CHAPTER XVIII
Met on the Trail
Pam’s face was so long when she came out of the house in response to a summons from Don that he took to rallying her on her evident depression as they drove back to Ripple.
“It looks as if you and Galena had been having a little difference of opinion, and that you had come off second best. Why didn’t you shout for me? It would have given me all the pleasure in life to have squashed her flat.”
“But it would not have mended matters at all,” said Pam with an impatient sigh. “I wanted Galena to be willing to take Reggie Furness back to work there when he is well enough, but she has got such an impossible attitude with regard to a wrongdoer. Because a person has once done the thing which is not square she will never trust that person again. She knows she is not perfect herself, and yet she expects perfection in everyone else.”
“That is the stand most folks take,” he answered with a short laugh. “Self-blindness, I call it, and as a rule the more they shout about the weaknesses of other people the more disposed they are to the same infirmity themselves. But Galena is a good sort at the bottom, and she will very likely turn things over in her mind a bit when she has had a little time. I guess Nathan is more than a little cross with me. He wanted his supper about as much as it is possible for a man to want anything, and I kept him out in the barn, asking him questions about every imaginable thing, from moose-calling to the best and quickest way of plucking chickens. I helped him feed his horses, though, and he said he hated that business worse than anything he had to do all day. He said it made him real bad to see the creatures stuffing their noses into the food and having such a good time, while he felt like sinking into his boots with hunger. Then I reminded him that he would soon have the boy back to get supper ready for his horses, so he cheered up a bit, although he did mention that Galena might have something to say on the subject.”
“Oh, it was good of you to put in a word for Reggie like that. If Nathan feels he wants the boy back so badly, Galena may have to give way.” There was a catch in Pam’s voice, for she was feeling this affair very keenly. Reggie was having to suffer for his vindication of her grandfather, and so it became very much of a personal matter to her.
The colt was spanking along at a fine pace. The trail was very good just at this part, and Don’s high-wheeled cart went bumping and swaying along under the shade of the birches and the hemlocks while the level rays of the setting sun lay in bars of gold across the heavy green foliage. In another ten or fifteen minutes they would be at Ripple, and Don’s golden evening would be over. It was not wonderful that he wanted to make the most of it while it lasted.
“I am a bit jealous of that boy Reggie. You seem to have no time to think of anyone else,” he ventured, greatly daring, and Pam turned to him with a look of astonishment.
“What else could we do but think of him, seeing how ill he has been?” she demanded; then added with a laugh: “Besides, he is not the sort to remain in the background at any time. He has been teaching me all sorts of things about the wild life of the forest, and telling me about racoons and minks and beavers. He told me that there is a beaver meadow about seven miles across the forest from here, and he is going to take me to see it some day when he is stronger.”
“I will drive you over. It is too far for you to walk, and the trail is rough,” said Don. Then, finding his golden minutes fleeting faster than ever, he burst out in impulsive speech: “I have loved you ever since that night you stopped us on the trail to ask the way to Ripple, and there isn’t a thing I would not do to please you, if you would let me.”
Pam looked keenly distressed.
“Oh, please, don’t!” she said, clasping her hands tightly and feeling that she would love to run away.
But Don, having once started, was not to be easily stopped.
“Why shouldn’t I tell you that I care for you more than for anyone else in the world?” he demanded. “I am not so clever as you by a long way, and you always make me feel that I am the very clumsiest animal that ever wore shoe leather; but Mother says that is very good for me, and she told me to-night that she owed a deep debt of gratitude to the little girl at Ripple for smartening up her son. Can’t you care for me at all, Pam?”
Pam went very white. What possessed this infatuated young man to talk to her of love, when for aught she knew there might be shame in front of her far greater than any she had had to bear as yet? It was fairly plain that her grandfather had had no hand in the hurting of Sam Buckle, but it was quite possible he was involved in something else which would not bear the light of day, seeing that he must have fled from his home to avoid meeting the surprise party.
“It is not a time to think of oneself,” she said in a chilly tone, which was all the colder because of the wave of self-pity that suddenly filled her heart. It did seem hard that her life should be clouded by this mystery, and just at the time when things might have been really delightful. “We never know what is going to happen next, or whether Grandfather will come home.”
