CHAPTER X

WE ARE LOST

The two girls, still clasping hands, looked into each other's eyes. Gypsy was very pale.

"Then we are lost!"

"Yes."

Joy broke into a sort of sobbing cry. Gypsy squeezed her hand very tightly, with quivering lips.

"It's all my fault. I thought I knew. Oh, Joy, I'm so sorry!"

She expected Joy to burst forth in a torrent of reproaches; once it would have been so; but for some reason, Joy did not say an angry word. She only sobbed away quietly, clutching at Gypsy's hand as if she were very much frightened. She was frightened thoroughly. The scene was enough to terrify a far less timid child than Joy.

It was now quite dark. Over in the west a faint, ghostly gleam of light still lingered, seen dimly through the trees; but it only made the utter blackness of the great forest-shadows more horrible. The huge trunks of the pines and maples towered up, up—they could scarcely see how far, grim, and gloomy and silent; here and there a dead branch thrust itself out against the sky, in that hideous likeness to a fleshless hand which night and darkness always lend to them. Even Gypsy, though she had been in the woods many times at night before, shuddered as she stood looking up. A queer thought came to her, of an old fable she had sometime read in Tom's mythology; a fable of some huge Titans, angry and fierce, who tried to climb into heaven; there was just that look about the trees. It was very still. The birds were in their nests, their singing done. From far away in some distant swamp came the monotonous, mournful chant of the frogs—a dreary sound enough, heard in a safe and warm and lighted home; unspeakably ugly if one is lost in a desolate forest.

Now and then a startled squirrel dropped from bough to bough; or there was the stealthy, sickening rustle of an unseen snake among the fallen leaves. From somewhere, too, where precipices that they could not find dashed downwards into damp gullies, cold, clinging mists were rising.

"To stay here all night!" sobbed Joy, "Oh Gypsy, Gypsy!"

Gypsy was a brave, sensible girl, and after that first moment of horror when she stood looking up at the trees, her courage and her wits came back to her.

"I don't believe we shall have to stay here all night," speaking in a decided, womanly way, a little of the way her mother had in a difficulty.

"They are all over the mountain hunting for us now. They'll find us before long, I know. Besides, if they didn't, we could sit down in a dry place somewhere, and wait till morning; there wouldn't anything hurt us. Oh, you brought your waterproof—good! Put it on and button it up tight."

Joy had the cloak folded over her arm. She did passively as Gypsy told her. When it was all buttoned, she suddenly remembered that Gypsy wore only her thin, nankeen sack, and she offered to share it with her.

"No," said Gypsy, "I don't want it. Wrap it around your throat as warm as you can. I got you into this scrape, and now I'm going to take care of you. Now let's halloa."

And halloa they did, to the best of their ability; Joy in her feeble, frightened way, Gypsy in loud shouts, and strong, like a boy's. But there was no answer. They called again and again; they stopped after each cry, with breath held in, and head bent to listen. Nothing was to be heard but the frogs and the squirrels and the gliding snakes.

Joy broke out into fresh sobs.

"Well, it's no use to stand here any longer," said Gypsy; "let's run on."

"Run where? You don't know which way. What shall we do, what shall we do?"

"We'll go this way—we haven't tried it at all. I shouldn't wonder a bit if the path were right over there where it looks so black. Besides, we shall hear them calling for us."

Ah, if there had been anybody to tell them! In precisely the other direction, the picnic party, roused and frightened, were searching every thicket, and shouting their names at every ravine. Each step the girls took now sent them so much further away from help.

While they were running on, still hand in hand, Joy heard the most remarkable sound. It was a laugh from Gypsy—actually a soft, merry laugh, breaking out like music on the night air, in the dreary place.

"Why, Gypsy Breynton! What can you find to laugh at, I should like to know?" said Joy, provoked enough to stop crying at very short notice.

"Oh, dear, I really can't help it," apologized Gypsy, choking down the offending mirth; "but I was thinking—I couldn't help it, Joy, now, possibly—how mad Francis Rowe will be to think he's got to stop and help hunt us up!"

"I wonder what that black thing is ahead of us," said Joy, presently. They were still running on together, but their hands were not joined just at that moment. Joy was a little in advance.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Gypsy, eyeing it intently. The words were scarcely off from her lips before she cried out with a loud cry, and sprang forward, clutching at Joy's dress.

