第40章

To simulate the creeping animals,and fall to the ground on hands and knees,feel his way through the underbrush when the smoke was densest,or take advantage of its momentary lifting,and without uncertainty,mistake,or hesitation glide from tree to tree in one undeviating course,was possible only to an experienced woodsman.To keep his reason and insight so clear as to be able in the midst of this bewildering confusion to shape that course so as to intersect the wild and unknown tract of an inexperienced,frightened wanderer belonged to Low,and Low alone.He was making his way against the wind towards the fire.He had reasoned that she was either in comparative safety to windward of it,or he should meet her being driven towards him by it,or find her succumbed and fainting at its feet.To do this he must penetrate the burning belt,and then pass under the blazing dome.He was already upon it;he could see the falling fire dropping like rain or blown like gorgeous blossoms of the conflagration across his path.The space was lit up brilliantly.The vast shafts of dull copper cast no shadow below,but there was no sign nor token of any human being.For a moment the young man was at fault.It was true this hidden heart of the forest bore no undergrowth;the cool matted carpet of the aisles seemed to quench the glowing fragments as they fell.Escape might be difficult,but not impossible,yet every moment was precious.He leaned against a tree,and sent his voice like a clarion before him:"Teresa!"There was no reply.He called again.A faint cry at his back from the trail he had just traversed made him turn.Only a few paces behind him,blinded and staggering,but following like a beaten and wounded animal,Teresa,halted,knelt,clasped her hands,and dumbly held them out before her.

"Teresa!"he cried again,and sprang to her side.

She caught him by the knees,and lifted her face imploringly to his.

"Say that again!"she cried,passionately."Tell me it was Teresa you called,and no other!You have come back for me!You would not let me die here alone!"He lifted her tenderly in his arms,and cast a rapid glance around him.It might have been his fancy,but there seemed a dull glow in the direction he had come.

"You do not speak!"she said."Tell me!You did not come here to seek her?""Whom?"he said quickly.

"Nellie!"

With a sharp cry he let her slip to the ground.All the pent-up agony,rage,and mortification of the last hour broke from him in that inarticulate outburst.Then,catching her hands again,he dragged her to his level.

"Hear me!"he cried,disregarding the whirling smoke and the fiery baptism that sprinkled them--"hear me!If you value your life,if you value your soul,and if you do not want me to cast you to the beasts like Jezebel of old,never--never take that accursed name again upon your lips.Seek her--HER?Yes!Seek her to tie her like a witch's daughter of hell to that blazing tree!"He stopped."Forgive me,"he said in a changed voice.

"I'm mad,and forgetting myself and you.Come."Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight that had passed across her face,he lifted her in his arms.

"Which way are you going?"she asked,passing her hands vaguely across his breast,as if to reassure herself of his identity.

"To our camp by the scarred tree,"he replied.

"Not there,not there,"she said,hurriedly."I was driven from there just now.I thought the fire began there until I came here."Then it was as he feared.Obeying the same mysterious law that had launched this fatal fire like a thunderbolt from the burning mountain crest five miles away into the heart of the Carquinez Woods,it had again leaped a mile beyond,and was hemming them between two narrowing lines of fire.But Low was not daunted.

Retracing his steps through the blinding smoke,he strode off at right angles to the trail near the point where he had entered the wood.It was the spot where he had first lifted Nellie in his arms to carry her to the hidden spring.If any recollection of it crossed his mind at that moment,it was only shown in his redoubled energy.He did not glide through the thick underbrush,as on that day,but seemed to take a savage pleasure in breaking through it with sheer brute force.Once Teresa insisted upon relieving him of the burden of her weight,but after a few steps she staggered blindly against him,and would fain have recourse once more to his strong arms.And so,alternately staggering,bending,crouching,or bounding and crashing on,but always in one direction,they burst through the jealous rampart,and came upon the sylvan haunt of the hidden spring.The great angle of the half-fallen tree acted as a harrier to the wind and drifting smoke,and the cool spring sparkled and bubbled in the almost translucent air.He laid her down beside the water,and bathed her face and hands.As he did so his quick eye caught sight of a woman's handkerchief lying at the foot of the disrupted root.

Dropping Teresa's hand,he walked towards it,and with the toe of his moccasin gave it one vigorous kick into the ooze at the overflow of the spring.He turned to Teresa,but she evidently had not noticed the act.

"Where are you?"she asked,with a smile.

Something in her movement struck him!He came towards her,and bending down looked into her face."Teresa!Good God!--look at me!What has happened?"She raised her eyes to his.There was a slight film across them;the lids were blackened;the beautiful lashes gone forever!

"I see you a little now,I think,"she said,with a smile,passing her hands vaguely over his face."It must have happened when he fainted,and I had to drag him through the blazing brush;both my hands were full,and I could not cover my eyes.""Drag whom?"said Low,quickly.

"Why,Dunn."

"Dunn!He here?"said Low,hoarsely.