The Flaming Forest

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THE FLAMING FOREST

BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

AUTHOR OF THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN, THE COUNTRY BEYOND, THE
ALASKAN, ETC.

THE FLAMING FOREST

I

An hour ago, under the marvelous canopy of the blue northern sky,
David Carrigan, Sergeant in His Most Excellent Majesty's Royal
Northwest Mounted Police, had hummed softly to himself, and had
thanked God that he was alive. He had blessed McVane,
superintendent of "N" Division at Athabasca Landing, for detailing
him to the mission on which he was bent. He was glad that he was
traveling alone, and in the deep forest, and that for many weeks
his adventure would carry him deeper and deeper into his beloved
north. Making his noonday tea over a fire at the edge of the
river, with the green forest crowding like an inundation on three
sides of him, he had come to the conclusion--for the hundredth
time, perhaps--that it was a nice thing to be alone in the world,
for he was on what his comrades at the Landing called a "bad
assignment."

"If anything happens to me," Carrigan had said to McVane, "there
isn't anybody in particular to notify. I lost out in the matter of
family a long time ago."

He was not a man who talked much about himself, even to the
superintendent of "N" Division, yet there were a thousand who
loved Dave Carrigan, and many who placed their confidences in him.
Superintendent Me Vane had one story which he might have told, but
he kept it to himself, instinctively sensing the sacredness of it.
Even Carrigan did not know that the one thing which never passed
his lips was known to McVane.

Of that, too, he had been thinking an hour ago. It was the thing
which, first of all, had driven him into the north. And though it
had twisted and disrupted the earth under his feet for a time, it
had brought its compensation. For he had come to love the north
with a passionate devotion. It was, in a way, his God. It seemed
to him that the time had never been when he had lived any other
life than this under the open skies. He was thirty-seven now. A
bit of a philosopher, as philosophy comes to one in a sun-cleaned
and unpolluted air, A good-humored brother of humanity, even when
he put manacles on other men's wrists; graying a little over the
temples--and a lover of life. Above all else he was that. A lover
of life. A worshiper at the shrine of God's Country.

So he sat, that hour ago, deep in the wilderness eighty miles
north of Athabasca Landing, congratulating himself on the present
conditions of his existence. A hundred and eighty miles farther on
was Fort McMurray, and another two hundred beyond that was
Chipewyan, and still beyond that the Mackenzie and its fifteen-
hundred-mile trail to the northern sea. He was glad there was no
end to this world of his. He was glad there were few people in it.
But these people he loved. That hour ago he had looked out on the
river as two York boats had forged up against the stream, craft
like the long, slim galleys of old, brought over through the
Churchill and Clearwater countries from Hudson's Bay. There were
eight rowers in each boat. They were singing. Their voices rolled
between the walls of the forests. Their naked arms and shoulders
glistened in the sun. They rowed like Vikings, and to him they
were symbols of the freedom of the world. He had watched them
until they were gone up-stream, but it was a long time before the
chanting of their voices had died away. And then he had risen from
beside his tiny fire, and had stretched himself until his muscles
cracked. It was good to feel the blood running red and strong in
one's veins at the age of thirty-seven. For Carrigan felt the
thrill of these days when strong men were coming out of the north
--days when the glory of June hung over the land, when out of the
deep wilderness threaded by the Three Rivers came romance and
courage and red-blooded men and women of an almost forgotten
people to laugh and sing and barter for a time with the outpost
guardians of a younger and more progressive world. It was north of
Fifty-Four, and the waters of a continent flowed toward the Arctic
Sea. Yet soon would the strawberries be crushing red underfoot;
the forest road was in bloom, scarlet fire-flowers reddened the
trail, wild hyacinths and golden-freckled violets played hide-
and-seek with the forget-me-nots in the meadows, and the sky was a
great splash of velvety blue. It was the north triumphant--at the
edge of civilization; the north triumphant, and yet paying its
tribute. For at the other end were waiting the royal Upper Ten
Thousand and the smart Four Hundred with all the beau monde behind
them, coveting and demanding that tribute to their sex--the silken
furs of a far country, the life's blood and labor of a land
infinitely beyond the pale of drawing-rooms and the whims of
fashion.

