Leave Her to Heaven (24 page)

Toward the end of the second week they moved farther downstream, below the mouth of the Sedgwick, and camped on a high bank in a bend of the river, close against the forest. The spot was a pleasant one, a tumbling brook coming steeply down from the hills to sing in the night beside the tents; and while the guides made camp, Ruth and Ellen drew apart together, and Ruth said appreciatively:

‘This would be a beautiful place to set a house.'

Ellen looked at the hills which came steeply down behind them and shivered with distaste. ‘It's too cramped,' she said. ‘The hills try to push you into the water. I like space around me, level places.'

‘Was it level at Back of the Moon?'

‘No, but the hills were friendly, not too steep and high.' There lay suddenly a tragic sorrow in her tones. ‘We were so darned happy there,' she murmured. ‘I don't suppose Richard will ever want to go back — but I want to, some day.'

Ruth wished they might go back together. Perhaps there or in some like retreat they could recapture what they had lost; and after the next day's fishing — she and Sime had gone down river — she came back to camp in a fine excitement.

‘I've found a place where someone really ought to build a cabin,' she told them at dinner. ‘Down where Sime and I
fished today. It's an old intervale, I suppose; a level tract shaped like a triangle, running way back from the river. But it's high enough to be dry, and there are a lot of elms along the water, beautiful great trees; and the forest is so open it's almost like a park.' She proposed that they move camp down there. ‘It's ever so much nicer than this,' she said; and she called to Sime: ‘How far is it down to where we fished today?'

‘Four-five miles.'

Ellen listened indifferently, but Harland asked questions, and Ruth saw his interest was caught, and thought he might create another Back of the Moon where he and Ellen could be happy together as they once had been. She elaborated her description. ‘I didn't explore it, of course, but even from the river we could see its possibilities. It could be made into a regular Garden of Eden.'

Harland smiled at her enthusiasm. ‘Only Adam and Eve need apply?' he suggested; and he said: ‘We'll look it over. Plenty of fishing for all of us, down there, Sime?'

‘Plenty of fishing,' Sime assured him. ‘But I don't know as there's many fish. They wouldn't do anything today, with this danged low water. What we need's a good rain, to raise the river.'

‘Well then, we'll pass up the fishing and go exploring,' Harland declared; and Ruth, realizing that Ellen had asked no question, had taken no part in their conversation, said eagerly:

‘You'll love it, Ellen.'

‘Oh, I'll stay here,' Ellen told her. ‘You two go. Leick and I will keep camp, maybe fish a while in the afternoon. I want to try the big pool up at the mouth of the Sedgwick.'

‘You go with Dick and I'll keep camp,' Ruth urged. ‘Sime can tell Leick and Tom the place I mean. You'll want to see it, Ellen.'

But Ellen persisted in her decision; and in the morning Ruth and Sime, young Tom Pickett and Harland, set off down river together. The day was still, and promised to be hot, and Sime said: ‘There was smoke in the air yest'day. I could smell it.
Fire somewhere off to the south of us, I'd judge.' There was in fact a faint haze between them and the sun.

They fished a pool or two on the way downstream, and Ruth got into a fine salmon of twenty pounds or better. She lost it after fifteen minutes, and Harland — he and Tom had paused to watch her — called his sympathy; but she was more relieved than otherwise. ‘I love it when they take the fly, and while they're fighting,' she said. ‘But when they're tired out and it's just a question of hauling them in, I'd rather see them get away.'

‘You're not like Ellen,' he commented. ‘She hates to lose them.'

She laughed. ‘I guess I just haven't got the killer instinct,' she confessed, and was puzzled by the sudden shadow in his eyes.

The salmon took that morning, though half-heartedly. Ruth got fast to another, Harland to two; but they all rose short, were lightly hooked, and so escaped. While he played the last, Ruth and Sime went on to the spot she remembered; and Sime set a fire going, and when the others arrived to report the salmon's escape, he was ready to serve broiled grilse and canned peas and toast and marmalade and good black tea.

The haze across the sky had thickened, and the sun itself was a red and angry ball, and Sime said thoughtfully: ‘There's a fire not far off. I can smell smoke plain. Looks like the wind's coming up from the south, too. If it does, that fire'll move this way.'

