Chambers Robert William
A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories

At first, for it was so feeble a fire, scarcely alive, he strove to stamp it out, then to smother it with damp mould. But as he followed its wormlike course, always ahead he saw the thin, blue signals rising through living moss – everywhere the attenuated spirals creeping from the ground underfoot.

“I could summon every man in this town if necessary,” she said; “I am empowered by law to do so; but – I shall not – yet. Where could we find a keeper – the nearest patrol?”

“Please follow me,” he said, mounting his horse and wheeling eastward.

In a few moments they came to a foot-trail, and turned into it at a canter, skirting the Spirit Water, which stretched away between two mountains glittering in the sun.

“How many men can you get?” she called forward.

“I don’t know; there’s a gang of men terracing below the lodge – ”

“Call them all; let every man bring a pick and shovel. There is a guard now!”

Burleson pulled up short and shouted, “Murphy!”

The patrol turned around.

“Get the men who are terracing the lodge. Bring picks, shovels, and axes, and meet me here. Run for it!”

The fire-warden’s horse walked up leisurely; the girl had relinquished the bridle and was guiding the mare with the slightest pressure of knee and heel. She sat at ease, head lowered, absently retying the ribbon on the hair at her neck. When it was adjusted to her satisfaction she passed a hat-pin through her sombrero, touched the bright, thick hair above her forehead, straightened out, stretching her legs in the stirrups. Then she drew off her right gauntlet, and very discreetly stifled the daintiest of yawns.

“You evidently don’t believe there is much danger,” said Burleson, with a smile which seemed to relieve the tension he had labored under.

“Yes, there is danger,” she said.

After a silence she added, “I think I hear your men coming.”

He listened in vain; he heard the wind above filtering through the pines; he heard the breathing of their horses, and his own heart-beats, too. Then very far away a sound broke out.

“What wonderful ears you have!” he said – not thinking of their beauty until his eye fell on their lovely contour. And as he gazed the little, clean-cut ear next to him turned pink, and its owner touched her mare forward – apparently in aimless caprice, for she circled and came straight back, meeting his gaze with her pure, fearless gray eyes.

There must have been something not only perfectly inoffensive, but also well-bred, in Burleson’s lean, bronzed face, for her own face softened into an amiable expression, and she wheeled the mare up beside his mount, confidently exposing the small ear again.

The men were coming; there could be no mistake this time. And there came Murphy, too, and Rolfe, with his great, swinging stride, gun on one shoulder, a bundle of axes on the other.

“This way,” said Burleson, briefly; but the fire-warden cut in ahead, cantering forward up the trail, nonchalantly breaking off a twig of aromatic black birch, as she rode, to place between her red lips.

Murphy, arriving in the lead, scanned the haze which hung along the living moss.

“Sure, it’s a foolish fire, sorr,” he muttered, “burrowing like a mole gone mad. Rest aisy, Misther Burleson; we’ll scotch the divil that done this night’s worruk! – bad cess to the dhirrty scut!”

“Never mind that, Murphy. Miss Elliott, are they to dig it out?”

She nodded.

The men, ranged in an uneven line, stood stupidly staring at the long vistas of haze. The slim fire-warden wheeled her mare to face them, speaking very quietly, explaining how deep to dig, how far a margin might be left in safety, how many men were to begin there, and at what distances apart.

Then she picked ten men and bade them follow her.

Burleson rode in the rear, motioning Rolfe to his stirrup.

“What do you think of it?” he asked, in a low voice.

“I think, sir, that one of those damned Storms did it – ”

“I mean, what do you think about the chances? Is it serious?”

“That young lady ahead knows better than I do. I’ve seen two of these here underground fires: one was easy killed; the other cleaned out three thousand acres.”

Burleson nodded. “I think,” he said, “that you had better go back to the lodge and get every spare man. Tell Rudolf to rig up a wagon and bring rations and water for the men. Put in something nice for Miss Elliott – see to that, Rolfe; do you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Rolfe, bring feed for the horses – and see that there are a couple of men to watch the house and stables – ” He broke out, bitterly, “It’s a scoundrelly bit of work they’ve done! – ” and instantly had himself under control again. “Better go at once, Rolfe, and caution the men to remain quiet under provocation if any trespassers come inside.”

