CHAPTER X
THE LAST RUN OF THE BELOVED THIRTY
A second time Phil loudly called and now an answer showed Nels Anderson and the golfing man to be near the edge of the woods. They had completed the burning of a wide strip of the dry grass completely around the clearing, only to find their work useless. All hope of thus stopping the spread of the fire toward the buildings was destroyed by the falling embers. The wind carried them everywhere.
There was no time to lose. The danger of death from suffocation, even if the flames could be escaped, was very great. Now the roof of the house was on fire. There was not a barrel of water within miles. Further fighting, further loss of time, would be folly. Giants of the forest were flaming up from roots to topmost branch not twenty yards within the woods. The whole roadway would be ablaze, on both sides, in a few minutes.
A most pitiable object was Anderson's poor cow. Her head to the ground as if to escape the smoke, a low, frightened bellowing told of her realization of the danger. Forgetful of herself the child was saying, "Oh, poor, good bossy! Oh, poor bossy!"
The small haystack along side the crude, log barn suddenly blazed up. The dull red glow gave place to a white light all through the clearing. It was impossible now that any part of the property could be saved. Anderson and the other man came running to the car.
"It will be a close shave! Can you make it, boys?" cried the one in the golf cap, above the roar of the flames.
"You bet! Be at the lake in no time! We've often carried more'n six," yelled Paul excitedly. "Right in here!" and he held the tonneau door open wide. "You in front with Phil, Mr. Anderson!"
Even as Jones followed Mrs. Anderson, the little girl and the golfing man into the tonneau, and slammed the door behind him, the Thirty was under way. Its staunch gears were never before so quickly shifted from low to high. What mattered it if Paul did sit down hard in the strange man's lap? What mattered it if poor Nels, unused to automobiles, was jerked nearly from his seat before he got his great, clumsy legs quite inside? The raging sea of fire was bordering the trail ahead, and hundreds of little tongues of flames leaped here and there in the parched, dry grass and weeds in the road itself.
With frightened, staring eyes Paul looked with wonder upon the dreadful flames leaping from one treetop to another. The man beside him was shielding his face from the terrible glare and heat and the woman and little girl clung tightly to each other, the former watching only the child and holding a hand to protect her face. As if dazed and unable to comprehend, Nels Anderson looked always back toward the doomed clearing.
Phil Way alone watched the road ahead. With firm set jaw and straining eyes he looked ever forward through the blinding glare and the billows of smoke that now and again concealed the trail completely. But his hands gripped the wheel with perfect confidence, his foot pressed the accelerator steadily. The gallant car responded. The ground seemed speeding from under its wheels. On and on it flew.
Thus far the fire had raged to the west of the road only. In but a few places had it reached the trees directly beside the trail, pausing there till some fresh gust of wind, or shower of sparks, carried it to the other side.
But now Phil saw before him a spot where on both sides of the road the forest was a flaming furnace. He did not falter. On flew the car. Another moment and it was in the midst of the fire. A hundred yards it ran through the deadly heat, the awful roar and sheets of flame leaping upward and outward till their fiery fingers were all but seizing the brave lad and his passengers.
Safely the Thirty ran the fearful gauntlet. There came a shout of praise and admiration from the golfing man, words of thanksgiving from the woman. The worst was over.
Rapidly, but not so fast as in the direct course of the wind, the fire was reaching out toward Opal Lake. Like a galloping army it came on behind the car, but, barring accident, could never, would never, overtake the swift machine.
Barring accident! Bravely the engine, clutch, gears, springs, axles and wheels had withstood the strain of the terrific speed, the heavy load and the wretched road. Bravely, with every charge of gas, each cylinder delivered generous power.
The car shot down the grade into the small valley where, some distance below, the gravel road came to its abrupt ending. There was a heavy jolt as the front wheels struck the dry bed of the shallow stream.
Anderson, the giant, pitched forward. He might have caught and righted himself quite readily had he had complete use of his hands and arms, long since partially paralyzed; but in his disabled condition he missed the windshield frame he tried to catch, and went partly overboard.
With his left hand Phil Way reached for his falling passenger, still holding the wheel with his right. He seized poor Anderson just in time, but the great bulk of the fellow drew him partly from his own seat, and pulled the steering wheel sharply round.
Still going at speed, though now on the upward grade, the automobile answered instantly to the call of the steering knuckles–true to its mechanism, perfectly, to the last–answered to the driver's unintended command, and sharply swerved to the right. A large pine stood in its course.
