Chapter 9

In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.

Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road. But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.

Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the children. That was all they could tell.

As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.

In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the mere argument that he was a man.

The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald Mountain.

The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched. He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even than the one of the fire itself.

"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth had to tell.

"Yes. We had just read it."

"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly.

"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.

"They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road from here there, is it open, do you know?"

"No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes down."

"I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins.

"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost."

"Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his horse up the hill.

"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the road!"

But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he heard or not, he did not answer or look back.

Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not drive him back. She knew that.

She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death just as certain but which they would prefer to face.

The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.

But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.

"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will catch you before long."

"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you. Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet, and won't be for some time."

Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the hill.

But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.

She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the chances and was ready to measure himself against them.

"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid. Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's business. I wonder."

Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into the sky.

Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming, sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward her home.

All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.

For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and surround them.

While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the level lands and safety.

The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.

Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the attempt.

Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home. For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his flanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the stroke of the whip to madden him.

Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:

"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way before, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it. I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear, I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"

She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet body.

But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came? She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.

A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on again, through the smoke and out into the good air.

The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared, either.

Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter much.

Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take revenge in the way of men.

But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.

The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal another.

Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be coming down upon the whole world.

She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom Bones for his brave best.

* * * * *

The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.

He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through somehow.

He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.

Then he came to the top of the hill.

He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road. This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the hill where he stood.

Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse and looked.

Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid wall of fire.

There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French Village.

Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick upon him.

His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.

Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.

"I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your best. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this."

He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two miles away and a thousand feet below.

The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any horse could have been driven.

The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an unbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with a calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to the west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift line of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. One narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.

With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over the horse and came heavily to the ground.

"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.

He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.

"We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again.

Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope. No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran through the grass by his horse's feet.

One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.

Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in hand.

Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his hand.

But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him, the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of the thing than he could see heroism.

He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He had meant well. God meant better.

Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this square of fire.

"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But we won't _burn_!"

Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.

They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.

It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light. The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau.

The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.

The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips there came the moan:

_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_