Chapter 7

It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods and followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein of another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter and gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering down upon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and their two riders gave them no more heed than if they had been wooden horses.

"How did you know it was all right, Ruth?"

"I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain," Ruth laughed. "You looked as though you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How did it all come out?"

"Here's the paper," he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of the day previous; "it tells the story right off. But I got a letter from the Bishop, too," he added.

"Oh, did you?" she exclaimed, looking up from the headline--U. & M. Grab Killed in Committee--which she had been feverishly trying to translate into her own language. "Please let me hear. I'm never sure what headlines mean till I go down to the fine print, and then it's generally something else. I can understand what the Bishop says, I'm sure."

"Well, it's only short," said Jeffrey, unfolding the letter. "He leaves out all the part that he did himself."

"Of course," said Ruth simply. "He always does."

"He says:

"'You will see from the Albany papers, which will probably reach you before this does, that the special session of the Legislature closed to-night and that the railroad's bill was not reported to the Senate. It had passed the Assembly, as you know. The bill aroused a measure of just public anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently thought it the part of wisdom not to risk a contest over it in the open Senate. So there can be no legislative action in favour of the railroad before December at the earliest, and I regard it as doubtful that the matter will be brought up even then.'

"You see," said Jeffrey, "from this you'd never know that he was there present at all. And it was just his speech before the committee that aroused that public anger. Then he goes on:

"'But we must not make the mistake of presuming that the matter ends here. You and your people are just where you were in the beginning. Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not in the nature of things that a corporation which has spent an enormous amount of money in constructing a line with the one purpose of getting to your lands should now give up the idea of getting them by reason of a mere legislative setback. They have not entered into this business in any half-hearted manner. They are bound to carry it through somehow--anyhow. We must realise that.

"'We need not speculate upon the soul or the conscience of a corporation or the lack of those things. We know that this corporation will have an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must watch for that answer. What their future methods or their plans may be I think no man can tell. Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed. But there will be an answer. While rejoicing that a fear of sound public opinion has been on your side, we must never forget that there will be an answer.

"'In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond the limits which men set for the proper activities of a priest of the church. I do not apologise. I have done this, partly because your people are my own, my friends and my comrades of old, partly because you yourself came to me in a confidence which I do not forget, partly--and most, perhaps--because where my people and their rights are in question I have never greatly respected those limits which men set. I put these things before you so that when the answer comes you will remember that you engaged yourself in this business solely in defence of the right. So it is not your personal fight and you must try to keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a quarrel. The struggle is a larger thing than that and you must keep your heart larger still and above it. I fear that you will sorely need to remember this.

"'My sincerest regards to your family and to all my friends in the hills, not forgetting your friend Ruth.' That's all," said Jeffrey, folding the letter. "I wish he'd said more about how he managed the thing."

"Isn't it enough to know that he did manage it, without bothering about how? That is the way he does everything."

"I suppose I ought to be satisfied," said Jeffrey as he gathered up his reins. "But I wonder what he means by that last part of the letter. It sounds like a warning to me."

"It is a warning to you," said Ruth thoughtfully.

"Why, what does it mean? What does he think I'm likely to do?"

"Maybe he does not mean what you are likely to do exactly," said Ruth, trying to choose her words wisely; "maybe he is thinking more of what you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to your heart rather than to your head or about your actions."

"Now I don't know what you mean, either," said Jeffrey a little discontentedly.

"I know I oughtn't to try to tell you what the Bishop means, for I don't know myself. But I've been worried and I'm sure your mother has too," said Ruth reluctantly.

"But what is it?" said Jeffrey quickly. "What have I been doing?"

"I'm sure it isn't anything you've done, nor anything maybe that you're likely to do. I don't know just what it is, or how to say it. But, Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in the Bishop's house at Alden?"

"Yes, and I remember what you said, too."

"We both meant it," Ruth returned gravely, not attempting to evade any of the meaning that he had thrown into his words. "And we both mean it now, I'm sure. But there's a difference, Jeffrey, a difference with you."

"I don't know it," he said a little shortly. "I'm still doing just the thing I started out to do that day."

"Yes. But that day you started out to fight for the people. Now you are fighting for yourself-- Oh, not for anything selfish! Not for anything you want for yourself! I know that. But you have made the fight your own. It is your own quarrel now. You are fighting because you have come to hate the railroad people."

"Well, you wouldn't expect me to love them?"

"No. I'm not blaming you, Jeff. But--but, I'm afraid. Hate is a terrible thing. I wish you were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you. I'm afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through all the long, long years of life. Can you see? I'm afraid of something that might go deeper than all this, something that might go as deep as life. After all, that's what I'm afraid of, I guess--Life, great, big, terrible, menacing, Life!"

"My life?" Jeffrey asked gruffly.

