The girl ran into the hut, lifted one of the cedar splints that made the floor, and took out a section of iron gas-pipe—the most prized possession of the tribe. It was their wand of plenty. It was Mother Nature’s crutch. Out of it flowed bounty.
Into the unplugged end she poured all the kerosene there was in a battered can. Then she stuffed into the tube a mass of wicking.
It was a torch—the torch for the blueberry barrens. Dragged after one, it left a blazing trail such as no other form of fire could produce.
There was a flicker of fire in the rusty stove. She thrust the wicking into the coals, and on the iron stalk a flame-flower sprang into huge blossom.
She burst through the hut’s rear window and ran straight for the edge of the clearing, towards the fuel piled high in the forest aisles.
In that moment of blind and desperate fury she realized that the wind was swinging into the north. It was there that MacLeod was sitting at the foot of Pogey Notch. Ah, what a furnace-flue that would make!
She did not pause to reason. Her single wild desire was to send the fire leaping towards him.
The roar of voices behind—voices entreating, voices of malediction—made her smile. Above all was the Honorable Pulaski’s bull roar. She began to drag the torch.
“Catch her! Damnation, catch that girl!” howled Britt.