And the forest-demons decided to grant it to him. It was not in accord with their plans that he should lie insensible throughout all the entertainment they had provided for him. So they not only permitted him to waken, but as a final favor they bestowed upon him a super-consciousness—a fine keying of every nerve and an added sensitiveness to his flesh. It was their final beneficence, and they gave it freely. Fargo opened his starting eyes.
His first thought was of flight, and therefore of his horse. But the animal, knowing of old the fear of fire, had sped on down the trail. Fargo was alone. He had to run for it, then, before it was too late. . . . He sat up, shuddering.
It occurred to him then that the fall had bewildered him as to his directions. At the first glance he beheld the fire, but it was in front of him instead of behind where he had left it. It was curious to be so turned around—and he looked over his shoulder, intending to mark the best trail to safety. And then Landy Fargo’s throat convulsed and his breath came out in a scream.
The fiery wall was behind him, too, leaping toward him with a deadly and terrible ferocity. The trees flamed like great torches, swayed and fell; the brush was a wall of fire. The conflagration had made a great half circle, just as he had planned, converging to the left of him.
But to his right the fiery barrier was nearest of all. He didn’t have to turn to know that. Its crackle was just in his ear. And then he leaped to his feet with a wild, blasphemous cry.
A little peninsula of fire had crept out from the burning brush to his right, and had paused—in grim speculation—beside something hard and strong that it found resting in the pine needles. It was Fargo’s hand—the hand in which he had exulted such a little time before, and which had set the flame. As if in gratitude, the red tongue licked at its brown skin.
Full knowledge came to Fargo then. All about him raged the fire, pressing ever closer. He was helpless—powerless to aid himself as the Shropshire lamb that he had thrown, so many weeks ago, among his hounds. His own handiwork had turned against him, and the vengeance of the wilderness was complete.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The face before her seemed only part of her dark dreams as Alice wakened from her unconsciousness. She hoped in an instant to waken into the world of reality she had always known, not this abyss with its red glare and creeping tongues of flame. She couldn’t understand why her arms felt so numb and why they didn’t answer the command of her nerves.
No moment of Alice’s life had ever been more fearful, more fraught with despair, than that in which her full consciousness returned to her. The fire’s glow was more lurid and terrifying than ever. The flame itself was nearer: already it had crept almost to the bottom of the glen. The way was still open, but a few moments would see it closed. Yet all these things were apart from her and infinitely remote. The only reality in her life, now that her dreams were done, was the intent face of her captor.