The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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Far to the north-east, above a sentinel pine which marks the outskirts
of the flat-woods, streaks like smoke drifted in the sky--the wild-fowl
leaving the lagoons. On the Lantana Road they drew bridle at a sign from
her; then she wheeled her horse and sat silent in her saddle, staring
into the western wilderness.

The character of the country had changed while they had been advancing
along this white sandy road edged with jungle; for now west and south
the Florida wilderness stretched away, the strange "Flat-woods,"
deceptively open, almost park-like in their monotony where, as far as
the eye could see, glade after glade, edged by the stately vivid green
pines, opened invitingly into other glades through endlessly charming
perspective. At every step one was prepared to come upon some handsome
mansion centring this park--some bridge spanning the shallow crystal
streams that ran out of jasmine thickets--some fine driveway curving
through the open woods. But this was the wilderness, uninhabited,
unplotted. No dwelling stood within its vistas; no road led out or in;
no bridge curved over the silently moving waters. West and south-west
into the unknown must he go who follows the lure of those peaceful,
sunny glades where there are no hills, no valleys, nothing save trees
and trees and trees again, and shallow streams with jungle edging them,
and lonely lakes set with cypress, and sunny clearings, never made by
human hands, where last year's grass, shoulder-high, silvers under the
white sun of the South.

Half a hundred miles westward lay the great inland lake; south-west, the
Everglades. The Hillsboro trail ran south-west between the upper and
lower chain of lakes, over Little Fish Crossing, along the old
Government trail, and over the Loxahatchi. Westward no trail lay save
those blind signs of the Seminoles across the wastes of open timber and
endless stretches of lagoon and saw-grass which is called the
Everglades.

On the edge of the road where Hamil sat his horse was an old pump--the
last indication of civilisation. He dismounted and tried it, filling his
cup with clear sparkling water, neither hot nor cold, and walking
through the sand offered it to Shiela Cardross.

"Osceola's font," she nodded, returning from her abstraction; "thank
you, I am thirsty." And she drained the cup at her leisure, pausing at
moments to look into the west as though the wilderness had already laid
its spell upon her.

Then she looked down at Hamil beside her, handing him the cup.

"_In-nah-cahpoor?_" she asked softly; and as he looked up puzzled and
smiling: "I asked you, in Seminole, what is the price I have to pay for
your cup of water?"

"A little love," he said quietly--"a very little, Shiela."

"I see!--like this water, neither warm nor cold: _nac-ey-tai?_--what do
you call it?--oh, yes, sisterly affection." She looked down at him with
a forced smile. "_Uncah_" she said, "which in Seminole means 'yes' to
your demand.... You don't mind if I relapse into the lake dialect
occasionally--do you?--especially when I'm afraid to say it in English."
And, gaining confidence, she smiled at him, the faintest hint of
tenderness in her eyes. "Neither warm nor cold--_Haiee-Kasapi_!--like
this Indian well, Mr. Hamil; but, like it, very faithful--even when in
the arid days to come you turn to drink from sweeter springs."

"Shiela!"

"Oh, no--no!" she breathed, releasing her hands; "you interrupt me; I
was thinking _ist-ahmah-mahhen_--which way we must go. Listen; we leave
the road yonder where Gray's green butterfly net is bobbing above the
dead grass: _in-e-gitskah?_--can't you see it? And there are dad and
Stent riding in line with that outpost pine--_ho-paiee_! Mount, my
cavalier. And"--in a lower voice--"perhaps you also may hear that voice
in the wilderness which cried once to the unwise."

As they rode girth-high through the grass the first enchanting glade
opened before them, flanked by palmettos and pines. Gray was galloping
about in the woods among swarms of yellow and brown butterflies,
swishing his net like a polo mallet, and drawing bridle every now and
then to examine some specimen and drop it into the cyanide jar which
bulged from his pocket.

"I got a lot of those dog's-head fellows!" he called out to Shiela as
she came past with Hamil. "You remember that the white ants got at my
other specimens before I could mount them."

"I remember," said Shiela; "don't ride too hard in the sun, dear." But
Gray saw something ahead and shook out his bridle, and soon left them in
the rear once more, riding through endless glades of green where there
was no sound except the creak of leather and the continuous popping of
those small pods on the seeds of which quail feed.

"I thought there were no end of gorgeous flowers in the semi-tropics,"
he said, "but there's almost nothing here except green."