Carrigan had thought of these things that hour ago, as he sat at
the edge of the first of the Three Rivers, the great Athabasca.
From down the other two, the Slave and the Mackenzie, the fur
fleets of the unmapped country had been toiling since the first
breakups of ice. Steadily, week after week, the north had been
emptying itself of its picturesque tide of life and voice, of
muscle and brawn, of laughter and song--and wealth. Through, long
months of deep winter, in ten thousand shacks and tepees and
cabins, the story of this June had been written as fate had
written it each winter for a hundred years or more. A story of the
triumph of the fittest. A story of tears, of happiness here and
there, of hunger and plenty, of new life and quick death; a story
of strong men and strong women, living in the faith of their
forefathers, with the best blood of old England and France still
surviving in their veins.

Through those same months of winter, the great captains of trade
in the city of Edmonton had been preparing for the coming of the
river brigades. The hundred and fifty miles of trail between that
last city outpost of civilization and Athabasca Landing, the door
that opened into the North, were packed hard by team and dog-
sledge and packer bringing up the freight that for another year
was to last the forest people of the Three River country--a domain
reaching from the Landing to the Arctic Ocean. In competition
fought the drivers of Revillon Brothers and Hudson's Bay, of free
trader and independent adventurer. Freight that grew more precious
with each mile it advanced must reach the beginning of the
waterway. It started with the early snows. The tide was at full by
midwinter. In temperature that nipped men's lungs it did not
cease. There was no let-up in the whip-hands of the masters of
trade at Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, and London across the sea.
It was not a work of philanthropy. These men cared not whether
Jean and Jacqueline and Pierre and Marie were well-fed or hungry,
whether they lived or died, so far as humanity was concerned. But
Paris, Vienna, London, and the great capitals of the earth must
have their furs--and unless that freight went north, there would
be no velvety offerings for the white shoulders of the world.
Christmas windows two years hence would be bare. A feminine wail
of grief would rise to the skies. For woman must have her furs,
and in return for those furs Jean and Jacqueline and Pierre and
Marie must have their freight. So the pendulum swung, as it had
swung for a century or two, touching, on the one side, luxury,
warmth, wealth, and beauty; on the other, cold and hardship, deep
snows and open skies--with that precious freight the thing
between.

And now, in this year before rail and steamboat, the glory of
early summer was at hand, and the wilderness people were coming up
to meet the freight. The Three Rivers--the Athabasca, the Slave,
and the Mackenzie, all joining in one great two-thousand-mile
waterway to the northern sea--were athrill with the wild impulse
and beat of life as the forest people lived it. The Great Father
had sent in his treaty money, and Cree song and Chipewyan chant
joined the age-old melodies of French and half-breed. Countless
canoes drove past the slower and mightier scow brigades; huge York
boats with two rows of oars heaved up and down like the ancient
galleys of Rome; tightly woven cribs of timber, and giant rafts
made tip of many cribs were ready for their long drift into a
timberless country. On this two-thousand-mile waterway a world had
gathered. It was the Nile of the northland, and each post and
gathering place along its length was turned into a metropolis,
half savage, archaic, splendid with the strength of red blood,
clear eyes, and souls that read the word of God in wind and tree.

And up and down this mighty waterway of wilderness trade ran the
whispering spirit of song, like the voice of a mighty god heard
under the stars and in the winds.

But it was an hour ago that David Carrigan had vividly pictured
these things to himself close to the big river, and many things
may happen in the sixty minutes that follow any given minute in a
man's life. That hour ago his one great purpose had been to bring
in Black Roger Audemard, alive or dead--Black Roger, the forest
fiend who had destroyed half a dozen lives in a blind passion of
vengeance nearly fifteen years ago. For ten of those fifteen years
it had been thought that Black Roger was dead. But mysterious
rumors had lately come out of the North. He was alive. People had
seen him. Fact followed rumor. His existence became certainty. The
Law took up once more his hazardous trail, and David Carrigan was
the messenger it sent.

"Bring him back, alive or dead," were Superintendent McVane's last
words.

And now, thinking of that parting injunction, Carrigan grinned,
even as the sweat of death dampened his face in the heat of the
afternoon sun. For at the end of those sixty minutes that had
passed since his midday pot of tea, the grimly, atrociously
unexpected had happened, like a thunderbolt out of the azure of
the sky.