II

By afternoon they had not found the end of the underground fire. The live trail had been followed and the creeping terror exterminated for half a mile; yet, although two ditches had been dug to cut the fire off from farther progress, always ahead the haze hung motionless, stretching away westward through the pines.

Now a third trench was started – far enough forward this time, for there was no blue haze visible beyond the young hemlock growth.

The sweating men, stripped to their undershirts, swung pick and axe and drove home their heavy shovels. Burleson, his gray flannel shirt open at the throat, arms bared to the shoulder, worked steadily among his men; on a knoll above, the fire-warden sat cross-legged on the pine-needles, her straight young back against a tree. On her knees were a plate and a napkin. She ate bits of cold partridge at intervals; at intervals she sipped a glass of claret and regarded Burleson dreamily.

To make certain, she had set a gang of men to clear the woods in a belt behind the third ditch; a young growth of hemlock was being sacrificed, and the forest rang with axe-strokes, the cries of men, the splintering crash of the trees.

“I think,” said Burleson to Rolfe, who had just come up, “that we are ahead of the trouble now. Did you give my peaceful message to Abe Storm?”

“No, sir; he wasn’t to home – damn him!”

The young man looked up quickly. “What’s the trouble now?” he asked.

“There’s plenty more trouble ahead,” said the keeper, in a low voice. “Look at this belt, sir!” and he drew from his pocket a leather belt, unrolled it, and pointed at a name scratched on the buckle. The name was “Abe Storm.”

“Where did that come from?” demanded Burleson.

“The man that fired the vlaie grass dropped it. Barry picked it up on patrol. There’s the evidence, sir. The belt lay on the edge of the burning grass.”

“You mean he dropped it last night, and Barry found it where the grass had been afire?”

“No, sir; that belt was dropped two hours since. The grass was afire again.”

The color left Burleson’s face, then came surging back through the tightening skin of the set jaws.

“Barry put out the blaze, sir. He’s on duty there now with Chase and Connor. God help Abe Storm if they get him over the sights, Mr. Burleson.”

Burleson’s self-command was shaken. He reached out his hand for the belt, flung away his axe, and walked up the slope of the knoll where the fire-warden sat calmly watching him.

For a few moments he stood before her, teeth set, in silent battle with that devil’s own temper which had never been killed in him, which he knew now could never be ripped out and exterminated, which must, must lie chained – chained while he himself stood tireless guard, knowing that chains may break.

After a while he dropped to the ground beside her, like a man dead tired. “Tell me about these people,” he said.

“What people, Mr. Burleson? My own?”

Her sensitive instinct had followed the little drama from her vantage-seat on the knoll; she had seen the patrol display the belt; she had watched the color die out and then flood the young man’s face and neck; and she had read the surface signs of the murderous fury that altered his own visage to a mask set with a pair of blazing eyes. And suddenly, as he dropped to the ground beside her, his question had swept aside formality, leaving them on the very edge of an intimacy which she had accepted, unconsciously, with her low-voiced answer.

“Yes – your own people. Tell what I should know I want to live in peace among them if they’ll let me.”

She gathered her knees in her clasped fingers and looked out into the forest. “Mr. Burleson,” she said, “for every mental, every moral deformity, man is answerable to man. You dwellers in the pleasant places of the world are pitiless in your judgment of the sullen, suspicious, narrow life you find edging forests, clinging to mountain flanks, or stupidly stifling in the heart of some vast plain. I cannot understand the mental cruelty which condemns with contempt human creatures who have had no chance – not one single chance. Are they ignorant? Then bear with them for shame! Are they envious, grasping, narrow? Do they gossip about neighbors, do they slander without mercy? What can you expect from starved minds, human intellects unnourished by all that you find so wholesome? Man’s progress only inspires man; man’s mind alone stimulates man’s mind. Where civilization is, there are many men; where is the greatest culture, the broadest thought, the sweetest toleration, there men are many, teaching one another unconsciously, consciously, always advancing, always uplifting, spite of the shallow tide of sin which flows in the footsteps of all progress – ”

She ceased; her delicate, earnest face relaxed, and a smile glimmered for a moment in her eyes, in the pretty curled corners of her parted lips.

