Chapter 34

THE FOREST ON FIRE.

Robert drew his paddle into the canoe, and sat perfectly still for some moments, gazing towards the fire and taking in its circumstances. They could hear the dull roar of the blaze distinctly, and even caught a glimpse of its crimson glare through an opening in the tall pines fringing the lake. It must have been burning a couple of hours to have attained such mastery. Dark resinous smoke hung heavily in the air: a hot stifling gust of it swept down on the canoe.

'The wind is towards the pond, most providentially,' said Robert, taking up his paddle, and beginning to stroke the water vigorously towards home. 'The burning _may_ do no harm; but fire is a fearful agent to set afoot. I'm sure the captain heartily wishes his kindling undone by this time.'

'Is there no danger to the farm, Robert?' asked his sister, who had become blanched with fear. 'I never heard such a terrible sound as that raging and crackling.'

'To Daisy Burn none, I should say; for, of course, the man had sense enough to fire the bush only a long way down in front, an extensive clearing rather round the house, and the breeze will keep away the blaze.'

'Thank God,' fervently ejaculated Linda. 'I wish we could bring Miss Armytage and little Jay to the Creek while it lasts. Wouldn't you go across for them, Bob? I know they must be frightened.'

Robert hardly heard her, and certainly did not take in the import of her words. With some wonder at his set face and earnest watch along shore, she did not press her wish. He was looking at the belt of fat resinous pines and balsams, dry as chips from the long summer droughts and tropical heats, which extended along from the foot of Armytage's farm even to the cedar swamp; he was feeling that the slight wind was blowing in a fair direction for the burning of this most inflammable fuel, and consequently the endangering of his property on the creek. A point or two from the east of south it blew; proved by the strong resinous smell wafted towards the landing cove.

'Bob, you're forgetting the trout and the tackle,' as he jumped ashore, helped her out, and hurried up the beaten path beside the beaver meadow. 'Never mind; I want to see Holt,' was his answer. 'If any man can help, 'tis he.'

'Then there is danger!' She still thought of the Daisy Burn people. Before they reached the house, they met Mr. Holt and half-a-dozen Indians.

'We must burn a patch of brushwood, to deprive the fire of fuel,' said the former. 'These Indians have done the like on the prairies westward. It is worth trying, at all events.'

'Go up to my mother, Linda; there's nothing to be much alarmed for as yet; I hope this plan of Holt's may stop its progress. I'll be at the house as soon as I can, tell her;' and he ran after the others, down to the mouth of the creek, where a strip of alluvial land, covered with bushes and rank grass, interrupted the belt of firs and cedars. Calling in fire as an ally against itself seemed to Robert very perilous; but the calm Indians, accustomed to wilderness exigencies, set about the protective burning at once. The flame easily ran through the dry brushwood; it was kept within bounds by cutting down the shrubs where it might spread farther than was desirable. Soon a broad blackened belt lay beside the creek, containing nothing upon which the fire could fasten. Axes were at work to widen it still further.

'The wind has risen very much, Holt,' said Robert, as they felt hot currents of air sweep past them.

'Just the result of the rarified atmosphere over the flames,' he answered. They spoke little: the impending risk was too awful. For once, the white man submitted himself to the guidance of the red. To prevent the fire from crossing the creek was the great object. The water itself, perhaps a hundred feet wide, would be an ineffectual barrier; such fierce flame would overleap it. Therefore the Indians had burned the left bank, and now proceeded to burn the right. Indomitably self-possessed, cool and silent, they did precisely what met the emergency, without flurry or confusion.

