So, in the midst of his turbulence, passed Michigan Red, but the evil that he had done mightily all the days of his life followed him into death, for the pounding hoofs spread embers of his fire over a leafy carpet, where the night wind found them. Leaping under its breath, small flames writhed tortuously across the glade to the thing that had been a man—touched and tasted its clothing with delicate lickings, then flashed up and sprang from the smouldering cinder into thick scrub, and so ran with incredible swiftness through the forest. Crouched, like a runner, at first, close to the ground, it suddenly straightened and bounded high over a patch of dry poplar burned by a former fire, cowered again, to crawl through thick green spruce, and so stole softly on, as though to catch the Cree in his sleep.
As well try to singe a weasel. Already the Cree was urging his ragged pony, with squaw and papoose, towards Carter's camp, and, balked there, the fire swung with the veering wind into poplar woods, and flamed on, a roaring, ebullient tide, overtopping the tallest trees. Under its effulgence, black lakes and sullen tarns flashed out of thick night with scared deer, belly-deep in the water. Huge owls went flapping through the smoke, leading the ducks, geese, vagrant flocks of the night, leaving hawks and other day birds to circle, shrieking, ere they whizzed down to a fiery death. Gaining strength from its own draught and the freshening wind, it flowed, at an angle, over the railroad and poured down both sides, licking up bridges, trestles, culverts, leaving the hot rails squirming like scorched snakes in empty space; and so, about midnight, roared on to the great trestle at which Michigan had paused that afternoon, and where Carter had lined up his men.
Roused by the Cree from a dream of Helen to a nightmare of flaming skies, Carter first sent out a gang under command of Hart and Smythe to back-fire around the camp, then loaded the remaining crews on flat-cars and raced the fire down to the trestle. Bender, who was with him in the engine-cab, leaned to his ear as the train pulled out of the cut.
"Michigan Red?"
"Looks it." Nodding, Carter turned to watch the rails which gleamed under the sky-glow, running like scarlet lines on black ribbon between dark, serried ranks of spruce. "Lucky it is coming at an angle," he said, as the engine thundered over the first bridge.
Bender raised his big shoulders. "If the wind don't shift? But it generally does about this time o' night. If she slips to the east—p-s-st! a puff of steam, a crackle, an' we're gone up like flies in a baker's oven."
Carter returned his shrug. "As good a way as any." He added, grimly smiling: "And very fit. Give us a chance to get acclimated. But with luck we ought to be able to wet her down and pull out south. Without it we can lie down in the creek."
"I like mine wet," Bender grinned. "Drowning ain't exactly comfortable, but if there's to be any preference I'll take it." And in the face of danger and disaster, Carter smiled again.
Starting out, it had seemed a toss-up between them and the fire, but the train rolled over the trestle and drew up in a cut on the southerly side, a quarter-hour to the good. The creek ran under the northerly end, with a short approach to the bank, the bulk of the trestle leading over a quarter-mile of morass to firm ground; so Carter, with Bender, Carrots Smith, and other half-dozen, dropped buckets from the bridge to the stream, thirty feet below, and passed them to the men who were strung along the plates. Dipping, drawing, dashing, they worked furiously under the glare of the conflagration. While still half a mile away, its heat set the trestle steaming. At a quarter of a mile, the furious draught rained embers large as a man's hand upon the men, who turned their faces away from the blistering heat. Casting uneasy glances over humped shoulders, they began to increase their distances, edging along the south approach towards the train; but as they still maintained communications, neither Carter nor Bender took notice until they suddenly broke and ran.
"Here! Come back!" Bender's angry roar drowned Carter's shout, and was lost, in turn, in a shrill whistling; for the engineer had seen that which had been hid from them.