“You refer to the time when the great forest was burned?” Jessie inquired rather absently. She had seated herself at the sewing machine and was busily running up the seams of Ralph’s new kilt.
“Yes; that’s the time. It was before you came here. And the fire was set in the way I spoke of. A couple of young men—they weren’t much more than boys—came up from town, and they were just at that age when they thought it a smart thing to be able to smoke a cigar without turning sick after it. They were staying at the hotel, and one day they went with a party from there up to see the marble quarries. There’d been an awful dry spell; it had lasted for weeks, and everything was just as dry as touch-wood. There were notices posted all along the roads and trails, forbidding folks building camp-fires, or anything of that kind. The boys, after they had been to the quarries, started home ahead of the others, and on foot. I don’t reckon that they’d got above a quarter of a mile from the quarries when they pulled out some cigars and matches, intending, of course, to have a smoke. Well, they had it, but it wasn’t just the kind they’d expected. First one, then the other, threw down their lighted matches, after they’d got their cigars to going. The wind was blowing hard in their faces and toward the quarry, as it happened, and the next thing they knew they heard a great roaring, and as they said afterward, two pillars of flame seemed to spring right out of the ground, one on either side of the trail, and to reach so high that they almost touched the tree-tops. In less time than I’m taking in telling of it they had reached the tree-tops, and then the two little pillars of fire became a great blazing ocean of fire up in mid-air. You know how ’tis with pine needles and cones; they make a blaze as if the end of the world had come. No wonder the poor boys were scared! It was right in the thickest part of the woods, and what with the fire roaring away before the wind on either side of them, and the clouds of smoke and sparks roaring away above the burning tree-tops, it must have been an awful sight. They were in no particular danger themselves, because the fire was going away from them, but as they stood there, blistering in the heat, they thought of their parents—their parents, who were right in the path of the flames, and in the way they acted up to that thought, you may see the difference in folks. One of them—Dick Adams, his name was—pulled his hat down over his eyes, shook out his handkerchief and tied it over his mouth to save his lungs, and said to the other, ‘If anything happens to our folks we are the ones to blame for it; come on and help;’ and with that he gave a leap down the trail as if he would overtake the fire itself. But the other boy, he wasn’t made of that kind of stuff. He just turned and ran the other way, and folks did say that he never stopped running until he reached town, twenty miles away. When poor Dick, blackened with grime and smoke, with his hair singed and his burnt shoes dropping off his feet, staggered into the open space about the quarry, there were the folks, and even the horses, all safe. They hadn’t started when they saw the fire coming, and so, knowing that they were safe where they were, they stayed. The fire swept past them on either side, and all they had to do was to wait till the trail got cool enough to travel over. There was no great damage done after all, though a great many trees were destroyed, but so were acres and acres of underbrush, and that was a big help to stockmen. Dick was pretty well done up, but he didn’t care for any more cigars, and his father paid the fine that the township’s trustees assessed against him, cheerful on that account, though he said he was sorry he couldn’t save the timber. Now, Leslie,” she concluded her story, abruptly, “if you’ll just move those hats a little I’ll lay the baby on the bed.”
After I had complied, and Ralph’s head was on a pillow instead of her arm, she came to Jessie’s side and stood regarding her work thoughtfully.
“You’re real spry on the machine, aren’t you?” she at length remarked, admiringly. “Now me, I’m as slow!” She looked around the room and continued, with seeming irrelevance: “I s’pose the furnishings must have cost you a good deal?” Her tone was very gentle.
“Yes,” Jessie returned, comprehending her meaning with the quick intuition that grief gives. “Yes; they did.”
“Well, he’s at rest. You can visit his grave. They’re worth all they cost and more, but I was thinking now if you felt like taking in a little sewing to help along until—”
“Why, I’d like to do it, dear Mrs. Horton!” Jessie interrupted, looking up with sparkling eyes. “I’ve never thought of it before, but if I could get it to do I would be so glad! Every little toward the proving up is just so much gained.”
“That is what I was thinking. I can let you have quite a little work myself, and I know there are others who will be glad of a chance to get sewing done. I declare, I’m glad I thought of it! It will be so nice for you to do something to help out right here at home. And,” she went on, her kind eyes shining, “maybe you can learn to be a dressmaker—”
“No, no!” interposed Jessie, who had her future comfortably mapped out in her mind. “I mean to be a teacher.”
“Do you? That’s a good, respectable trade, too, and a teacher you shall be if I can do anything to help you get a school.”