“Crab Creek Trestle,” she said. “He’s—going to burn it. He warned you—to get you—out here.”
His suspicion reared itself between them.
“How do you know? What are you doing here? Did he send you?”
She quivered, sobbed dryly—then she shoved him away.
“I know because he boasted of it. That—and other things. To-morrow that—note. The bank will make you pay it. He—said he—would be making clothespins—in your mill—”
“But you—why are you here? What do you want?”
“It doesn’t—matter why—I am here. You must go back. You mustn’t go on.”
“So that’s it,” he said, bitterly. “He sent you to hold me back till they could do the work.”
“Go back to town, Marie,” he said, his voice quivering, not with wrath, but with pain. “Go back. I’m going on.”
“You mustn’t!” She took one tottering step toward him and sank until she was on her knees. He would not believe her. He would not be warned.
What she had suffered, the things she had just done, had been in vain.
“Go back,” he said, dully. “It isn’t safe out there. Go back.”
“It isn’t safe for you—for _you_. It’s planned to have you come—alone.”
He moved away from her. She forced herself to rise.
He set his teeth, turned his face away from her, and went on, unmindful of her sobbing, gasping breaths. At one moment they saw a redness in the sky; saw the darkness ahead fluttering like a waved cloth.
“Fire,” Jim muttered, and began to run. He was too late—Crab Creek Trestle was in names!
As best she could Marie followed. He gained, but she did not falter, urged herself to her utmost. Ahead of them the trestle came into view, wreathed in flames, flames that leaped and writhed and strained upward as if seeking to be released from bonds that held them to earth. The trees and bushes about seemed to rise and fall with the swelling of the tongues of fire. In the midst the framework of the trestle stood black, stark, startlingly vivid.
For a moment Jim stood where bank and trestle met, stood undecided. There was nothing to do, yet he must do something, for it was his nature to do something. Nothing would save the trestle. He perceived that, though he hesitated to admit it. He saw that the work of incendiarism had been done efficiently; timbers had been well soaked with oil, and the match applied not in one spot but in scores of places. Except for a matter of thirty feet at the end where Jim stood the whole structure was flame-wrapped. From the very brook fire seemed to flow upward; here and there, twenty feet below, marsh grass burst into ruddy, living flower.