The Fire Flower/Chapter 5

HELDON gave over asking himself unanswerable questions and hurried on around the end of the lake and into the forest beyond where the lithe racing figure had shot through the shadows like a shimmering gleam of light.

He found her trail and followed it easily, for it ran in a straight line and through a meadow where the grass stood tall and had broken before her.

Only infrequently did it swerve to right or left to avoid one of the big trees in her path. As Sheldon went on he saw many a field flower or tuft of grass which she had bent in her passing straighten up; it seemed to him almost that they were sentient little creatures seeking to tell him

“She went this way!”

He was fully prepared to follow the track of her wild flight across miles if need be, his one hope being that she continued in a meadow like this which held the sign of her going. He was no longer running at the top speed with which the chase had begun, nor was he walking as he had been for a moment while she swam. His gait had settled down into a steady, hammering pace which he could keep up for an hour, his one hope being now to win with his greater endurance.

For the most part his eyes kept to the ground that he might not lose the trail and much precious time finding it again. Only now and then would he glance up, to right or left, to make certain that she had not turned out at last to double back or seek shelter in the mountain slopes.

And as he came plunging with accelerated speed down a gentle incline, swinging about a grove of young firs which stood with outflung branches interlacing so that they made a dense dark wall, his eyes were upon the ground, watchful for her trail.

For a second he lost it; then, without checking his speed he found it, turning again, a very little, this time to the left to avoid a second thickly massed group of young firs.

He ran around this, swerved again a very little as he came up "out of the hollow and to a flat open space, saw the track leading straight across the level sward, entered a larger grove of firs, lost the trail for a dozen steps, ran on, shot out of the grove and—came to a dead halt, staring in utter amazement.

If at that moment he had been asked who in all the wide world was the simon-pure king of fools, he would have answered in unqualified vehemence, “John Sheldon!”

With a bearskin which he must admit he had acquired rather in defiance of convention, in one hand, with a rifle in the other, his hat back yonder somewhere under the limb which had knocked it off, looking he was sure such a fool as never a man looked before, he was standing with both feet planted squarely in the middle of the main street of a town!

He had more than a suspicion that in some mysterious way he had gotten very drunk without knowing it. He was by no means positive that he was not a raving maniac. If he had been obliged to tell his name at that bewildering second it is a toss whether he would have said “King Sheldon,” or “John Fool.”

His mind was a blank to all emotions and sensations save the one that reddened his face. If a man had ever foretold that he would some day see a girl out in the woods, upon a lake shore where no doubt she was going to take a bath; that he would first scare her half out of her wits and then wildly pursue her for a quarter of a mile, shouting God knows what madness at her; that he’d grab up the morning robe which she’d worn and come waving it after as he ran; that he’d rush on so blindly that he didn’t know what he was doing until he was right square in the middle of a town—well, it would be mild to say that he would have dubbed that man an incurable idiot.

And yet in front of him stood a house, builded compactly of logs and rudely squared timbers, that might have stood there half of a century. To the right stood a house. To the left a house. Straight ahead ran a narrow street, houses upon the right, houses upon the left. In that blindly groping moment he felt that he had never seen so many houses all at once in all the days of his life. And yet he was no stranger to San Francisco or Vancouver nor yet New York!

He hardly knew what to expect first: A great shout of laughter as men and women saw him, or a shot from a double-barreled shotgun.

“If she’s got a father or a brother and he doesn’t shoot me,” he muttered, “he’s no man.”

But there came neither shout of laughter nor shot of gun. As the first wave of stupefaction surged over him and passed, leaving him a little more clear-thoughted, there came the inclination to draw back swiftly into the trees before he was seen.

But he stood stone still. For at last it was evident that there was no one to see. There was the town, unmistakably a typical, rude mining camp. But it was still, deserted, a veritable city of desolation.

Nowhere did a rock chimney send up its smoke to stain the clear sky; the street was empty, grown up with grass and weeds and even young trees; no child's voice in laughter or man or woman’s voice calling; no dog's bark to vibrate through the stillness which was absolute; no sound of ax on wood or of hammer or of horses’ hoofs; no stirring object upon the steps which were rotting away, nor at door or window.

No sign of life, though he turned this way and that, searching. Everywhere the wilderness was pushing in again where once man had come, vanquishing it. Before him was the most drearily desolate scene that had ever stood out before his eyes. In some strange way it was unutterably, indescribably sad.

He came on again, slowly. Obeying an impulse which he did not consciously recognize, he stepped softly as a man does in a death chamber. His soul was oppressed, his spirit drooped suddenly as the atmosphere of the abandoned camp fell upon it.

By daylight, gloom haunted the tenantless buildings; by night, here would be melancholia’s own demesne. Nowhere else in the world does one find that terrible sadness which spreads its somber wings in the abode of man long given over to the wild to be a lair for its soft-footed children.