“I’m talking very like a school-marm,” she said. “I am one, by-the-way, and I teach the children of these people —my people,” she added, with an exquisite hint of defiance in her smile.

She rested her weight on one arm and leaned towards him a trifle.

“In Fox Cross-roads there is much that is hopeless, much that is sorrowful, Mr. Burleson; there is hunger, bodily hunger; there is sickness unsolaced by spiritual or bodily comfort – not even the comfort of death! Ah, you should see them —once! Once would be enough! And no physician, nobody that knows, I tell you – nobody through the long, dusty, stifling summers – nobody through the lengthening bitterness of the black winters – nobody except myself. Mr. Burleson, old man Storm died craving a taste of broth; and Abe Storm trapped a partridge for him, and Rolfe caught him and Grier jailed him – and confiscated the miserable, half-plucked bird!”

The hand which supported her weight was clinched; she was not looking at the man beside her, but his eyes never left hers.

“You talk angrily of market hunting, and the law forbids it. You say you can respect a poacher who shoots for the love of it, but you have only contempt for the market hunter. And you are right sometimes – ” She looked him in the eyes. “Old Santry’s little girl is bedridden. Santry shot and sold a deer – and bought his child a patent bed. She sleeps almost a whole hour now without much pain.”

Burleson, eyes fixed on her, did not stir. The fire-warden leaned forward, picked up the belt, and read the name scratched with a hunting-knife on the brass buckle.

“Before Grier came,” she said, thoughtfully, “there was misery enough here – cold, hunger, disease – oh, plenty of disease always. Their starved lands of sand and rock gave them a little return for heart-breaking labor, but not enough. Their rifles helped them to keep alive; timber was free; they existed. Then suddenly forest, game, vlaie, and lake were taken from them – fenced off, closed to these people whose fathers’ fathers had established free thoroughfare where posted warnings and shot-gun patrols now block every trodden trail! What is the sure result? – and Grier was brutal! What could be expected? Why, Mr. Burleson, these people are Americans! – dwarfed mentally, stunted morally, year by year reverting to primal type – yet the fire in their blood set their grandfathers marching on Saratoga! – marching to accomplish the destruction of all kings! And Grier drove down here with a coachman and footman in livery and furs, and summoned the constable from Brier Bridge, and arrested old man Santry at his child’s bedside – the new bed paid for with Grier’s buck…”

She paused; then, with a long breath, she straightened up and leaned back once more against the tree.

“They are not born criminals,” she said. “See what you can do with them – see what you can do for them, Mr. Burleson. The relative values of a deer and a man have changed since they hanged poachers in England.”

They sat silent for a while, watching the men below.

“Miss Elliott,” he said, impulsively, “may I not know your father?”

She flushed and turned towards him as though unpleasantly startled. That was only instinct, for almost at the same moment she leaned back quietly against the tree.

“I think my father would like to know you,” she said. “He seldom sees men – men like himself.”

“Perhaps you would let me smoke a cigarette, Miss Elliott?” he ventured.

“You were very silly not to ask me before,” she said, unconsciously falling into his commonplace vein of easy deference.

“I wonder,” he went on, lazily, “what that débris is on the land which runs back from the store at Fox Cross-roads. It can’t be that anybody was simple enough to go boring for oil.”

She winced; but the smile remained on her face, and she met his eyes quite calmly.

“That pile of débris,” she said, “is, I fancy, the wreck of the house of Elliott. My father did bore for oil and found it – about a pint, I believe.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” cried Burleson, red as a pippin.

“I am not a bit sensitive,” she said. Her mouth, the white, heavy lids of her eyes, contradicted her.

“There was a very dreadful smash-up of the house of Elliott, Mr. Burleson. If you feel a bit friendly towards that house, you will advise me how I may sell ‘The Witch.’ I don’t mind telling you why. My father has simply got to go to some place where rheumatism can be helped – be made bearable. I know that I could easily dispose of the mare if I were in a civilized region; even Grier offered half her value. If you know of any people who care for that sort of horse, I’ll be delighted to enter into brisk correspondence with them.”

“I know a man,” observed Burleson, deliberately, “who would buy that mare in about nine-tenths of a second.”

“Oh, I’ll concede him the other tenth!” cried the girl, laughing. It was the first clear, care-free laugh he had heard from her – and so fascinating, so delicious, that he sat there silent in entranced surprise.