II

Huddled behind a rock which was scarcely larger than his body,
groveling in the white, soft sand like a turtle making a nest for
its eggs, Carrigan told himself this without any reservation. He
was, as he kept repeating to himself for the comfort of his soul,
in a deuce of a fix. His head was bare--simply because a bullet
had taken his hat away. His blond hair was filled with sand. His
face was sweating. But his blue eyes were alight with a grim sort
of humor, though he knew that unless the other fellow's ammunition
ran out he was going to die.

For the twentieth time in as many minutes he looked about him. He
was in the center of a flat area of sand. Fifty feet from him the
river murmured gently over yellow bars and a carpet of pebbles.
Fifty feet on the opposite side of him was the cool, green wall of
the forest. The sunshine playing in it seemed like laughter to him
now, a whimsical sort of merriment roused by the sheer effrontery
of the joke which fate had inflicted upon him.

Between the river and the balsam and spruce was only the rock
behind which he was cringing like a rabbit afraid to take to the
open. And his rock was a mere up-jutting of the solid floor of
shale that was under him. The wash sand that covered it like a
carpet was not more than four or five inches deep. He could not
dig in. There was not enough of it within reach to scrape up as a
protection. And his enemy, a hundred yards or so away, was a
determined wretch--and the deadliest shot he had ever known.

Three times Carrigan had made experiments to prove this, for he
had in mind a sudden rush to the shelter of the timber. Three
times he had raised the crown of his hat slightly above the top of
the rock, and three times the marksmanship of the other had
perforated it with neatness and dispatch. The third bullet had
carried his hat a dozen feet away. Whenever he showed a patch of
his clothing, a bullet replied with unerring precision. Twice they
had drawn blood. And the humor faded out of Carrigan's eyes.

Not long ago he had exulted in the bigness and glory of this
country of his, where strong men met hand to hand and eye to eye.
There were the other kind in it, the sort that made his profession
of manhunting a thing of reality and danger, but he expected
these--forgot them--when the wilderness itself filled his vision.
But his present situation was something unlike anything that had
ever happened in his previous experience with the outlawed. He had
faced dangers. He had fought. There were times when he had almost
died. Fanchet, the half-breed who had robbed a dozen wilderness
mail sledges, had come nearest to trapping him and putting him out
of business. Fanchet was a desperate man and had few scruples. But
even Fanchet--before he was caught--would not have cornered a man
with such bloodthirsty unfairness as Carrigan found himself
cornered now. He no longer had a doubt as to what was in the
other's mind. It was not to wound and make merely helpless. It was
to kill. It was not difficult to prove this. Careful not to expose
a part of his arm or shoulder, he drew a white handkerchief from
his pocket, fastened it to the end of his rifle, and held the flag
of surrender three feet above the rock. And then, with equal
caution, he slowly thrust up a flat piece of shale, which at a
distance of a hundred yards might appear as his shoulder or even
his head. Scarcely was it four inches above the top of the rock
before there came the report of a rifle, and the shale was
splintered into a hundred bits.

Carrigan lowered his flag and gathered himself in tighter. The
accuracy of the other's marksmanship was appalling. He knew that
if he exposed himself for an instant to use his own rifle or the
heavy automatic in his holster, he would be a dead man before he
could press a trigger. And that time, he felt equally sure, would
come sooner or later. His muscles were growing cramped. He could
not forever double himself up like a four-bladed jackknife behind
the altogether inefficient shelter of the rock.

His executioner was hidden in the edge of the timber, not directly
opposite him, but nearly a hundred yards down stream. Twenty times
he had wondered why the fiend with the rifle did not creep up
through that timber and take a good, open pot-shot at him from the
vantage point which lay at the end of a straight line between his
rock and the nearest spruce and balsam. From that angle he could
not completely shelter himself. But the man a hundred yards below
had not moved a foot from his ambush since he had fired his first
shot. That had come when Carrigan was crossing the open space of
soft, white sand. It had left a burning sensation at his temple--
half an inch to the right and it would have killed him. Swift as
the shot itself, he dropped behind the one protection at hand, the
up-jutting shoulder of shale.

For a quarter of an hour he had been making efforts to wriggle
himself free from his bulky shoulder-pack without exposing himself
to a coup-de-grace. At last he had the thing off. It was a
tremendous relief when he thrust it out beside the rock, almost
doubling the size of his shelter. Instantly there came the crash
of a bullet in it, and then another. He heard the rattle of pans,
and wondered if his skillet would be any good after today.