"I have faced that," the girl answered evenly, "just as you have faced it. And I am not afraid of that. No. It's what you might do in anger--if they hurt you again. Something that would scar your heart and your soul. Jeffrey, do you know that sometimes I've seen the worst, the worst--even _murder_ in your eyes!"

"I wish," the boy returned shortly, "the Bishop would keep his religion out of all this. He's a good man and a good friend," he went on, "but I don't like this religion coming into everything."

"But how can he? He cannot keep religion apart from life and right and wrong. What good would religion be if it did not go ahead of us in life and show us the way?"

"But what's the use?" the boy said grudgingly. "What good does it do? You wouldn't have thought of any of this only for that last part of his letter. Why does that have to come into everything? It's the Catholic Church all over again, always pushing in everywhere."

"Isn't that funny," the girl said, brightening; "I have cried myself sick thinking just that same thing. I have gone almost frantic thinking that if I once gave in to the Church it would crush me and make me do everything that I didn't want to do. And now I never think of it. Life goes along really just as though being a Catholic didn't make any difference at all."

"That's because you've given in to it altogether. You don't even know that you want to resist. You're swallowed up in it."

The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before she answered.

"It's the queerest thing, isn't it, Jeff," she said finally in a thoughtful, friendly way, "how two people can fight about religion? Now you don't care a particle about it one way or the other. And I--I'd rather not talk about it. And yet, we were just now within an inch of quarrelling bitterly about it. Why is it?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry, Ruth," the boy apologised slowly. "It's none of my business, anyway."

They were just coming over the long hill above Ruth's home. Below them stretched the long sweep of the road down past her house and up the other slope until it lost itself around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain.

Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his big roan horse up the hill towards them at a heart-breaking pace.

"That's 'My' Stocking's roan," said Jeffrey, straightening in his saddle; "I'd know that horse three miles away."

"But what's he carrying?" cried Ruth excitedly, as she peered eagerly from under her shading hand. "Look. Across his saddle. Rifles! _Two_ of them!"

Brom Bones, sensing the girl's excitement, was already pulling at his bit, eager for a wild race down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long, sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes downhill.

The rider was Myron Stocking from over in the Crooked Lake country, as Jeffrey had supposed. He pulled up as he recognised the two who waited for him by the roadside, and when he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew by sight, he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as she was to hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces farther away from them. They would not talk freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey would tell her all that she needed to know.

The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences and Ruth heard Stocking conclude:

"Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun o' yours. Your Ma didn't see."

Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he came to Ruth.

"There's some strangers over in the hills that maybe ought to be watched. The country's awful dry," he added quietly. He knew that Ruth would need no further explanation.

He pulled the Bishop's letter from his pocket and handed it to Ruth, saying:

"Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see them right away. And say, Ruth," he went on, as he looked anxiously at the great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them and his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry. If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this country. You can make them go. Nobody else could."

The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses and silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a trust to look after the ones whom he loved.

She put out her hand to his and said simply:

"I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff."

"I was a fool," said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'll remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth."

"There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now," she said softly.

Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart. She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes.

Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country.

"We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away," said Jeffrey, as they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comes straight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there is any."

"I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out if we go that way."

"I guess that won't hurt us," Jeffrey returned. "If anything happens we might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of other people would have to do the same."

"All right then," Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give the horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over the hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like."

At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, and having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great trees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too high up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels. Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the horses to pick their own canny footing up the trail.

"Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?" Jeffrey asked as they rode along. "You know, the man that was in French Village this summer."

"I don't know," Stocking answered. "You see they came up to the end of the rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody's sure that he's seen any of 'em since. But they must be in the hills somewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau's with 'em. You can bet on that. That's all we've got to go on. But it may be a-plenty."

"It's enough to set us on the move, anyway," said Jeffrey. "They have no business in the hills. They're bound to be up to mischief of some sort. And there's just one big mischief that they can do. Can we make Bald Mountain before daylight?"

"Oh, certainly; that'll be easy. We'll get a little light when we're through this belt of heavy woods and then we can push along. We ought to get up there by two o'clock. It ain't light till near five. That'll give us a little sleep, if we feel like it."

True to Stocking's calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinly grassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o'clock. It was a soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere, for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divide or it might be miles below on the lowlands.

Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of the mountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace had gone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey had done, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had not heard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care to give any signals of their own whereabouts.

As for those others, the possible enemy, who had left the railroad that morning and had scattered into the hills, if their purpose was the one that men feared, they, too, would be near here. But it was useless to look for them in the dark: neither was anything to be feared from them before morning. Men do not start forest fires in the night. There is little wind. A fire would probably die out of itself. And the first blaze would rouse the whole country.

The two hobbled their horses with the bridle reins and lay down in the open to wait for morning. Neither had any thought of sleep. But the softness of the night, the pungent odour of the tamarack trees floating up to them from below, and their long ride, soon began to tell on them. Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.