All this time the fire was advancing behind the green veil of woods. Volumes of thick smoke were borne off across the pond, alarming the dwellers in distant shanties and oases of clearing, with suggestion of the most terrific danger that can befall a settler in the bush. Before sunset the conflagration came in sight of Cedar Creek. Marching resistlessly onward, to the sound of great detonations of crashing and crackling timber, and its own vast devouring roar, the mighty fire presented a front of flame thirty feet higher than the tree-tops. Daylight went down before that huge glare. The low hanging clouds were crimsoned with a glow, not from the sinking sun, but from the billows of blaze beneath. As the dusk deepened, the terrors of the scene intensified by contrast, though in reality the triumphant fire recoiled from that blackened space fringing the stream, where it must die for want of fuel.

To prevent its spreading up to the concession line, and catching the forest there, and perhaps destroying the whole township, all the men in the neighbourhood had assembled to cut down trees, and leave a barrier of vacancy. If the wind had not been blowing from that direction, it is improbable that their endeavours would have been sufficient to keep back the burning. The crestfallen Captain Armytage, author of all the mischief, wielded an axe among them. Truly he had created a view of black smoking poles and cheerful charcoal vistas before his dwelling. Whether that were better than the utilitarian Scotchman's green woods, he did not say just now, nor have spirit even to answer Davidson's sarcastic remarks on his 'muckle clearin'.'

Far into the night, the great gaunt boles of trees stood amid wreathing flame. When all risk was over that it would communicate further, and destroy the garden or the house, Robert and the rest could admire its magnificence, and Sam Holt could tell of other forest-burnings of which he had heard, especially of the great fire which occurred in the year 1825, and consumed about two hundred square miles of woods on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, left fourteen houses standing in the town of Newcastle, and destroyed five hundred people. Two thousand were thus reduced to pauperism.

'Such things are never heard of in Europe. Why are these forests more inflammable than those in the old world?' asked Mr. Wynn the elder.

'Because the drought and heat of the climate are so much greater,' answered Sam Holt; 'and the preponderance of pines, loaded to the end of every leaf and twig with pitch and resin, affords uncommon food for fire.'

Then as to the cause; he considered it could never be spontaneous combustion, but always accident, unless, indeed, in an exceptional case like the present, said Mr. Holt _sotto voce_. Settlers, burning brush heaps, or logging, sometimes permit the flame to run along the ground into the bush; and in dry weather entrance was sufficient. The boundary fences of farms were often consumed in this way, and more extensive mischief might follow.

For days the charred chaos of timber poles and fallen trunks gave forth such heat and flickering flames as to be unapproachable. Zack's Yankee brain had a scheme for utilizing the ashes, if only he had machinery big enough for converting all into potash and pearlash. This man was old Mr. Wynn's special aversion. There was indeed little in common between the well-bred European gentleman, who always, even in these poor circumstances, wore the whitest linen (he never knew how Linda toiled over those neat shirt-fronts and ruffles), and kept up the _convenances_ of society in the bush, and had a well-educated range of thought--between all this and the Yankee storekeeper, who wore no linen at all, nor had the faintest idea of the usages of the polite world, nor an idea which might not be paralleled in the mental experience of a rat in a barn. 'Get' and 'grasp' were the twin grooves of his life.

Unconscious of the antipathy, Zack would saunter up to Cedar Creek sometimes of an evening, and, if not intercepted, would march straight into the parlour where the ladies sat, and fix his feet on the wooden chimney-piece, discharging tobacco juice at intervals into the fire with unerring labial aim. Mr. Wynn's anger at the intrusion signified nothing, nor could a repellent manner be understood by Zack without some overt act, which a strained respect for hospitality prevented on the part of the old gentleman.

'Well, Robert, how you could permit that man to walk with you for the last half-hour I do not know.' Mr. Wynn stood on the threshold, looking a complete contrast to the shuffling, retreating figure of the lank Yankee striding over to the road.

'I assure you it is not for the pleasure I take in his society, sir; but he gives me useful hints. We were talking just now of potash, and I showed him my new rail-fences; he has rather put me out of conceit with my week's work because it is of basswood, which he says does not hold.'

'Are those the rails which I helped to split?'

