For a minute or two he sat on his horse and scanned the black boat. It was certainly the boat he had seen before, and he wondered how she had been brought back against the stream. She must have hired a tow from the steamboat, and he wondered what had been the inducement. As before, no one was in sight. No smoke rose from the stovepipe that projected through the roof, and the door upon the little end deck was closed.
“Hello! Aboard there!” he shouted at last.
There was a sound of stirring in the boat. The door of the cabin opened, and a man stepped out upon the stern deck, a ragged and disreputable object. He was dressed in a tattered cotton shirt and trousers, barefooted and bareheaded, with long, fair hair, straggling mustache and a yellowish, malarial complexion. He looked startled; he gave Joe a glance of mingled fright and suspicion.
“Howdy!” Joe greeted him. “Camping here?”
“Fur a leetle while, mebbe,” drawled the sallow man, looking him carefully up and down. “You’re Burnam’s woods-rider, ain’t you?”
“One of them. Can I come on board?”
The man hesitated, and spat into the bayou.
“I reckon you can’t,” he said at last. “My brother’s in yander, mighty sick, and he’s just gone to sleep.”
“Too bad. What’s the matter with him?”
“Chills ’n’ fever. He’ll git over it. Just done had it myself. Gum runnin’ good?” he added listlessly.
“Pretty fair. Some one’s been stealing some of it. Seen anybody round the woods at night?”
“Naw!” The river-man looked sidelong at Joe, and bit off a chew from a plug of tobacco. “Soon’s Bud gits well enough to help me, we aims to float down to Choctaw Bluffs.”
“I saw you up here a week or so ago. How did you get back?” said Joe.
“Naw, you didn’t. Ain’t never been by yere before,” returned the man quickly. “We been up by Peach Tree, and we’re goin’ to Choctaw.”
“Going down to the River Island?” Joe asked casually.
“No, sir! Too many rough charackters there. They says Blue Bob uses the River Island this spring.”
Joe had often heard of this same Blue Bob, notorious among the houseboat men, whose evil reputation had spread all along the river, from Montgomery to Mobile. Blue Bob, with a gang of disreputable associates, ran a large houseboat, combining a sort of small piracy with occasional selling of illicit whisky. He stole hogs and cattle along the river; he had been concerned in several shooting affrays, and had been several times arrested but had always been lucky enough to get off with nothing more than a fine.
It struck Joe that it might have been Blue Bob who had robbed the turpentine orchard, for the River Island was not more than thirty miles down the river. They had been almost within sight of it, in fact, on the recent bee-hunt. But he hardly thought that the lazy, shiftless figure before him, evidently a prey to hookworms and malaria, had had anything to do with the thefts. The stealing in the turpentine woods had been energetic and laborious, involving a good deal of hard work. All the same, he felt that the black houseboat would bear watching, until “Bud” got over his chills and fevers.
He offered to get the boatman some quinine, which was declined, and he rode away with a careless good-by. For half a mile up the shore he proceeded, finding no traces of any other boat, until he was checked by an impenetrable swamp, and he turned back into the pine woods again.
The wagons had taken a load of gum-barrels up to the camp that day, where a charge was to be run in the still. But only a part had been taken; eight or ten partly full barrels still stood in the orchard, and Joe felt increasingly uneasy about them as the day went on. He determined to spend another night in the woods and guard them himself.
He rode up to camp for supper, however, when the negroes ceased work and found the still just cooling from its recent charge. The upper orchard as well as the river tract had been dipped within the last few days. Negroes were still barreling up the hot rosin, and he counted nearly twenty barrels of turpentine on the plank platform beside the road, ready for hauling down to the steamboat. A great row of rosin barrels stood near the still, and Wilson told him that they were going to run another charge after supper.
After a hasty meal Joe rode back in the twilight to the river tract. Leaving Snowball tied near the road, he went quietly into the dim woods and stationed himself near enough to the houseboat to be sure of knowing if anybody left it or came to it.
There was a dull smolder of embers on the shore of the bayou, where the houseboat’s occupants had probably cooked their supper; but there was no light aboard nor any sound whatever. Joe waited for more than an hour in silence; then, growing disgusted, he walked back into the pine woods a little way.
