Tabitha at Ivy Hall

by Ruth Brown MacArthur

In the distance she heard the sound of a dog's insistent barking, and was annoyed by the plaintive howls. She stopped her ears but could not shut out the sound, and in desperation she sat up and looked out of the window, wishing that morning would dawn.

The night was very dark, but the starlight seemed to break the heavy blackness that hung like a pall over the landscape. Off toward the horizon, in the direction of the dog's barking was a faint glimmer of wavering light, and Tabitha watched it idly for a moment, wondering if there were campers in that little hollow, too. Then the light grew brighter and more flickering, the barking more frantic, and Tabitha started up in terror.

"It's the hermit's house on fire! What can I do? Neither Tom nor Dad is here to give the alarm, and town is so far away."

She flew out of bed and to the dresser where her father's pistol was kept, lifted the ugly weapon from its case and mechanically cocked it. Tom had taught her to use a rifle, but she had never been allowed to handle a revolver, though she had watched him so often that she was familiar with its mechanism, and had no thought of fear as she sped fleetly out of the house, pausing only long enough to slip on her sticky shoes.

Bang, bang, bang! went the gun in rapid succession; bang, bang, bang! Six times the report rang sharply through the still night air,—the signal of fire in this little desert town. Then tossing the empty pistol aside, she ran down the road as fast as her feet would carry her, all her terror of the night swept away in the one idea that the townspeople might be too late to help the old man if he should happen to be in the burning house. She never stopped to wonder what aid she, a child of twelve, could render, she never thought of arousing Mr. Carson, but stumbled breathlessly on in the darkness toward the shack now burning merrily.

Somewhere behind her she heard a second revolver alarm; then someone passed her in the road, and a man's voice called, "Go home, Tabitha. This is no place for you." But still she kept on, having scarcely heard the words, and hardly aware that other help than her own feeble strength was at hand.

That was a night she never forgot. In these desert mining towns where water costs a dollar a barrel and the system of piping it into the houses is yet in its infancy, fire is not an easy thing to fight, and many a time the whole camp has been destroyed before the conflagration could be checked or would burn itself out. The hermit's hut, however, was so isolated that the town was in no danger, even from the flying sparks, but there was not a drop of water to throw on the flames, and the roads were too steep and rough for the volunteer fire department to drag their chemicals to the rescue.

So the little shack burned to the ground, but Mr. Carson and Tabitha arrived in time to pull the lone occupant to safety, though it was a close call for the old miner, for he was almost suffocated with the smoke and his head and hands were badly burned.

Mr. Carson, too, suffered from his buffeting with the flames, but Tabitha came out unscathed, and when the men from town arrived, hatless and anxious, they found the child helping the brave superintendent in his efforts to revive the unconscious hermit, while the little yellow cur whined in terror at their feet, and the blaze of the burning house mounted high in the heavens.

Dr. Vane was among the crowd, and he quietly took charge of the patient, easing his suffering and binding up his wounds as best he could while someone went for a rig that the injured man might be carried back to town more easily.