But a rampart of high hills walled the river on the south, and any wind that blew was high above them. The air here by the water scarce stirred at all, so Ruth and Harland were unconcerned; and after lunch they went exploring, plunging into the forest, breaking through the fringe of small, close-grown young spruces which above their luncheon ground bordered the river. The little trees, their tenacious branches interlaced, formed a stubborn barricade; but these two fought their way, scratched and panting, to larger growth, to more open ground. Ruth lost her hat, and when she stooped to recover it her hair became entangled and Harland came to free it.

‘“Absalom, my son, my son,”' he said laughingly. ‘Say, you're a wreck! I thought you said this place was like a park! Some park!'

‘It opens out farther on,' she promised. ‘You'll see!' And when they had gone a few rods more she cried triumphantly: ‘There! Now you can see down river.'

This was true. Tall hardwoods, beech and maple and an occasional oak, grew here more sparingly; and between their trunks he caught at some distance the gleam of water. ‘It's pretty good at that,' he admitted. ‘And it's well above flood level too.' But the ground was a tangle of underbrush, and the rotting trunks of trees fallen long ago made many a barricade, and he pointed this out.

‘Well, I couldn't see them from the river,' she admitted. ‘But they could all be cleared away, and you'd cut some of the standing trees, to make vistas.' She was eager, for Ellen's sake and for his too, to impart to him her enthusiasm; and she said in gay challenge: ‘Come on, don't keep finding fault! Let's pretend we're pioneers, choosing our own land in the wilderness. If pioneers were discouraged by a little underbrush they'd never get anywhere!'

He laughed agreeably. ‘Well, it has some possibilities, at that,' he assented. ‘Now let's see. Where would we build our cabin?'

‘We must look for just the right place,' she reminded him, and they explored, floundering through boggy pockets, clambering over windfalls, brushing aside the tangle of young growth, till they found a knoll with drainage on all sides. She was sure this was the perfect spot, but he pointed out that they must build near water. So they pushed on, and discovered a hidden brook where the tiny pools were alive with small trout, and they dropped twigs on the water, laughing when the fingerlings struck at them hungrily; and Ruth declared she could almost see the disgusted disappointment on their little fish faces.

‘Let's not tease them any more,' she begged. ‘Come on.'

So they went deeper into the forest till they reached steeply rising ground, and Harland estimated that they were half a mile
or more from the river, that there were here sixty or seventy acres of level, fertile, well-drained soil.

‘There's enough for a real farm,' he exclaimed. ‘A man could raise his own corn and beans and peas, everything he'd need, and a couple of pigs, and a cow or two.' His eyes were shining, and Ruth saw that he was happier than he had been in these months — almost a year now — since Danny's death; and she wished Ellen were here in her place. But since Ellen was not here, she shared his pleasure.

They wandered for an hour or two, playing this game of make believe together as gaily as children, forgetful of time. Ruth saw everything through his eyes, and Harland was increasingly pleased with each new discovery. The brook plunged down from the hills over a cascade a dozen feet high. ‘There's your water power,' he cried. ‘If there's as much current as that even in a dry season, there'd always be plenty for light and heat and cooking, all you'd need. You know, Ruth, a man really could make a fine place here, with a little time and work.'

‘It's a long way from everything,' she suggested, seeking by raising objections to stimulate his eager imagination.

‘It's not a long way from a salmon river,' he reminded her gleefully. ‘Nor from a trout brook! Nor from good hunting! And besides, there's room to put in a runway long enough for small planes. Run it toward the river and you could take off over the water. The fair weather wind here is apt to be that way.'

His word reminded them that the wind was stirring in the tops of the trees above their heads. They had been till now too absorbed to notice this. ‘It's getting dark, too,' he said, and looked at his watch. ‘Only half past three. Must be clouding up! Maybe we'll get a rain to raise the river.'

‘I smell smoke pretty strongly,' she remarked, remembering Sime's concern. ‘Do you suppose that fire is near us?'

‘I guess not,' he said, and he lay prone to drink from the brook. In this moment's silence she heard, or thought she heard, a distant call. When he stood up, wiping his wet lips, she asked:

‘Did you hear anything?'