More questions demanding answers and all unanswerable. He sought to throw off the influence which had fallen upon him and went on more swiftly, seeking the girl who had fled here. Had she stopped in one of these ruined houses? Was one of them “home to her? Who lived here with her? And why? Were they, like himself, chance comers, newly arrived? Or did they, like the log houses, belong to this land; were they like everything of man here, being drawn back into the mighty arms of the wild?

This part of the world, the fastnesses stretching from Belle Fortune to Ruminoff Shanty on the Gold River, was what he and his fellows glibly called “new country.” What country on the earth is new? What nook or corner has not once known the foot of man and his conquering hand? And, given time, what bit of the world has not in the end hurled its conqueror out, trodden down his monuments, made dust of his labors, and crowned his hearths in creeping vines and forgetfulness, wresting it all back from him?

The thoughts which came to him had their own way in a mind which was half given to the search resumed. Questions came involuntarily; he did not pause or seek to answer them. Hurriedly he went up and down, turning out for fallen timbers, circling tangled growths.

At every open door and window he looked in eagerly, noting less the sagging panels and broken shutters than the dark interiors. Many roofs had fallen, many walls were down, many buildings were but rectangular heaps of ruins grown over grass. But other houses, builded solidly of great logs, with sturdy steep roofs, stood defiantly.

“There was a time when hundreds of men lived here,” he thought as he hastened on. “Men and women, maybe, and perhaps children! Why did they go like this? Even a town may die like a man, even its name be forgotten in a generation or two.”

Pushing through a rear yard long ago so reclaimed by the wilderness that he must fight his way through brush shoulder high, he came out suddenly upon a path. It ran, broad and straight, toward the lake. There, upon a little knoll, until now hidden from him by the trees, was the largest building of the village, the one in a state of the best preservation. The path ran to the door. On either side of the doorstep, cleared of weeds, was a space in which grew tall red flowers. He stopped a moment, his heart beating fast.

The door was closed, the windows were covered with heavy shutters. He came on again, walking warily, his eyes everywhere at once. What should a man expect here in the dead city of the Sasnokee-keewan? A rifle ball as readily as anything else. And yet he came on steadily, his own rifle ready.

At last he stood not ten steps from the closed door, wondering. Some one lived here; so much was certain. The well-worn path told it eloquently. Then, too, there were signs of digging about the little flower garden. A woman’s work—hers. And she, herself, was she in there now?

“I might go up to the door and knock,” he muttered. “The regular way when you want to know if any one is at home! But I have precious little desire to be- come pile of bleached bones number three.”

He lifted his voice and called. A startled squirrel that had been watching him curiously vanished with a sudden whisk of tail, and a big woodpecker upon a distant falling wall cocked a pair of bright eyes at him impertinently. Sheldon waited, turned this way and that, called again. Then again, louder.

“Devil take it,” he grunted in sudden irritation. “There’s got to be an end of this tomfoolery. If I have to do with crazy folk I might as well know it now as any time.”

He went up the two steps to the door and rapped sharply. Still there came no answer. He rapped again and then put his hand to the latch. The door was fastened from within.

“Who’s in there?” he called. “Can't you answer me?”

His voice died away into silence; the woodpecker went back to his carpentering. A hush lay over the world about him.

He called again, explained that his intentions were friendly, argued with the silence, pleaded and then lost his temper.

“Open!” he shouted, “or by the Lord I’ll beat your old door off its hinges!”

Then, for the first time, he thought that he heard a sound from within, the gentle fall of a foot as some one moved. His head turned a little, listening eagerly, he heard no other sound.

Lifting his rifle, he drove the butt hard against the door. It creaked, rattled, and held. He struck again, harder.

His rifle was swung back for the third blow when a voice answered him, the voice of a girl, clear but troubled, uncertain, thrilling him strangely with the note in it he had heard this morning when he awoke, suggesting as it did the wild.

“Wait,” said the voice. “Wait—a—little—while.”

To describe the voice, to put a name to the subtle quality of it which made it different from any other voice Sheldon had ever heard was as impossible as to describe the perfume of a violet to one who has no olfactory nerve.

But in one respect her speech was definitely distinctive, in that each word came separately, enunciated slowly, spoken with the vaguest hint of an effort, as though her tongue were not used to shaping itself to words at all.

“All right,” answered Sheldon. “That’s fair. How long do you want me to wait?”

“Just—-little—bit,” came the clear answer, the little pauses seeming to indicate that she was seeking always for the right word. “Not—damn—long.”

“Oh!” said Sheldon.

“Go over by that house that is all broken,” continued the voice. “Then I will open the door.” There came a pause, then the words uttered with great impressiveness: “Do what I say almighty quick or I’ll cut your white liver out!”

Sheldon obeyed, wondering more than ever. As he went he dropped the bear-skin close to the door.

“I’m putting your—your dress where you can reach out and get it,” he said as he went.

There was no answer.