She laughed. "The concentration of bloom in Northern hothouses deceives
people. The semi-tropics and the tropics are almost monotonously green
except where cultivated gardens exist. There are no masses of flowers
anywhere; even the great brilliant blossoms make no show because they
are widely scattered. You notice them when you happen to come across
them in the woods, they are so brilliant and so rare."

"Are there no fruits--those delectable fruits one reads about?"

"There are bitter wild oranges, sour guavas, eatable beach-grapes and
papaws. If you're fond of wild cassava and can prepare it so it won't
poison you, you can make an eatable paste. If you like oily cabbage, the
top of any palmetto will furnish it. But, my poor friend, there's little
here to tempt one's appetite or satisfy one's aesthetic hunger for
flowers. Our Northern meadows are far more gorgeous from June to
October; and our wild fruits are far more delicious than what one finds
growing wild in the tropics."

"But bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges--"

"All cultivated!"

"Persimmons, mulberries--"

"All cultivated when eatable. Everything palatable in this country is
cultivated."

He laughed dejectedly, then, again insistent: "But there _are_ plenty of
wild flowering trees!--magnolia, poinciana, china-berry--"

"All set out by mere man," she smiled--"except the magnolias and
dog-wood. No, Mr. Hamil, the riotous tropical bloom one reads about is
confined to people's gardens. When you come upon jasmine or an orchid in
the woods you notice the colour at once in the green monotony. But think
how many acres of blue and white and gold one passes in the North with
scarcely a glance! The South is beautiful too, in its way; but it is not
that way. Yet I care for it even more, perhaps, than I do for the
North--"

The calm, even tenor of the speech between them was reassuring her,
although it was solving no problems which, deep in her breast, she knew
lay latent, ready to quicken at any instant.

All that awaited to be solved; all that threatened between her and her
heart and conscience, now lay within her, quiescent for the moment. And
it was from moment to moment now that she was living, blindly evading,
resolutely putting off what must come after that relentless
self-examination which was still before her.

The transport wagon was now in sight ahead; and Bulow, one of the
guides, had released a brace of setters, casting them out among the open
pines.

Away raced the belled dogs, jingling into the saw-scrub; and Shiela
nodded to him to prepare for a shot as she drew her own gun from its
boot and loaded, eyes still following the distant dogs.

To and fro raced the setters, tails low, noses up, wheeling, checking,
quartering, cutting up acres and acres--a stirring sight!--and more
stirring still when the blue-ticked dog, catching the body-scent, slowed
down, flag whipping madly, and began to crawl into the wind.

"You and Shiela!" called out Cardross as they trotted up, guns resting
on their thighs. "Gray and I'll pick up the singles."

The girl sprang to the ground, gun poised; Hamil followed her, and they
walked across the sandy open where scarcely a tuft of dead grass
bristled. It seemed impossible that any living creature bigger than an
ant could conceal itself on that bare, arid sand stretch, but the ticked
dog was standing rigid, nose pointing almost between his forefeet, and
the red dog was backing him, tail like a ramrod, right forefoot doubled,
jaws a-slaver.

The girl glanced sideways at Hamil mischievously.

"What are we shooting for, Mr. Hamil?"

"Anything you wish," he said, "but it's yours anyway--all I can give. I
suppose I'm going to miss."

"No; you mustn't. If you're out of practice remember to let them get
well away. And I won't shoot a match with you this time. Shall I flush?"

"I'll put them up. Are you ready?"

"Quite, thank you."

He stepped up beside the ticked dog, halted, took one more step
beyond--whir-r-r! and the startled air was filled with wings; and crack!
crack! crack-crack! spoke the smokeless powder.

Two quail stopped in mid-air and pitched downward.

"O Lord!" said Hamil, "they're not my birds. Shiela, how _could_ you do
such a thing under my very nose and in sight of your relatives and three
unfeeling guides!"

"You poor boy'" she said, watching the bevy as he picked up the curious,
dark, little Florida quail and displayed them. Then, having marked, she
quietly signalled the dogs forward.

"I'm not going," he said; "I've performed sufficiently."

She was not quite sure how much of disappointment lay under his
pretence, and rather shyly she suggested that he redeem himself. Gray
and his father were walking toward one dog who was now standing; two
quail flushed and both fell.

"Come," she said, laying her hand lightly on his arm; "Ticky is pointing
and I _will_ have you redeem yourself."

So they went forward, shoulder to shoulder; and three birds jumped and
two fell.

"Bravo!" she exclaimed radiantly; "I knew my cavalier after all!"

"You held your fire," he said accusingly.

