The Fire Flower/Chapter 9

T was high noon. Sheldon needed no glance at his watch to tell him that. He was hungry.

He went to the door, which had remained open all morning—left so in hope of the return of the mad man—and closed it. Paula’s eyes followed him intently. He made the door fast by putting its bar across it. A bit of wood from a pile of faggots by the fireplace he forced down tight between the bar and the door, jamming it so that if the girl sought to jerk it loose it would take time. He treated the bar of the front door similarly.

The clip of cartridges he slipped out of his rifle, dropping it into his pocket. He had thrown no cartridge into the barrel. Then he put the gun down, turned again toward Paula, and said smilingly:

“Turn about is fair play. I gave you a can of peaches; suppose that you treat me to the lunch?”

An instant ago she had been teasing Napoleon and showing no hint of distress. Suddenly now her lips were quivering; for the first time he saw the tears start into her eyes.

“Won’t you go away?” she asked pleadingly. “Please, please go away!”

“Why,” he said in astonishment, “what is the matter? Don’t you want to give me something to eat?”

“Oh,” she cried, even her voice shaking, “I’ll give you anything if you’ll only go away! You are bad, bad to keep me here like this; to drive papa away—”

“I didn’t drive him away. I don’t want him away. I am waiting for him to come back. That’s all I am waiting for!”

“But he won’t! While you are here he won’t come back. And, out there, he will die.”

“Die!” muttered Sheldon. “What’s the matter with him?”

Slowly the tears welled up and spilled over, running unchecked down her cheeks. Sheldon, little used to women, shifted uneasily, not knowing what to do, feeling that he should do something. Napoleon, wiser in matters of this sort, made his way to her shoulder and rubbed his soft body sympathetically against her cheek.

“Open the door,” begged Paula. “Be good to me and open the door. Let me go to him.”

“You would not know where to find him,” he protested.

“Oh, yes, I would! I would go to him, running.”

“He is sick?” he asked.

Other tears followed the first, unnoticed by the girl. Sheldon thought of the Graham twins: they cried that way some time, only more noisily. They kept their eyes open wide and looked at you, and the tears came until you wondered where they all came from.

“Two times,” she said, her voice trembling, “I have thought he was dead!” She shuddered. “I have seen dead things. Oh, it is terrible! This morning I thought he was dead! He did not answer when I talked with him. And he lay still; I could not feel him breathe. I ran out. I was frightened. I cried out aloud. You heard me and ran to kill me, and I ran here. And he was not dead! Oh, I was glad! But if you do not let me go to him now—he will die—I know he will die. And I will be all alone—and it gets so still sometimes that I can’t breathe. Please let me go! Please be good to me!”

She came to him hurriedly. Napoleon sprang down and chattered in a corner. She caught up Sheldon’s hand and held it, her eyes lifted to his pleadingly.

“Don’t be bad to me,” she murmured over and over. “Be good to me, and let me go to him.”

When Bill and Bet came to him this way he knew what to do with them. He picked them up, an arm about each one, and carried them about adventuring until their mama expostulated. And, surreptitiously now and then when no one was looking, he kissed their red, fettle, moist mouths. “Please,” said Paula. “I shall not call you bad any more. I shall say you are good and love you. Please.”

“Hang it!” muttered John Sheldon.

“Please!” said Paula.

“You see—”

“Please!” said Paula. She laid her wet cheek against his hand. “Please!”

“Now look here, young lady,” he told her, flattering himself that he had achieved a remarkable dignity, and looking more awkward than John Sheldon had ever looked before; “I’ll compromise with you. You say you know where he is? All right. Sit down and we’ll eat, you and I. You will then show me the way, and we’ll go and find him and bring him back here. I haven’t hurt you, have I? I won’t hurt him. No,” as her lips shaped to another “please,” “I’m not going to let you go alone. We go together—or we stay right here. Which is it?”

Paula frowned. Then she wiped away the tears. Whether some deep feminine instinct had told her that they had almost served their purpose but were useless now will, perhaps, never be known. She went across the room to a rude cupboard, and brought from it a blackened pot containing a meat stew. Sheldon was hungry enough to dispense with the stew being warmed up. Merely to make conversation to divert her thoughts from her father’s danger, he said carelessly:

“You must have trouble getting your meat? You can’t have much ammunition.” He tasted the stew, and found it, although salt was noticeably wanted, savory and palatable. “What sort of meat is it?” he. asked.

“Snakes!” said Paula.

Sheldon had swallowed just before putting the last question. Paula was given the joy of seeing his tanned cheeks pale a little. A look of horror came into his eyes. Then he caught an expression of lively malice in hers, malice and mirth commingled.

