Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/342

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

beside him, a low exclamation and a crisp voice that said heartily: "I'll help you, Adolph!"

Scarce looking up, though grateful, Adolph knew that hands less large but equally tender with his own lifted that dear treasure to its place and helped him compose it as for a comfortable sleep.

Salzberg murmured fervent thanks and looked up to ejaculate in amazement: "Py Gott! Henry Harrington!"

"The fire is coming fast," said Henry; "get along with you."

Salzberg put his children beside him on the seat, and clucked to the old horse and drove away—away from the cliffs of fire—away toward the open country—through the pungent bitter smoke, with its smell of burning codfish—Salzberg who had kindled that first warehouse down on the dock near seven hours before.

"Dam' dis man, Boland," he sobbed. "Dam' de Supreme Court. Dam' me! Dam' every t'ing but my two modderless little kids!" Salzberg, clucking thickly to the old horse, stretched a sheltering arm around his children.

"Now, wouldn't that break your heart!" exclaimed Harrington, but stood gazing after for only a minute; for he had run head-on into this Salzberg tragedy while on most personal business bent, and was immediately under way once more, pointing his course to the edge of town and up the side-hill by a short cut through scrubby fir trees to the bluff on which Humboldt House had been reared so proudly. "Billie! My Lord, what an awful blow it's been to her! Why didn't I think of that side of it before," he was reproaching himself as he plunged upward. "She wasn't to blame.