So quickly did the collision occur, so unprepared were any of the automobile's occupants to meet the terrible shock that the escape of all from serious injury was truly miraculous. The outcome must surely have been far worse had the tree been struck squarely head-on. The fact of the fender and right front tire and wheel receiving the heaviest force of the impact lessened the jar, and the car swung around spending broken momentum in the dishing of both rear wheels.
Nels Anderson, pitched far out on the ground, was gathered up cut and bleeding. Mrs. Anderson and the child were bruised but not much hurt. Phil, Paul and the golfing man suffered no injuries beyond the nervous shock.
Strange as it may seem, Paul Jones spoke not a word. Questioningly he looked at Way.
Phil had been first to help Anderson to his feet. Now leaving him to the care of the others he quickly inspected the damage done to the machine. The roar of the flames was still just behind. Their blood-red glare cast a twilight glow far ahead through the darkness of the woods.
"She was a mighty good car," said Phil Way, softly, as if to himself, quite as one might speak of some friend who has gone. "A mighty good car!" but at the same moment his gaze took in the flames fast following along the ground and from tree to tree both west and south. Even here the heat and smoke were terrible. The dull red light was everywhere. The very sky seemed ablaze.
"This is most unfortunate. I'm truly sorry for this, boys," spoke the golfing man, very soberly. He too had been hastily investigating the damage.
Though his voice was kind, the speaker irritated Paul Jones exceedingly. "Wouldn't have happened but for you, and except to send you to prison you aren't worth it, I can tell you that, Mr. Grandall," were the words he thought, but did not utter.
"Might have been worse! We're still a mile from the lake and the fire's just behind us! That's the whole answer," said Phil rapidly. His words were in reply to the stranger's sympathetic expression, but were equally addressed to all. "Right ahead on this trail, then! We've a raft that will hold everyone!"
Rapid movement was necessary. The wind was blowing furiously now. No power on earth could stay the flames that swept ever forward. Their path grew constantly wider.
Both Phil and Paul looked with astonishment to see the stranger, whom they now detested more than ever, seize Anderson's little girl in his arms to carry her; but they were all hastening forward through the crimson light, and clouds of smoke. No more than a glance could the boys exchange.
Many times the two lads looked back. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the rise of the ground soon shut off their view of the prized Thirty. The hungry, sweeping flames came curling, playing, leaping, dancing, roaring on. They reached the car.
Phil remembered, long afterward, that as he stepped out of the automobile for the last time he noticed the speedometer, twisted about so that the light of a lamp shattered and broken, but still burning, fell upon it. The reading was 5,599 miles–the record of the season.
Safely ahead of the fire the fleeing refugees reached Opal Lake. With a glad shout, though their faces showed deepest anxiety and fear, Billy Worth and Chip Slider received them.
"The raft's all ready! I've made it big enough to float a house! All our provisions are on board, too!" said Billy to Phil, the moment he ran up. "Where's the car?"
A few words told the story. There was no comment beyond the quick, "Oh! what an escape!"
The snaky tongues of fire coming on swift, almost, as the wind itself, were but two hundred yards away when the rescuers and rescued embarked upon the raft. Boxes and camp equipage afforded seats. Billy had trimmed a couple of extra long poles with which to move the clumsy craft, and present safety for all was assured.
The dawn was just breaking. Once out on the water the coming daylight was quite clear despite the smoke that in vast clouds rolled swiftly over, whipped and torn by the wind.
"Thank goodness there's no fire to the north–not yet anyway," said Phil rubbing his face, grimy with smoke and ashes. He was thinking of MacLester and for the information of the Andersons briefly told of Dave's unaccountable disappearance.
"There's a long stretch of pine on the other side," said the stranger, still wearing his golfing cap, by the way. "There are a couple of streams there, though, both of them flowing into the lower end of the lake. If your friend is lost and should remember that, he could follow either one of them and not come out wrong."
Dave was more than merely lost, Paul thought and said so. And, "You know this country pretty well," he added, addressing the former speaker. "You belonged to the Longknives," he went on rather tartly. "It will be the last of the old clubhouse."
"Yes, one blot will be wiped out. It is only too bad that so much that is good must go with it."
Paul glanced at Phil and his eyes also met Billy's. The man's words were puzzling.
"We saw–" Paul began, but a shout interrupted him–
"
There's
Dave! There's Dave now and some man with him!" yelled Chip Slider suddenly. His voice was like a burst of ecstasy. His eyes scanning the distant shore, he had instantly caught sight of the two hats waved as a signal.