“That seems to me all the more reason why you should have someone with a right to stand by you,” said Don, whose face was setting into stern lines of determination. “You have Jack here now, it is true, but he is only a boy, and I want the right to stand by you.”
She shook her head. Speech was so difficult just now, and oh! she could have cried because her golden evening was spoiled. But in her way she was as resolute as Don, and she was determined that she would avoid anything that might bring more suffering later on.
“It is very nice of you to want to shelter me,” she said gently. “But I don’t need it. I mean, I am quite able to stand up under things without help. I could not let you care for me—I mean, go on caring for me, when perhaps there is heavy disgrace to come on us in the near future. Of course we know now that Grandfather did not hurt Sam Buckle, but we do not understand why he had to leave his home. We know he did not die in the forest, because Mose Paget knew a man who had seen him and talked to him. This was all easy of understanding while we thought he had gone away because of what happened to his neighbour. Now it is a maddening mystery, and I can’t begin to think of myself or to plan for being happy in my own way. I have to do my very best to keep the farm going so that it shall pay, and so that there may be a little money for Grandfather if he comes home. I came to New Brunswick hoping to make a place for Mother and the younger children, but my work seems to go in the direction of helping Grandfather all I can, even though I have never seen him.”
Pam was talking now for talking’s sake. She wanted to stave off all the things which she instinctively felt Don wanted to say to her. She was stifling back, too, a very real heartache. They had been such friends, such real chums, and it was hard to feel that she must give up what she had had, just because circumstances would not let her give more. But she did not know Don quite as well as she thought she did. He received all she had to say in a very non-committal silence, and then, when the house at Ripple was reached, he said quietly:
“I can wait. You have not said that you did not care for me, or that there was anyone else, and nothing else matters. No, I won’t come in to-night, thank you, it is getting late. I shall come over again and take you out when there is time, and things will be just as they were.”
Would they? Pam greatly doubted it. She would always be self-conscious now when she was with Don; the old comradeship would have disappeared, and she would feel it necessary to stand on guard always.
It was quite early next morning when Galena Gittins drove up to the house in a smart little wagon that she had bought for herself from her own earnings.
“I thought I would just come over and see for myself if that pickle of a boy is getting better,” she explained a little awkwardly. “Nathan was saying last night that if he could not have Reggie back he would have a hired man in the house for this summer, but I tell him we can’t get men these days, and so we have to be thankful to have boys. Nathan ought to have married years ago, then maybe he would not be dependent on outside labour now.”
Sophy laughed quietly as she led Galena across the best sitting-room to the end bedroom where Reggie lay. Rumour said that back in those far-off years when he was a young man, Nathan Gittins had wanted to get married, but gave up the idea because of the strenuous objections of Galena; but then rumour is not much to be trusted, so perhaps Nathan had not been very keen upon matrimony.
Reggie looked up and flushed scarlet when Galena entered the room. But she walked across the floor with her usual brisk tread, saying, in a matter-of-fact tone:
“Getting better, are you? Well, the sooner you are fit for work the better we shall like it. A rotten time we are having at our place, and Nathan is about worn out with all the things he has to do at night when he comes in from the field.”
Reggie stared at her with unbelieving joy in his eyes.
“Do you mean that I am to come back to work the same as if nothing had happened—I mean, the same as if I had not told?” he asked, in a tone that quavered suspiciously.
Galena snorted, and tossed her head with an air of fine scorn.
“I haven’t much patience with two-faced folks myself, but this time, at least, it has turned out all right, since you can clear Wrack Peveril from such a low-down charge as that brought against him. The pity is that you did not do it before, but the wisest of us make mistakes sometimes.”
Reggie murmured an incoherent something, then lay staring at Galena with shining eyes, while she talked to Sophy about the wedding that was to be so very soon. Then Pam came in from the barn, where she had been helping Jack with the morning “chores”, and very soon afterwards Miss Gittins went away, declaring that she could not stay another minute. But when she bade him good-bye she told Reggie that she was going to ask the Doctor how soon he could be moved, as it would be a comfort to have him at their place, even if he could do nothing better than lie on the settle in the kitchen and tell her when the saucepans boiled.
