Shepherds of the Wild/Chapter 24
Chapter XXIV
The sheep were taking their midday rest, and Hugh and Alice exchanged certain confidences as they kept watch over them, sitting side by side on a dead log. Always, it seemed to them, they had more to tell each other than time would possibly permit. There was only one thing, it seemed to Hugh, that they didn't talk of: his real station in life before he came to Smoky Land. He had never told her of his wealth, of the Old Colonel sitting in the club. For once in his life his credentials were his own manhood and his own personality, and he wanted no others. It was the test, and no irrelevant matters must enter in.
And all at once he paused in the middle of a sentence, staring curiously at the ground. The shadow of their figures in the sunlight was no longer to be seen.
"Good Lord, Alice," he exclaimed. "What's happened to the sun?"
They both looked up at once. And they found it without difficulty. But it was not that potent orb that the long summer days had taught them to respect. It was a feeble sun, a mere red disk in the strange, gray-blue sky.
"Clouds?" Hugh asked. A queer little stir went over his body. It was as if instinct—not yet dead but only blunted in human beings—had spoken within his being, giving him knowledge that his conscious self had not yet grasped. He was angry with himself for the tone. He had tried to keep all urgency out of it, and yet it seemed so breathless, so charged with dread.
"No," the girl answered clearly. "It's smoke."
They were silent a breath. Both of them were testing the direction of the wind. Both of them knew at the same instant that their whole world depended largely upon this. It was not blowing hard at present, yet there was wind enough to sweep the fire through the tree-tops. And, more than anything, they remembered the parched and inflammable condition of the woods and brush.
Both of them discovered the truth the same instant. "We're right in its track," Hugh said.
They waited a long time, hardly speaking. The sky slowly thickened with smoke. They saw it rising, in great billowing clouds, toward Bear Canyon. Listening closely, they heard—at the vague frontier of hearing—the distant crackle of the fire.
All doubt was past. The time for delay was spent. That age-old terror of the wilderness, the forest fire, was sweeping toward them. It was yet distant and they had no inkling of its true origin. And as they listened, the first of the vanguard of fleeing wild creatures—a full-grown buck with magnificent horns and soft eyes—swept past them at top speed.
"You see, Hugh, don't you?" she said rather quietly. "The whole valley seems to be afire, and we've got to run before it. There's no way to hold it off "
"But won't the rangers see the smoke and come?"
"They couldn't come in time. Besides, the high range hides it from the settlements. Unless a gale starts up—or accidents happen—we can drive the sheep out before it. As yet there's no need to leave the sheep."
"Of course not," Hugh agreed. "We can't leave the sheep."
The girl looked up, a wonderful luster in her dark eyes. She was a mountain girl, inured to the terror of the flaming forest, and it was natural that she should retain perfect self-control. But she found herself wondering at this tenderfoot, this man of cities. There is no greater test of the spirit than that slow, remorseless advance of the wall of flame. The sight calls forth dreadful memories from the labyrinthal depths of the germ plasm; it chokes up the heart with cold blood and distills a poison in the nerves, yet he seemed as free from panic as she herself. And he was also the eternal shepherd. He would not leave the sheep.
"We pass the camp on the walk and I'll get the horses," she explained quickly. "It will be hard to control the flock if the fire gets much nearer. And I'll try to take time to snatch a little food to keep us going through the night."
"And your father's lease—it's all lost?"
"No. The grass will come up after the winter rains. If it were just a top fire the underbrush would be even heavier." She turned to the shepherd dog, who now stood gazing, as if entranced, toward the billowing wall of smoke behind them. "Get 'em up, Shep, old boy. We've got to start."
The dog obeyed; they began to drive the flocks in the direction of the foothills. It was hard work for all three to control them. In the first place they missed the guidance of Spot,—gone some days before to join his people. Besides, they were all uneasy and at the very verge of panic from the increasing sound of the fire behind them.
They reached the camp, and Alice left her place to secure the horses. One of them, her own riding bay, came quickly to her hand, but the pack horses were not to be seen. The only explanation was that while her own animal, true to his trust, had remained for his rider to come, the others—terrorized by the fire—had fled in the direction of the foothills. They were hobbled, surely, but by striking down with both fore feet at once, horses learn to make good time even with hobbles. It was not a great disaster, yet it cut down—to an appreciable degree—their chances of saving the flock. It was more difficult for them to keep the flock closely bunched. And both of them knew, and neither of them spoke of it, that in case of the "accidents" that all mountaineers learn—some time in their lives—to expect, it hurt their own chances of getting out alive. Because it impeded his ease of motion, Hugh left his rifle in camp, depending on the pistol at his belt for any emergencies that might arise.
