The Golden Woman Part 56

The Padre was more leisurely. He remained in his seat and raked out the bowl of his pipe with the care of a keen smoker. Then he cut his tobacco carefully from his plug, and rolled it thoughtfully in the palms of his hands.

"Say, about little Joan," he said abruptly. "Will she join us on----?"

His question remained unfinished. At that instant Buck sprang from his seat and leant out of the window. The Padre was at his side in an instant.

"What----?"

"Holy Mackinaw! Look!" cried Buck, in an awed tone.

He was pointing with one arm outstretched in a direction where the ruined stockade had fallen, leaving a great gaping s.p.a.ce. The opening was sharply silhouetted against a wide glow of red and yellow light, which, as they watched, seemed to grow brighter with each pa.s.sing moment.

Each man was striving to grasp the full significance of what he beheld. It was fire. It needed no second thought to convince them of that. But where--what? It was away across the valley, beyond the further lip which rose in a long, low slope. It was to the left of Devil's Hill, but very little. For that, too, was dimly silhouetted, even at that distance.

The Padre was the first to speak.

"It's big. But it's not the camp," he said. "Maybe it's the--forest."

For a moment Buck made no answer. But a growing look of alarm was in his straining eyes.

"It's not a prairie fire," the Padre went on. "There's not enough gra.s.s that way. Say, d'you think----" A sudden fear had leapt into his eyes, too, and his question remained unfinished.

Buck stirred. He took a deep breach. The alarm in his eyes had suddenly possessed his whole being. Something seemed to be clutching his heart, so that he was almost stifled.

"It's none o' them things," he said, striving to keep his voice steady. Then of a sudden he reached out, and clutched the arm of his friend, so that his powerful fingers sank deep into its flesh.

"It's the--farm!" he cried, in a tone that rang with a terrible dread.

"Come on! The hosses!" And he dashed from the room before the last sound of his voice had died out.

The Padre was hard on his heels. With danger abroad he was no laggard.

Joan--poor little Joan! And there were miles to be covered before her lover could reach her.

But the dark shadows of disaster were crowding fast. Evil was abroad searching every corner of the mountain world for its prey. Almost in a moment the whole scene was changed, and the dull inertia of past days was swept aside amidst a hurricane of storm and demoniacal tempest.

A crash of appalling thunder greeted the ears of the speeding men. The earth seemed to shake to its very foundations. Ear-splitting detonations echoed from crag to crag, and down deep into the valleys and canyons, setting the world alive with a sudden chaos. Peal after peal roared over the hills, and the lightning played, hissing and shrieking upon ironstone crowns, like a blinding display of pyrotechnics.

There was no pause in the sudden storm. There was no mercy for wretched human nerves. The blinding light was one endless chain, sweeping across the heavens as though bent on forever wresting from its path the black shadows that defied it.

And amidst all this turmoil, amidst all the devastating roar, which shook the earth as though bent on wrecking the very mountains themselves, amidst all the blinding, h.e.l.lish light, so fierce, so intense, that the last secrets of the remotest forest depths must be yielded up, two hors.e.m.e.n dashed down the trail from the fur fort as fast as sharp spurs could drive their eager beasts.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE EYES OF THE HILLS

The thunder roared without intermission. It rose and fell, that was all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a t.i.tanic crescendo only to find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth.

The electric fires rifting the darkness of this out-world night were beyond compare in their terror. The radiance of sunlight might well have been less than the blaze of a rush candle before the staggering brilliancy. It was wild, wild and fearsome. It was vicious and utterly terrifying.

Below the quaking earth was in little better case. Only was the scene here in closer touch with human understanding. Here the terror was of earth, here disaster was of human making. Here the rack of heart was in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements, flames licked up and devoured with ravening appet.i.tes the tinder-like structures of Joan's farm.

The girl was standing in the open. A confined enough open s.p.a.ce almost completely surrounded by fire. Before her were the blazing farm buildings, behind her was the raging furnace that once had been her home. And on one side of her the flames commingled so as to be impa.s.sable. Her head was bowed and her eyes were closed, her hands were pressed tight over her ears in a vain attempt to shut out cognizance of the terror that reigned about and above her. She stood thus despairing. She was afraid, terribly afraid.

Beside her was her aunt, that strange creature whose brain had always risen superior to the sufferings of the human body. Now she was crushed to earth in mute submission to the powers which overwhelmed her. She lay huddled upon the ground utterly lost to all consciousness. Terror had mercifully saved her from a contemplation of those things which had inspired it.

