Moosemeadows/Chapter 14

IRE was flickering up all four walls of the little white house and blossoming on the roof. As I approached it, I shouted as I ran. Sparks flew up from the dry shingles; and I heard muffled barks from the little dog in answer to my shouts. A pane of glass broke with a tinkle and let out a squirt of smoke. There was fire within as well as without. I dashed at the door, staggered back from it, took a short run and pounded it with both heels. But it was a well built and securely bolted door. Tom came running up, armed with a stick from the woodpile.

"Window!" he cried. "Knock the sash clean in!"

He demonstrated with the heavy stick of maple, rammed the corners of the stout sash until the whole window fell inward. I did a dive through the hole. The little dog went out, sneezing, as I went in. Tom followed me in.

The three Jeanbards were all sound asleep, half suffocated with smoke. I found Rose and got her out single-handed. When I got into the house again I barged into someone and fell down. It was Tom, who cursed me and told me to lend a hand. We got clear with Jules and beat the sparks out of his flannelette nightshirt. Tom was swearing like a sailor and rubbing his beard with both hands; and the smell of singed hair was noticeable. I went back and stumbled about for choking ages, feeling for Jacques. I found him at last and dragged him out; and when I was able to see I saw that it was not Jacques Jeanbard whom I had last rescued, but Tom Deblore. Tom explained the mystery later. He had found and brought out Jacques, then had gone back for me and lost consciousness.

Fresh air and cold water brought the Jeanbards back to life. Every inch of the house was afire by that time. The flames stood up like spires and the sparks scraped the stars. We feared for the barns, so opened all the stables and pens and chased forth the livestock. Soon after that, the first of the neighbors from the settlement arrived, driving furiously. The Jeanbards told him what they knew about it. They had gone to bed in the house, had sensed being carried or dragged, had glimpsed a horror of heat and flame and, upon recovering full consciousness, had found themselves lying on the grass. They were full of gratitude. The neighbor glanced keenly from Tom to me, and back again, without a word. Half of Tom's beard was burned off, and his face and hands were blistered. My hands were blistered, too, and my mustache and eyebrows had rubbed off, and there were dozens of black holes in my coat and shirt and trousers.

"We didn't get here a moment too soon," I admitted.

"We'd have been here in time to save the house, if Young Bill hadn't acted the fool and smashed things seven ways to Sunday," confessed Tom. "But he is not entirely to blame. His harness was several sizes too small for him, poor fellow."

The neighbor, Amos Trim by name and austere by habit, strode off and examined Young Bill and the harness and the buggy. Upon rejoining us he remarked, in a tone of reluctance, "Things was surely smashed."

More neighbors from the settlement arrived, lured and guided by the flames. Stack Glashner arrived. Stack had been on his way to see us, and had stopped for the night at Earle Smithkin's. He seemed to be suffering from great emotional and mental strain. I felt sorry for him. I drew him aside and told him about the death and burial of old Ruben's murderous confederate, of Ruben's illness and flight.

The Jeanbards were taken away by hospitable neighbors. Stack Glashner was all for accompanying them; but I told him flatly that the least he could do was to return to Moosemeadows Park with us and assist us in the search for his sick and demented relative. He could not see it in that light. He did not care whether old Ruben lived or died.

"You'll come with us, Stack," I said. "The Jeanbards can get along very well without you. They escaped death without your help. We need you, and they don't."

That got under his skin. He cursed a bit, but he headed for Moosemeadows with Tom and me and Young Bill. Tom drove and Stack and I walked. Young Bill could have pulled a ton with no more effort than a hundredweight; but our consideration was for the harness and the buggy. Stack sulked for a mile, then told me the truth of the mysterious shot at the lantern out on the hardhack.

The peddler had visited Rose Jeanbard on the day of the attempt upon my life, to have his hand attended to. She had already dressed it once, and he had fussed with it in the meantime and evidently infected it in some way. It was in a bad state, and the arm was swollen. She had dressed it again, as well as she could, despite the fear and repugnance she felt for him. Then she had noticed a strange thing. The hair of his head had slipped back several inches, and with it the smooth, weathered skin of his forehead had slipped up from his eyebrows, disclosing several inches of a slanting, disfiguring scar. She had screamed at the first shock of it. Who wouldn't scream at the sight of a man losing his scalp?

His hand had flashed to his head, and in an instant his forehead and hair had resumed their normal appearance and position. Then, realizing that he was disguised, she had sprung back from him. But he had gripped her wrist in fingers like iron before she could turn and run. He had made her swear, by all that was holy, never to tell a soul what she had seen. She had warned me. After Stack and I had departed for Moosemeadows, and Jacques had gone to bed, she had broken her oaths and told her father. Like herself, Jules had immediately taken it for granted that the disguised man was Henry Deblore. And she had gone on to tell him everything that I, Swayton, had told her about Ruben Glashner's actions, the shot at the shaking alder and the faked map. She had seen hate in her father's eyes. Evidently Jules the Fiddler had even more reason than the folk of Wicklow Creek in general to hate Henry Deblore. But Jules had gone to his room without a word. She, too, had retired, but, terrified and sensing tragedy in the air, she had sought her father, only to discover that he was nowhere in the house and that his rifle, too, was missing. She had not disturbed her brother. In the stable she had found only one of the two horses—the slower one. Terrified and conscience-stricken, she had mounted and ridden off in the direction in which she was sure her father had gone with his rifle. If her father were to kill that old man, Henry Deblore or whoever he was, she who had broken her oath would be blood-guilty and, worse still, the cause of her father's punishment. She had found the old Deblore house quiet. She had peeped in and seen the lamp burning on the table in the empty kitchen. She had found the other horse tied behind one of the barns, had tied hers beside it and run along the old logging road. When we had attempted a capture from ambush, she had been far too terrified to recognize Stack's voice. ''Yes, that was Rose Jeanbard! And Stack had recognized her and then dropped the electric torch!'' She had found her father after the shooting, guided to him by the report. Stack had found them both, and they had followed us out—been behind me along those miles of logging-road. Stack had driven Rose home, leaving her father to ride one horse and lead another.