Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 26

He turned the horses out of the beaten track through the brush and brambles, to the edge of the open place which had been heaped with sawdust from the steam-mill.

Just as they broke cover a vivid flash of lightning cleaved the black cloud that had almost reached the zenith by now, and the deep rumble of thunder changed to a sharp chatter; then followed a second flash and a deafening crash.

"Oh, Tom!" gasped Nan, as she clung to him.

"The flash you see'll never hit you, Nan," drawled Tom, trying to be comforting. "Remember that."

"It isn't so much the lightning I fear as it is the thunder," murmured Nan, in the intermission. "It just so-o-ounds as though the whole house was coming down."

"Ho!" cried Tom. "No house here, Nan."

"But-----"

The thunder roared again. A light patter on the leaves and ground announced the first drops of the storm.

"Which tree was it you saw smoking?" asked the young fellow.

Nan looked around to find the tall, broken-topped tree. A murmur that had been rising in the distance suddenly grew to a sweeping roar. The trees bent before the blast. Particles of sawdust stung their faces. The horses snorted and sprang ahead. Tom had difficulty in quieting them.

Then the tempest swooped upon them in earnest.

Chapter XXVI. BUFFETED BY THE ELEMENTS

Nan knew she had never seen it rain so hard before. The falling water was like a drop-curtain, swept across the stage of the open tract of sawdust. In a few minutes they were saturated to the skin. Nan could not have been any wetter if she had gone in swimming.

"Oh!" she gasped into Tom's ear. "It is the deluge!"

"Never was, but one rain 't didn't clear up yet," he returned, with difficulty, for his big body was sheltering Nan in part, and he was facing the blast.

"I know. That's this one," she agreed. "But, it's awful."

"Say! Can you point out that tree that smoked?" asked Tom.

"Goodness! It can't be smoking now," gasped Nan, stifled with rain and laughter. "This storm would put out Vesuvius."

"Don't know him," retorted her cousin. "But it'd put most anybody out, I allow. Still, fire isn't so easy to quench. Where's the tree?"

"I can't see it, Tom," declared Nan, with her eyes tightly closed. She really thought he was too stubborn. Of course, if there had been any fire in that tree-top, this rain would put it out in about ten seconds.

So Nan believed.

"Look again, Nan," urged her cousin. "This is no funning. If there's fire in this swamp."

"Goodness, gracious!" snapped Nan. "What a fuss-budget you are to be sure, Tom. If there was a fire, this rain would smother it. Oh! Did it ever pelt one so before?"

Fortunately the rain was warm, and she was not much discomforted by being wet. Tom still clung to the idea that she had started in his slow mind.

"Fire's no funning, I tell you," he growled. "Sometimes it smoulders for days and days, and weeks and weeks; then it bursts out like a hurricane."

"But the rain"

"This sawdust is mighty hard-packed, and feet deep," interrupted Tom.

"The fire might be deep down."

"Why, Tom! How ridiculously you talk!" cried the girl. "Didn't I tell you I saw the smoke coming out of the top of a tree? Fire couldn't be deep down in the sawdust and the smoke come out of the tree top."

"Couldn't, heh?" returned Tom. "Dead tree, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Hollow, too, of course?"

"I don't know."

"Might be hollow clear through its length," Tom explained seriously.

"The b.u.t.t might be all rotted out. Just a tough sh.e.l.l of a tree standing there, and 'twould be a fine chimney if the fire was smouldering down at its old roots."

"Oh, Tom! I never thought of such a thing," gasped Nan.

"And you don't see the tree now?"

"Let me look! Let me look!" cried Nan, conscience-stricken.

In spite of the beating rain and wind she got to her knees, still clinging to her big cousin, and then stood upon the broad tongue of the wagon. The horses stood still with their heads down, bearing the buffeting of the storm with the usual patience of dumb beasts.

A sheer wall of water seemed to separate them from every object out upon the open land. Behind them the bulk of the forest loomed as another barrier. Nan had really never believed that rain could fall so hard. It almost took her breath.

Moreover, what Tom said about the smoking tree began to trouble the girl. She thought of the fire at Pale Lick, of which she had received hints from several people. That awful conflagration, in which she believed two children belonging to her uncle and aunt had lost their lives, had started in the sawdust.

Suddenly she cried aloud and seized Tom more tightly.

"Cracky! Don't choke a fellow!" he coughed.

"Oh, Tom!"

"Well"

"I think I see it."

"The tree that smoked?" asked her cousin.

"Yes. There!"

For the moment it seemed as though the downpour lightened. Veiled by the still falling water a straight stick rose high in the air ahead of them.

Tom chirruped to the horses and made them, though unwilling, go forward.

They dragged the heavy cart unevenly. Through the heavy downpour the trail was hard to follow, and once in a while a rear wheel b.u.mped over a stump, and Nan was glad to drop down upon the tongue again, and cling more tightly than ever to her cousin's collar.