Chapter XXVI. BUFFETED BY THE ELEMENTS
Nan knew she had never seen it rain so hard before. The falling waterwas like a drop-curtain, swept across the stage of the open tract ofsawdust. In a few minutes they were saturated to the skin. Nan could nothave been any wetter if she had gone in swimming.
"Oh!" she gasped into Tom's ear. "It is the deluge!"
"Never was, but one rain 't didn't clear up yet," he returned, withdifficulty, for his big body was sheltering Nan in part, and he wasfacing the blast.
"I know. That's this one," she agreed. "But, it's awful."
"Say! Can you point out that tree that smoked?" asked Tom.
"Goodness! It can't be smoking now," gasped Nan, stifled with rain andlaughter. "This storm would put out Vesuvius."
"Don't know him," retorted her cousin. "But it'd put most anybody out, Iallow. Still, fire isn't so easy to quench. Where's the tree?"
"I can't see it, Tom," declared Nan, with her eyes tightly closed. Shereally thought he was too stubborn. Of course, if there had been anyfire in that tree-top, this rain would put it out in about ten seconds.So Nan believed.
"Look again, Nan," urged her cousin. "This is no funning. If there'sfire in this swamp."
"Goodness, gracious!" snapped Nan. "What a fuss-budget you are to besure, Tom. If there was a fire, this rain would smother it. Oh! Did itever pelt one so before?"
Fortunately the rain was warm, and she was not much discomforted bybeing wet. Tom still clung to the idea that she had started in his slowmind.
"Fire's no funning, I tell you," he growled. "Sometimes it smouldersfor days and days, and weeks and weeks; then it bursts out like ahurricane."
"But the rain"
"This sawdust is mighty hard-packed, and feet deep," interrupted Tom."The fire might be deep down."
"Why, Tom! How ridiculously you talk!" cried the girl. "Didn't I tellyou I saw the smoke coming out of the top of a tree? Fire couldn't bedeep down in the sawdust and the smoke come out of the tree top."
"Couldn't, heh?" returned Tom. "Dead tree, wasn't it?"
"Oh, yes."
"Hollow, too, of course?"
"I don't know."
"Might be hollow clear through its length," Tom explained seriously."The butt might be all rotted out. Just a tough shell of a tree standingthere, and 'twould be a fine chimney if the fire was smouldering down atits old roots."
"Oh, Tom! I never thought of such a thing," gasped Nan.
"And you don't see the tree now?"
"Let me look! Let me look!" cried Nan, conscience-stricken.
In spite of the beating rain and wind she got to her knees, stillclinging to her big cousin, and then stood upon the broad tongue ofthe wagon. The horses stood still with their heads down, bearing thebuffeting of the storm with the usual patience of dumb beasts.
A sheer wall of water seemed to separate them from every object outupon the open land. Behind them the bulk of the forest loomed as anotherbarrier. Nan had really never believed that rain could fall so hard. Italmost took her breath.
Moreover, what Tom said about the smoking tree began to trouble thegirl. She thought of the fire at Pale Lick, of which she had receivedhints from several people. That awful conflagration, in which shebelieved two children belonging to her uncle and aunt had lost theirlives, had started in the sawdust.
Suddenly she cried aloud and seized Tom more tightly.
"Cracky! Don't choke a fellow!" he coughed.
"Oh, Tom!"
"Well"
"I think I see it."
"The tree that smoked?" asked her cousin.
"Yes. There!"
For the moment it seemed as though the downpour lightened. Veiled by thestill falling water a straight stick rose high in the air ahead of them.Tom chirruped to the horses and made them, though unwilling, go forward.
They dragged the heavy cart unevenly. Through the heavy downpour thetrail was hard to follow, and once in a while a rear wheel bumped overa stump, and Nan was glad to drop down upon the tongue again, and clingmore tightly than ever to her cousin's collar.
"Sure that's it?" queried Tom, craning his neck to look up into thetall, straight tree.
"I, I'm almost sure," stammered Nan.
"I, don't, see, any, smoke," drawled Tom, with his head still raised.
The rain had almost ceased, an intermission which would not be of longduration. Nan saw that her cousin's prophecy had been true; the groundactually smoked after the downpour. The sun-heated sawdust steamedfuriously. They seemed to be crossing a heated cauldron. Clouds of steamrose all about the timber cart.
"Why, Tommy!" Nan choked. "It does seem as though there must be fireunder this sawdust now."
Tom brought his own gaze down from the empty tree-top with a jerk."Hoo!" he shouted, and leaned forward suddenly to flick his off horsewith the whiplash. Just then the rear wheel on that side slumped downinto what seemed a veritable volcano.
Flame and smoke spurted out around the broad wheel. Nan screamed.The wind suddenly swooped down upon them, and a ball of fire, flamingsawdust was shot into the air and was tossed twenty feet by a puff ofwind.
"We're over an oven!" gasped Tom, and laid the whip solidly across thebacks of the frightened horses.
They plunged. Another geyser of fire and smoke spurted from the holeinto which the rear wheel had slumped. Again and again the big horsesflung themselves into the collars in an endeavor to get the wheel out.
"Oh, Tommy!" cried Nan. "We'll be burned up!"
"No you won't," declared her cousin, leaping down. "Get off and run,Nan."
"But you--"
"Do as I say!" commanded Tom. "Run!"
"Where, where'll I run to?" gasped the girl, leaping off the tongue,too, and away from the horses' heels.
"To the road. Get toward home!" cried Tom, running around to the rear ofthe timber cart.
"And leave you here?" cried Nan. "I guess not, Mr. Tom!" she murmured.
But he did not hear that. He had seized his axe and was striding towardthe edge of the forest. For a moment Nan feared that Tom was runningaway as he advised her to do. But that would not be like Tom Sherwood!
At the edge of the forest he laid the axe to the root of a sapling aboutfour inches through at the butt. Three strokes, and the tree was down.In a minute he had lopped off the branches for twenty feet, then removedthe top with a single blow.
As he turned, dragging the pole with him, up sprang the fire again fromthe hollow into which the wheel of the wagon had sunk. It was a smokingfurnace down there, and soon the felloe and spokes would be injured bythe flames and heat. Sparks flew on the wings of the wind from out ofthe mouth of the hole. Some of them scattered about the horses and theyplunged again, squealing.
It seemed to Nan impossible after the recent cloudburst that the firecould find anything to feed upon. But underneath the packed surface ofthe sawdust, the heat of summer had been drying out the moisture forweeks. And the fire had been smouldering for a long time. Perhaps foryards and yards around, the interior of the sawdust heap was a glowingfurnace.
Nan would not run away and Tom did not see her. As he came plungingback to the stalled wagon, suddenly his foot slumped into the yieldingsawdust and he fell upon his face. He cried out with surprise or pain.Nan, horrified, saw the flames and smoke shooting out of the hole intowhich her cousin had stepped. For the moment the girl felt as if herheart had stopped beating.
"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" she shrieked, and sprang toward him.
Tom was struggling to get up. His right leg had gone into the yieldingmass up to his hip, and despite his struggles he could not get it out.A long yellow flame shot out of the hole and almost licked his face. It,indeed, scorched his hair on one side of his head.
But Nan did not scream again. She needed her breath, all that she couldget, for a more practical purpose. Her cousin waved her back feebly, andtried to tell her to avoid the fire.
Nan rushed in, got behind him, and seized her cousin under the arms. Tolift hi
m seemed a giant's task; but nevertheless she tried.