"My God!" Carrots Smith cried; and Brady broke out in whimpering prayer to the saints.
They stood, staring.
As aforesaid, the fire was running south and westerly at an acute angle to—in fact, almost paralleling the railroad, with its extreme point farthest away but already beyond the trestle. And now, veering swiftly southeast, as Bender had feared, it swung at right angles and came broadside on, a fiery tide high over the forest. To the engineer it seemed that the wind lifted a mass of flame and threw it bodily into a tangle of poplar-brake, red willow, tall reeds, and sedge at the trestle's south end. Dry, explosively inflammable from a summer's heat, it touched off like a magazine, whirling skyward, a twisting water-spout of flame, and as he jerked wildly on his whistle he saw, as under the calcium of lurid melodrama, men running like wingless flies along the wet, black trestle. Careening, the column fell across them.
Only the few who were drawing with Carter escaped that first explosive flame, and they gained only time to jump as the main fire came hurdling over the trees. Falling, Carter saw the stream, blood-red; jagged rocks rising swiftly to meet him. A flash blinded his eyes, then—
He rubbed them—that is, he winked, for he was far too weak for such robust exercise. Yes, he winked it. Was—could that be Helen's face bending low over him?
XXXI
WHEREIN THE FATES SUBSTITUTE A CHANGE OF BILL
Carter winked again. The face, however, did not move. On the contrary, it lit up with sudden delight and said smile helped his limping consciousness forward to the idea of a dream. Yes, he was dreaming, undoubtedly dreaming! No! Here memory took hold and gave him back the flaming forest; wet rocks, rising swiftly from red water, carried him back and left him at the precise moment that he had struck a projecting timber. He was falling! Involuntarily he stiffened, expecting the shock ... but—ah! a clew! He was dead—of the fall; and this? Must be heaven, or why Helen? If t'other place? 'Twas not so bad as long as she was there! Here his eye, through removal of the face, touched the whitewashed ceiling, then wandered to blank walls, a stand with medicine, covered glasses and spoons, a linen-press, two chairs—he arrived at truth, a hospital! Then, tired out by these strenuous mental exercises, his eyes closed once more, to the ineffable relief of the anxious watcher, and sleep, natural sleep, replaced the coma that had held him these two days.
For a while Helen listened to his breathing, then, once sure that he was really asleep, she tiptoed out to the corridor and, under urge of relief, ran, fairly flew, with her good news to the head doctor's office. For these had been days of haggard waiting, as, for the matter of that, had the last two weeks—Bender's battles, Carter's triumph, the strike and forest fire had all been packed into ten short days.
Beginning at the morning after she saw Carter at dinner with the general manager, her joyful prayer had gone with the jubilant roar of press and people at the ceding of the crossing, and for several following days her ears drank thirstily of the plaudits which were universal in the hospital, on the street, at her boarding-house. When, indeed, the topic cropped up at her first operation, her fingers trembled so over a bandage that Carruthers excused her, thinking the sight of blood had turned her sick. At Jean Glaves's table she had to veil the eager exultance of her eyes. The merchants who were discussing competition in freight rates on the street would have stared could they have heard the heart-cry of the pretty nurse then passing.