The joy of the three chums, that the fourth member of their almost inseparable quartette was safe and sound, it would take pages to describe. With the most delighted waving of his own hat, Phil shouted to MacLester about the skiff still moored on the north shore. His voice was lost in the roar of the wind and the flames now sweeping very near the water's edge. By signals, however, he quickly made Dave understand and the latter and the man with him were seen to hurry forward to where the boat was tied.
All the time the golfing man watched MacLester and the person with him keenly. "Impossible!" he muttered at last. "I thought for a moment I knew the old chap your friend seems to have in tow."
But it was not impossible, apparently, for even before MacLester and his chums could exchange greetings, as the skiff drew near, the small, elderly man in the stern of the boat cried: "Oh! 'tis there ye air then, Mr. Beckley! Oh, ho! hurray! I dunno!" A laugh that was equally like a sob accompanied the words, and "Oh, ho! oh, ho! I dunno!" the old fellow cried again and again.
"It's 'Daddy' O'Lear, right from my own home," the golfing man explained briefly.
The three boys again exchanged quick glances. Instantly as he heard the name "Beckley" Phil had remembered the initial B on the shaving cup found in the clubhouse. Was the man trying to carry on a deception even as to his name, and at such a time, his thoughts inquired. No, he quickly decided, there was some mistake.
"I do hope it may be no bad news he may be sent with, Meester Beckley," said Mrs. Anderson. She had been sitting silent on one of the boxes Billy provided, the little girl leaning on her knees. All the Andersons had watched the fire constantly, their heavy hearts revealed in their sad faces.
"I–I think not," spoke the man in a puzzled way, glancing toward the fire now almost bursting through the shore line.
"It will be hot here, and dangerous," said Phil, looking in the same direction. "We must shove down the lake. Our poles won't reach to go out farther. The water's too deep. We'll lie off opposite the marsh near the Point."
Shouting to the approaching boat to follow, Way and Billy slowly pushed their heavy craft to the west. The skiff overtook them easily and quickly.
"Hello!" grinned Paul Jones as Dave faced quickly about when the boat came alongside. But his half-jocular tone fell on ears attuned to serious matters.
"Oh! this is a terrible thing," said MacLester, his eyes fixed on the flood of flames.
"I was never so glad as I am this minute! What in the world happened to you, Dave? But never mind; you're safe now," Way answered with emphasis.
Somehow all felt it was no time for conversation. Dave made no response to Phil's question. But Billy Worth–Chef Billy–remembered one thing.
"Have you had anything to eat?" he demanded. "I'll bet you haven't!"
"Mighty little–either of us," was the answer. "We were lost,–just about."
"Here's something!" and Worth drew a basket out from beneath a blanket. "Guess we'll all feel better for a bite of breakfast," he added.
Crackers, cheese, bread and butter and bananas were in the "ship's stores," as Billy expressed it, and there was enough for all.
The simple matter of eating served not only to relieve hunger but gave all present a sense of better acquaintance and far greater freedom in talking with one another.
"'Tis an awful waste of wood, sure!" said Mr. O'Lear.
Obviously he referred to the fire. The flames now swept the shore line from the Point to the lake's eastern boundary. For miles upon miles the forest was a whirlwind of furiously roaring flames, or a desolate waste of blazing wreckage, smoldering stumps and blackened, leafless tree trunks.
"The clubhouse! The roof has caught!" cried Billy Worth suddenly. "And look! It's a man!–two men, on the porch roof!" he yelled.
"Great heavens! it's Lew Grandall!" cried the stranger on the raft. "And the other man! They're fighting!"
"It's Murky! The other one is Murky!" Paul's sharp voice fairly shrieked. "It's the suit-case! They have the suit-case! Murky's trying to get it away from him!"
"Oo–ho there!" shouted the golfing man with all his force. "Get to the ground! The fire's all around you! Get into the lake quick or you're dead men!"
For an instant the two who fiercely struggled on the small balcony seemed to answer to the voice. Grandall would have leaped, it was apparent, but the other seized him furiously, and drew him forcibly back. Then a thick burst of smoke concealed them both.
CHAPTER XI
SETTING WRONG THINGS RIGHT
Wearily had Lewis Grandall lain himself down to sleep in his hot, close room. It was his last night in the old clubhouse. He might have been quite comfortable, so far as his physical self was concerned, had he been willing to open the door-like window that led to the small balcony and admit the air; but this he feared to do.
Some sense of danger, a feeling of some dreadful peril impending, harassed him. He tried to reason it all out of his mind. He had not felt so before having actually in his possession the moldy, discolored leather suit-case, he reflected. Why should it make a difference?
There was no good cause for its doing so, he told himself, and resolved to think of other things. But always his thoughts came back to the one point–some great peril close before him. What was it? He could not fathom the distress of his own mind.