She was too late.

Joy tripped over a mass of briars, fell, rolled heavily—not over upon the ground, but off . Off into horrible, utter darkness. Down, with outstretched hands and one long shriek.

Gypsy stood as if someone had charmed her into a marble statue, her hands thrown above her head, her eyes peering into the blank darkness below.

She stood so for one instant only; then she did what only wild, impulsive Gypsy would have done. She went directly down after Joy, clinging with her hands and feet to the side of the cliff; slipping, rolling, getting to her feet again, tearing her clothes, her hands, her arms—down like a ball, bounding, bouncing, blinded, bewildered.

If it had been four hundred feet, there is no doubt she would have gone just the same. It proved to be only ten, and she landed somewhere on a patch of soft grass, except for her scratches and a bruise or two, quite unhurt.

Something lay here beside her, flat upon the ground. It was Joy. She lay perfectly still.

A horrible fear came over Gypsy. She crept up on her hands and knees, trying to see her lace through the dark, and just then Joy moaned faintly. Gypsy's heart gave a great thump. In that moment, in the moment of that horrible fear and that great relief, Gypsy knew for the first time that she loved Joy, and how much.

"It's my ankle," moaned Joy; "it must be broken—I know it's broken."

It was not broken, but very badly sprained.

"Can you stand on it?" asked Gypsy, her face almost as pale as Joy's.

Joy tried to get to her feet, but fell heavily, with a cry of pain.

Gypsy looked around her with dismay. Above, the ten feet of rock shot steeply; across the gully towered a high, dark wall; at each end, shelving stones were piled upon each other. They had fallen into a sort of unroofed cave,—a hollow, shut in completely and impassably. Impassably to Joy; there could be no doubt about that. To leave her there alone was out of the question. There was but one thing to be done; there was no alternative.

"We must stay here all night," said Gypsy, slowly. She had scarcely finished her sentence when she sprang up, her lips parted and white.

"Joy, see, see! what is that?"

"What? Where?" asked Joy between her sobs.

"There! isn't that smoke ?"

A distinct, crackling sound answered her, as of something fiercely licking up the dead leaves and twigs,—a fearful sound to hear in a great forest. At the same instant a white cloud of smoke puffed down almost into their faces. Before they had time to stir or cry out, a great jet of yellow flame shot up on the edge of the cliff, glared far into the shadow of the forest, lighted up the ravine with an awful brightness.

The mountain was on fire.

Gypsy sat for the instant without speaking or moving. She seemed to herself to have no words to say, no power of motion. She knew far better than Joy what those five words meant. A dim remembrance came to her—and it was horrible that it should come to her just then—of something she had seen when she was a very little girl, and never forgotten, and never would forget. A mountain burning for weeks, and a woman lost on it; all the town turned out in an agony of search; the fires out one day, and a slow procession winding down the blank, charred slope, bearing something closely covered, that no one looked upon.

She sprang up in an agony of terror.

"Oh, Joy, can't you walk? We shall die here! We shall be burned to death!"

At that moment a flaming branch fell hissing into a little pool at the bottom of the gully. It passed so near them that it singed a lock of Gypsy's hair.

Joy crawled to her feet, fell, crawled up again, fell again.

Gypsy seized her in both arms, and dragged her across the gully. Joy was taller than herself, and nearly as heavy. How she did it she never knew. Terror gave her a flash of that sort of strength which we sometimes find among the insane.

She laid Joy down in a corner of the ravine the furthest removed from the fire; she could not have carried her another inch. Above and all around towered and frowned the rocks; there was not so much as a crevice opening between them; there was not a spot that Joy could climb. Across, the great tongues of flame tossed themselves into the air, and glared awfully against the sky, which was dark with hurrying clouds. The underbrush was all on fire; two huge pine trees were ablaze, their branches shooting off hotly now and then like rockets.

When those trees fell they would fall into the ravine.

Gypsy sat down and covered her face.

Little did Mr. Francis Rowe think what he had done, when, strolling along by the ravine at twilight, he threw down his half-burnt cigar: threw it down and walked away whistling, and has probably never thought of it from that day to this.

