The Heart of the Red Firs: A Story of the Pacific Northwest

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

He took a lamp and lighted the officers through the rooms. Little Silas wakened and sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes. He saw these men open his mother's bureau, drawer after drawer, and thrust their hands through her things, and he turned to Forrest for explanation. But the young man stood back, waiting in silence, with frowning brows.

There was no one on the walk when Louise hurried to the ruin. The fog and smoke had become very dense along the front of the bluff, but the moonlight filtered through enough to show objects, with the indistinctness of wet nights. The walls of the hotel loomed out of the pall, lonesomely. The floor complained at her tread. She went quickly behind the bar, and drawing the key from her pocket, found the lock. Inside the tap-room she lighted the candle. The floor was strewn with sand, dust, pebbles and bits of broken board. The tide still swashed under the worm-eaten planks; they shook at her step.

She put the candle down and tried to move the chest. It yielded slowly to her straining effort. Her first impulse had been to drag it through to the rear balcony and push it over into the sea, but she had not considered its weight. She locked the door and stood briefly scanning the floor. The short, uneven strips were rotting about the old nail-heads, which in places had worked up from the boards. There were widening cracks where ends joined. She knelt down and tried to start some of these rusty nails, but they were firmer than they looked. She moved from one to another in growing haste, still on her knees, and tugged at the stubborn iron with her tender hands. The jagged roughness tore her fingers, imbedding splinters at every wrench. She reached a looser nail. Her renewed effort forced the wood around it, and she began to use it as a claw, prying and digging faster and faster, working out the next. Presently she was able to lift this plank, and she used it as a lever under the second, bearing gradually with increasing weight. It gave without breaking and she laid it aside while she raised a third strip. There was an increased rush of air. The flickering candle-flame was snuffed out. Still the light from the high window showed the chest, and she dragged it to the aperture. It fell slanting, and caught in the flooring. At the same instant some one outside tried the tap-room door.

She grasped the chest with the strength of desperation. It slowly righted and went through. The tide closed over it with a deeper swash.

Again she heard that cautious noise. Some one was trying to force a key in the lock. It was obstructed by the one she had left there, and the attempt was followed by a muttered curse. She laid the planks back in their order, and brushing the sand and pebbles hastily over them, rose, panting, and faced the door. There was no further disturbance, but the room suddenly darkened. She turned, lifting her eyes to the high window, and saw against the light the head of a man. It appeared briefly and moved down, but she caught the brutish profile. It was the face that had once alarmed her, peering into her room out of the night.

She threw the door open, and relocking it from the outside, ran swiftly through the bar-room and down the walk. Presently she glanced back fearfully, but the man had not followed, and she paused to hurl the key and the candle far out in the tide.

As she approached her gate she saw that Forrest was waiting at the foot of the piazza steps, while the inspectors came along the side of the house from the rear. They moved slowly, prodding the sawdust and planking that built up the yard, and she hoped to gain the porch before they came that far. But they met her while she was still on the walk. Bates swept her with his keen glance, but the lantern, which the other man was adjusting, flashed that moment full in his face, and, blinded, he passed without stopping her, going in the direction of the ruin.

Forrest saw her and stood holding the gate. The slab-fire suddenly burst into brighter flame. It showed him clearly the stains of earth and brine upon her gown; the grime of dust and moisture on her worn face. She raised her hand to ward off his look, and her sleeve, rent to the elbow, fell back from her beautiful forearm, baring a long deep, bleeding hurt, ploughed there by the brass-bound end of the falling chest. "Louise, Louise," he said. "What is it? Tell me."

She pushed him aside and went up the steps.

"Trust me," he said. "Let me help you."