A Pagan of the Hills | Page 6

in me yit atter all," and he
started back, stumbling with the ache of tired bones, to the task he had
renounced, while his fellows grumbled a little and followed his lead.
Throughout the day Brent had felt himself an ineffective. He had done
what he could but his activities had always seemed to be on the less
strenuous fringe of things like a bee who works on the edge of a honey
comb.
Now as the replenished fire leaped high and the hills resounded to an
occasional peal of unseasonable thunder the figure of the woman who
had assumed a man's responsibility became a pattern of action. In the
flare and the shadow he watched it, fascinated. It was always in the
forefront, frequently in actual but unconsidered peril, leading like the
white plume of Navarre.
It was all as lurid and as turgid a picture as things seen in nightmare or
remembered from mythology--this turmoil of emergency effort through
a fire-lit night of storm and flood; figures thrown into exaggeration as
the flames leaped or dwindled--faces haggard with weariness.

To Brent came a new and keener spirit of combat. The outskirts of
action no longer sufficed, but with an elemental ardor and elation his
blood glowed in his veins.
When at last all that could be done had been done, the east was
beginning to take on a sort of ashen light--the forerunner of dawn.
Alexander had held to the sticking-point the quailing energies of spent
men for more than six agonized hours. Below them the river bed that
had been almost dry forty-eight hours ago was a madly howling torrent.
Men with faces gray and hollow-eyed laid down their crow-bars and
pike-poles. Brent, reeling unsteadily as he walked, looked about him in
a dazed fashion out of giddy eyes. He saw Alexander wiping the
steaming moisture from her brow with the sleeve of her shirt and heard
her speak through a confused pounding upon eardrums that still seemed
full of cumulative din.
"Unless ther flood carries ther river five foot higher then hit's ever gone
afore, we've done saved thet timber," she said slowly. "An' no men ever
worked more plum slavish ner faithful then what you men have
ternight."
"That hain't nothin' more left ter do now," said Parson Acup, "unless hit
be ter go home an' pray."
But Alexander shook her head with a vigorous and masculine
determination.
"No, thar's still one thing more ter do. I want thet when you men goes
home ye send me back a few others--fresh men. I'm goin' back ter see
how my daddy's farin' an' whether he's got a chanst ter live, but----" she
paused abruptly and her voice fell, "thar's a spring-branch over thar by
my house. Ye kin mighty nigh gauge how ther water's risin' or fallin'
hyar by notin' ther way hit comes up or goes down over yon. I aims ter
keep a watchin' hit, whilst I'm over thar."
The parson nodded his head. "That's a right good idee, Alexander, but
wharfore does ye seek ter hev us send more men over hyar? All thet kin

be done, has been done."
The girl's eyes snapped. In them were violet fires, quick-leaping and
hot.
"I hain't gone this fur only ter quit now," she passionately declared.
"Them logs is rafted. Ef they goes out on this flood-tide, I aims ter ride
'em down-stream 'twell I kin land 'em in a safe boom."
"But my God Almighty, gal," Parson Acup, wrenched out of his usual
placidity by the effrontery of the project, spoke vehemently. "Any tide
thet would bust thet dam would sartain shore rip them rafts inter
fragments. Ef they goes out a-tall they goes out ter destruction and
splinters an' sure death, I fears me. Hit's like ridin' a runaway hoss
without no bit in his mouth."
"Thet's a thing I've done afore now," the girl assured him. "An' I aims
ter undertake hit ergin."
She turned and, taking the rubber coat from a tree crotch, went striding
away with her face toward the pale east and despite fatigue she went
high-headed and with elasticity in her step.
CHAPTER III
The two-storied house of Aaron McGivins stood on a hill-side
overlooking a stretch of cleared acreage. It was a dwelling place of
unusual pretentiousness for that land of "Do-without," where
inexorable meagerness is the rule of life. Just now in a room whose
hearth was wide, upon a four-poster bed, lay the master of the place
gazing upwards at the rafters with eyes harassed, yet uncomplaining.
Aaron McGivins had just cause for troubled meditation as he stretched
there under the faded coverlet and under the impending threat of death,
as well. His life had been one of scant ease and of unmitigated warfare
with the hostile