than its original front. But the shape of the mountain caught the light breeze as it came down and twisted it away always to the side. So that the end of the fire line was 141 not a thin edge of scattered fire that could be fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted funnel of flame that leaped and danced ever outward and onward.

Half way down the mountain they thought that they had outflanked it. They slid from their horses and began to beat desperately at the brush and grasses among the trees. They gained upon it. They were doing something. They shouted to each other when they had driven it back even a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree. They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat began to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air to breathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, for they were surely pushing the fire in upon itself.

A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.

When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon them from three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise so that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they had cleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had been turned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down the hill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful, tricky 142 monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at their puny efforts.

Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path of the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by them on its way.

Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their instinct to hunt water.

The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they hung on in desperation.

Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something. And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind and around them so that they had to race for life.

Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among the broken hills. Here 143 their work was entirely hopeless and they knew it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being cut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep any steady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied and whirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every direction and with it the fire ran apparently at will.

When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were just beginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind would send a ring of fire around to the other side so that they saw themselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off.

Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the north side of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly east and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions. If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save the southern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north of the lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did not enter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have had plenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men were fighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is the way of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with the fire.

They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. 144 It was no longer an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it.

They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into the hills to do this thing.

Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter given or asked with the demon of the fire.

Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If 145 they could hold the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be safe.

The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it.

They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it! To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and drink!

Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder, fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They had won! It could not beat them now!

As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the placid lake below him one 146 of the new men, who still had voice, raised a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph.

But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry, flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames went roaring to the top of it.

The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get themselves out of that encircling death.

When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of victory.

Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain––but they themselves could not get near the lake.

Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in the lake.

Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted 147 silent teeth, according to the nature that was in each.

Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not men of the hills.

They were!––They were the real enemy!––They were two of those who had set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed straight for the lake and had gotten there. They were safe. And they had water!

All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire fury of the day, rushed back upon him.

He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had not.

Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those two there in the water. In the water!

He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward, his face buried in a patch of bare earth.

Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he understood, he turned on his face moaning:

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“I didn’t kill Rogers. I wish I had––I wish I had.”

And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west.


The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop.

But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the U. & M. Railroad must not 149 dare to drive the people of the hills from their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results.

He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand that struck.

Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue of the sky behind them.

Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now.

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Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking posts.

Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south and west.

He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled, perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.

Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain had suddenly been moved 151 into the gap. He went back to his seat and sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should have been.

He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind, and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart whose passions ran deep below a placid surface.

At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and hurried to the operator’s window to ask if any news had gone down the wire of a fire in the hills.

Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table “listening in” with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company, between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office at Steuben.

The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.

Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:

“This ain’t the bulletin board. We’re busy.”

The Bishop stood quiet a moment.

Then Jerry looked up. The face looking 152 calmly through the window was the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of certain things.

Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:

“I––I’m sorry, Bishop! I––I––didn’t hear what you said.”

The Bishop––if one might say it––grinned. Then he said quickly:

“I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything on the wire?”

Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop’s mouth. The beet red colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were coming back. He was now coherent.

No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a “call.”

Jerry held up his hand. “Lowville calling Utica,” he said. They waited a little and then: “Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call everything,” Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the benefit of the Bishop.

“It must be big, Bishop,” he said, turning, “or they wouldn’t call––”

But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing train.

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At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady’s house. Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady’s saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the hills.

It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady’s clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the matter no more than a mild wonder.

For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.

He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men into 154 the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady’s horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his well fed life.

Nearing Corben’s, he saw that the horse could go but little farther. Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop’s destination in the hills––which was vague, and his business––which was still more vague. He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.

The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the diocese. Corben did not believe that.

In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.

Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road. But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe of 155 the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.

Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the children. That was all they could tell.

As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.

In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the mere argument that he was a man.

The Bishop’s first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what she knew. That a 156 man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald Mountain.

The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched. He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even than the one of the fire itself.

“He had my letter?” the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth had to tell.

“Yes. We had just read it.”

“He went armed?” said the Bishop quietly.

“Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey’s gun to him,” the girl answered simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.

“They will all be driven in upon French Village,” said the Bishop slowly. “The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road from here there, is it open, do you know?”

“No one has come down from that far,” said Ruth. “We have watched the people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the lake. And if they did they would go north 157 by the river. But the road certainly won’t be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes down.”