Be it noticed here that Mr. Wynn the elder could not bear to be totally dependent on his sons, nor to live the life of a _faineant_ while they laboured so hard; he demanded some manual task, and believed himself of considerable use, while they had often to undo his work when he turned his back; and at all times the help was chiefly imaginary. No matter, it pleased him; and they loved the dear old gentleman too well to undeceive him.

'As to the potash business, sir, I fear it is too complicated and expensive to venture upon this year, though the creek is an excellent site for an ashery, and they say the manufacture is highly remunerating. What do you think, father?' And they had a conference that diverged far from potash.

After closely watching Davidson's management, and finding that he realized twenty-eight shillings per hundredweight, Robert resolved to try the manufacture. Details would be tedious. Both reader and writer might lose themselves in leach-tubs, ash-kettles, and coolers. The 'help,' Liberia, proved herself valuable out of doors as well as indoors at this juncture; for Mrs. Zack's principle of up-bringing was that young folk should learn to turn their hand to 'most everythin'. And Libby, a large plump girl with prodigiously red cheeks and lips, had profited so far by her training as to be nearly as clever in the field as in the kitchen. Her great strength was a constant subject of admiration to Andy, though the expression of any such sentiment was met by unmitigated scorn on the lady's part.

'Why, thin, Miss Green, an' it's yerself has the beautifullest arm, all to nothing', that ever I see; an' it's mottled brown with freckles, an' as big as a blacksmith's anyhow. Och, an' look how she swings up the potash kettle as light as if it was only a stone pot; musha, but yer the finest woman, my darlin', from this to yerself all round the world agin!'

'I guess, Mister Handy, if yer was to bring some logs, an' not to stand philanderin' thar, 'twould be a sight better,' rejoined Miss Liberia sourly.

'Look now,' answered Andy; 'ye couldn't make yerself ugly musthore, not if yer wor thryin' from this till then, so ye needn't frown; but ye're very hard-hearted intirely on a poor orphant like me, that has nayther father nor mother, nor as much as an uncle, nor a cousin near me itself. Though sorra bit o' me but 'ud sooner never have one belongin' to me than thim out-an-out disgraceful cousins of yer own at the "Corner."'

Libby was immovable by this as by any other taunt, to all appearance. 'Throth, I thried her every way,' quoth Andy subsequently, after an experience of some months; 'I thried her by flatthery an' by thruth-tellin', by abusing her relations an' herself, an' by praisin' 'em, by appalin' to her compassion an' by bein' stiff an' impident, an' I might as well hould me tongue. A woman that couldn't be coaxed wid words, I never seen afore.'

Perhaps she was the better servant for this disqualification; at all events, she had no idea of any nonsense keeping her from the full discharge of her duties in the house. Her propensity to call the gentlemen by their baptismal names, without any respectful prefix, was viewed by Linda as a very minor evil when set off against strength and willing-heartedness. But one day that she wanted her young mistress, and abruptly put her head into the parlour, asking, in a strong tone, 'Whar's Linda? Tell her the men that's settin' the fall wheat'll be 'long in no time for dinner,' Mr. Wynn could have turned her away on the spot.

'Wal! sure it ain't no sin to forget the "miss" of an odd time, I guess,' was the large damsel's rejoinder, though without the least spice of sauciness. 'Come, I hain't no time to be spendin' here;' and she closed the door after her with a bang which made gentle Mrs. Wynn start. There was some trouble in convincing her husband that it was only the servant's rough manner--no real disrespect was intended; the incident put him into low spirits for the day, and turned many a backward thought upon the wealth of his youth.

He would say, in these downcast moods, that Canada was no place for the gentleman emigrant; but could he point out any colony _more_ suited? Also, that his sons earned daily bread by harassing toil, worse than that of a bricklayer or day labourer at home; but were they not happier than in pursuit of mere pastime like thousands of their equals in the province they had left? Robert would certainly have answered in the affirmative. Arthur's restless spirit less wisely pined for the pleasure-seeking of such a life as Argent's.