These two were alone. The other woman had gone, fled at the first coming of that dreaded fiend--fire. And those others, those wretched, besotted creatures whose mischief had brought about this wanton destruction, they too had fled. But their flight was in answer to the wrathful voice of the heavens which they feared and dreaded above all things in the wild world to which they belonged.

Alone, helpless, almost nerveless, Joan waited that end which she felt could not long be delayed. She did not know, she could not understand.

On every hand was a threat so terrible that in her weakness she believed that life could not long last. The din in the heavens, the torturing heat so fierce and painful. The glare of light which penetrated even her closed eyelids, the choking gasps of smoke-laden, scorching air with which she struggled. Death itself must come, nor could it be far from her now.

The wind rushed madly down from the hilltops. It swept over forest and plain, it howled through canyon and creva.s.se in its eager haste to reach the centre of the battle of elements. It pounced upon the blinding smoke-cloud and swept it from its path and plunged to the heart of the conflagration with a shriek and roar of cruel delight.

One breath, like the breath of a tornado, and its boisterous lungs had sent its mischief broadcast in the flash of an eye. With a howl of delight it tore out the blazing roof of the house, and, lifting it bodily, hurled it like a molten meteor against the dark walls of the adjacent pine forest.

Joan saw nothing of this, she understood nothing. She was blind and deaf to every added terror. All she felt, all she understood was storm, storm, always storm. Her poor weary brain was reeling, her heart was faint with terror. She was alive, she was conscious, but she might well have been neither in the paralysis that held her. It meant no more that that avalanche of fire, hurled amidst the resinous woods, had suddenly brought into existence the greatest earthly terror that could visit the mountain world; it meant no more to her that an added roar of wind could create a greater peril; it meant no more to her that, in a moment, the whole world about her would be in a blaze so that the burning sacrifice should be complete. Nothing could possibly mean more to her, for she was at the limit of human endurance.

But other eyes, other brains were alive to all these things, eyes and minds trained by a knowledge which only that mountain world could teach. To them the significance was all absorbing. To them this new terror was a thousandfold more appalling than all other storm and tempest. With the forest afire there was safety for neither human nor beast. With that forest afire flight was well-nigh impossible. With that forest afire to save any living creature would be well-nigh a miracle, and miracles had no place in their thoughts.

Yet those eyes, so watchful, remained unchanged. Those straining brains only strained the harder. Those eager hearts knew no flinching from their purpose, and if they quailed it was merely at the natural dread for those whom they were seeking to succor.

Even in face of the added peril their purpose remained. The heavens might roar their thunders, the lightnings might blind their staring eyes, the howling gale might strew their path with every obstruction, nothing could change them, nothing could stop them but death itself.

So with horses a-lather they swept along. Their blood-stained spurs told their tale of invincible determination. These two men no longer sat in their saddles, they were leaning far out of them over their racing horses' necks, urging them and easing them by every trick in a horseman's understanding. They were making a trail which soon they knew would be a path of fire. They knew that with every stride of the stalwart creatures under them they were possibly cutting off the last hope of a retreat to safety. They knew, none better, that once amidst that furnace which lay directly ahead it was something worse than an even chance of life.

Buck wiped the dripping sweat out of his eyes that he might get a clearer view. The blaze of lightning was of no use to him. It only helped to make obscure that which the earthly fires were struggling to reveal. The Padre's horse was abreast of his saddle. The st.u.r.dy brute was leaving Caesar to make the pace while she doggedly pursued.

"We'll make it yet!" shouted Buck, over his shoulder, amidst the roar of thunder.

The Padre made no attempt at response. He deemed it useless.

Buck slashed Caesar's flanks with ruthless force.

The blazing farm was just ahead, as was also the roaring fire of the forest. It was the latter on which both men were concentrating their attention. For the moment its path lay eastward, away to the right of the trail. But this they knew was merely the howling force of the wind. With a shift of direction by half a point and the gale would drive it straight down the trail they were on.

The trail bent away to the left. And as they swung past the turn Buck again shouted.

"Now for it!"

He dashed his spurs again at the flanks of his horse, and the great beast stretched out for a final burst across the bridge over the narrow creek.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

FROM OUT OF THE ABYSS

Joan swayed where she stood. She stumbled and fell; and the fall went on, and on, and on. It seemed to her that she was rushing down through endless s.p.a.ce toward terrors beyond all believing. It seemed to her that a terrific wind was beating on her, and driving her downward toward a fiercely storm-swept ocean, whose black, hideous waves were ever reaching up to engulf her.