"Ye-s."

"Why?"

"Because--if you--" She raised her eyes half serious, half mockingly:
"Do you think I care for--anything--at your expense?"

A thrill passed through him. "Do you think I mind if you are the better
of us, you generous girl?"

"I am not a better shot; I really am not.... Look at these birds--both
cocks. Are they not funny--these quaint little black quail of the
semi-tropics? We'll need all we can get, too. But now that you are your
resistless self again I shall cease to dread the alternative of
starvation or a resort to alligator tail."

So with a gay exchange of badinage they took their turns when the dogs
rounded up singles; and sometimes he missed shamefully, and sometimes he
performed with credit, but she never amended his misses nor did more
than match his successes, and he thought that in all his life he had
never witnessed more faultless field courtesy than this young girl
instinctively displayed. Nothing in the world could have touched him
more keenly or convinced him more thoroughly. For it is on the firing
line that character shows; a person is what he is in the field--even
though he sometimes neglects to live up to it in less vital moments.

Generous and quick in her applause, sensitive under his failures, cool
in difficulties, yielding instantly the slightest advantage to him,
holding her fire when singles rose or where there could be the slightest
doubt--that was his shooting companion under the white noon sun that
day. He noticed, too, her sweetness with the dogs, her quick
encouragement when work was well done, her brief rebuke when the red
dog, galloping recklessly down wind, jumped a ground-rattler and came
within a hair's breadth of being bitten.

"The little devil!" said Hamil, looking down at the twisting reptile
which he had killed with a palmetto stem. "Why, Shiela, he has no
rattles at all."

"No, only a button. Dig a hole and bury the head. Fangs are always fangs
whether their owner is dead or alive."

So Hamil scooped out a trench with his hunting-knife and they buried the
little ground-rattler while both dogs looked on, growling.

Cardross and Gray had remounted; Bulow cast out a brace of pointers for
them, and they were already far away. Presently the distant crack of
their guns announced that fresh bevies had been found beyond the branch.

The guide, Carter, rode out, bringing Shiela and Hamil their horses and
relieving the latter's pockets of a dozen birds; announcing a halt for
luncheon at the same time in a voice softly neglectful of _I's_ and
_R's_, and musical with aspirates.

As they followed him slowly toward the wagon which stood half a mile
away under a group of noble pines, Hamil began in a low voice:

"I've got to say this, Shiela: I never saw more perfect sportsmanship
than yours; and, if only for that, I love you with all my heart."

"What a boyish thing to say!" But she coloured deliciously.

"You don't care whether I love you--that way, do you?" he asked
hopefully.

"N-no."

"Then--I can wait."

She turned toward him, confused.

"Wait?" she repeated.

"Yes--wait; all my life, if it must be."

"There is nothing to wait for. Don't say such things to me. I--it's
difficult enough for me now--to think what to do--You will not speak to
me again that way, will you? Because, if you do, I must send you
away.... And that will be--hard."

"Once," he said, "you spoke about men--how they come crashing through
the barriers of friendship. Am I like that?"

She hesitated, looked at him.

"There were no barriers."

"No barriers!"

"None--to keep you out. I should have seen to it; I should have been
prepared; but you came so naturally into my friendship--inside the
barriers--that I opened my eyes and found you there--and remembered, too
late, alas--"

"Too late?"

"Too late to shut you out. And you frightened me last night; I tried to
tell you--for your own sake; I was terrified, and I told you what I have
never before told a living soul--that dreadful, hopeless, nightmare
thing--to drive you out of my--my regard--and me from yours."

His face whitened a little under its tan, but the flat jaw muscles
tightened doggedly.

"I don't understand--yet," he said. "And when you tell me--for you will
tell me sooner or later--it will not change me."

"It _must_!"

He shook his head.

She said in desperation: "You cannot care for me too much because you
know that I am--not free."

"Cannot?" He laughed mirthlessly. "I _am_ caring for you--loving
you--every second more and more."

"That is dishonourable," she faltered.

"Why?"

"You _know_!"

"Yes. But if it does not change me how can I help it?"

"You can help making me care for _you_!"

His heart was racing now; every vein ran fiery riot.

"Is there a chance of _that_, Shiela?"

She did not answer, but the tragedy in her slowly lifted eyes appalled
him. Then a rushing confusion of happiness and pain almost stupefied
him.

"You must not be afraid," he managed to say while the pulse hammered in
his throat, and the tumult of his senses deadened his voice to a
whisper.

"I am afraid."

