Stiff, half frozen, utterly dazed, she pulled herself up to the bunk, nursed the child, and soothed him again to sleep. Then the accumulation of anguish which had overwhelmed her rolled back upon her understanding. She staggered to the window.
The dreadful illumination across the valley had died down to a faint ruddiness, just seen through 222 the thin tops of the firs. The fire––whether it had been the barn or the house––had burned itself out. Whatever had happened, it was over. As she stood shuddering, unable to think, not daring to think, her eyes rested upon the bear, huge and formless in the gloom, staring at her, not ten feet away. She answered the stare fixedly, no longer aware of fearing him. Then she saw him turn his head suddenly, as if he had heard something. And the next moment he had faded away swiftly and noiselessly into the darkness, like a startled partridge. She heard quick footsteps coming up the trail. A dog’s fierce growl broke into a bark of warning. That was Jake’s bark! She almost threw herself at the door, and tore it open.
Dave Stone had got back from the settlement earlier than he expected, driving furiously the last two miles of his journey, with his eyes full of the red light of that burning, his heart gripped with intolerable fear. He had found his good barn in flames, but the children safe, the house untouched, the stock rescued. The children, prompt and resourceful as the children of the backwoods have need to be, had loosed the cattle from the stanchions 223 and got them out in time. Neighbours, hurrying up in response to the flaming summons, had found the children watching the blaze enthusiastically from the doorstep, as if it had been arranged for their amusement. Seeing matters so much better than they might have been, Dave was struck with a new apprehension, because Mandy had not returned. It was hardly conceivable that she had failed to see the flames from the window of the shack! Then why had she not come? Followed by Jake, he had taken the camp trail at a run to find out what was the matter.
As he drew near the shack, the darkness of it chilled him with dread. No firelight gleam showed out from the window! And no red glow came from the boiling-shed! The fire had been allowed to die out under the sugar-pot! As the significance of this dawned upon him, his keen woodsman’s eyes seemed to detect through the dark a shape of thicker blackness gliding past the shack and into the woods. At the same moment Jake growled, barked shortly, and dashed past him, with the hair bristling along his neck.
The man’s blood went to ice, as he sprang to the door of the shack, crying in a terrible voice: 224 “Mandy! Mandy! Where are––” But before the question was out of his mouth, the door leaped open, and Mandy was on his neck, shaking and sobbing.
“The children?” she gasped.
“Why, they’re all right, mother!” replied the man cheerfully. “It was only the barn––an’ they got the critters out all safe! But what’s wrong here? An’ what’s kep’ you? An’ didn’t you––”
But he was not allowed to finish his questionings, for the woman was crying and laughing and strangling him with her wild clasp. “Oh, Dave!” she managed to exclaim. “It was the bear––as tried to git us––all night long! An’ he’s et up every crum of the last bilin’.”