"Curl up and go to sleep, 'My,'" he said, shaking himself. "You might as well. I'll wake you in an hour."

A ready snore was the only answer.

Morning coming over the higher eastern hills found them stiff and weary, but alert. The woods below them were still banked in darkness as they ate their dry food and caught their horses for the day that was before them. There was no water to be had up here, and they knew their horses must be gotten down to some water course before night.

A half circle of open country belted by heavy woods lay just below them. Eagerly, as the light crept down the hill, they scanned the area for sign of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently they had the world to themselves. A fresh morning breeze came down over the mountain and watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops of the distant trees. The same thought made both men grip their rifles and search more carefully the ground below them, for that innocent breeze blowing straight down towards their homes and loved ones was a potential enemy more to be feared than all the doings of men.

Down to the right, two miles or more away, a man came out of the shadow of the woods. They could only see that he was a big man and stout. There was nothing about him to tell them whether he was friend or foe, of the hills or a stranger. Without waiting to see who he was or what he did, the two dove for their saddles and started their horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.

He saw them at once against the bare brow of the hill, and ran back into the wood.

In another instant they knew what he was and what was his business.

They saw a light moving swiftly along the fringe of the woods. Behind the light rose a trail of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a line of living fire. The man was running, dragging a flaming torch through the long dried grass and brush!

The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks, regardless of paths or horses' legs, would gladly have killed the man as he ran. But it was too far for even a random shot. They could only ride on in reckless rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat it to death with their hands, to stamp it into the earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and a fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.

Before they had stumbled half the distance down the hill, a wave of leaping flame a hundred feet long was hurling itself upon the forest. They could not stamp that fire out. But they could kill that man!

The man ran back behind the wall of fire to where he had started and began to run another line of fire in the other direction. At that moment Stocking yelled:

"There's another starting, straight in front!"

"Get him," Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder. "I'm going to kill this one."

Stocking turned slightly and made for a second light which he had seen starting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and driving madly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, now saw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought with him a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man. Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse and that his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and leaping free with his gun ran towards the man.

The man was dodging in and out now among the trees, but still using his torch and moving rapidly away.

Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man in his zigzag until he was within easy distance. But the man continued weaving his way among the trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim. Jeffrey dropped to one knee and steadied the sights of his rifle until they closed upon the running man and clung to him.

Suddenly the man turned in an open space and faced about. It was Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He was unarmed, but he must be killed.

"I am going to kill him," said Jeffrey under his breath, as he again fixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man's breast.

A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took a half step forward, and fell on his face.

Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had not pulled, ran forward to where the man lay.

He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side, his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass.

He was dying. No need for a second look.

His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean round hole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair showed just the merest streak of red.

Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroad torch, with which he had done his work.

Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shot had come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no sign of another human being anywhere.

Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, three; Stocking, probably, or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at other fleeing figures in the woods.

He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it into a patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, and started clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of his rifle.

He was quickly brought to his senses, when the forgotten cartridge in his gun accidentally exploded and the bullet went whizzing past his ear. He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp piece of sapling he began to work furiously, but systematically at the line of fire.

The line was thin here, where it had really only that moment been started, and he made some headway. But as he worked along to where it had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless. Still he clung to his work. It was the only thing that his numbed brain could think of to do for the moment.

He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the loose dirt furiously after the fire as it ran away from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept up his trousers and shirt and up even to his hair. And still the fire ran away from him, away down the hill after its real prey. He looked farther on along the line and saw that it was not now a line but a charging, rushing river of flame that ran down the hill, twenty feet at a jump. Nothing, nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain could now stop that torrent of fire.

He stepped back. There was nothing to be done here now, behind the fire. Nothing to be done but to get ahead of it and save what could be saved. He looked around for his horse.

Just then men came riding along the back of the line, Stocking and old Erskine Beasley in the lead. They came up to where Jeffrey was standing and looked on beyond moodily to where the body of Rogers lay.

Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell upon the little group of horsemen and upon the boy standing there.

Myron Stocking spoke at last:

"Mine got away, Jeff," he said slowly.

Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the meaning of the words flashed upon him.

"I didn't do that!" he exclaimed hastily. "Somebody else shot him from the woods. My gun went off accidental."

Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look at Jeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had been too muffled for them to hear.

Again Stocking broke the silence.

"What difference does it make," he said. "Any of us would have done it if we could."

"But I didn't! I tell you I didn't," shouted Jeffrey. "The shot from the woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot from behind!"

Old Erskine Beasley took command.

"What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We've got live men and women and children to think about to-day," he said. "Straighten him out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. The alarm can't travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it's rising, too," he added.

"But I tell you--!" Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless it was.

He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face of this unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward his master.

He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the party that was to try to get around the fire from that side.