With his opened knife in his hand old Fleming himself had gone headlong into the barn, where the stifling smoke swirled with the air currents, and where could be heard in its fulness the terrible chorus of the flames, laden with tones of hate and death, a hymn of wonderful ferocity.
He flung a blanket over an old mare"s head, cut the halter close to the manger, led the mare to the door, and fairly kicked her out to safety.
He returned with the same blanket, and rescued one of the work horses.
He took five horses out, and then came out himself, with his clothes bravely on fire. He had no whiskers, and very little hair on his head.
They soused five pailfuls of water on him. His eldest son made a clean miss with the sixth pailful, because the old man had turned and was running down the decline and around to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the barn, where were the stanchions of the cows. Some one noticed at the time that he ran very lamely, as if one of the frenzied horses had smashed his hip.
The cows, with their heads held in the heavy stanchions, had thrown themselves, strangled themselves, tangled themselves: done everything which the ingenuity of their exuberant fear could suggest to them.
Here, as at the well, the same thing happened to every man save one.
Their hands went mad. They became incapable of everything save the power to rush into dangerous situations.
The old man released the cow nearest the door, and she, blind drunk with terror, crashed into the Swede. The Swede had been running to and fro babbling. He carried an empty milk pail, to which he clung with an unconscious, fierce enthusiasm. He shrieked like one lost as he went under the cow"s hoofs, and the milk pail, rolling across the floor, made a flash of silver in the gloom.
Old Fleming took a fork, beat off the cow, and dragged the paralyzed Swede to the open air. When they had rescued all the cows save one, which had so fastened herself that she could not be moved an inch, they returned to the front of the barn and stood sadly, breathing like men who had reached the final point of human effort.
Many people had come running. Some one had even gone to the church, and now, from the distance, rang the tocsin note of the old bell. There was a long flare of crimson on the sky, which made remote people speculate as to the whereabouts of the fire.
The long flames sang their drumming chorus in voices of the heaviest ba.s.s. The wind whirled clouds of smoke and cinders into the faces of the spectators. The form of the old barn was outlined in black amid these ma.s.ses of orange-hued flames.
And then came this Swede again, crying as one who is the weapon of the sinister fates. "De colts! De colts! You have forgot de colts!"
Old Fleming staggered. It was true; they had forgotten the two colts in the box stalls at the back of the barn. "Boys," he said, "I must try to get "em out." They clamoured about him then, afraid for him, afraid of what they should see. Then they talked wildly each to each. "Why, it"s sure death!" "He would never get out!" "Why, it"s suicide for a man to go in there!" Old Fleming stared absent-mindedly at the open doors. "The poor little things!" he said. He rushed into the barn.
When the roof fell in, a great funnel of smoke swarmed toward the sky, as if the old man"s mighty spirit, released from its body--a little bottle--had swelled like the genie of fable. The smoke was tinted rose-hue from the flames, and perhaps the unutterable midnights of the universe will have no power to daunt the colour of this soul.
THE END.