A voice rang out to the left, “Stand, or I’ll shoot!”
She set a foot on the fading bit of fire, and, still gripping the ax, fled, with one hoarse cry, through the woods, striking against the trees, falling, tearing her hands and clothes in the raspberry vines.
“He ain’t dead,” she cried, “and there’s another man there. I got the money, though. Come! quick! Take blankets—go on to the road. I’ll be there in a minute. Don’t stand staring. You’re drunk!”
He was. All day long he had been drinking; and when she went out, he found his bottle and emptied it, half crazed with fear. He obeyed her with difficulty and came out staggering—letting the blankets trail, and stumbling as he went. Then he halted.
“Oh, the river! the river!—the dugout! Fool! sot! The dugout’s at the lower landing, isn’t it? I left it this morning.”
She went back into the cabin, caught up some garments, and threw them out of the window. Next she raked the fire out onto the floor, and, when again at the door, caught the kerosene-can from a shelf, with no tremor or haste, uncorked it, and threw it onto the scattered fire. A great yellow blaze went up, and she barely escaped in time. She stood a moment, and turned away laughing. “There won’t be much for that lawyer-man, I guess.” One of her starved hens, which had ventured into the cabin to forage, was hurled out by the blast, blind and scorched, and reeled about making strange noises. “Gosh, but that’s funny!” she cried, snatching the ax and following Joe.
“Shut up, and hurry, if you want to save your neck.”
“What!” she cried. There was that in her voice which quieted the man, and they went as swiftly as a reeling head and hurt leg permitted down to the landing.
“Set down,” she cried, and pushed off the pirogue. “Can you paddle?”
“Then do it,” and they went away into the darkness, down the hurry of the stream.
Jack had dimly understood that something was wrong as he came through the edge of the wood, but, as the birch flared up in its fall through the air, he caught sight of a man’s body, and of the backward step of one about to strike with an ax. Then he called to her. As she fled he ran out, and, hearing the noise of her retreat more and more distant, he dropped beside the man.