The fire was really entirely burned out, as he discovered immediately, but at the first steps he went ankle-deep in ashes, and felt the heat strike through his boot-soles. The ground was still hot, and beds of embers smoldered here and there beneath the ashes.
His heart almost failed him again. He might step into a mass of hot coals that would scorch and cripple him. But there was no way around; he had to cross this barrier or give up, and he went on again, moving in long leaps to touch the ground as little as possible. Wherever he could, he paused on a log to gain breath and lay his course.
The ground was cumbered with masses of fallen trees, charred, spiky, a continual chevaux-de-frise of tangled stubs and roots. They lay at every possible angle, and Tom had to edge his way round them, climb over, or squeeze through. It was like the “burn” he had already crossed, but this one was fresh and hot. By sheer good luck he escaped stepping into any spots of fire, but the ground burned under his feet, and the ashes rose in smothering clouds as he plowed through them.
The ground was treacherous under its thick gray covering. It was mined with holes and strewn with hidden entanglements. Two or three times Tom tripped and went headlong, almost choked in the ashes. His eyes grew filled with the fine powder; he could not see clearly nor make sure of his directions, and he had a terrible feeling that his strength was failing.
He heard the locomotive whistle again, and much nearer. It spoke failure, he thought. He could never reach the station now in time for the train. To his blurred eyes his watch seemed to mark half-past ten already. He was desperately tired, and burning with thirst. He thought that he might as well rest a little; he longed more than anything to sink down in the ashes, anywhere, and sleep.
Still he kept doggedly moving, driven by he hardly knew what force. The rest of the journey was a kind of nightmare, whose details he could never quite remember. Hours seemed to pass in the torment of that suffocating atmosphere—hours of intense heat, of stumbling, of terrible thirst, and of overwhelming exhaustion. Then he seemed to see trees ahead. They were charred evergreens, but the carpet of hot ash ceased, and a little beyond he saw the cool, blessed green of living spruces.
Stimulated now by the consciousness that he had come through, he made a last spurt, and in a few minutes he emerged suddenly upon the railway. He stopped, confusedly; and then perceived, a hundred yards down the track, a red-painted wooden station and the smoke of a locomotive.
He rushed toward it. The place was no more than a flag-station with a log house or two in the background; and this was not a passenger-train that stood there. It was not even a mixed train; it was a long freight-train, engaged just then in coupling up a few flat-cars loaded with fresh-cut ties.
The conductor was standing on the platform, talking leisurely with the station agent, and they both stared in amazement as Tom dashed up, blackened, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed.
“Give me a ticket to Toronto!” he exclaimed. “Am I in time? Has the train—”