For the first time he could wipe the sweat from his face and
stretch himself. And also he could think. Carrigan possessed an
unalterable faith in the infallibility of the mind. "You can do
anything with the mind," was his code. "It is better than a good
gun."

Now that he was physically more at ease, he began reassembling his
scattered mental faculties. Who was this stranger who was pot-
shotting at him with such deadly animosity from the ambush below?
Who--

Another crash of lead in tinware and steel put an unpleasant
emphasis to the question. It was so close to his head that it made
him wince, and now--with a wide area within reach about him--he
began scraping up the sand for an added protection. There came a
long silence after that third clatter of distress from his cooking
utensils. To David Carrigan, even in his hour of deadly peril,
there was something about it that for an instant brought back the
glow of humor in his eyes. It was hot, swelteringly hot, in that
packet of sand with the unclouded sun almost straight overhead. He
could have tossed a pebble to where a bright-eyed sandpiper was
cocking itself backward and forward, its jerky movements
accompanied by friendly little tittering noises. Everything about
him seemed friendly. The river rippled and murmured in cooling
song just beyond the sandpiper. On the other side the still cooler
forest was a paradise of shade and contentment, astir with subdued
and hidden life. It was nesting season. He heard the twitter of
birds. A tiny, brown wood warbler fluttered out to the end of a
silvery birch limb, and it seemed to David that its throat must
surely burst with the burden of its song. The little fellow's
brown body, scarcely larger than a butternut, was swelling up like
a round ball in his effort to vanquish all other song.

"Go to it, old man," chuckled Carrigan. "Go to it!"

The little warbler, that he might have crushed between thumb and
forefinger, gave him a lot of courage.

Then the tiny chorister stopped for breath. In that interval
Carrigan listened to the wrangling of two vivid-colored Canada
jays deeper in the timber. Chronic scolds they were, never without
a grouch. They were like some people Carrigan had known, born
pessimists, always finding something to complain about, even in
their love days.

And these were love days. That was the odd thought that came to
Carrigan as he lay half on his face, his fingers slowly and
cautiously working a loophole between his shoulder-pack and the
rock. They were love days all up and down the big rivers, where
men and women sang for joy, and children played, forgetful of the
long, hard days of winter. And in forest, plain, and swamp was
this spirit of love also triumphant over the land. It was the
mating season of all feathered things. In countless nests were the
peeps and twitters of new life; mothers of first-born were
teaching their children to swim and fly; from end to end of the
forest world the little children of the silent places, furred and
feathered, clawed and hoofed, were learning the ways of life.
Nature's yearly birthday was half-way gone, and the doors of
nature's school wide open. And the tiny brown songster at the end
of his birch twig proclaimed the joy of it again, and challenged
all the world to beat him in his adulation.

Carrigan found that he could peer between his pack and the rock to
where the other warbler was singing--and where his enemy lay
watching for the opportunity to kill. It was taking a chance. If a
movement betrayed his loophole, his minutes were numbered. But he
had worked cautiously, an inch at a time, and was confident that
the beginning of his effort to fight back was, up to the present
moment, undiscovered. He believed that he knew about where the
ambushed man was concealed. In the edge of a low-hanging mass of
balsam was a fallen cedar. From behind the butt of that cedar he
was sure the shots had come.

And now, even more cautiously than he had made the tiny opening,
he began to work the muzzle of his rifle through the loophole. As
he did this he was thinking of Black Roger Audemard. And yet,
almost as quickly as suspicion leaped into his mind, he told
himself that the thing was impossible. It could not be Black
Roger, or one of Black Roger's friends, behind the cedar log. The
idea was inconceivable, when he considered how carefully the
secret of his mission had been kept at the Landing. He had not
even said goodby to his best friends. And because Black Roger had
won through all the preceding years, Carrigan was stalking his
prey out of uniform. There had been nothing to betray him.
Besides, Black Roger Audemard must be at least a thousand miles
north, unless something had tempted him to come up the rivers with
the spring brigades. If he used logic at all, there was but one
conclusion for him to arrive at. The man in ambush was some
rascally half-breed who coveted his outfit and whatever valuables
he might have about his person.