He had gone only a few paces when he thought he saw a flicker of light among the trees ahead. It seemed to increase rapidly. Wondering if it could be a camp-fire or a blaze from some chipper’s cigarette, he started to investigate it. The glow brightened to a glare, and he covered the last half of the distance at a run.
As he broke out of the woods into an open space, a blast of heat struck him. One of the gum-barrels had been left there, and it was roaring and flaming like a gigantic torch, sending up volumes of pitchy smoke.
Joe knew well that he could no more extinguish that blaze than he could put out a volcano. Only quantities of sand would do it, and there was no sand. He knew, too, that the barrel had caught fire by no accident. There was an incendiary in the woods; and he cocked his rifle and stared in every direction. Nothing stirred, though all the woods at hand were lighted up like day.
Then in the distance he caught another ominous flash of flame. Sick at heart, he rushed toward it. Another of the barrels was on fire, too far gone to be checked. There were six or eight more barrels, standing at intervals of a few hundred yards, and with a sense of impending disaster he ran for the next in the line.
When he was still twenty yards away he saw the barrel flash up. In the sudden glare he thought he saw the retreating shape of a man. He shouted; then he fired two quick shots at the vanishing figure, but nothing answered either his shot or his cry. Reaching the barrel he saw that a flaming splinter had been thrust deep into the gum. He jerked it out. The gum was not yet fairly burning, and he beat out the fire with a pine branch.
He realized that wholesale destruction was meant this time. He started toward the next barrel, and then stopped, perplexed and despairing. Help was what he needed. He wondered if they could see the glare of the burning barrels at the camp, and he looked in that direction.
To his dismay he saw that the sky above the far-away turpentine camp was red! Either the camp itself or the woods around it were on fire. Deeper-planned destruction than he had imagined must be under way, but he knew that it was at the camp that he would be needed most. Tearing through the woods to the spot where he had left his horse, he leaped into the saddle and went flying up the road.
The red glare on the sky seemed to increase. While he was still far off he saw a towering flame and heard the yelling of the negroes. He left the woods for a short cut, reached the clearing, threw Snowball’s bridle across a branch, and rushed into the fiery glow of the camp.
It seemed all aglare with fire and surging with men. The still itself was the centre of the conflagration. The wooden platform around the retort had already been burned away, and the flames were shooting high from the turpentine-soaked timbers; but that blaze was trifling compared to the roaring blast of fire that rose from the barrels of rosin. Three or four dozen of them were ablaze at once. The barrels had burst, and the molten rosin was running into a great lake of flame that spread and flowed like lava. A dozen negroes were throwing sand on it with shovels, but the flaming liquid splashed so dangerously that they had to give up the attempt.
Joe heard Burnam’s voice roaring commands. A gang under his direction was pulling down several of the cabins nearest the burning still. Another gang was carrying supplies out of the commissary—high combustibles, tins of kerosene, boxes of cartridges, buckets of lard. The black, excited faces of the negroes rushing about in the red glare made the wildest scene that Joe had ever beheld.
He rushed forward ready to lend a hand at anything, but the pool of burning rosin caught his eye first. It was overflowing into the little creek that crossed the camp-space; the rosin floated flaming on the water, so that a burning current was beginning to stream down toward the roadway.
No one seemed to have noticed that orange rivulet of fire, but Joe remembered the barrels of turpentine spirit on the platform by the road. The little creek flowed right under that platform.
Joe caught an excited negro by the collar as he rushed past.
“Go tell Burnam to send some men down to the road right away to look after that spirits!” he cried, and darted himself in the direction of the threatened barrels.
The platform was eighty yards from the edge of the camp, and pines screened it from the glare of the fire. Three of the heavy posts that supported it stood in the stream, which formed a sort of pool among them. To Joe’s relief, everything seemed blindly dark. The flood of fire had not yet come down, but he had scarcely reached the spot when a lump of blazing, unmelted rosin came drifting down, and lodged right against one of the pine posts. He thrust it under water and extinguished it; but within a minute several more lumps came flaming down, followed by a stream of burning fluid that hissed and smoked on the surface of the running water.