“About the value of the mare,” she suggested, diffidently, “you may tell your friend that she is only worth what father paid for her – ”

“Good Lord!” he said, “that’s not the way to sell a horse!”

“Why not? Isn’t she worth that much?”

“What did your father pay for her?”

The girl named the sum a trifle anxiously. “It’s a great deal, I know – ”

“It’s about a third what she’s worth,” announced Burleson. “If I were you, I’d add seventy-five per cent., and hold out like – like a demon for it.”

“But I cannot ask more than we paid – ”

“Why not?”

“I – don’t know. Is it honorable?”

They looked at each other for a moment, then he began to laugh. To her surprise, she felt neither resentment nor chagrin, although he was plainly laughing at her. So presently she laughed, too, a trifle uncertainly, shy eyes avoiding his, yet always returning curiously. She did not know just why; she was scarcely aware that she took pleasure in this lean-faced young horseman’s company.

“I have always believed,” she began, “that to sell anything for more than its value was something as horrid as – as usury.”

“Such a transaction resembles usury as closely as it does the theory of Pythagoras,” he explained; and presently their laughter aroused the workmen, who looked up, leaning on spade and pick.

“I cannot understand,” she said, “why you make such silly remarks or why I laugh at them. A boy once affected me in the same way – years ago.”

She sat up straight, a faint smile touching her mouth and eyes. “I think that my work is about ended here, Mr. Burleson. Do you know that my pupils are enjoying a holiday – because you choose to indulge in a forest-fire?”

He strove to look remorseful, but he only grinned.

“I did not suppose you cared,” she said, severely, but made no motion to rise.

Presently he mentioned the mare again, asking if she really desired to sell her; and she said that she did.

“Then I’ll wire to-night,” he rejoined. “There should be a check for you day after to-morrow.”

“But suppose the man did not wish to buy her?”

“No chance of that. If you say so, the mare is sold from this moment.”

“I do say so,” she answered, in a low voice, “and thank you, Mr. Burleson. You do not realize how astonished I am – how fortunate – how deeply happy – ”

“I can only realize it by comparison,” he said.

What, exactly, did he mean by that? She looked around at him; he was absorbed in scooping a hole in the pine-needles with his riding-crop.

She made up her mind that his speech did not always express his thoughts; that it was very pleasant to listen to, but rather vague than precise.

“It is quite necessary,” he mused aloud, “that I meet your father – ”

She looked up quickly. “Oh! have you business with him?”

“Not at all,” said Burleson.

This time the silence was strained; Miss Elliott remained very still and thoughtful.

“I think,” he said, “that this country is only matched in paradise. It is the most beautiful place on earth!”

To this astonishing statement she prepared no answer. The forest was attractive, the sun perhaps brighter than usual – or was it only her imagination due to her own happiness in selling The Witch?

“When may I call upon Mr. Elliott?” he asked, suddenly. “To-night?”

No; really he was too abrupt, his conversation flickering from one subject to another without relevance, without logic. She had no time to reflect, to decide what he meant, before, crack! he was off on another trail – and his English no vehicle for the conveyance of his ideas.

“There is something,” he continued, “that I wish to ask you. May I?”

She bit her lip, then laughed, her gray eyes searching his. “Ask it, Mr. Burleson, for if I lived a million years I’m perfectly certain I could never guess what you are going to say next.”

“It’s only this,” he said, with a worried look, “I don’t know your first name.”

“Why should you?” she demanded, amused, yet instinctively resentful. “I don’t know yours, either, Mr. Burleson – and I don’t even ask you.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you,” he said; “my name is only John William. Now will you tell me yours?”

She remained silent, coping with a candor that she had not met with since she went to parties in a muslin frock. She remembered one boy who had proposed elopement on ten minutes’ acquaintance. Burleson, somehow or other, reminded her of that boy.

“My name,” she said, carelessly, “is Constance.”

“I like that name,” said Burleson.

It was pretty nearly the last straw. Never had she been conscious of being so spontaneously, so unreasonably approved of since that wretched boy had suggested flight at her first party. She could not separate the memory of the innocent youth from Burleson; he was intensely like that boy; and she had liked the boy, too – liked him so much that in those ten heavenly minutes’ acquaintance she was half persuaded to consent – only there was nowhere to fly to, and before they could decide her nurse arrived.