‘No. Say, that water's cold as ice.'

‘I think I did. Listen!'

The call did not come again, but the wind blew harder, and a thread of warmer air came searching through the trees. She felt it on her cheek, and she saw that Harland felt it too; for he turned sharply, looking toward the river. But he did not speak of it. Instead, so casually that she knew he was uneasy, he said: ‘Well, the boys will be wondering where we are. We'd better be getting back.' He looked around almost wistfully: ‘But I hate to leave this place. I'll come here again some day.'

He turned to retrace their way, and she followed him; but at once he stopped. ‘I heard someone calling then,' he declared, and listened, and cupped his hands and halloed and listened again. The distant cry was repeated, but the freshening wind shredded the sound and tossed it every way. He shouted once more, had this time no answer.

‘They can't hear us,' she suggested. ‘The wind's from them to us.'

He nodded and set out again, this time at a fast pace, but then he slowed. ‘I guess I'm excited,' he confessed. ‘We'll be a little careful, take a straight line.' And as they went on, he explained how to do this. ‘Take two trees in line in front of you. Then when you come to the first one, get another in line beyond the second. I think the yelling was off this way.'

But within two hundred yards, they came back to the brook again. He laughed. ‘That must have been an echo I heard,' he decided. ‘But the brook will bring us back to the river.'

She followed him easily, keeping far enough behind so that branches displaced by his passing would not hit her when they swung back. The brook meandered, and there were alders and cedars along its bank, but Harland would not leave it now. Once she thought she heard distant, shouting voices; but they could do no more than they were doing, so they did not speak.

After a long time, fifteen or twenty minutes, the brook brought them to the river. They were both hot and panting from their haste, and from the dry and stifling air; but when they came into
the open by the waterside, they stopped still, startled into silence by what they saw.

For the sky to the south and east was all one pall of smoke; and against that dark mass, along the crest of the ridge that walled the river, not a mile away downstream, they saw the red flicker of hungry flames.

Ruth, drawing near him, was the first to speak. ‘That's bad, isn't it, Dick?' she said quietly.

‘Look!' he cried. ‘The fire's flowing down that hill like lava. It's halfway down to the river already, just since we've been standing here.'

‘I can feel the heat of it,' she agreed.

He took her arm. ‘Come along,' he said. ‘The boys are upstream, around that first bend.'

They hurried that way, half-running, silent, side by side.

When Ruth and Harland came to the canoes, the men were not there; but they saw Sime a quarter-mile away up the shore and shouted, and he heard and called in turn to Tom and then came running. From the fire down river, smoke rolled swirling toward them, so thick it made them choke and cough; and Harland wetted his handkerchief and told Ruth to tie it across her mouth and nose.

‘Better wet your hat, too, and tuck your hair up into it,' he advised. She wore an old soft felt, and she obeyed him; and then Sime reached them, and bade her get into the canoe.

‘We'll start,' he told Harland. ‘Fire's coming fast! Tom'll be right along. He's in the woods, looking for you. We thought you was lost.'

Ruth, wise enough to do as she was told without protest, stepped into the canoe, and Sime pushed off and began to pole upstream along the north bank, the canoe surging under his strong efforts. Ruth turned to look back to where Harland stood, watching for Tom Pickett to appear; and she saw that the fire
down river had reached the stream side. The strong south wind, pouring over the ridges like a waterfall, created a tremendous pinwheel of racing drafts above the river itself, smoke and sparks and an occasional burning fragment flying high as though flung by an explosion; and she saw a tall tree on the north bank suddenly flare like a torch. The great fire had passed so easily the barrier of the river! Then thickening smoke, flowing up the deep channel among the hills where the river ran, hid the flames from her, and a moment later Harland's figure too was obscured.

She protested to Sime: ‘We can't leave Mr. Harland. Something may have happened to Tom.'

‘Tom's all right. Thev'll catch up with us,' he promised, and made the canoe bound with his strong poling.

She was astonished that the fire could have come upon them so quickly, and said so; and Sime grunted, between thrusts with the pole: ‘Wind — came up — strong! — It'll outrun — a horse!'