Gypsy sat there with her hands before her face, and she sat very still. She understood in that moment what was coming to her and to Joy. Yes, to her as well as to Joy; for she would not leave Joy to die alone. It would be an easy thing for her to climb the cliffs; she was agile, fearless, as used to the mountains as a young chamois, and the ascent, as I said, though steep, was not high. Once out of that gully where death was certain, she would have at least a chance of life. The fire if not checked would spread rapidly, would chase her down the mountain. But that she could escape it she thought was probable, if not sure. And life was so sweet, so dear. And her mother—poor mother, waiting at home, and looking and longing for her!

Gypsy gave a great gulp; there was such a pain in her throat it seemed as if it would strangle her. But should she leave Joy, crippled and helpless, to die alone in this horrible place? Should she do it? No, it was through her careless fault that they had been brought into it. She would stay with Joy.

"I don't see as we can do anything," she said, raising her head.

"Shall we be burned to death?" shrieked Joy. "Gypsy, Gypsy, shall we be burned to death?"

A huge, hot branch flew into the gully while she spoke, hissing as the other had done, into the pool. The glare shot deeper and redder into the forest, and the great trees writhed in the flames like human things.

The two girls caught each other's hands. To die—to die so horribly! One moment to be sitting there, well and strong, so full of warm, young life; the next to lie buried in a hideous tangle of fallen, flaming trunks, their bodies consuming to a little heap of ashes that the wind would blow away to-morrow morning; their souls—where?

"I wish I'd said my prayers every day," sobbed Joy, weakly. "I wish I'd been a good girl!"

"Let's say them now, Joy. Let's ask Him to stop the fire. If He can't, maybe He'll let us go to heaven anyway."

So Gypsy knelt down on the rocks that were becoming hot now to the touch, and began the first words that came to her:—"Our Father which art in Heaven," and faltered in them, sobbing, and began again, and went through somehow to the end.

After that, they were still a moment.

"Joy," said Gypsy then, faintly, "I've been real ugly to you since you've been at our house."

"I've scolded you, too, a lot, and made fun of your things. I wish I hadn't."

"If we could only get out of here, I'd never be cross to you as long as ever I live, and I wish you'd please to forgive me."

"I will if—if you'll forgive me, you know. Oh, Gypsy, it's growing so hot over here!"

"Kiss me, Joy."

They kissed each other through their sobs.

"Mother's in the parlor now, watching for us, and Tom and—"

Gypsy's sentence was never finished. There was a great blazing and crackling, and one of the trees fell, swooping down with a crash. It fell across the ravine, lying there, a bridge of flame, and lighting the underbrush upon the opposite side. One tree stood yet. That would fall, when it fell, directly into the corner of the gully where the girls were crouched up against the rocks. And then Joy remembered what in her terror she had not thought of before.

"Gypsy, you can climb! don't stay here with me. What are you staying for?"

"You needn't talk about that," said Gypsy, with faltering voice; "if it hadn't been for me you wouldn't be here. I'm not going to sneak off and leave you,—not any such thing!"

Whether Gypsy would have kept this resolve—and very like Gypsy it was, to make it—when the flames were actually upon her; whether, indeed, she ought to have kept it, are questions open to discussion. Something happened just then that saved the trouble of deciding. It was nothing but a clap of thunder, to be sure, but I wonder if you have any idea how it sounded to those two girls.

It was a tremendous peal, and it was followed by a fierce lightning-flash and a second peal, and then by something that the girls stretched out their arms to with a great cry, as if it had been an angel from heaven. A shower almost like the bursting of a cloud,—great, pelting drops, hissing down upon the flaming tree; it seemed like a solid sheet of water; as if the very flood-gates of heaven were open.

The cruel fire hissed and sputtered, and shot up in angry jets, and died in puffs of sullen smoke; the glaring bridge blackened slowly; the pine-tree, swayed by the sudden winds, fell into the forest, and the ravine was safe. The flames, though not quenched,—it might take hours to do that,—were thoroughly checked.

And who was that with white, set face, and outstretched hands, springing over the smoking logs, leaping down into the ravine?

"Oh, Tom, Tom! Oh, father, here we are!"