They were near the wagon now; both dismounted under the pines while
Bulow came forward to picket their horses. On their way together among
the trees she looked up at him almost piteously: "You must go if you
talk to me again like this. I could not endure very much of it."

"I don't know what I am going to do," he said in the same curiously
deadened voice. "You must tell me more."

"I cannot. I am--uncertain of myself. I can't think clearly when
we--when you speak to me--this way. Couldn't you go North before
I--before my unhappiness becomes too real--too hard?--couldn't you go
before it is too late--and leave me my peace of mind, my common sense!"

He looked around at her. "Yes," he said, "I will go if there is no
decent chance for us; and if it is not too late."

"I have my common senses still left. It is not too late."

There was a silence. "I will go," he said very quietly.

"W-when?"

"The day we return."

"Can you leave your work?"

"Yes. Halloran knows."

"And--you _will_ go?"

"Yes, if you wish it."

Another silence. Then she shook her head, not looking at him.

"There is no use in going--now."

"Why?"

"Because--because I do not wish it." Her eyes fell lower; she drew a
long, unsteady breath. "And because it is too late," she said. "You
should have gone before I ever knew you--if I was to be spared my peace
of mind."

Gray came galloping back through the woods, followed by his father and
Eudo Stent. They were rather excited, having found signs of turkey along
the mud of a distant branch; and, as they all gathered around a cold
luncheon spread beside the wagon, a lively discussion began concerning
the relative chances of "roosting" and "yelping."

Hamil talked as in a dream, scarcely conscious that he was speaking and
laughing a great deal. A heavenly sort of intoxication possessed him; a
paradise of divine unrealities seemed to surround him--Shiela, the
clustering pines, the strange white sunlight, the depthless splendour of
the unshadowed blue above.

He heard vaguely the voices of the others, Cardross, senior, rallying
Gray on his shooting, Gray replying in kind, the soft Southern voices of
the guides at their own repast by the picket line, the stir and whisk
and crunch of horses nuzzling their feed.

Specks moved in the dome of heaven--buzzards. Below, through the woods,
myriads of robins were flying about, migrants from the North.

Gray displayed his butterflies; nothing uncommon, except a black and
green one seldom found north of Miami--but they all bent over the lovely
fragile creatures, admiring the silver-spangled Dione butterflies, the
great velvety black Turnus; and Shiela, with the point of a dry pine
needle, traced for Hamil the grotesque dog's head on the fore wings of
those lemon-tinted butterflies which haunt the Florida flat-woods.

"He'd never win at a bench-show," observed her father, lighting his
pipe--an out-of-door luxury he clung to. "Shiela, you little minx, what
makes you look so unusually pretty? Probably that wild-west rig of
yours. Hamil, I hope you gave her a few points on grassing a bird. She's
altogether too conceited. Do you know, once, while we were picking up
singles, a razor-back boar charged us--or more probably the dogs, which
were standing, poor devils. And upon my word I was so rattled that I did
the worst thing possible--I tried to kick the dogs loose. Of course they
went all to pieces, and I don't know how it might have fared with us if
my little daughter had not calmly bowled over that boar at three paces
from my shin-bones!"

"Dad exaggerates," observed the girl with heightened colour, then
ventured a glance at Hamil which set his heart galloping; and her own
responded to the tender pride and admiration in his eyes.

There was more discussion concerning "roosting" versus "yelping" with
dire designs upon the huge wild turkey-cock whose tracks Gray had
discovered in the mud along the branch where their camp was to be
pitched.

Seven hens and youthful gobblers accompanied this patriarch according to
Eudo Stent's calculations, and Bulow thought that the Seminole might
know the location of the roost; probably deep in some uninviting swamp.

But there was plenty of time to decide what to do when they reached
camp; and half an hour later they started, wagon and all, wheels bumping
over the exposed tree roots which infinitely bored the well-behaved
dogs, squatting forward, heads in a row, every nose twitching at the
subtle forest odours that only a dog could detect.

Once they emitted short and quickly stifled yelps as a 'possum climbed
leisurely into a small tree and turned to inspect the strange procession
which was invading his wilderness. And Shiela and Hamil, riding behind
the wagon, laughed like children.

Once they passed under a heronry--a rather odoriferous patch of dead
cypress and pines, where the enormous nests bulged in the stark
tree-tops; and once, as they rode out into a particularly park-like and
velvety glade, five deer looked up, and then deliberately started to
trot across.