“Snakes and lizards,” said Paula. “We catch ’em in holes—”

“You little devil!” muttered the man under his breath. And to show her that he knew now that she was making fun of him, he went back to his stew. “Just the same, Miss Paula,” he told her threateningly, “if we ever do get to the outside I’ll take you to dinner some time, and I’ll order oysters and shrimps for you. And crab and lobster, by glory! I wonder what you’ll say at that?”

Paula didn’t know, didn’t have any opinion on the subject.

“They are fishes,” she hazarded the opinion with an uncertain show at certainty. “We eat fishes, too.”

He ate his scanty meal, insisting upon her coming to sit across the table from him. She watched him, but refused to eat. Plainly she was still deeply distressed. Her eyes were never still, going from him to the door, to the rifle on the floor by him, to the door again. But she made no further attempt at escape.

Meanwhile he took this opportunity to examine the cabin more carefully than he had done so far. A broken bottle stood in a corner, serving as a vase for a handful of field flowers. Upon the walls were a number of pictures gleaned years ago from newspapers—one a view of the business section of a city, one a seascape, one a lady in a ball dress of about 1860 or 1870, one a couple of kittens.

Upon the wall on Paula’s side of the partition was a bulge, which was evidently the young woman’s wardrobe, covered over with a blanket hung from pegs. An ax with a crude handle lay on the floor. A long, heavy box served both as receptacle for odds and ends, and, covered with a plank, as a bench.

“Now,” said Sheldon, “shall we go and find your father?”

Paula did not hesitate, nor did she again seek to dissuade him from his purpose.

“Yes,” she said.

He went to the rear door and opened it.

“You must understand,” he told her, standing in the way so that she could not pass him, his rifle in his right hand, his left extended to her, “that I am not going to take any chances of losing you too. You can run faster than I can, and I don’t want you to prove it again. You must give me your hand.”

For an instant she drew away from him, the old distrustful look coming back.

“I would like to kill you!” she said in a way which made him believe that she meant what she said. Then she came to him and slipped her hand into his.

So they went out into the sunlight, side by side, Sheldon’s hand gripping Paula’s tightly.

“Which way?” he asked.

“This way.” She nodded toward the forest closing in about them at the east. That way the madman had gone. She seemed to feel no uncertainty, but walked on briskly, holding as far away from him as she could manage so that her arm stretched out almost horizontally from her shoulder.

So they went on for a hundred yards or so, through the great trees that stood like living columns all about them. Every nerve tense, Sheldon sought to watch her, trusting her as little as she him, and at the same time keep a lookout for her father.

One thing he had missed from the cabin which he had expected to find there. If the madman had killed those wanderers who incurred his kingly displeasure by venturing into his realm, then he must have taken their guns with their other belongings.

There had been no rifle leaning against the wall, no pistol to be seen. What had become of them? Certainly no adventuring prospector had ever come in here without, at the least, his side-arms. It was quite possible that the madman kept them secreted somewhere in the forest; that he had run for a rifle; that even now he was crouching behind a clump of bushes, his burning eyes peering over the sights.

At every little sound Sheldon turned this way or that sharply. There was so little calculating what a madman would do! But he must take his chances if he did not mean to turn tail and run out of the whole affair. And he told himself that it had been perhaps a matter of years since a stranger had brought fresh ammunition here; that the madman would have long ago exhausted his supply hunting.

They went in silence. Paula’s eyes showed a great preoccupation; Sheldon had little enough mind for talk. As the forest grew denser about them, and the undergrowth thickened, they came into a narrow path, well trodden. Now Paula, despite her evident distaste, was forced to walk close at his side, sometimes slipping a little behind him. He judged that they had gone a full mile before they came to a distinct forking of the trails.

“We go this way,” said Paula, indicating the trail leading off toward the right.

They turned as she directed. Sheldon felt a tremor run through the girl’s arm and looked at her inquiringly. But the emotion, however inspired, had passed. She came on, her hand lying relaxed in his, walking close at his side, passive.

Presently she said:

“We must watch for him now. We are near the place.”

On either hand were many small trees, here and there a fallen log, everywhere small shrubs which he did not recognize, thick with bright red berries. He watched Paula, watched even more for the madman. They came into a cleared space as wide as an ordinary room.

“Look yonder!” cried the girl sharply.

She had thrown up her left hand, pointing across his breast. He looked swiftly.

In an instant she was no longer passive. With all of that supple strength which he knew to lie in that beautiful body of hers, she had thrown herself against him, pushing at him. His weight was greater, so much greater than hers, that though taken unaware he was barely budged two paces.

But that was ample for the purpose of Paula. He heard a sharp crackling of dead branches and leaves, the ground gave way under his feet, and crashing through a flimsy covering of slender limbs and twigs he plunged downward, falling sheer.

He threw out his arm to save himself, his rifle was flung several feet away, Paula had jerked free, and with the breath jolted out of his body, he lay upon his back in a pit ten feet deep struggling to free himself of the branches which he had brought with him in his fall.