A week later he was gone, and the house dropped back into its condition of normal quiet. Pam and Jack only came into the house to eat and sleep, while Sophy worked industriously at her wedding-gown. She had decided that she would rather make it at Ripple than at her own home, where there were so many interruptions. Every day she approached her task with the reverent awe of a priestess performing a religious ceremony, and Pam had many a quiet chuckle to herself over the happiness Sophy got from work that is mostly left to outsiders.
One baking hot morning in early June the cow was missing. The creature had apparently pushed down a weak portion of the fence and gone for a stroll on her own account. There was in consequence no milk for breakfast. Corn porridge and molasses is not bad fare, but coffee without milk is horrid, so many hard things were said about the cow while they had breakfast. In an ordinary way there would have been the milk of the previous night to fall back upon, but it so chanced that the storekeeper from The Corner had been collecting all the evening milk of the district for the last few weeks, because he had bought a separator and was making butter for his customers.
“I will take the dog and go to find the cow,” said Pam. “I was going to hoe potatoes in the field by the creek, but those weeds will have to get a little bigger before they are hoed up. I don’t believe I am sorry either, for I would much rather tramp about the forest than hoe potatoes to-day. Isn’t the weather just gorgeous? I wish, oh, I wish that the boys and Muriel were here to enjoy it!”
People told her that June was not often as hot as this, and that the weather would probably break in a thunder-storm soon, and then it would get cooler.
“You will have to go, because I can’t.” Jack spoke with his mouth full, for he was bolting his breakfast in a great hurry, having lost time in hunting for the cow. “I promised Nathan that I would be at his place in good time. We are going to start haymaking to-day, and now we shall have to hustle for all we are worth.”
Pam started on her quest directly breakfast was over. It was really stupid of the cow to break bounds in this fashion, because if the creature wandered very far the night’s milk would not be so good, and Pam was rapidly developing the farmer instinct, which is dead against waste of this sort.
She went out through the break in the fence made by the cow, and followed the trail of the animal through the long grass, so far as it showed; when she could no longer see it she had to trust to common sense for direction. The cow was out for change of diet rather than from any desire to run away, so most likely it would wander straight along the nearest trail, which was the narrow one that led out to the old tote road. Pam had not been there for some time, work having called her in other directions. Farmers in that part of the world do not often walk for the sake of taking a stroll in the middle of summer, time being too precious.
The dog paced soberly along at her heels, and she wondered if the creature had any recollection of the happening of last fall, when it had encountered the lynx at the ruined house. Her way this morning led past the ruin, for as she turned into the old tote road she saw far away in the distance something which looked like a cow. The creature was so far away that it was of no use to send the dog in pursuit yet, so she went on, ankle-deep in grass and flowers, while the morning seemed to grow hotter and hotter.
She halted at the door of the ruined house, trying to get courage enough to enter. Apparently the door had not been touched since Mose Paget had tied it up to keep the lynxes from returning to their lair. Pam had a vivid remembrance of the bit of yellow pocket-handkerchief he had used for the purpose, and there it was still tied to the door. The place had a bad name. Luke Dobson told her that he himself had once been scared nearly out of his senses by seeing a grey shape flit along the tote road in front of him one night when he was belated in that part of the forest, and it had disappeared in or near the ruins. Pam had laughed then: it is so easy to laugh when one is hearing of an experience of such a kind second-hand. Now she was shivering at the remembrance, and she did not wonder that even a stolid, unimaginative man like Mr. Dobson had been frightened.
“Oh, but it is all nonsense to be so scared. I will open the door and have a look inside,” she whispered to herself. She was noticing that the shell of the house still appeared sound and good, and she was thinking that the place might be used as a dwelling again if only someone could be found brave enough to live there. She forced her unwilling feet close to the door, laid her hand on the rag with which Mose had fastened the door to the frame, then stood still for a moment to overcome the fierce trembling which had seized her.
A crash sounded overhead, followed by a long, crackling roll of thunder, and at the same moment the dog flung up its head, uttering a most doleful howl. With a sharp cry of fear Pam darted out to the middle of the wide green road, and stood shaking and shivering, for she was dreadfully afraid of thunder. Of choice she would have turned and fled back to Ripple as fast as she could go; but there was the cow. She had found it, and for very shame she could not go back and say that she had run home because she was afraid.