Often as Grandall tried wearily to forget, to turn and sleep, some lines of a tale he had somewhere heard or read,–a pirate's song you'll recognize as being in a book of Stevenson's–struck into his mind. It was as if someone sang or called aloud to him:–
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum!"
In vain he told himself that it was nothing–nothing! That he must not let himself fall a prey to such silly dread, an unidentified fear, like a child afraid in the dark. But ever the sense of peril oppressed him. Ever there came to his haunted thoughts–
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum!"
At last he rose and sat a long time on the edge of the bed. Then he dressed himself. For a great while, as the night crept slowly on, he sat thus fully clothed. He did not know why he did this. The fear of some unknown, threatening thing was not removed or altered. The ringing in his brain–
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!" was just as it had been before.
He lighted a match and looked at his watch. Four o'clock. Soon it would be daylight. Then he would go–leave this terrible place forever! Leave everything he hated–and that was all persons and all things. Leave the guilt he vowed he would never face–if he could. So thinking, he lay down once more and sheer exhaustion let the wretched man sink into heavy slumber.
Lynx-eyed, the scowling Murky waited. The black shadows of the thick shrubbery near the clubhouse door concealed him. A long, long time passed. It was quite evident, the tramp reflected, that the man with the suit-case had gone to bed.
Should he break in on him? Break in the house, slip up to his bed, strike one swift blow and end the whole search for that twenty thousand dollars quickly? End it all so quietly that the one who had played him false would never be conscious of the outcome?
No, that was not the plan Murky chose to follow. It might result in his obtaining the prize he sought, but he desired more. He wanted revenge. He wanted Grandall to know, too, that he
was
avenged,–would have him fully realize that it was Murky,–Murky whom he had tricked and deceived, that had found him out and vanquished him at last.
Daylight was necessary to the tramp's plan. He wanted Grandall to see and recognize him. He pictured in his mind how, when suddenly awakened, the trickster should find looking down into his face a pair of eyes that were sharper and just as unmerciful as his own. Then he would speak, make sure he was known–strike quickly and effectively, and be gone.
He would not commit murder–unless obliged to do so; it might make trouble. But he would leave Grandall so hopelessly senseless that there would be no possibility of early pursuit from that quarter, as there would probably be none from any other.
Oh, they were black, black thoughts that coursed in Murky's mind!–hardly the thoughts that should come to a man in his last night on earth. But they were very pleasing to the tramp. With a kind of wild, wolfish relish, he pondered over the details of his plan.
Satisfied that Grandall would not leave the clubhouse before morning, confident of his own ability to awaken at the slightest sound of footsteps near, and resolving to be astir before daybreak, anyway, if he were not disturbed earlier, which he regarded as quite improbable, the scowling wretch allowed his eyes to close.
Even in sleep Murky's face bore an expression little short of fiendish. He was lying quite under the thick foliage of the bushes. They screened him from view and from the breeze that had sprung up out of the west. But also they screened from his eyes the glow that now lit up the heavens, in the distance, for miles around.
It was the smoke, strong in his nostrils, that at last startled the fellow into sudden wakefulness. He had been too long a woodsman, had had too thorough a knowledge of the great forests in his earlier, better days, not to know instantly what it meant. He sprang up and looked about. The course of the wind was such, he reasoned, that the fire would not reach this particular vicinity. But what if it should? Why, so much the better, he reflected. The clubhouse would burn. If Grandall, dead or unconscious, burned with it–Murky's smile was hideous.
For some time he watched the progress of the fire, yet in the distance. But presently he became aware that the daylight was near. It was time for him to act.
Stealthily Murky crept to the broken window at the west side of the clubhouse and entered. He knew the first floor doors were locked, but he did not know that Grandall had secured his bedroom door. This he discovered in due time. Just outside the room he listened. Sounds of heavy breathing assured him his victim slept.
It took a good while for Murky's heavy knife to cut in a panel of the pine door a hole large enough to permit him to reach in and turn the key; for he worked very slowly, very quietly. The daylight was coming in at the window of the narrow hallway when his task was done–the daylight, the dull glare of the advancing flames and the sound of their roar and fury.
The door creaked slightly as ever so slowly its hinges were moved, but in another second Murky stood inside.
The man on the bed awoke–leaped to his feet–saw–recognized–gave forth a yell the like of which even the wildest places have seldom heard.
Instantly Grandall knew his danger. Seizing the leather case, for whose stolen contents he had risked so much, he threw open the balcony window. In another moment he would have leaped to the ground below but Murky caught him and they grappled.