The long afternoon drew to twilight. The fire slowly gained. It came with a rush up the ridges, a veritable charge that drove the wild beasts before it, but it crept like a snail as it descended. The crackle was no longer just a whisper in the air to be drowned out by the slightest sound. It had swollen until it filled the forest, and it had begun to have a strange, roaring quality that fire fighters learn to dread. It meant but one thing: an all-consuming forest and brush fire in which great sheets of flame spring from tree to tree, wherein no living thing may survive. Already a pronounced heat was in the air. The twilight did not fall soft and cool as usual. Worst of all, the wind had begun to increase.
They didn't pause to eat. The girl shared with him the little food she had snatched from the tent—a handful of jerked venison and a few pieces of bread—and they ate it on the march. As the dog worked near her, she slipped scraps of the dried meat into his mouth. This was no time to neglect Shep. The success of their flight depended on his strength and skill.
The shadows lengthened, the sun declined and set, and an ominous glare spread over the sky behind them. And the impression began to grow on both of them that the sheep were constantly more hard to control. They kept dipping into the little glens and draws on each side of their valley; they bunched uneasily, then spread out into little scurrying groups. Their sense of unity seemed lost, and more than once only a quick word, a sharp command, a swift dash about the flanks of the flock kept them from a panic. They did not keep the even gait by which sheep usually move. Sometimes they ran and sometimes stopped, milling.
"I don't understand," Alice told Hugh, in an instant when they were within speaking range of each other. "Sheep usually know what to do better than their herders. And it looks as if they'd run straight away from the fire."
It was true. Even the domestic sheep have not lost all their powers of instinct, and every herder knows that this inner knowledge is often more to be relied upon than his own intelligence. The flocks usually know what is best for them. And many a time a wise and experienced herder will come racing his flocks down from the higher levels just in time to escape a blizzard—without a word of forecast from the weather man. He has simply followed the sheep who in turn have obeyed their own instincts. And Hugh, too, found himself wondering why the flocks seemed so reluctant to flee down into the valley. It was true that their course led them to a narrow pass, bound on each side by steep cliffs and impassable walls of brush, but the flock could pass through with ease. It looked to him as if the sheep did not themselves know where they wished to go, but were undeniably uneasy and vacillating. The thought haunted Hugh, returning again and again, and filling him with a vague discomfort and dread.
There would be light to travel by to-night. The glare in the sky behind them ever brightened, and the eyes kept seeking it with an irresistible apprehension. It cast a red glow over the whole forest world. The warm color deepened as the night encroached upon the twilight, and all semblance of reality faded from the land. It was as if it had been dipped in red wine. The great trees were incarnadine, the canyons swam in red vapor, even the sheep had red wool. No longer was this the green and lovely mountain realm they had known. Rather it was an inferno of mythology, an underworld lighted by sulphurous fires.
From time to time, through the long afternoon, they beheld the march of the wild creatures. All manner of the forest people passed them, sometimes in little groups, sometimes one by one. Often the deer sped by, seemingly almost flying in the long tree-lanes; once a coyote ran yapping, his fur singed by the fire, and once a great bull elk stalked soberly past. He seemed to give no thought to the man that walked behind the sheep,—the same form that had terrorized him that summer day beside the spring. Once a porcupine rattled his quills on a nearby hillside, and far away the brush crinkled and popped as a cougar passed through. And now—in the early night—a magnificent grizzly—that ancient and mystic nobleman of the forest—ambled past him at an awkward run.
But he was no longer gray. The red radiance was upon him, too. Hugh watched him, but for once the sheep paid him no heed. The terror behind them left no room for their usual fears. And the bear slowly reduced his pace to a walk and then stopped altogether.
Hugh couldn't have told why he kept his eyes upon the old bear with such entranced attention. For an instant he forgot his task, the dreadful beauty of the fire-lighted forest, and even Alice, riding back and forth on her horse. He seemed to know that from this shaggy forest creature he was to receive a sign that must not be ignored or missed. "The wild folk show the way," is one of the oldest maxims of the forest, and Hugh had learned his lesson. He was the shepherd, but also he was the forester. And the simple faith, the humbleness, the sure and inner knowledge of the Indian had come to him at last.
The bear seemed distressed. For a moment he stood quite still, then turned his great head this way and that. And then he turned back, running at top speed, toward the fire.
Even before his senses made verification, Hugh knew beyond all question what the sign betokened. While he took one breath he stood strangely silent and bowed, the lines of his face graven deep, his eyes darkened with shadows. Then he straightened. The eyes cleared and looked out straight. The lips set, the muscles seemed to gather and bunch beneath his brown skin,—as if for some crucial test.
Strength was upon him. The dog circled by, seemed to sense it, and paused for an instant at his feet. Hugh listened. The air was charged full with the roar of the fire behind, but there was a new sound too. And far ahead a gray haze lay over the trees.
He signaled to the girl, then motioned toward it. He watched her face, and a great weight came upon his heart when he read in her expression the fact that she also had discerned the truth.
"We can't go on," he said simply. "There's a fire in front, too."