The House of the Black Ring by Fred Lewis Pattee

Author:Fred Lewis Pattee [Fred Lewis Pattee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-271-05420-9
Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press

CHAPTER X

THE MILL DOWN FOAMING VALLEY

AFTER A MOMENT they found themselves by the brook in a place where a deep pool was overhung by a limestone ledge. Rose, struggling with the frantic horse, saw nothing. She was crashing through the brush just a step behind Jim, with only one impulse. He too had but one impulse: he would reach the rocks and save her, if he had to tear her hand from the bridle and bear her through the flames in his arms. She shouldn’t perish; she mustn’t perish. He would fight for her till he died.

As his eye fell upon the pool in the brook he stopped short. If they could stand in the water to their necks there might be a chance. He had heard of such escapes. Then something about the ledge caught his eye.

“This way,” he yelled suddenly. “We can make it yet. I know where we are.” He turned sharply to the left, his axe still flying like a steel maul.

“We can make it,—Pomp and all,” he shouted over his shoulder exultantly. “Come on!”

And she came on, though the horse reared and plunged, lifting her from her feet again and again, and swinging her about in the cruel tangle, tearing her clothes and hands and hair. But she clung fast and kept ever close behind Jim, who was slashing and stamping and smashing like a Viking in battle. Ten rods more and they came to the brook again, but at right angles to its former course.

“Foaming Valley Stream,” he shouted lustily. “We’re out of it; we’re in Foaming Valley, and it’s high time.”

He was right; it was high time. Swept on by the gale, the flames were leaping like wolves from bush to bush, and scurrying in the dead leaves not two rods behind. A minute more and the roaring cauldron would have been all about them, but they had reached now the mouth of the little valley at an angle from the flame-swept funnel.

“Here we are in a regular turnpike!” he shouted. “It can’t catch us now. It ’ll run slow up this valley.”

They were on the little dinkey road which years before had taken the lumber down to the Cherry Run trail. It was plain sailing now. But the panic still on them, they scurried ahead like rabbits.

The valley grew narrower. A mat of cherry sprouts, all in full blossom, and of raspberry and blackberry tangle, bound in the road on either side. The ties had begun to decay; the iron rails were thick with rust; and there were places where floods had gullied widely into the road-bed. The smoke became less and less dense until it was possible to see several rods in advance. The wind was blowing toward the fire and sweeping it in the opposite direction. The valley grew narrower; at length the ridge-sides, steep and ragged, a mere mass of torn stone, drew into a sharp V with the dinkey road raised on trestle work at one side. They passed through with difficulty.

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