Monty Price's Nightmare (2 page)

Chapter III

Monty untied his saddle pack and threw it aside; and then with tight-shut jaw he rode down the steep de­scent to the level valley. His horse was big and strong and fast. He was fresh, too, and in superb condition. Once down on the hard-packed road he broke into a run, and it took an iron arm to hold him from extending himself. Monty calculated on saving the horse for the run back. He had no doubt that would be a race with fire. And he had been in forest fires more than once.

The big bay settled into a steady, easy-running gait. The valley floor sloped up quite perceptibly, and the road was many times cut and crossed by a dry wash. Soon Monty reached the bleached and scraggy cedars—and the scant thickets of scrub oak—and then the straggling pines. They were dwarfed and gnarled, and many were dead. As he advanced, however, these trees grew thicker and larger. Then he rode out of the pines into a park, where the white grass and the gray sage waved in the wind.

A dry, odorous scent of burning wood came on the breeze. He could still see part of the smoke cloud that had alarmed him, but, presently, when he had crossed into the pines again it passed from his sight. The ascent of the valley merged into level and the slopes widened out and the road crossed park after park, all girdled by pines. Then he entered the forest proper. It was dark and shady. The great pines stood far apart, with only dead limbs low down, and high above, the green, lacy foliage massed together. There was no underbrush. Here and there a fallen monarch lay with great slabs of bark splitting off. The ground was a thick brown mat of pine needles, as dry as powder.

The dry, strong smell of pine was al­most sickening. It rushed at Monty—filling his nostrils. And in the treetops there was a steady, even roar of wind. Monty had a thought of how that beau­tiful brown and green forest, with its stately pines and sunny glades, would be changed in less than an hour.

There seemed to be a blue haze veil­ing the aisles of the forest, and Monty kept imagining it was smoke. And he imagined the roar in the pines grew louder. It was his impatience and anx­iety that made the ride seem so long. But he was immensely relieved when he reached Muncie's corral. It was full of horses, and they were snorting, stamp­ing, heads up, facing the direction of the wind. That wind seemed stronger, more of a warm, pine-laden blast, which smelled of fire and smoke. It appeared to be full of fine dust or ashes. Monty dismounted and had a look at his horse. He was wet and hot, just right for a grueling race. Monty meant to let down the bars of the corral gate, so that Muncie's horses could escape, but he was deterred by the thought that he might need another mount. Then he hurried on to Muncie's cabin.

This was a structure of logs and clap­boards, standing in a little clearing, with the great pines towering all around. Presently Monty saw the child, little Del, playing in the yard with a dog. He called. The child heard, and being frightened ran into the cabin. The dog came barking toward Monty. He was a big, savage animal, a trained watchdog. But he recognized Monty.

Hurrying forward Monty went to the open door and called Mrs. Muncie. There was no immediate response. He called again. And while he stood there waiting, listening, above the roar of the wind he heard a low, dull, thundering sound, like a waterfall in a flooded river. It sent the blood rushing back to his heart, leaving him cold. He had not a single instant to lose.

“Mrs. Muncie,” he called louder. “Come out! Bring the child! It's Monty Price. There's forest fire! Hurry!”

Still he did not get an answer. Then he called little Del, with like result. He reflected that the mother often drove to town, leaving the child in care of the watchdog. Besides, usually Muncie or one of his men was near at hand. But now there did not seem to be any­body here. And that dull, continuous sound shook Monty's nerve. He yelled into the open door. Then he stepped in. There was no one in the big room—or the kitchen. He grew hurried now. The child was hiding. Finally he found her in the clothespress, and he pulled her out. She was frightened. She did not recognize him.

“Del, is your mother home?” he asked.

The child shook her head. With that Monty picked her up, along with a heavy shawl he saw, and, hurry­ing out, he ran down to the corral. The horses were badly frightened now. Monty set little Del down, threw the shawl into a watering trough, and then he let down the bars of the gate. The horses pounded out in a cloud of dust. Monty's horse was frightened, too, and almost broke away. There was now a growing roar on the wind. It seemed right upon him. Yet he could not see any fire or smoke. The dog came to him, whining and sniffing.