“If you had not told me your first name,” said Burleson, “how could anybody make out a check to your order?”

“Is that why – ” she began; and without the slightest reason her heart gave a curious little tremor of disappointment.

“You see,” he said, cheerfully, “it was not impertinence – it was only formality.”

“I see,” she said, approvingly, and began to find him a trifle tiresome.

Meanwhile he had confidently skipped to another subject. “Phosphates and nitrogen are what those people need for their farms. Now if you prepare your soil – do your own mixing, of course – then begin with red clover, and plough – ”

Her gray eyes were so wide open that he stopped short to observe them; they were so beautiful that his observation continued until she colored furiously. It was the last straw.

“The fire is out, I think,” she said, calmly, rising to her feet; “my duty here is ended, Mr. Burleson.”

“Oh – are you going?” he asked, with undisguised disappointment. She regarded him in silence for a moment. How astonishingly like that boy he was – this six-foot —

“Of course I am going,” she said, and wondered why she had said “of course” with emphasis. Then she whistled to her mare.

“May I ride with you to the house?” he asked, humbly.

She was going to say several things, all politely refusing. What she did say was, “Not this time.”

Then she was furious with herself, and began to hate him fiercely, until she saw something in his face that startled her. The mare came up; she flung the bridle over hastily, set foot to metal, and seated herself in a flash. Then she looked down at the man beside her, prepared for his next remark.

It came at once. “When may we ride together, Miss Elliott?”

She became strangely indulgent. “You know,” she said, as though instructing youth, “that the first proper thing to do is to call upon my father, because he is older than you, and he is physically unable to make the first call.”

“Then by Wednesday we may ride?” he inquired, so guilessly that she broke into a peal of delicious laughter.

“How old are you, Mr. Burleson? Ten?”

“I feel younger,” he said.

“So do I,” she said. “I feel like a little girl in a muslin gown.” Two spots of color tinted her cheeks. He had never seen such beauty in human guise, and he came very near saying so. Something in the aromatic mountain air was tempting her to recklessness. Amazed, exhilarated by the temptation, she sat there looking down at him; and her smile was perilously innocent and sweet.

“Once,” she said, “I knew a boy – like you – when I wore a muslin frock, and I have never forgotten him. He was extremely silly.”

“Do you remember only silly people?”

“I can’t forget them; I try.”

“Please don’t try any more,” he said.

She looked at him, still smiling. She gazed off through the forest, where the men were going home, shovels shouldered, the blades of axe and spade blood-red in the sunset light.

How long they stood there she scarcely reckoned, until a clear primrose light crept in among the trees, and the evening mist rose from an unseen pond, floating through the dimmed avenues of pines.

“Good-night,” she said, gathered bridle, hesitated, then held out her ungloved hand.

Galloping homeward, the quick pressure of his hand still burning her palm, she swept along in a maze of disordered thought. And being by circumstances, though not by inclination, an orderly young woman, she attempted a mental reorganization. This she completed as she wheeled her mare into the main forest road; and, her happy, disordered thoughts rearranged with a layer of cold logic to quiet them, reaction came swiftly; her cheeks burned when she remembered her own attitude of half-accepted intimacy with this stranger. How did he regard her? How cheaply did he already hold her – this young man idling here in the forest for his own pleasure?

But she had something more important on hand than the pleasures of remorseful cogitation as she rode up to the store and drew bridle, where in their shirt-sleeves the prominent citizens were gathered. She began to speak immediately. She did not mince matters; she enumerated them by name, dwelt coldly upon the law governing arson, and told them exactly where they stood.

She was, by courtesy of long residence, one of them. She taught their children, she gave them pills and powders, she had stood by them even when they had the law against them – stood by them loyally and in the very presence of Grier, fencing with him at every move, combating his brutality with deadly intelligence.

They collapsed under her superior knowledge; they trusted her, fawned on her, whined when she rebuked them, carried themselves more decently for a day or two when she dropped a rare word of commendation. They respected her in spite of the latent ruffianly instinct which sneers at women; they feared her as a parish fears its priest; they loved her as they loved one another – which was rather toleration than affection; the toleration of half-starved bob-cats.

