The Manager of the B. & A.: A Novel

by Vaughan Kester

He had distanced and outwitted pursuit, and his old pride in his physical strength and superiority returned. The woods never ceased to interest him. There was a mighty freedom about them, a freedom he shared and joyed in. He felt he could tramp on forever, with the scent of the pines filling his nostrils and the sweep of the wind in his ears. His muscles seemed of iron. There was cunning and craft, too, in the life he was living.

The days were sultry August days. No rain had fallen in weeks, and the earth was a dead, dry brown. A hot haze quivered under the great trees. Off in the north, against which his face was set, a long, low, black cloud lay on the horizon. Sometimes the wind lifted it higher, and it sifted down dark threads of color against the softer blue of the summer sky. Presently the wind brought the odor of smoke. At first it was almost imperceptible—a suggestion merely, but by-and-by it was in every breath he drew. The forest was on fire ahead of him. He judged that the tide of devastation was rolling nearer, and he veered to the west. Then one evening he saw what he had not seen before—a dull red light that shone sullenly above the pines. The next day the smoke was thick in the woods; the wind, blowing strongly from the north, floated little wisps and wreaths of it down upon him. It rested like a heavy mist above the cool surface of the lake, on the shores of which he had made his camp the night previous, while some thickly grown depressions he crossed were sour with the stale, rancid odor that clung to his clothes and rendered breathing difficult. There was a powdering of fine white ashes everywhere. At first it resembled a hoar-frost, and then a scanty fall of snow.

By five o'clock he gained the summit of a low ridge. From its top he was able to secure an extended view of the fire. A red line—as red as the reddest sunset—stretched away to the north as far as the eye could see. He was profoundly impressed by the spectacle. The conflagration was on a scale so gigantic that it fairly staggered him. He knew millions of feet of timber must be blazing.

He decided to remain on the ridge and study the course of the fire, so he lay down to rest. Sleep came over him, for the day had been a fatiguing one, but at midnight he awoke. A dull, roaring sound was surging through the forest, and the air was stifling. The fire had burned closer while he slept. It had reached the ridge opposite, which was nearly parallel to the one he was on, and was burning along its northern base. The ridge flattened perceptibly to the west, and already at this point a single lone line of fire had surmounted the blunt crest, and was creeping down into the valley which intervened. Presently tongues, of fire shot upwards. The dark, nearer side of the ridge showed clearly in the fierce light, and soon the fire rolled over its entire length, a long, ruddy cataract of flame. As it gained the summit it seemed to fall forward and catch fresh timber, then it raced down the slope towards the valley, forming a great red avalanche that roared and hissed and crackled and sent up vast clouds of smoke into the night.

Clearly any attempt to go farther north would be but a waste of time and strength. The fire shut him off completely in that quarter. He must retrace his steps until he was well to the south again. Then he could go either to the east or west, and perhaps work around into the burned district. The risk he ran of capture did not worry him. Indeed, he scarcely considered it. He felt certain the pursuit, if pursuit there were, had been abandoned days before. He had a shrewd idea that the fire would give people something else to think of. His only fear was that his provisions would be exhausted. When they went he knew the chances were that he would starve, but he put this fear resolutely aside whenever it obtruded itself. With care his supplies could be made to last many days.

He did not sleep any more that night, but watched the fire eat its way across the valley. When it reached the slope at his feet he shouldered his pack and started south. It was noon when he made his first halt. He rested for two hours and then resumed his march. He was now well beyond the immediate range of the conflagration. There was only an occasional faint odor of smoke in the woods. He had crossed several small streams, and he knew they would be an obstacle in the path of the fire unless the wind, which was from the north, should freshen.

Night fell. He lighted a camp-fire and scraped together his bed of pine-needles, and lay down to sleep with the comforting thought that he had put a sufficient distance between himself and the burning forest. He would turn to the west when morning came. He trusted to a long day's journey to carry him out of the menaced territory. It would be easier travelling, too, for the ridges which cut the face of the country ran east and west. The sun was in the boughs of the hemlocks when he awoke. There had been a light rain during the night, and the forest world had taken on new beauty. But it grew hot and oppressive as the hours passed. The smoke thickened once more. At first he tried to believe it was only his fancy. Then the wind shifted into the east, and the woods became noticeably clearer. He pushed ahead with renewed hope. This change in the wind was a good sign. If it ever got into the south it would drive the fire back on itself.

He tramped for half the night and threw himself down and slept heavily—the sleep of utter exhaustion and weariness. It was broad day when he opened his eyes. The first sound he heard was the dull roar of the flames. He turned with a hunted, fugitive look towards the west. A bright light shone through the trees. The fire was creeping around and already encircled him on two sides. His feeling was one of bitter disappointment, fear, too, mingled with it. In the south were Ryder's friends—Dannie's enemies and his. Of the east he had a horror which the study of his map did not tend to allay; there were towns there, and settlements, thickly scattered. Finally he concluded he would go forward and examine the line of fire. There might be some means by which he could make his way through it.

A journey of two miles brought him to a small watercourse. The fire was burning along the opposite bank. It blazed among the scrub and underbrush and leaped from tree to tree; first to shrivel their foliage to a dead, dry brown, and then envelop them in sheets of flame. The crackling was like the report of musketry.

Roger Oakley was awed by the sight. In spite of the smoke and heat he sat down on the trunk of a fallen pine to rest. Some birds fluttered out of the rolling masses of smoke above his head and flew south with shrill cries of alarm. A deer crossed the stream, not two hundred yards from where he sat, at a single bound. Next, two large timber wolves entered the water. They landed within a stone's throw of him, and trotted leisurely off. The heat soon drove him from his position, and he, too, sought refuge in the south. The wall of flame cut him off from the north and west, and to the east he would not go.