The Fire Flower/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE COMPANY PAULA KEPT.
LESS for the breakfast without which he had left camp than realizing the wisdom to caching his blankets and provisions, Sheldon’s first step was back toward the spot where Buck grazed.
If those within the old cabin meant to seek to escape talking with him they would not stir forth immediately but would peer forth many times, cautiously, to make certain that in reality he was not watching from shelter of the grove. He could dispose of his pack, eat hastily and be again in front of the cabin within less than an hour.
He drew back swiftly, made sure with a glance over his shoulder that the door had remained shut, the shutters of the windows undisturbed, slipped through the fir grove and then broke into a trot, headed up the meadow.
Selecting some tinned goods hurriedly, he rolled everything else, blankets and all, in his canvas, found a hiding place which suited him in a tiny, rocky gorge, piled rocks on top of the cache, and returned for his horse. Buck he led deeper into the forest that lay upon the eastern rim of the valley and left there where there was pasture and water, hobbling him for fear of the long tie rope getting tangled about the bushes which grew under the trees.
When the pack-saddle had been tossed into a clump of these bushes he felt reasonably sure that his outfit was safe for the short time he expected to be away from it. Then, eating as he went, he turned back to the town which Paula, the daughter of Midas, called Johnny’s Luck.
As he came again into the abandoned street he examined each ruined cabin as he passed it, stopping for all that still stood, making his way to the door through more than one weed-grown yard, slipping in at door or window where the buildings were still upon the rim of being habitable.
Nor were his puzzles lessened at the signs everywhere that men, when they had given over these dwellings, had gone in wild haste. They had not taken fittings and furnishings with them, at least nothing cumbersome had gone out.
He could picture the exit from the homes that had been almost a frenzied rushing out of doors flung rudely open and left to gape stupidly after their departing masters. Yes, and mistresses. For it was written in dusty signs that women, too, had walked here and had fled as though from some dread menace.
But to a man knowing the vivid tales of the western country as Sheldon knew them here was a. mystery which must soon grow clear as the memory of half-forgotten stories came back to him.
He saw rude chairs and tables standing idly under dust of many, many years’ accumulation; chairs which had been pushed back violently as men sprang to their feet, some overturned and left to sprawl awkwardly until, as time ran by, they fell apart and in due time came to disintegrate as all other things physical crumble in the world.
He saw pictures tacked to walls, knew that they had been cheap colored prints or newspaper illustrations; thick earthenware dishes and utensils of iron and tin upon more than one stone hearth, invariably the homes of spiders; cupboards where food had lain and rotted, discoloring the unpainted wood; a thousand little homely articles which in the ordinary course of house vacating would have been packed and taken away.
Johnny’s Luck had been a mining town; for no other conceivable reason would men have made a town here at all as long ago as Johnny’s Luck gave every evidence of having been builded. And its life had been that of many another village of the far-out land in the days of the early mining madness.
Rumor of gold, strong rumor of gold, had brought many men and some few women, most of the latter what the world calls bad, some few perhaps what God calls good, to answer the call and the lure.
They had been so sure that they had builded not mere shanties, but solid homes of logs; they had remained here for many months—and then, no doubt, the bottom had fallen out of Johnny’s Luck. The vein had pinched out; the gold was gone.
And then, so did Sheldon reconstruct the past from the dust-covered ruin about him, word had come to Johnny’s Luck of another strike out yonder somewhere, beyond the next ridge, perhaps; perhaps a hundred miles away. That word had come into camp mysteriously as word of gold always travels; men had whispered it to their “pardners” and in its own fashion the word had spread.
There had been that first attempt at stealing away by stealth as some few hoped to be miles from camp before every one knew. Others had seen; men in that day attributed but the one motive to hasty, stealthy departure.
The stealing away had turned into a mad rush. Some one, a nervous man or an excitable woman, had pried out the magic word, “Gold!” And then homes had been deserted with a speed which was like frenzy; a few precious belongings had been snatched up; chairs and even tables overturned, and down the long street of Johnny’s Luck they had gone, fighting for the place at the fore, the whole camp. And, for some reason, they had never come back. Perhaps they had come to learn that Johnny’s Luck was unlucky.
It was simple enough after all, he told himself as he came at length to the base of the knoll upon which stood the cabin into which the girl had gone. Like everything else in the world, simple enough when once one understood.
Up and down the Pacific coast, from tidewater some mountainous hundreds of miles inland, how many towns had grown up like Johnny’s Luck, almost in a night, only to be given over to the wild again, deserted and forgotten in another night. There are many, some still lifting vertical walls, some mere mounds o f grass-grown earth where one may dig and find a child’s tin cup or a broken whisky bottle.
Simple enough when one understood, he pondered, staring at the closed door. But what explanation lay just here; this girl could not have been born when Johnny’s Luck flourished; whence had she come, and why?
It was broad morning, the sun rising clear above the last of the trees so that its light fell upon the two beds of red flowers. On the doorstep lay the bear-skin as he had left it. From the rock and dirt chimney smoke rose. Coming closer to the house he heard now and then a sound of one walking within. He fancied that he heard a voice, hardly more than a whisper.
His purpose taken, he stood watching, waiting. If he had to stay here until some one came out, if he were forced to linger here all day, camp here to-night, he was not going away until the last question was answered.
“I’d be a brute to go off and leave her alone here,” he told himself stubbornly. “Or, perhaps, worse than alone. The poor little devil won’t know how to take care of herself; God knows what she’s up against as it is. Anyway, here I stay!”