A fourth smashing eruption among his comestibles and culinary
possessions came to drive home the fact that even that analysis of
the situation was absurd. Whoever was behind the rifle fire had
small respect for the contents of his pack, and he was surely not
in grievous need of a good gun or ammunition. A sticky mess of
condensed cream was running over Carrigan's hand. He doubted if
there was a whole tin in his kit.

For a few moments he lay quietly on his face after the fourth
shot. His eyes were turned toward the river, and on the far side,
a quarter of a mile away, three canoes were moving swiftly up the
slow current of the stream. The sunlight flashed on their wet
sides. The gleam of dripping paddles was like the flutter of
silvery birds' wings, and across the water came an unintelligible
shout in response to the rifle shot. It occurred to David that he
might make a trumpet of his hands and shout back, but the distance
was too great for his voice to carry its message for help.
Besides, now that he had the added protection of the pack, he felt
a certain sense of humiliation at the thought of showing the white
feather. A few minutes more, if all went well, and he would settle
for the man behind the log.

He continued again the slow operation of worming his rifle barrel
between the pack and the rock. The near-sighted little sandpiper
had discovered him and seemed interested in the operation. It had
come a dozen feet nearer, and was perking its head and seesawing
on its long legs as it watched with inquisitive inspection the
unusual manifestation of life behind the rock. Its twittering note
had changed to an occasional sharp and querulous cry. Carrigan
wanted to wring its neck. That cry told the other fellow that he
was still alive and moving.

It seemed an age before his rifle was through, and every moment he
expected another shot. He flattened himself out, Indian fashion,
and sighted along the barrel. He was positive that his enemy was
watching, yet he could make out nothing that looked like a head
anywhere along the log. At one end was a clump of deeper foliage.
He was sure he saw a sudden slight movement there, and in the
thrill of the moment was tempted to send a bullet into the heart
of it. But he saved his cartridge. He felt the mighty importance
of certainty. If he fired once--and missed--the advantage of his
unsuspected loophole would be gone. It would be transformed into a
deadly menace. Even as it was, if his enemy's next bullet should
enter that way--

He felt the discomfort of the thought, and in spite of himself a
tremor of apprehension ran up his spine. He felt an even greater
desire to wring the neck of the inquisitive little sandpiper. The
creature had circled round squarely in front of him and stood
there tilting its tail and bobbing its head as if its one insane
desire was to look down the length of his rifle barrel. The bird
was giving him away. If the other fellow was only half as clever
as his marksmanship was good--

Suddenly every nerve in Carrigan's body tightened. He was positive
that he had caught the outline of a human head and shoulders in
the foliage. His finger pressed gently against the trigger of his
Winchester. Before he breathed again he would have fired. But a
shot from the foliage beat him out by the fraction of a second. In
that precious time lost, his enemy's bullet entered the edge of
his kit--and came through. He felt the shock of it, and in the
infinitesimal space between the physical impact and the mental
effect of shock his brain told him the horrible thing had
happened. It was his head--his face. It was as if he had plunged
them suddenly into hot water, and what was left of his skull was
filled with the rushing and roaring of a flood. He staggered up,
clutching his face with both hands. The world about him was
twisted and black, a dizzily revolving thing--yet his still
fighting mental vision pictured clearly for him a monstrous,
bulging-eyed sandpiper as big as a house. Then he toppled back on
the white sand, his arms flung out limply, his face turned to the
ambush wherein his murderer lay.

His body was clear of the rock and the pack, but there came no
other shot from the thick clump of balsam. Nor, for a time, was
there movement. The wood warbler was cheeping inquiringly at this
sudden change in the deportment of his friend behind the shoulder
of shale. The sandpiper, a bit startled, had gone back to the edge
of the river and was running a race with himself along the wet
sand. And the two quarrelsome jays had brought their family
squabble to the edge of the timber.

It was their wrangling that roused Carrigan to the fact that he
was not dead. It was a thrilling discovery--that and the fact that
he made out clearly a patch of sunlight in the sand. He did not
move, but opened his eyes wider. He could see the timber. On a
straight line with his vision was the thick clump of balsam. And
as he looked, the boughs parted and a figure came out. Carrigan
drew a deep breath. He found that it did not hurt him. He gripped
the fingers of the hand that was under his body, and they closed
on the butt of his service automatic. He would win yet, if God
gave him life a few minutes longer.

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