Joe had picked up a shovel as he ran down, and now he cautiously flung sand on the water. Fire spattered fiercely in all directions. The dry brush along the road ignited, but he was able to beat it out. Running up to the top of the bank, he yelled at the top of his voice.
“Here! This way! Help!”
No one answered; no one came. His voice was totally lost in that shouting and uproar. No doubt the scared negro had forgotten to give Burnam his message. He started to run for help himself, when a backward glance showed him a tongue of flame licking up one of the posts of the platform.
He rushed back and smothered it. The liquid fire was coming down faster now, and threatened to spread over the whole pool under the platform. There was no time to seek for help. If he left the spot for a minute the spirit-barrels might flash up like gunpowder. He wet down the posts thoroughly, but he realized that he would have to stop the stream of flame that was pouring into the pool.
With his shovel he set to work to throw a dam of sand and mud across the creek. Three times he had to stop and rush back to extinguish a fire on one of the posts. Drops of spattering fire fell on his hands; his clothes smoked, but at last he had the stream effectually blocked. Then he stopped, breathless, and beat the fire out of his coat and trousers.
While he worked, the thought had continually hammered at his brain that this certainly meant the end of Burnam’s turpentine business, and of his own investment in it. The still was destroyed. A copper retort is extremely expensive. Even if money were forthcoming to buy another, it would take time to get it, and to set it up, and the best of the season’s run of gum would be lost. It looked as if these barrels of turpentine would be about all the salvage from the wreck.
Then he noticed with consternation that the water was brimming to the top of his dam, and that burning rosin was beginning to flow over it. He built it higher, but the water, carrying the liquid fire on its surface, rose steadily. Would that flaming stream never cease flowing?
For a moment he felt at his wit’s end. Then it occurred to him that he should have provided for the water to drain out under the dam instead of over it. Thus it would carry no fire. He punched an outlet underneath, and had the satisfaction of seeing the level of the flaming creek slowly subside, and no more fire went over the dam.
His satisfaction was increased by noticing that the flow of liquid rosin was diminishing. The great lake of flame must have burned out. A good deal of the burning stuff had got past his dam, however, and a glance back at the turpentine gave him a shock of fright.
One of the barrels had caught fire. It was well smeared with raw gum on the outside, and was snapping and crackling fiercely, though the flame had not yet worked through to the contents. With a bound, Joe reached the platform. This barrel would have to be sacrificed to save the rest. The ground beyond the platform sloped away, and with a great heave he tilted the barrel up and sent it rolling off. It landed with a crash, burst open, and flashed into a stream of flame; but the burning spirit, thinning and scattering as it went, flowed down the slope away from the platform.
And now no more burning rosin was coming down the creek. Isolated lumps still sputtered and flared, but the main flow had ceased.
With a last glance around, Joe hurried back to the scene of the main fire. The still had burned out, and the copper retort and brick furnace stood up barely from the ashes. The danger from the fire had shifted to a group of cabins. One had been burned and another torn down, and the men were working hard to save the others.
Shouting orders, pulling, hauling, wielding an ax, working harder than any of the men, Burnam was everywhere. He was hatless, his sleeves were rolled above his elbows, his face and arms were black with smoke, and his voice was hoarse with shouting. Joe almost ran against him, and the operator glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
“Where’ve you been?” he shouted furiously into Joe’s face. “Why haven’t you been helping?”
Joe was so utterly taken aback that he forgot the events of the last few minutes, and could only stammer that he had been “down in the river orchard.”
“What were you doing there this time of night—and a night like this? Asleep, hey?”
“The gum-barrels were afire,” said Joe, more and more confused. “They’re all burned by now, I reckon. Some one must have—”
It was no time to give Burnam bad news. Joe thought for an instant that the man meant to kill him. He shrunk back as Burnam lifted his clenched fist.
“Burned? What were you doing, then? You dare to come in here and tell me that you let the gum burn up on your range? What d’you think I pay you for? You never were no good, anyway! You get outer this camp! You’re fired! Go get your wages, and keep away from here, or I’ll break every bone in your body!”