The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
Flower o' the Flame
OOVERHEAD through the foliage, a sky was visible whose ebon darkness called to mind a thundercloud. Beneath it veils and whorls of smoke fled athwart the wreck. The heat was nearly intolerable; the voice of the fire was loud—snappings and cracklings and sharp detonations making an embroidery of sound upon a texture of sustained roaring like that of surf.
A heavy crashing made Alan turn his head, and he saw a terrified bear break cover and plunge on into the farther thickets.
Two minutes had passed of the ten when a sharp crackling brought him suddenly to a sitting position, to find that the Indian had touched a match to the pyre before departing. At Alan's feet the twigs were blazing merrily.
It would have been easy to snatch his limbs away, but another thought was in his mind: he did not move more than to strain his feet apart as far as their bonds permitted. He was conscious of scorching heat even through his cowhide hunting boots; but a minute sufficed: within its span a tongue of flame licked up, wrapped itself round the hempen cord, and ate it through. Immediately Alan kicked his feet free and crawled from the pyre.
As for his hands—Alan's hunting-knife was still in its sheath belted to the small of his back. Tearing at the belt with his hampered fingers, he contrived to shift it round within comparatively easy reach. Withdrawing and conveying the blade to his mouth, he gripped it between his teeth and severed the cords round his wrists.
Already the glare was silhouetting the trees not a hundred yards away. Before Alan could turn and run he saw the flames bridge fifty yards at a bound and set a dead pine blazing.
And then he was pelting like a madman across the clearing. Presently the trail branched right and left; Alan darted to the left at a venture, and soon broke from the forest to the shore of a lake, within few hundred feet of the dam that choked its outlet—a substantial dam, well-banked and timbered, through whose spillway a heavy volume of water cascaded with a roar.
A glance showed Alan that his only way of escape was via the dam, and that there was a canoe at mid-lake bearing to the farther shore Judith Trine and the Indian. Suddenly Jacob turned his head sharply and dropped the paddle. The next instant a bullet from a Winchester .30 kicked up the pebbles a few feet in advance of Alan.
He quickened his pace; the next bullet fell closer, while the third actually bit the earth beneath his running feet as he gained the dam. Exasperated, he pulled up, whipped out his pistol and fired without aim. And he noted that the distance between dam and canoe had lessened perceptibly, thanks to the strong current sucking through the spillway.
His shot flew wide, but instinctively his finger closed again upon the trigger, and coincident with the report he saw the paddle in the bow of the canoe snap in twain, its blade falling overboard. Then the Indian fired again, his bullet droning past Alan's ear. As he fired in response Jacob started, dropped his rifle into the lake, clawed at his throat, and crumpled up in the bow of the canoe.
Alan turned and ran along the dam toward two heavy timbers that bridged the spillway.
Then a glance aside brought him up with a thrill of horror: the suck of the overflow had drawn the canoe within a hundred yards of the spillway. The dead Indian in its bow, the living woman helpless in its stern, it swept onward to destruction.
A moment later Alan found himself at the brink of the spillway, staring down into a chasm thirty feet in depth, wherein the cascade broke upon a huddle of jagged boulders.
His next actions were unpremeditated. He ran out upon the bridge, threw himself down upon the innermost timber, and calculated the drop to the glassy brink immediately below—not less than a fathom. And the canoe was now within a hundred feet.
A swift glance gauged its course: Alan turned, dropped his legs in the space between the timbers, and let his body fall backward, arms extended, and swung braced by his feet beneath the outer timber.
He was aware of the canoe hurtling onward, its sharp prow aimed directly for his head. In an instant hands closed around his wrists, a tremulous weight tore at his arms, and with an effort of inconceivable difficulty he began to lift the woman up out of the foaming jaws of death.
Somehow that impossible feat was achieved, somehow the woman gained a hold upon his body and contrived to clamber over him to the timbers, and somehow he in turn pulled himself up to safety. Later he became aware that the woman had crawled to safety on the farther shore; he pulled himself together and imitated her example. Then he discovered the face of Judith Trine close to his, and he heard her voice, barely audible above the voices of conflagration and cascade:
"You fool! Why did you save me? I tell you, I have sworn your death"
The grotesqueness of it all broke upon him and he laughed hysterically, waving her aside.
"Oh, go to the devil!" he cackled insanely. …
Darkness followed. A flash of lightning seemed to flame between them and he lapsed into unconsciousness. …
When he roused, it was with a shiver. Rain was falling in torrents. Across the lake clouds of steam enveloped the fires that fainted beneath the deluge. A hissing noise filled the world above the roaring of the spillway.
He was alone.
But in his hand he found—a rose.