Carolyn of the Corners Part 43

"I have," snapped Parlow.

"Yes. And I'd decided on taking Cherry, too," the hardware dealer added, and swung into the lane towards the carpenter's barn.

"Hey, you! Needn't be so brash about it," growled the carpenter. "He's my hoss, I s'pose?"

Joseph Stagg went straight ahead, and without answering. Having once decided on his course, he wasted no time.

He rolled back the big door and saw Cherry already harnessed in his boxstall. Mr. Parlow had got that far, but knew that he could not attempt putting the spirited creature into the shafts of the light buckboard that was drawn out on the barn floor.

"You be as easy as ye can be with him, Joe Stagg," groaned the carpenter, hanging to the doorframe. "He's touchy-and I don't want him abused."

"You've never driven a better horse than I have, Jedidiah Parlow,"

snapped the hardware merchant as he led Cherry out of the stall.

Together they backed the animal between the shafts, fastened the traces, and Mr. Stagg leaped quickly to the seat and gathered up the reins.

"You'll hafter take the Fallow Road," the carpenter shouted after him.

"And have a care drivin' Cherry--"

Horse and buckboard whirled out of the yard and his voice was lost to the hardware merchant. The latter looked neither to the right nor the left as he drove through The Corners. On the store porch a dozen idle men were congregated, but he had no time for them. He did not even stop to warn Aunty Rose.

Cherry stepped out splendidly, and they left a cloud of dust behind them as they rolled up the pike, not in the direction of the abandoned camp.

Forewarned, he did not seek to take the shortest way to the cabin where Amanda Parlow and Carolyn May were perhaps even now threatened by the forest fire. The Fallow Road turned north from the pike three miles from The Corners.

Flecks of foam began to appear on Cherry's glossy coat almost at once.

The air was very oppressive, and there was no breeze.

This last fact Mr. Stagg considered a blessing. With no movement of the air, the fire could not spread rapidly.

The streak of flame that had followed down the banks of West Brook moved mysteriously. He could see the smoke of it now, hanging in a thick cloud above the ravine through which the watercourse flowed. He was tempted to believe that this was a fire set on this side of the mountain ridge. Yet Parlow had said he had seen the flames when the fire crossed the summit.

The sweating horse kept up his unbroken stride, and the buckboard-a frail-looking, but strongly built, vehicle-bounded over the rough road at a pace to distract one unused to such riding. But Joseph Stagg cared nothing for the jolting. His thought was wholly fixed on the fire and on those who might be imperiled by it.

Amanda Parlow and his niece might even now be threatened by the flames!

The thought shook the hardware dealer to his depths.

He was not a demonstrative man, that was true. His strongest feelings he hid away in his heart; and the world at large-even those nearest to him-suspected little of the emotions that seethed in Joseph Stagg's heart and brain.

Towards Carolyn May he had finally shown something of this deeper feeling. She had fairly forced him to do this.

And his very soul hungered for Amanda Parlow. But she was denied to him, and he shrank, as a man with a raw wound shrinks from unskilful touch, from letting anybody suspect his feeling for the carpenter's daughter.

Of late, since Amanda had spoken to him, since the day when Caroline May and Chet Gormley had been lost out on the ice and the nurse had so courageously rung the chapel bell, Joseph Stagg's mind had been less on business than at any time in twenty years.

He thought of Amanda Parlow. He saw her while bending over the big ledger in the back office. In his memory rang the low, mellow tones of her voice. He even heard her laugh, although it had been a score of years since he had actually been within sound of her laughter.

Now that danger threatened the woman he had loved all these years, it seemed as though his mind and heart were numbed. He was terrified beyond expression-terrified for her safety, and terrified for fear that somebody, even Jedidiah Parlow, should suspect just how he felt about it.

From the very first instant he had known the danger of the women and the child, Joseph Stagg had determined to get to them and save them. The barrier of the fire itself should not keep him back.