With swift hands Monty soaked the shawl thoroughly in the water, and then wrapping it round little Del and holding her tight, he mounted. The horse plunged and broke and plunged again—then leaped out straight and fast down the road. And Monty's ears seemed pierced and filled by a terrible, thunder­ing roar.

For an instant the awful and unknown sound froze him, stiffened him in his saddle, robbed him of strength. It was the feel of the child that coun­teracted this and then roused the dare­devil in him. The years of his range life had engendered wildness and vio­lence, which now were to have expres­sion in a way new to him.

He had to race with fire. He had to beat the wind of flame to the open parks. Ten miles of dry forest, like powder! Though he had never seen it he knew fire backed by heavy wind could rage through dry pine faster than a horse could run. He would fail in the one good deed of his life. And flashing into his mind came the shame and calumny that before had never affected him. It was not for such as he to have the happiness of saving a child. He had accepted a fatal chance; he had forfeited that which made life signifi­cant to attempt the impossible. Fate had given him a bitter part to play. But he swore a grim and ghastly oath that he would beat this game. The intense and abnormal passion of the man, damned for years, never controlled, burst within him—and suddenly, ter­ribly, he awoke to a wild joy in this race with fire. He had no love of life—no fear of death. All that he wanted to do—the last thing he wanted to do was to save this child. And to do that he would have burned there in the forest and for a million years in the dark be­yond.

So it was with wild joy and rage that Monty Price welcomed this race. He goaded the horse. Then he looked back.

Through the aisles of the forest he saw a strange, streaky, murky some­thing, moving, alive, shifting up and down, never an instant the same. It must have been the wind, the heat be­fore the fire. He seemed to see through it, but there was nothing beyond, only opaque, dim, mustering clouds. Hot puffs shot into his face. His eyes smarted and stung. His ears hurt, and were being stopped up. The deafening roar was the roar of avalanches, of maelstroms, of rushing seas, of the wreck and ruin and end of the world. It grew to be so great a roar that he no longer heard. There was only si­lence. His horse stretched low on a dead run; the tips of the pines were bending in the wind; and wildfire was blowing through the forest, but there was no sound.

Ahead of him, down the road, low under the spreading trees, floated swiftly some kind of a medium, like a transparent veil. It was neither smoke nor air. It carried faint pin points of light, sparks, that resembled atoms of dust floating in sunlight. It was a wave of heat propelled before the storm of fire. Monty did not feel pain, but he seemed to be drying up, parching. All was so strange and unreal—the swift flight between the pines, now growing ghostly in the dimming light—the sense of rushing, overpowering force—and yet absolute silence. But that light bur­den against his breast—the child—was not unreal.

He fought the desire to look back, but he could not resist it. Some hor­rible fascination compelled him to look. All behind had changed. A hot wind, like a blast from a furnace, blew light, stinging particles into his face. The fire was racing in the treetops, while below all was yet clear. A lashing, leaping, streaming flame engulfed the canopy of pines. It seemed white, seething, in­conceivably swift, with a thousand flash­ing tongues. It traveled ahead of smoke. It was so thin he could see the branches through it, and the dirty, fiery clouds behind. It swept onward a sublime and an appalling spectacle. Monty could not think of what it looked like. It was fire, liberated, freed from the bowels of the earth, tremendous, de­vouring. This, then, was the meaning of fire. This, then, was the burning of the world.

He must have been insane, he thought, not to be overcome in spirit. But he was not. He felt loss of some­thing, some kind of sensation he ought to have had. But he rode that race keener and better than any race he had ever before ridden. He had but to keep his saddle—to dodge the snags of the trees—to guide the maddened horse. No horse ever in the world had run so magnificent a race. He was outracing wind and fire. But he was run­ning in terror. For miles he held that long, swift, tremendous stride without a break. He was running to his death whether he distanced the fire or not. For nothing could stop him now except a bursting heart. Already he was blind, Monty thought.

