Partners of the Out-Trail Part 18

"It won't bother us unless the wind changes," he remarked. "In this country, however, the wind generally does change when you'd sooner it did not, and it's not safe to trust your luck much. Looks as if Nature had put up her shingle on the mountains, warning the white man off."

"But white men do live in the mountains," Carrie objected.

"Men who are strong enough. They must fight for a footing and then use the best tools other men can make to hold the ground they've won.

We're scouts, carrying axes, saws, and giant-powder, but the main body must cooperate to defend its settlements with civilization's heavy machines. It's sure a hard country, and sometimes it gets me scared!"

Carrie laughed. "You're romantic when you talk about the North. Could the fire bother us?"

"That depends. It couldn't burn the line, though it might burn the posts. If it spread and rolled up the valley, it might put us off the ground and stop the job."

"While we waited the boys would have to be fed and wages would run on,"

Carrie said in a thoughtful voice. "How do the fires start?"

"n.o.body knows. I allow it looks ridiculous, but my notion is some fires start themselves; you'll find them burning in belts of woods the Indians and prospectors leave alone. Some are probably started by cooking fires. The man who knows the bush is careful; the tenderfoot is not."

"Then you don't think somebody may have had an object for lighting this fire?"

"On the whole, I reckon not. The chances against its bothering us are too steep. For all that, I'd like it better if the blaze went out."

Carrie said nothing, and for a time they watched the light. Sometimes it leaped up and sometimes it faded, but it got larger, and when they went to bed a red reflection played about the sky. In the morning there was no wind and a heavy trail of smoke stretched across the hills. In places, a bright flicker pierced the dark trail, and Carrie noted a smell of burning when she filled the kettle. Then she saw Jim watching the smoke.

"It's nearer and bigger, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes," said Jim, quietly. "It's bigger than I like. We'll go along and look at it after breakfast."

They ate quickly and when the meal was over Jim and Carrie set off while Jake went to work. It was not easy to push through the tangled bush, and now and then Jim was forced to clear a path with his ax.

After a time he stopped behind a trunk and touched Carrie, who saw an animal leap out from the gloom. It cleared a big fallen branch with a flying bound, vanished almost silently in a brake of tall fern, and shooting out with forelegs bent sprang across a thicket. Carrie thought it hardly touched the ground. It was wonderfully swift and graceful, and although the forest was choked with undergrowth and rotting logs all was very quiet when the animal vanished.

"Oh," she said, "I'm glad you stopped me! I haven't seen a wild deer before."

"They are hard to see," Jim replied. "If they're standing, they melt into their background at a very short distance. However, I didn't like the way that deer was going. It pa.s.sed pretty close, without seeing we were about."

Noting that the scramble had tired her, he began to rub his ax with a sharpening stone, and Carrie mused while she got her breath. By and by she looked up and saw his twinkling glance.

"Yes," she said, "I was thinking rather hard; I thought it was good for me to come North. All was always just the same at the store; the dull street, the mean frame houses, and the stale smell of groceries. There was nothing different; you knew you would do to-morrow what you did to-day, and you had made no progress when the reckoning came. If there was money enough to pay the bills, you were satisfied, and sometimes there was not. But I really mean you felt you had made no progress of any kind; you were slipping back."

"Slipping back? I'm not sure I get that----"

"Sometimes it's hard to put you wise, but perhaps slipping back wasn't altogether right. I meant things were moving on and leaving me behind.

The time I could be happy was going and soon I'd be old and sour. I didn't want to feel I'd done nothing and had never tasted life. Well, my chance came and I pulled out."

"I'm afraid you haven't had your good time yet," Jim remarked.

Carrie's eyes sparkled. "One always wants something better, Jim, but I've begun to live. I've seen the woods and the wild back country; I'm helping at a big job."

"Your help is worth much, and if we put the job over, you can have the things a girl is supposed to like; for example, pretty clothes, opera tickets, a holiday at a fashionable summer hotel. They're things you ought to have."

"I do like pretty clothes and think I'd like to meet smart people. The trouble is, they would know I didn't belong where they belonged and might leave me out. Do you think that would happen, Jim?"

"Certainly not," Jim declared. "Girls of your type don't get left out.

I dare say pretty girls are numerous, but you have a calm and a confidence that make their mark."

Carrie smiled, but there was some color in her face. "I suppose you mean to be nice. Yet you have seen me serving at the store and cooking for the boys!"

"I've seen you nursing me when I was ill and hope I'm going to see you wear the smartest clothes money can buy. But there's much to be done first and I'm bothered about the fire."

They pushed on while the smell of burning got stronger, and presently came to a rocky hill. Its top cut off their view, but a dingy cloud rolled up behind it and as they climbed the air got hot. When they reached the summit Carrie gasped and her eyes opened wide.

The spur commanded the valley and the fire that had run through the woods below. In the foreground a wall of tossing flame threw out clouds of sparks, and leaping up here and there, ran in yellow trails to the top of the tall firs. It advanced slowly, with an angry roar, licking up the dry brush and branches before the big trunks caught. In front they were hung with streamers of flame, farther off they glowed red, and in the distance smoldering rampikes towered above a wide belt of ash. Now and then one leaned and fell, and showers of sparks shot up as if the log had exploded.

The shock of the fall hardly pierced the confused uproar, and Carrie, shielding her scorched face with her hand, was appalled by the din.

Green wood split with detonating cracks, the snapping of branches was like musketry, and the flames roared in a deep undertone. Her dress fluttered, for eddying draughts swept the rocks. She was dazzled but fascinated, unconscious of heat and fear, for she had not seen or imagined a spectacle like this.

"It's tremendous!" she said in an awed voice.

"Pretty fierce," Jim agreed. "A bush-fire's a big thing, but it doesn't grip you like the break up of the ice. When the river bursts the jam, the floes grind the rocks smooth and rub out the pines. You can hear the wreck drive down the channel a day's journey off."

"I thought it a silent country. It's often so quiet it makes one half-afraid."

Jim nodded. "Something forbidding in its quietness that's like a threat? Well, it wakes up and gets busy in a dramatic way now and then. If you want to live in the mountains, you've got to be watchful."

A wave of smoke rolled about them and sparks drove past like hail. A fiery shower fell on Carrie's thin dress and Jim, seizing her, beat them out. This was needful and he began without embarra.s.sment but presently thrilled, and Carrie's scorched face got red as he ran his smarting hands across the thin material.

"Keep still!" he said, roughly. "It's light stuff and will soon catch fire."

Then, picking off a glowing cinder, he took her arm and they started down hill. When they came out of the smoke he was breathless and Carrie gasped.

"Oh, Jim, you have burned your hands!" she said.

"Not much. They're hard and I have often hurt them worse. It's your dress that bothers me. Look at the charred spots."

"But you're not to blame for that."

"I am to blame. I oughtn't to have let you stay."

"I wanted to stay."

"That doesn't matter," Jim declared. "My business was to take care of you. In fact, it's my business all the time."

"Something of a responsibility, Jim!" Carrie remarked. "However, I think we'll go on."

They stopped again before they reached the camp, for pushing through tangled bush is hard work, and Carrie sat down on a fallen trunk.

"Isn't the fire moving up the valley?" she asked.

"It is," Jim said, frowning. "Fires sometimes do move against a light wind. However, we won't talk about this yet." He paused and touched her dress. "Here's another big hole. You can't mend the thing."

"I'm afraid not," Carrie agreed.