She removed the handkerchief, bone-dry now from the hot air, and wetted it again, and secured it across her mouth and nose. Over the ridges south of the river and abeam of them heavy smoke came rolling down the slopes, and she saw that they were racing across the face of the fire. Escape down river, since the flames had bridged the stream, was cut off. She wondered how far they must go to get out of its path.

It seemed a long time — it may have been half an hour, a mile or more of distance — before she heard behind them the clack of paddle against gunwale and looked back and saw the other canoe almost upon them, Harland paddling, Tom using the pole. She reached back in the canoe and took her own paddle and tried to use it; but she was awkward at it and Sime after a moment said shortly — for he was short of breath:

‘Leave be! I'll handle her.'

So Ruth put the paddle down, feeling the haste in him, trembling with excitement but unafraid. The other canoe kept its place just behind them, but Harland was no longer paddling now, and she saw that he too had something tied across his face. Then Sime began to cough uncontrollably, and he poled the nose
of the canoe ashore while he fashioned a mask to protect his mouth and nose, and Tom held his canoe beside them and Harland asked her quietly:

‘All right?'

‘Fine. But I'm no help.'

‘We'll be out of this soon,' he promised.

But the smoke was thicker, and her eyes were smarting, and her hands were parched by the heat. She dipped them in the water; and Sime took his pole and they raced upstream for another mile or so, till Ruth began to think — as though of a safe refuge — that they were nearing camp. The campground, she remembered, was close against a spruce wood where the fire might run; nevertheless instinctively she felt they would find safety there.

Then they rounded a bend in the river and saw flames atop the ridge that flanked the stream. The ridge was well back from the water, but already the fire began to flow down the slope toward them, the wind casting brands like scouts ahead. Sime after a moment once more nosed the canoe ashore.

‘We'll go overboard, soak our clothes,' he directed. ‘Wrap a sweater or something around your head, ma'am. It's going to be hot, the next half mile, till we pass the front of it; but then the river swings north again and we'll have it behind us.'

She obeyed him, as did Harland; and then they went on, racing past that nearing mass of fire. Before they were clear of its path, embers that hissed as they were extinguished began to drop in the water all around them; and once a small red spark fell into the canoe itself and was lost in the water which, draining from ber wet garments, lay half an inch deep under Ruth's feet.

They rounded the point and put the fire behind them and for a few minutes followed this northward reach of the river, till in a wide easy curve it began to swing westerly again. They could see no great distance now, for smoke was everywhere; and the roar of the fire was in the air like the rumble of an earthquake, shaking them. West and then southwest the river swung, and so did they;
and Ruth recognized this great bend and knew the camp site was not half a mile ahead. Soon, even through the smoke, they would be able to see the dingy white of the tents.

But when they came nearer, she saw where the tents had stood the hot licking glare of flames; and a moment later she uttered a low cry. For ahead of them the fire had crossed the river, its skirmishers seizing a bridgehead on the north bank, from which the forces of destruction spread up and down stream and went racing on through the forest to the north.

Without a word and without hesitation, Sime turned the canoe. Ruth asked no questions. Back in the wide bend, a gravel bar well away from either shore divided the channel. Sime poled toward this, and Tom followed him. They landed on the bar. The hot and smothering air seemed to sear her lungs, and — holding her breath — Ruth wetted Harland's handkerchief again and replaced it.

Sime said hoarsely: ‘We've got to stay here. We'll keep mostly under water, wait it out.' He stepped overside in the shallows. ‘Out you come, ma'am. We'll sink the canoes, keep 'em wet, so we'll have 'em when we can travel again.'

The water around her legs was deliciously cool. Ruth waded deeper and sat down on the bottom, only her head above the surface. She soaked her sweater and made of it a sort of turban that was also like a tent, covering her head completely. After a moment, relieved by breathing the cool, filtered air, she looked to see what the others were doing. The three men scooped rocks and gravel into the canoes, then waded to waist depth and filled the canoes and sank them, and Sime said to her:

‘Now you come sit in this one, ma'am. Help hold it down.' He shifted the canoe into deeper water till, seated on the thwart, she had only her head above the surface.

‘There,' he said with a dry humor. ‘Well, we've got grandstand seats for whatever's coming, anyway.'