The sun was shining still, and from where she stood she could not see the storm coming up against the wind. The wonder seized her as to whether the crash of thunder had been sent to warn her from trying to enter that haunted ruin. Then she laughed aloud at her own folly in thinking such a thing, and set forward in pursuit of the cow once more. But she did not look back, and she was debating in her mind if there was not a cross-trail that would take her back to Ripple without her having to come back past the ruins.
The cow saw her coming, and moved gently on ahead, as if to prolong the morning’s stroll as far as possible.
“Tiresome thing!” cried Pam, who was shaken by her experience. Then she quickened her pace, for the cow had turned out of the straight wide road into a narrow avenue of mighty beech trees. The sun was certainly clouding over now, and the heat grew every moment more suffocating. She had left the great open space where the black spruce had been lumbered last winter, and had plunged into a dense forest of mighty beech trees. Here and there were dead trees and plentiful windfalls—that is, broken branches stripped off by the tempest in its fury.
Another crash louder than before. A queer sensation of being stunned came to Pam, and she leaned against a tree to recover her breath. How dark it had grown! The cow was out of sight, and the dog crouched at her feet, whimpering as if frightened also. Then came a quick, darting flash, and a cracking, riving noise, followed by a peal of thunder so mighty and overwhelming that Pam shrieked aloud in her terror, yet could not hear her own voice. Such a dead silence followed that her ears fairly ached. A big tree towering above its fellows had been riven from summit to base by lightning, and to her horror and dismay she saw little crackling flames and a thin haze of smoke creeping about its foot.
The forest was on fire—she could smell the burning! Everything she had ever heard or read of forest fires came back to her now, and she turned to flee. She had taken half a dozen flying steps backward to the comparative safety of the old tote road when she remembered what Don had said to her one day, to the effect that there would not be half so many fires in the forest if the people who saw them start were to take the trouble to beat them out.
Could she do it? Would she dare go back to the burning tree? She was running with the wind, and if the fire grew, as sometimes forest fires did grow, then soon the flames would overtake her, and her life would be forfeit. Better face the danger now, and stop it, if stopping was possible.
A moment she halted, then she fled back by the way she had come, just as a loud peal of thunder crashed above her head. The smoke was blinding. It was last year’s dead leaves that were burning, for the beech leaves only fell as the new growth pushed them off, except where they were exposed to the fury of the wind. She had a stick in her hand, and although she was nearly blinded by the smoke, she dashed into the circle of burning leaves and began beating out the fire. At first her efforts seemed only to make things worse; instead of extinguishing the fire she flicked the sparks here and there and started other fires. But she grew wiser as she went on, and did her beating in surer fashion. The smoke was certainly growing less, she was gaining on the fire, and she was ready to shout with triumph, when suddenly, without any warning, a blazing branch fell on the ground in front of her, so close that it was nothing short of marvellous it had not come right on her head. Looking up, she saw that the flames had been creeping up the side of the tree farthest away from where she was working, and, finding a rotten branch as inflammable as tinder, had burst into an active conflagration far above her reach.
Oh, the horror of it! Pam’s courage, shaken by the thunder and the fierce efforts she had made to stop the outbreak, gave way altogether now, and again she fled. The dog had disappeared long ago, she had seen nothing of the cow since the fire began, and she was alone with this great terror. Never in all her life had solitude frightened her so much. The fire on the ground had all been beaten out; but for the blazing branch above her head the danger would be nearly all over by now. There was another crash. Pam gave a sideway leap just in time to avoid another decayed branch that came crashing to the ground, throwing out showers of sparks and starting another fire of dead leaves where it fell. She could now hear the flames crackling above her, and she suddenly realized her own danger, for if a blazing branch fell upon her she must burn to death with no one to help her.
She fled then, not back to the old tote road, for the blazing tree was between her and the trail which led that way, but straight ahead by a trail she did not know. To her nothing mattered just then but to get as far away as possible from the burning tree.
The trail she took was a cross-trail, and five minutes later she emerged on a wider one. Glancing distractedly to right and left, she saw to her intense relief a man coming towards her. He was a stranger. The first glance showed her that. But he looked so much at home on the forest trail that she made up her mind he was of the wilderness places.
“A forest fire has started, can you help?” she shouted as she came nearer to him.