The windows remained shuttered; the door stood unopened; the smoke from the chimney grew a faint gray line against the sky and was gone; it was death-still in the house. An hour passed and Sheldon, striding back and forth, on the watch for a possible attempt to slip away through a door which he had found at the rear, grew impatient.
Another hour, and never a sound. Such watching and waiting, with nothing discovered to reward his patience, was the death of what little patience was a part of John Sheldon’s makeup.
“I’ve waited long enough,” he muttered.
He strode straight between the beds of red flowers, up the three steps made of logs, and rapped at the door. The sounds died away, as all sounds seemed to do here, swallowed by the silence, echoless, as though killed by thick walls. So he knocked again, calling out:
“I’ve no habit of prying into other peoples’s business, but I am not used to being treated like a leper, either. Open the door or I shall batter it down.”
Hurried whispers within, then silence. He waited for a moment. Then swinging back his rifle he drove the butt mightily against the door, close to the latch. There was a little cry then, Paula’s voice he was sure, a cry of pure fear.
“Poor little thing,” he thought. “She thinks I’m going to kill her!”
But he struck again and the thick panel of the door, dry and old, cracked. Again, and Paula’s voice again, this time calling:
“Wait! Wait and I will come!”
“No,” he answered in flat stubbornness. “I’ll not wait. I am coming inside. Open the door.”
“You cannot! You must not! What is it that you want here? What have we that you would take away from us? Go back into the world outside. Go quick—before we kill you!”
He laughed savagely.
“You are not going to kill me. And we’ve talked nonsense long enough. I tell you I am not going to hurt you. Who is in there with you? Why doesn’t he talk?”
Whispers, quick, sharp, agitated. But no answer. Sheldon waited, grew suddenly angry and struck with all his might. The door cracked again; two long cracks showed running up and down. But the bar within held and the cracks gave no glimpse of the room’s interior. He struck once more.
“Wait!” Paula’s voice again, strangely quiet. “I am coming.”
He stepped back a little, standing just at the side of the door, his rifle clubbed and lifted. There was so little telling what next to expect here in a land which seemed to him a land of madness. He heard her at the door.
She was taking down the bar. He was sure of it. But why was she so long about it? And it seemed to him that in the simple process she made an unnecessary amount of noise. And she kept talking, rapidly now, her voice raised, her utterances almost incoherent as though she labored under come tremendous excitement:
“Don’t you see I am opening the door? But you must step back, down the steps. I’ll hear you going. I am afraid. You might reach out and seize me. Just a minute now, only a minute. I don’t hear you though. You must go down the steps. Then I will come out; then you can come in. I am hurrying—hurrying as fast as I can.”
It only whetted his suspicion. What was going on just ten feet from him, beyond that wall? There was no loophole through which an out-thrust gun barrel could menace him, he had seen to that. And, if a gun was thrust out as the door opened, he could strike first; he was ready. But if he went back down the steps—
Suddenly he knew. He heard a little scraping sound which, low as it was, rose above the sound of Paula’s young voice. It was at that other door at the back. Some one was there, opening it cautiously. The forest came down close to the house at the back.
He leaped down the steps and ran around the side of the house, of no mind to have them give him the slip this way.
“Hurry!” Paula had heard him, had guessed his purpose as he theirs, and was screaming, “Hurry! He is coming!”
The rear door, little used perhaps, had caught. But as Sheldon raced around the corner of the cabin the door was flung violently open and an astonishingly, wildly uncouth figure shot out, making strange, horrible sounds in his throat as he ran.
It was a man, so tall and gaunt that it seemed rather the caricature of a man. Clad in shirt and trousers, the flying feet were bare. The head was bare, and from it the hair, long and snow white, floated out behind him. The beard, long and unkempt, was as white as the hair of his head.
His eyes—Sheldon saw them looking for one brief moment straight into his own—were the burning, brilliant eyes of a madman. Had there been doubt in the case of the girl there was room for no doubt here. The man was only too clearly a maniac.
Just the one look into the terrible eyes was given to Sheldon. The man ran as Paula had run this morning, but with a greater, more frantic speed. Crying out strange, broken fragments of words he dashed into the trees. And Sheldon stopped.
Paula was still in the house. With little chance to overtake the man, with no wish to have them both escape him, Sheldon whirled and running with all the speed in him, came to the open door. It slammed in his face; Paula, too, had just reached it. But not yet had she had time to make it fast. He threw his weight against it; he could hear her panting and crying out in terror. The door flew open. He was in the house.
But now she was running to the other door. The bar there was still in its place. Her hands lost no time now, but whipped it out, dropped it clattering to the bare floor, jerked the door open.
She was on the steps, outside when Sheldon’s arms closed about her. She screamed and tore at his arms as he swept her off of her feet. He marveled at the strength in her; he felt the muscles of her body against his and they were like iron. But he held her.
She struck at his face, beating at him with hard little fists. But he held her. And at that she had in her all the fierceness of a mountain cat. She was pantherine in her rage that flashed at him from her eyes, in the supple strength of her body, in all the fierceness which he had whipped to the surface.
Though she struggled, he brought her back into the cabin. He even managed to slam the door and, while he held her and she beat at him, to drop the bar back into place. He carried her across the room to a tumbled bunk there and threw her down upon it, standing between her and the rear door, still open.
Suddenly she was quite still. She lay there, her breast shaking to the rage and fear that shone in her eyes. She did not seek to move, but lay breathing deeply, watching him.
From somewhere far out in the woods there floated to them a strange cry billowing weirdly through the stillness.
Sheldon stepped across the room and picked up his rifle.