Harland drew near, squatting beside her, his face hidden under the heavy flannel shirt he had stripped off to wrap around his head. ‘Real adventure,' he said cheerfully.

‘I wonder where Ellen is.'

‘Leick will take care of her.'

‘They're probably worried about us.'

‘We're all right, and so are they,' he insisted.

She said frankly: ‘I'm scared to death. I guess I'm not a great big outdoors girl.'

He touched her arm, his hand groping under water to find hers. ‘You don't sound scared!'

‘Probably I'm not, really. But I will be tomorrow after it's all over.'

He laughed. ‘You can be as scared as you damned please, tomorrow,' he agreed.

Thus began for them long hours of passive endurance. They were in a backwater by the bar, where no current flowed at all; and the water was their fortress. With only their heads above the surface, they crouched like animals, warily watching their enemy.

The fire, as though sure now of its prey, approached them with a certain deliberation. Ruth opened a slit in the folds of her sweater so that she could see. The wide bend of the river where they had elected to stay drew a half circle around a bold hill which rose steeply three or four hundred feet above the water. Its bulk acted for a while as a shield in that quarter, and just here the river was too wide for the fire to cross. But downstream and upstream the barrier had been passed, and on the north bank, working across the wind, these flanking fires crept nearer. Presently too the main conflagration topped the hill on the south bank and rolled down toward them. Smoke, whirling and eddying, at one moment black as night, at the next shot through with the red glare of the flames, walled them in; and by the increasing heat they knew the fire drew close on either side. More and more often they dipped completely under water to wet their headcoverings, thus winning brief respites from discomfort.

The smoke was so heavy that except for the red glare of the flames, day was already almost as dark as night and they did not know when dusk came down. By that time the two fires on the northern bank had met, and on the other side the trees along the
water were ablaze. The fire fed hungrily on the heavy stand of second growth spruce and hemlock. Once when the swirling, scorching wind for a moment swept the smoke aside, Ruth saw that the whole face of the hill on the south bank was a towering wall of flames up which swept serpent torches roaring to the sky; a wall so steep it seemed about to topple down on them. Then the smoke shut in again, sucking and shuttling in the terrific drafts generated by this blast furnace all around.

Even through the soaked sweater which covered her head, the heat was almost unbearable; and when she dipped under water and lifted her head again, the water in the sweater began at once to turn to steam. The river itself, here in the shallows where no current ran, was milk warm, and she wondered if it would grow hotter and hotter till they were boiled alive like so many lobsters. The notion made her laugh, near hysteria, and Harland asked what the matter was and she told him her thought and he said sternly:

‘Stop it! Don't think about anything! Just keep down, keep wet, be passive. It can't last long as bad as this.'

Yet time went on, and the thundering, crackling roar of the fire seemed to fill the world; and the swirling fumes came chokingly. Only by bringing her nostrils close down to the surface of the water, could she breathe clear, sweet, smoke-free air. The fire was like a great herd of cattle stampeding, in whose path they lay while the heavy hooves went pounding by their ears. When now and then she parted the sweater's folds to peer out, the murky darkness all around them was shot with falling sparks and brands; and sometimes these burning branches were large enough so that even after they struck the water, upward-thrusting twigs and stubs which had not been submerged continued to wear small flames, like candle-torches dotting the surface of the stream. Some of these floating brands were astonishingly large, giving her a measure of the powerful suction of the updraft from the fire, which had lifted them into the tornado of the upper air.

Eventually it seemed to Ruth there came a lull, as though the fires were dying; but when she spoke of this, Harland said: ‘Fires
always quiet down at night. This will start up again in the morning.'

‘Must we stay here all night?'

‘Yes, and half tomorrow probably, till it burns down.'

The immensity of that prospect stunned her. She lost all sense of the reality of this experience. The lightness of her body, almost completely submerged and upborne by the water, made her seem to float, and she clung to the sunken canoe in which she sat, grateful for this firm grip on the substantial world. Once Harland suggested that in shallower water she might lie down with only her face exposed; but Ruth said she was all right as she was. Yet a sort of stupor crept through her, and the warm water made her sleepy, so that sometimes she nodded. He stayed beside her, and after a while he gripped and held her hand, and it was good to know she was not alone. Time stood still — yet somehow the long night passed.