Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/301

Rh of her pine logs, the next one to it smoking threateningly.

The chemicals went into play and the fire was held to the one place, but it was daylight before buckets, used when the worst heat was over, could drench out the last embers.

The hose, which was on its reel in the mill, had been carefully cut in a half dozen places.

That day came another warning:

"What happened last night is only a start. Unless you make a move to clear out, we will show you what real vengeance is.—Citizens' Committee."

It had been mailed twenty-four hours before the fire broke out.

That noon John Taylor, walking between two of his lumber piles at Seven Mile siding, stopped shortly and then squatted and eyed the ground, touching it here and there lightly. Some one had been sitting there and moving his feet restlessly—not many hours ago, either. And in the sand was another mark, perhaps like that made by a bicycle—

John walked back along the edge of the swamp later. The road was little used and grass grew rank in it. But here and there where the ruts ran through black muck the imprint of an automobile tire was set in perfect pattern. The car had stopped at Charley Stump's cabin and turned about there. He returned to Pancake on the afternoon freight and before going to his room at Mrs. Holmquist's he stopped a moment before the Commercial House and eyed the tires on Jim Harris' automobile.

It may be recorded here that the next evening the Widow Holmquist was talking with her neighbor as she watered her garden.