The stillness and oppressiveness of the atmosphere finally made an impression on his mind. He noted that already the animal life of the forest seemed to have taken fright and to have escaped. Not a rabbit, not a squirrel, was in evidence. A single jay winged his way through the wood, shrieking discordantly. Although it was the height of the mating season, the song birds were dumb.

The smoke grew heavier as he pushed on. It was sharp in his nostrils, and his breathing became laboured.

Cherry showed that he felt the stifling atmosphere, too. He tossed his proud head and snorted. Long strings of froth dripped from his bit, and his whole body had turned dark with sweat. Mr. Parlow might have felt doubtful of the horse's well-being had he seen Cherry now.

The hardware dealer drove straight on. He looked out for the horse's pace, for he was a careful driver, but he was out for no pleasure jaunt.

There was work for the horse to do.

Joseph Stagg knew the country hereabout perfectly. From boyhood he had hunted, fished, and tramped all over the towns.h.i.+p. He was still five miles from the camp, approaching it by a roundabout way.

The horse's hoofs rang sharply over the stony path. Presently they capped a little ridge and started down into a hollow. Not until they were over the ridge was Mr. Stagg aware that the hollow was filled, chokingly filled, with billowy white smoke.

There was, too, a crackling sound in the air. V-points of red and yellow flame suddenly flecked the bole of a tall, dead pine beside the path, and right ahead.

Another man-one as cautious as the hardware merchant notoriously was-would have pulled the horse down to a walk. But Joseph Stagg's cautiousness had been flung to the winds. Instead, he shouted to Cherry, and the beast increased his stride.

The man knew that hollow well. At the bottom flowed Codler's Creek, a larger stream than West Brook. Indeed, West Brook joined its waters with Codler's Creek. The fire must have come into this cut, too. Then, in all probability, a couple of thousand acres of standing timber were afire on this side of the mountain!

Ten rods further on the horse snorted, stumbled, and tried to stop. A writhing, flaming snake-a burning branch-plunged down through the smoke directly ahead.

"Go on!" shouted Joseph Stagg, with a sharpness that would ordinarily have set Cherry off at a gallop.

But, as the snorting creature still s.h.i.+ed, the man seized the whip and lashed poor Cherry cruelly along his flank.

At that the horse went mad. He plunged forward, leaped the blazing brand, and galloped down the road at a perilous gait. The man tried neither to soothe him nor to r.e.t.a.r.d the pace.

The smoke swirled around them. The driver could not see ten feet beyond the horse's nose. If a tree should fall across the track, disaster was certain.

But this catastrophe did not occur. Within a few furlongs, however, flames danced ahead on either side of the road.

"The bridge!" gasped Joseph Stagg.

The bridge over the creek was a wooden structure with a rustic railing on either hand. Flames had seized upon this and were streaming up from the rails.

It was fortunate that there was so little wind. The flames were perpendicular and rose, as Joseph Stagg sat in the buckboard, higher than his head.

The man leaned forward and once more laid the whip along Cherry's flank.

Later, Mr. Parlow was destined to mark both those welts and to vow that "Joseph Stagg did not know how to treat a horse!"

Now, however, there was no thought in Joseph Stagg's mind regarding what Mr. Parlow might say or think. He had to get over that blazing bridge!

Cherry took the platform in great leaps. The bridge swung, sank, fire spurted through the planks almost under the horse's heels, and then, just as the wheels left the shaking structure, the rear end of the bridge slipped off the abutments. The fire must have been eating out the heart of the timbers for two hours.

Cherry ran madly. The smoke, the smarting of several small burns, the loud crash of the falling bridge maddened the horse to such a degree that Joseph Stagg could scarcely hold him. Ten minutes later they rattled down into the straight road, and then, very soon, indeed, were at the abandoned camp.

The fire was near, but it had not reached this place. There was no sign of life about.

The man knew which was Judy's cabin. He leaped from the vehicle, leaving the panting Cherry unhitched, and ran to the hut.