It was in the midst of this first fierce struggle that the two were seen by those on the raft. Murky's greater strength was fast overpowering the other's soft muscles. Grandall breathed in choking gasps.
Then came the shouted warning from the lake. For an instant the surprise of it caused the tramp to relax his hold, but only for an instant.
"Blame
me
!" like some wild beast he growled, though there was savage delight in his tones as well, "Blame
me
! but I'd as soon leave my bones here as anywhere, to see you get what's comin' to ye, you lyin' skunk!" He fairly hissed the epithet in Grandall's ear.
It was at this juncture that Murky first drew his panting adversary back into the flaming clubhouse. Grandall knew he was no match for his enemy in strength.
"Wait, you fool!" he gasped. "There's a fortune for you–ease–luxury! Take it! I'll add as much more to it!"
As the lying wretch hoped, Murky's wild thoughts were for the moment attracted by the words. His grip upon Grandall's great, fat neck was weakened. Like lightning and with a vicious curse the latter threw him off, put forth all his strength and hurled the tramp to the floor.
For himself there was aid in sight, was Grandall's thought. If he could escape to the water below, he could make some explanation to those on the raft, whoever they might be. They would save him from the fire and from Murky, whom he feared still more.
Far more quickly than you read the words, the idea flashed in the mind of the frightened scoundrel. The instant he freed himself he leaped again through the window. With the yell of an enraged maniac Murky followed.
The Auto Boys and their companions on the great raft, floating but a few hundred feet from shore, saw Grandall reappear. With horrified faces they saw about him the smoke and flame that now raged in the roof above, and throughout the whole lower floor of the clubhouse, below the balcony,–saw him seize the leather case and pitch it far forward to the water's edge–saw him glance down as if, in desperation, to leap.
Again a blood-thirsty savage scream sounded above the fury of the fire and wind, and Murky also appeared on the flame-shrouded balcony.
Grandall was too late. No more than a child could he cope with the mad strength of his assailant. Like a great bag of meal, or other heavy, limp and lifeless thing he was dragged in through the open, blazing window. A fiendish but triumphant yell once more came out of the leaping smoke and flame. It was the voice of the infuriated tramp, to be heard on earth again, no more forever.
Dazed, powerless, speechless, those on the lake helplessly witnessed the awful tragedy. With straining eyes and ears they watched and listened; but there came now no sound above the fitful roar and crackle of the fire and the surging wind.
Within a minute the roof of the clubhouse went down. The whole interior of the building followed, and where had stood the old house on the Point there remained only the walls of flaming logs, the mass of debris and the wreckage of wrecked lives that rapidly burned within them.
"You know what's in that bag he threw down to the water?" the golfing man asked. It was in the midst of the exclamation and words of awe of those who saw the terrible scene enacted, that the question was asked of Anderson. The Swede nodded.
"And you?" said the stranger, turning to Phil as spokesman for the boys.
"Yes, we know. We know the whole story. We–we thought
you
were–We saw you about the clubhouse and we got it into our heads that
you
were–Was it really Grandall that we saw on the balcony?"
"Thought
I
was Grandall?" muttered the man, mystified. "Why should you? Did you know he was in the woods? For I did not. But it was Lewis Grandall and no other that went to his death before our very eyes! The man with him–Murky was the name you used? Who was he?"
"Then you don't
know
the
whole story
of the robbery?" exclaimed Billy Worth. "Murky was the man Grandall got to go through the motions of robbing him of the twenty thousand dollars in the first place!"
It was with great interest, indeed, that Mr. Beckley heard the complete account of Grandall's double-dealing scheme as Chip Slider and the Auto Boys had gathered the information.
Meanwhile there had come with the wind fitful dashes of rain that soon settled itself to a steady downpour. The forest fire had nearly burned itself out on the lake's south shore. Thousands of acres of smoldering ruins lay in its wake. Yet for a long time the refugees huddled upon the raft, protecting themselves from the storm as best they could with blankets and bedding. Not yet was it safe to venture ashore.
It was during this period that the golfing man made known his own identity and told why he happened to be hiding in the old clubhouse, resulting quite naturally, he freely admitted, in his being taken for the fugitive treasurer of the Longknives.
His name was Henry Beckley, he explained, and he had been one of the most active members of the Longknives Club. He had never been quite satisfied that the club's treasurer was really robbed of the money intended for the road builders, but had never found any genuine evidence to the contrary.
A long time had passed since the loss of the money. The investigation of Grandall's crookedness, at home, was taken up by the Grand Jury. Mr. Beckley had reason to suspect the man of a number of dishonest practices, but feared f