And now the school-marm had turned on them – turned on them with undisguised contempt. Never before had she betrayed contempt for them. She spoke of cowardice, too. That bewildered them. Nobody had ever suggested that.

She spoke of the shame of jail; they had heretofore been rather proud of it – all this seated there in the saddle, the light from the store lamp shining full in her face; and they huddled there on the veranda, gaping at her, stupefied.

Then she suddenly spoke of Burleson, praising him, endowing him with every quality the nobility of her own mind could compass. She extolled his patience under provocation, bidding them to match it with equal patience. She bad them be men in the face of this Burleson, who was a man; to display a dignity to compare with his; to meet him squarely, to deal fairly, to make their protests to his face and not whisper crime behind his back.

And that was all; she swung her mare off into the darkness; they listened to the far gallop, uttering never a word. But when the last distant hoof-stroke had ceased, Mr. Burleson’s life and forests were safe in the country. How safe his game was they themselves did not exactly know.

That night Burleson walked into the store upon the commonplace errand of buying a jack-knife. It was well that he did not send a groom; better still when he explained, “one of the old-fashioned kind – the kind I used as a school-boy.”

“To whittle willow whistles,” suggested old man Santry. His voice was harsh; it was an effort for him to speak.

“That’s the kind,” said Burleson, picking out a one-blader.

Santry was coughing; presently Burleson looked around.

“Find swallowing hard?” he asked.

“Swallerin’ ain’t easy. I ketched cold.”

“Let’s see,” observed Burleson, strolling up to him and deliberately opening the old man’s jaws, not only to Santry’s astonishment, but to the stupefaction of the community around the unlighted stove.

“Bring a lamp over here,” said the young man.

Somebody brought it.

“Tonsilitis,” said Burleson, briefly. “I’ll send you something to-night?”

“Be you a doctor?” demanded Santry, hoarsely.

“Was one. I’ll fix you up. Go home; and don’t kiss your little girl. I’ll drop in after breakfast.”

Two things were respected in Fox Cross-roads – death and a doctor – neither of which the citizens understood.

But old man Santry, struggling obstinately with his awe of things medical, rasped out, “I ain’t goin’ to pay no doctor’s bills fur a cold!”

“Nobody pays me any more,” said Burleson, laughing. “I only doctor people to keep my hand in. Go home, Santry; you’re sick.”

Mr. Santry went, pausing at the door to survey the gathering with vacant astonishment.

Burleson paid for the knife, bought a dozen stamps, tasted the cheese and ordered a whole one, selected three or four barrels of apples, and turned on his heel with a curt good-night.

“Say!” broke out old man Storm as he reached the door; “you wasn’t plannin’ to hev the law on Abe, was you?”

“About that grass fire?” inquired Burleson, wheeling in his tracks. “Oh no; Abe lost his temper and his belt. Any man’s liable to lose both. By-the-way” – he came back slowly, buttoning his gloves – “about this question of the game – it has occurred to me that it can be adjusted very simply. How many men in this town are hunters?”

Nobody answered at first, inherent suspicion making them coy. However, it finally appeared that in a community of twenty families there were some four of nature’s noblemen who “admired to go gunnin’ with a smell-dog.”

“Four,” repeated Burleson. “Now just see how simple it is. The law allows thirty woodcock, thirty partridges, and two deer to every hunter. That makes eight deer and two hundred and forty birds out of the preserve, which is very little – if you shoot straight enough to get your limit!” he laughed. “But it being a private preserve, you’ll do your shooting on Saturdays, and check off your bag at the gate of the lodge – so that you won’t make any mistakes in going over the limit.” He laughed again, and pointed at a lean hound lying under the counter.

“Hounds are barred; only ‘smell-dogs’ admitted,” he said. “And” – he became quietly serious – “I count on each one of you four men to aid my patrol in keeping the game-laws and the fire-laws and every forest law on the statutes. And I count on you to take out enough fox and mink pelts to pay me for my game – and you yourselves for your labor; for though it is my game by the law of the land, what is mine is no source of pleasure to me unless I share it. Let us work together to keep the streams and coverts and forests well stocked. Good-night.”

About eleven o’clock that evening Abe Storm slunk into the store, and the community rose and fell on him and administered the most terrific beating that a husky young man ever emerged from alive.