"We need that venison!" exclaimed Gray, motioning for his gun which was
in the wagon. Shiela spurred forward, launching her mount into a gallop;
Hamil's horse followed on a dead run, he tugging madly at the buck-shot
shell in his web belt; and away they tore to head the deer. In vain! for
the agile herd bounded past far out of shell-range and went crashing on
through the jungle of the branch; and Shiela reined in and turned her
flushed face to Hamil with a laugh of sheer delight.

"Glorious sight, wasn't it?" said Hamil. "I'm rather glad they got clear
of us."

"So am I. There was no chance, but I always try."

"So shall I," he said--"whether there is a chance or not."

She looked up quickly, reading his meaning. Then she bent over the gun
that she was breaking, extracted the shells, looped them, and returned
the weapon to its holster.

Behind them her father and brother jeered at them for their failure,
Gray being particularly offensive in ascribing their fiasco to bad
riding and buck-fever.

A little later Shiela's horse almost unseated her, leaping aside and
into the jungle as an enormous black snake coiled close in front.

"Don't shoot!" she cried out to Hamil, mastering her horse and forcing
him past the big, handsome, harmless reptile; "nobody shoots black
snakes or buzzards here. Slip your gun back quickly or Gray will
torment you."

However, Gray had seen, and kept up a running fire of sarcastic comment
which made Hamil laugh and Shiela indignant.

And so they rode along through the rich afternoon sunshine, now under
the clustered pines, now across glades where wild doves sprang up into
clattering flight displaying the four white feathers, or pretty little
ground doves ran fearlessly between the horses' legs.

Here and there a crimson cardinal, crest lifted, sat singing deliciously
on some green bough; now and then a summer tanager dropped like a live
coal into the deeper jungle. Great shiny blue, crestless jays flitted
over the scrub; shy black and white and chestnut chewinks flirted into
sight and out again among the heaps of dead brush; red-bellied
woodpeckers, sticking to the tree trunks, turned their heads calmly;
gray lizards, big, ugly red-headed lizards, swift slender lizards with
blue tails raced across the dry leaves or up tree trunks, making even
more fuss and clatter than the noisy cinnamon-tinted thrashers in the
underbrush.

Every step into the unknown was a new happiness; there was no silence
there for those who could hear, no solitude for those who could see. And
he was riding into it with a young companion who saw and heard and loved
and understood it all. Nothing escaped her; no frail air plant trailing
from the high water oaks, no school of tiny bass in the shallows where
their horses splashed through, no gopher burrow, no foot imprint of the
little wild things which haunt the water's edge in forests.

Her eyes missed nothing; her dainty close-set ears heard all--the short,
dry note of a chewink, the sweet, wholesome song of the cardinal, the
thrilling cries of native jays and woodpeckers, the heavenly outpoured
melody of the Florida wren, perched on some tiptop stem, throat swelling
under the long, delicate, upturned bill.

Void of self-consciousness, sweetly candid in her wisdom, sharing her
lore with him as naturally as she listened to his, small wonder that to
him the wilderness was paradise, and she with her soft full voice, a
native guide. For all around them lay an enchanted world as young as
they--the world is never older than the young!--and they "had eyes and
they saw; ears had they and they heard"--but not the dead echoes of that
warning voice, alas! calling through the ancient wilderness of fable.

CHAPTER XI

PATHFINDERS

Considerably impressed by her knowledge he was careful not to embarrass
her by saying so too seriously.

"For a frivolous and fashionable girl who dances cotillions, drives
four, plays polo, and reviews her serious adorers by regiments, you're
rather perplexing," he said. "Of course you don't suppose that I really
believe all you say about these beasts and birds and butterflies."

"What has disturbed your credulity?" she laughed.

"Well, that rabbit which crossed ahead, for one thing. You promptly
called it a marsh rabbit!"

"_Lepus palustris_" she nodded, delighted.

"By all means," he retorted, pretending offensive scepticism, "but why a
_marsh_ rabbit?"

"Because, monsieur, its tail was brown, not white. Didn't you notice
that?"

"Oh, it's all very well for you to talk that way, but I've another
grievance. All these holes in the sand you call gopher burrows
sometimes, sometimes salamander holes. And I saw a thing like a rat run
into one of them and a thing like a turtle run into another and I think
I've got you now--"

Her delightful laughter made the forest silence musical.

"You poor boy! No wonder your faith is strained. The Crackers call the
gopher a salamander, and they also call the land turtle a gopher. Their
burrows are alike and usually in the same neighbourhood."

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