He looked at her and broke into a run. No need to tell a forest-dweller to hurry when a fire has started. It is seconds that count then, and a few of them may make all the difference between ruin and security.
“Where is it?” he shouted, and there was something in his voice that brought instant comfort to Pam, for she instinctively realized that here was a man who could grapple with the situation.
“This way!” She had turned, and was speeding back by the way she had come. She had forgotten the cow, she had lost sight of everything save the need of the moment.
A blast of hot air struck her as she neared the tree. But a moment later she saw to her great joy that the fire was still confined to the one tree that had been struck by lightning. The foliage of the forest was at present so green and tender that it would not readily flame. Scorched and blackened it might be, but it would have to be drier before it would burn easily. The danger lay in the bits of blazing branches that were falling from the stricken tree. There was a large amount of dead wood cumbered up with the living branches, and it was these that were blazing so furiously. The man she had met overtook Pam by the time she came in sight of the tree, and he rapidly summed up the situation, for he plainly understood all about it.
“Beech tree, struck by lightning; dead wood ablaze. Chief danger of spreading lies in the burning fragments that are dropping from the tree. We shall have to beat the fires out as they start. You have a stick; come along!” As he spoke the man sprang forward, and, using the stout walking-stick he carried, started to beat out the flame of a particularly vigorous little fire that had started in a great mass of dried bracken.
What a difference between the wrong way and the right! Pam watched him, fascinated by the way he was doing it, and quite unconscious that a very active blaze had just started within a few paces of her on the other side.
“Look out!” called the man sharply. “You will be on fire yourself in another moment!”
“Oh, oh!” Pam started forward and commenced hitting wildly, raising showers of sparks. Panic had seized her, fire was such a truly horrible thing, and she was almost at the end of her self-control.
“Slower, slower! Don’t be in such a hurry!” called the man, and then he left his own fire and came over to where Pam was trying to beat the fire so that it would go out. “Knock the other stuff down on the top of what is blazing; that smothers it, don’t you see?”
“Be careful!” shrieked Pam, looking up just in time to see that a great fragment of blazing wood was coming straight down on the man; then, because he did not look up and spring away himself, she rushed at him, pushing with so much vigour that, unable to save himself, he was bowled over like a ninepin. Just as he measured his length on the ground, the branch, blazing furiously, struck him on the boot and rolled harmlessly to one side.
“Thank you!” he said, as he picked himself up and again started on smothering the fire. “There is an old proverb among the Mic-macs to the effect that he who fights fire wants eyes all over him. I should have been in a sorry case if you had not come to my help just then.”
“It is horrible—horrible! Shall we ever be able to stop it?” Pam was very near despair, for it seemed to her that for every fire they beat out three more started. Her arms were aching so badly that she could hardly lift her stick. But she stuck to it because the man who was helping her kept shouting to her to come on, and worked with an amazing vigour himself which was tremendously infectious.
He paused a moment to look at the tree that was blazing far above their heads; then he gave a glance at the sky, dashed to one side to beat out a fresh fire, came back to help Pam with the one she was beating out, and said encouragingly:
“We shall do it, I fancy. The rain will begin inside of ten minutes, and if it comes down according to promise, the fire will be out in another ten minutes. We shall be as wet as if we had been wading, but you will have saved quite a big forest fire.”
“I?” cried Pam in astonishment. “Why, I could not keep it back; that was why I ran away. I was running away when I met you on the trail. Didn’t you know?”
“I guessed that was what you were doing, and small blame to you, for you might easily have lost your life, and no one any the wiser. But when there are two, the danger is so much less, because one can help the other, as you did me when you bowled me over.”
“It was dreadful of me, but there was no other way,” said Pam. Then she cried out in dismay, for the rain was suddenly flung upon the forest, coming down with such force and violence that her breath was nearly taken away, and she could only lean against a tree and gasp.
“Our work is done,” said the stranger, who seemed in no way disturbed by the downpour. “And as there is nothing more to do, we might as well be moving. Can you direct me to the house of Mrs. Sam Buckle?”
“I am not sure, but I think so. I don’t think I have been in this part before, but I have a general idea as to where the trail leads, and I think I can guide you,” said Pam, who was wondering more than ever who this stranger could be.