PAGE 9
The Sheriff Of Siskyou
by
The sheriff had grasped the full meaning of their situation. In spite of his first error–the very carelessness of familiarity–his knowledge of woodcraft was greater than his companion’s, and he saw their danger. “Come,” he said quickly, “we must make for an opening or we shall be caught.”
The major smiled in misapprehension.
“Who could catch us here?”
The sheriff pointed to the blazing tree.
“THAT,” he said. “In five minutes IT will have a posse that will wipe us both out.”
He caught the major by the arm and rushed him into the smoke, apparently in the direction of the greatest mass of flame. The heat was suffocating, but it struck the major that the more they approached the actual scene of conflagration the heat and smoke became less, until he saw that the fire was retreating before them and the following wind. In a few moments their haven of safety–the expanse already burnt over–came in sight. Here and there, seen dimly through the drifting smoke, the scattered embers that still strewed the forest floor glowed in weird nebulous spots like will-o’-the-wisps. For an instant the major hesitated; the sheriff cast a significant glance behind them.
“Go on; it’s our only chance,” he said imperatively.
They darted on, skimming the blackened or smouldering surface, which at times struck out sparks and flame from their heavier footprints as they passed. Their boots crackled and scorched beneath them; their shreds of clothing were on fire; their breathing became more difficult, until, providentially, they fell upon an abrupt, fissure-like depression of the soil, which the fire had leaped, and into which they blindly plunged and rolled together. A moment of relief and coolness followed, as they crept along the fissure, filled with damp and rotting leaves.
“Why not stay here?” said the exhausted prisoner.
“And be roasted like sweet potatoes when these trees catch,” returned the sheriff grimly. “No.” Even as he spoke, a dropping rain of fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered redwood, before overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the upper wind. A vague and indefinable terror was in the air. The conflagration no longer seemed to obey any rule of direction. The incendiary torch had passed invisibly everywhere. They scrambled out of the hollow, and again dashed desperately forward.
Beaten, bruised, blackened, and smoke-grimed–looking less human than the animals who had long since deserted the crest–they at last limped into a “wind opening” in the woods that the fire had skirted. The major sank exhaustedly to the ground; the sheriff threw himself beside him. Their strange relations to each other seemed to have been forgotten; they looked and acted as if they no longer thought of anything beyond the present. And when the sheriff finally arose and, disappearing for several minutes, brought his hat full of water for his prisoner from a distant spring that they had passed in their flight, he found him where he had left him–unchanged and unmoved.
He took the water gratefully, and after a pause fixed his eyes earnestly upon his captor. “I want you to do a favor to me,” he said slowly. “I’m not going to offer you a bribe to do it either, nor ask you anything that isn’t in a line with your duty. I think I understand you now, if I didn’t before. Do you know Briggs’s restaurant in Sacramento?”
The sheriff nodded.
“Well! over the restaurant are my private rooms, the finest in Sacramento. Nobody knows it but Briggs, and he has never told. They’ve been locked ever since I left; I’ve got the key still in my pocket. Now when we get to Sacramento, instead of taking me straight to jail, I want you to hold me THERE as your prisoner for a day and a night. I don’t want to get away; you can take what precautions you like–surround the house with policemen, and sleep yourself in the ante-room. I don’t want to destroy any papers or evidence; you can go through the rooms and examine everything before and after; I only want to stay there a day and a night; I want to be in my old rooms, have my meals from the restaurant as I used to, and sleep in my own bed once more. I want to live for one day like a gentleman, as I used to live before I came here. That’s all! It isn’t much, Tom. You can do it and say you require to do it to get evidence against me, or that you want to search the rooms.”