“I must hurry, then,” said the Bishop, gripping his reins.

“Oh, but you cannot, you must not!” exclaimed Ruth. “You will be trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost.”

“Well, I can always come back,” said the Bishop lightly, as he set his horse up the hill.

“But you cannot. Won’t you listen, please, Bishop,” Ruth pleaded after him. “The fire may cross behind you, and you’ll be trapped on the road!”

But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he heard or not, he did not answer or look back.

Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not drive him back. She knew that.

She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he 158 meant hunters and hunted alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death just as certain but which they would prefer to face.

The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.

But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.

“I am going back to the top of the hill,” she said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. “I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will catch you before long.”

“No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you. Don’t go past the hill. We’ll wait. There’s no danger down here yet, and won’t be for some time.”

Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He 159 did not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the hill.

But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.

She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the chances and was ready to measure himself against them.

“Brom Bones could catch him, I think,” she said as she watched him up the long hill. “But we could not make him come back until it was too late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don’t think I’m afraid. Only somehow he seems––seems different. He doesn’t seem just like a man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all about it. But it doesn’t count. He is a man going on business––God’s business. I wonder.”

Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, 160 for he was very tired from the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into the sky.

Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming, sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward her home.

All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.

For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and surround them.

While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This 161 was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the level lands and safety.

The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.

Ruth’s decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find him and lead him 162 out to the north and probably to safety. If he did not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the attempt.

Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home. For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his flanks––to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones’ scheme of life, for he had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the stroke of the whip to madden him.

Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not understand the girl’s words, he could feel the thrill of rising excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:

“You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way before, did I? But it’s for life––a good man’s life! You can make it. I know you can make it. I wouldn’t ask you to if I didn’t know. You can make it! It won’t hurt us a bit. It can’t hurt us! Bromie, dear, I tell you it can’t hurt us. It just can’t!”

She crouched out over the horse’s shoulder, laying her weight upon her hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet body.

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But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came? She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.

A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on again, through the smoke and out into the good air.

The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared, either.

Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and turning looked back at her 164 home. The farmer had long since gone away with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter much.

Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the men who had set it. (She was sure that men had set it.) She wanted vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take revenge in the way of men.

But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And she took her religion at its word. When she said, “Forgive us our trespasses,” she meant just that. And when she said, “As we forgive those who trespass against us,” she meant that, too.

The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal another.

Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire burst upon her with appalling 165 force. What she had so far seen was but a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be coming down upon the whole world.

She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom Bones for his brave best.


The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to French Village. His watch told him that it was six o’clock. Soon the sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come to the 166 road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.

He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through somehow.

He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.

Then he came to the top of the hill.

167

He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road. This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the hill where he stood.

Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse and looked.

Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid wall of fire.

There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the fire, for in that way he might 168 easily be caught and hemmed in entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French Village.

Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick upon him.

His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.

Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.

“I am sorry, boy,” he said gently to the horse. “You have done your best. And I––have done my worst. You did not deserve this.”

He was looking down toward Wilbur’s Fork, a dry water course, two miles away and a thousand feet below.

The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to the west down through the great trees, travelling 169 faster than any horse could have been driven.

The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an unbroken line––death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with a calm and certain steadiness of purpose––death. On the hill to the west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift line of fire coming down the northern side of the square––death. One narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.

With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over the horse and came heavily to the ground.

“You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance,” he said, as he hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.

He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.

“We stay together, then.” And the Bishop mounted again.

Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope. 170 No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran through the grass by his horse’s feet.

One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.

Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in hand.

Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his hand.

But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him, the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of the thing than he could see heroism.

He had come out on a bootless errand, to save 171 the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He had meant well. God meant better.

Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this square of fire.

“It’s you, Bishop, isn’t it?” the voice cried frantically. “I thought I’d never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He’ll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks,” she yelled back over her shoulder, “we can make them yet! There’s nothing there to burn. We may smother. But we won’t burn!”

Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.

They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet 172 above the ground about them. Looking down he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.

It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light. The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau.

The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop’s arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.

The man’s eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised the Bishop’s grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips there came the moan:

“Mon Pere, je me ’cuse––”

With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which the French people 173 began the telling of their sins in confession. And she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.

She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like––the Catholic Church always turning up in everything.

She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there behind that awful veil of red.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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