There was something tragic in this blocking of his way. He wondered if it was not the Lord's wish, after all, that he should be taken. This thought had been troubling him for some time. Then he remembered Dannie. Dannie, to whom he had brought only shame and sorrow. He set his lips with grim determination. Right or wrong, the Lord's vengeance would have to wait. Perhaps He would understand the situation. He prayed that He might.
Twenty-four hours later and he had turned westward, with the desperate hope that he could cross out of the path of the fire, but the hope proved futile. There was no help for it. To the east he must go if he would escape.
It was the towns and settlements he feared most, and the people; perhaps they still continued the search. When he left the wilderness the one precaution he could take would be to travel only by night. This plan, when it was firmly fixed in his mind, greatly encouraged him. But at the end of ten hours of steady tramping he discovered that the fire surrounded him on three sides. Still he did not despair. For two days he dodged from east to west, and each day the wall of flame and smoke drew closer about him, and the distances in which he moved became less and less. And now a great fear of Antioch possessed him. The railroad ran nearly due east and west from Buckhom Junction to Harrison, a distance of ninety-five miles. Beyond the road the country was well settled. There were thriving farms and villages. To pass through such a country without being seen was next to impossible. He felt a measure of his strength fail him, and with it went his courage. It was only the thought of Dannie that kept him on the alert. Happen what might, he would not be taken. It should go hard with the man or men who made the attempt. He told himself this, not boastfully, but with quiet conviction. In so far as he could, as the fire crowded him back, he avoided the vicinity of Antioch and inclined towards Buckhorn Junction.
There was need of constant vigilance now, as he was in a sparsely settled section. One night some men passed quite near to the fringe of tamarack swamp where he was camped. Luckily the undergrowth was dense, and his fire had burned to a few red embers. On another occasion, just at dusk, he stumbled into a small clearing, and within plain view of the windows of a log-cabin. As he leaped back into the woods a man with a cob-pipe in his mouth came to the door of the cabin.
Roger Oakley, with the hickory staff which he had cut that day held firmly in his hands, and a fierce, wild look on his face, watched him from his cover. Presently the man turned back into the house, closing the door after him.
These experiences startled and alarmed him. He grew gaunt and haggard; a terrible weariness oppressed him; his mind became confused, and a sort of panic seized him. His provisions had failed him, but an occasional cultivated field furnished corn and potatoes, in spite of the serious misgivings he felt concerning the moral aspect of these nightly depredations. When he raided a spring-house, and carried off eggs and butter and milk, he was able to leave money behind. He conducted these transactions with scrupulous honesty.
He had been living in the wilderness three weeks, when at last the fire drove him from cover at Buck-horn Junction. As a town the Junction was largely a fiction. There was a railroad crossing, a freight-shed, and the depot, and perhaps a score of houses scattered along a sandy stretch of country road.
The B. & A. had its connection with the M. & W. at this point. It was also the beginning of a rich agricultural district, and the woods gave place to cultivated fields and farm-lands.
It was late afternoon as Roger Oakley approached Buckhorn. When it was dark he would cross the railroad and take his chance there. He judged from the light in the sky that the fire had already burned in between Buckhom and Antioch. This gave him a certain sense of security. Indeed, the fire surrounded Buckhorn in every quarter except the south. Where there was no timber or brush it crept along the rail-fences, or ran with tiny spurts of flame through the dry weeds and dead stubble which covered much of the cleared land.
He could see a number of people moving about, a quarter of a mile west of the depot. They were tearing down a burning fence that was in perilous proximity to some straw-stacks and a barn.