At last he stood up. He had strained an ankle in striking, he did not know for the moment whether or not he had broken his left arm. His hands and face were scratched, his body was sore, his face grew red to a towering rage.

Standing at the brink of the pit, stooping a little to look down at him, was Paula. He had never seen a look of greater, gladder triumph upon a human face.

“You are not very smart,” said Paula contemptuously, “to get caught in a trap like that. Bears are smarter!”

John Sheldon, for the first time on record, swore violently in the presence of a young woman. She did not appear in the least shocked; perhaps she was accustomed to occasional outbursts from her father. Rather, she looked delighted. In fact, she clapped her hands, and there came down to him, to swell his rage, her tinkling laughter. “When I get out of this I’m going to spank you,” he growled, meaning every word of it. “Good and hard, too! Don’t you know you might have broken my neck?”

“You are not coming out,” dimpled Paula. “If you are very good I will feed you every day and bring you water.”

Sheldon answered her with an angry silence. There is no wrath like that which has in it something of self accusation; he might have expected something like this. Turning his back on her he sought the way out of the bear pit. Forthwith his anger, like a tube of quicksilver carried out into the hot sun, mounted to new heights while he did not.

The trap was cunningly made, must have required weeks in the excavation. At the bottom it was some ten feet wide; at the opening above his head perhaps not over eight feet. Thus its walls sloped in at the top, and he promptly saw the futility of trying to scramble out. He would have to use his sheath-knife; hack hand holds and dig places out for his feet, and at that he saw that he would have his work cut out for him.

And his rifle lay on the ground above! A sudden, disquieting vision was vividly outlined in his imagination. Suppose that the madman came now! He could stand above, and if he had nothing but stones to hurl down— The vision ended with a shudder as Sheldon remembered two bleached piles of bones.

Crouching, he leaped upward, seizing the pitt’s [sic] edge. The soil crumbled, gave way. He slipped back. He heard Paula’s laughter, coolly taunting. He crouched, leaped again, furious as he found no hand hold. To try again would but be to make a fool of himself.

Among the broken branches about him he sought one strong enough to bear his weight. He stood it upright against the wall of the pit. With his knife in one hand driven into the bank, the other hand gripping the leaning branch, he sought to climb out. And then, from across the pit, at his back, Paula called sharply:

“Stop! I am going to shoot!”

He slipped back and turned toward her. She was on her knees, his rifle in her hands, the barrel looking unnaturally large as it described nervously erratic arcs and ellipses. But Paula’s eyes, looking very determined, threatened him along the sights.

With a feeling of devout thankfulness he remembered that he had taken out the clip of cartridges at the cabin. Then, with sudden sinking heart, he remembered also that before he opened the door to come out he had again slipped the clip in.

What he could not remember, to save him, was whether or not he had thrown a cartridge into the barrel!

“I’ve got one chance out of a thousand, and a cursed slim chance it is!” he told himself grimly. “She can’t miss me at this range if she tries!”

Here lay his one chance: If he had not thrown a cartridge into the barrel, and if the girl knew nothing of an automatic rifle, he might have time to get out yet before she discovered how to operate it. These two “ifs” struck him at that moment as the tallest pair of ifs he had ever met.

He racked his brains for the answer to that one question: “Did I throw a load into, the barrel?” One moment he was certain that he remembered doing so; the next he was as certain that he had not. He was very uncomfortable.

“I’ve got to shoot you!” Paula was crying. “I don’t want to, oh! I don’t want to shoot you. But you would kill us. You would kill papa and—I’m going to shoot!”

“For God’s sake shoot and get it over with, then!” muttered Sheldon. He didn’t think that he was a coward, but he knew that he was white as a ghost. And he didn’t even know that the gun was loaded!

The gun barrel wavered uncertainly. The girl’s finger was on the trigger that a very slight pressure would set offhand it made him faint to see how that finger was shaking! Paula had one eye shut tight; the other peered wildly along the sights. One instant she was aiming at his stomach, the next at his knees.

Paula shut both eyes and pulled the trigger. After a century-long second in which there was no discharge, Sheldon laughed loudly if somewhat shakily. And, seeing his one chance now about to bring him his safety, he lost no more time in inactivity, but began again with knife and dead branch to try to make his way out.

Paula sprang to her feet, her cheeks that had been pale growing suddenly flushed, and with the gun at her shoulder, pulled again and again at the trigger. Sheldon managed to get half-way out, lifted his hand to grasp the brink—and slipped back again.

Then the girl, crying out angrily, threw down the gun, whirled, and disappeared in a flash. Sheldon struggled manfully to work his way out of his pit before she should be lost to him entirely in the woods. But when at last he was out, and had caught up his rifle, the still woods about him hid her, giving no sign which way she had gone.