And then, it appeared to Monty, al­though his steed kept fleeting on faster and faster, that the wind of flame was gaining. The air was too thick to breathe. It seemed ponderous—not from above, but from behind. It had irresistible weight. It pushed Monty and his horse onward in their flight—straws on the crest of a cyclone.

Again he looked back and again the spectacle was different. There was a white and golden fury of flame above, beautiful and blinding; and below, far­ther back, a hellishly dark and glowing fire, black-streaked, with tumbling puffs and streams of yellow smoke, The aisles between the burning pines were smoky, murky caverns, moving, coalesc­ing, weird, and mutable. Monty saw fire shoot from the treetops down the trunks, as if they were trains of pow­der; and he saw fire shoot up the trunks. They went off like huge rock­ets. And along the ground leaped the little flames, like oncoming waves in the surf. He gazed till his eyes burned and blurred, till all merged into a wide, pursuing storm too awful for the gaze of man.

Ahead there was light through the forest. He made out a white, open space of grass. A park! And the horse, like a demon, hurtled onward, with his smoothness of action gone, be­ginning to break.

A wave of wind, blasting in its heat, like a blanket of fire, rolled over Monty. He saw the lashing tongues of flame above him in the pines. The storm had caught him. It forged ahead. He was riding under a canopy of fire. Burning pine cones, like torches, dropped all around him, upon him. A terrible blank sense of weight, of agony, of suffoca­tion—of the air turning to fire! He was drooping, withering when he flashed from the pines out into an open park. The horse broke and plunged and went down, reeking, white, in convul­sions, killed on his feet. There was fire in his mane. Monty fell with him, and lay in the grass, the child in his arms. There was smoke streaming above him, and his ears seemed to wake to a terrible, receding roar. It lessened, passed away, leaving behind a crackling, snapping, ripping sound. The wind of flame had gone on. Monty lay there partially recovering. The air was clearer. Still he was dazed.

Fire in the grass—fire at his legs roused him. He experienced a sting­ing pain. It revived him. He got up. The park was burning over. It was enveloped in a pall of smoke. But he could see. Drawing back a fold of the wet shawl, he looked at the child. She appeared unharmed. Then he set off running away from the edge of the for­est. It was a big park, miles wide. Near the middle there was bare ground. He recognized the place, got his bear­ings, and made for the point where a deep ravine headed out of this park.

Beyond the bare circle there was more fire, burning sage and grass. His feet were blistered through his boots, and then it seemed he walked on red-hot coals. His clothes caught fire, and he beat it out with bare hands. Agony of thirst tortured him, and the beating, throbbing, excruciating pain of burns. He lost his way, but he kept on. And all about him was a chaos of smoke. Unendurable heat drove him back when he wandered near the edge of the pines.

Then he stumbled into the rocky ra­vine. Smoke and blaze above him—the rocks hot—the air suffocating—it was all unendurable. But he kept on. He knew that his strength failed as the conditions bettered. He plunged down, always saving the child when he fell. His sight grew red. Then it grew dark. All was black, or else night had come. He was losing all pain, all sense when he stumbled into water. That saved him. He stayed there. A long time passed till it was light again. His eyes had a thick film over them. Sometimes he could not see at all. But when he could, he kept on walking, on and on. He knew when he got out of the ra­vine. He knew where he ought to be. But the smoky gloom obscured every­thing. He traveled the way he thought he ought to go, and went on and on, endlessly. He did not suffer any more. The weight of the child bore him down. He rested, went on, rested again, went on again till all sense, except a dim sight, failed him. Through that, as in a dream, he saw moving figures, men looming up in the gray fog, hurrying to him.

* * * *

Far south of the Tonto Range, under the purple shadows of the Peloncillos, there lived a big-hearted rancher with whom Monty Price found a home. He did little odd jobs about the ranch that by courtesy might have been called work. He would never ride a horse again. Monty's legs were warped, his feet hobbled. He did not have free use of his hands. And seldom or never in the presence of anyone did he remove his sombrero. For there was not a hair on his head. His face was dark, almost black, with terrible scars. A burned-out, hobble-footed wreck of a cowboy! But, strangely, there were those at the ranch who learned to love him. They knew his story.