CHAPTER VI

THE NARROWS AND MARY ANN FURNACE

“Oh!” added the man, frightened to see such a little shape cling to the plunging horse, “I thought it was the doctor.”

The doctor was fortunately making a short call; and he now appeared to quiet the still snorting creature.

“I held on tight, father!” said his little girl, trembling in every nerve.

“I didn’t mean to scare anything,” apologized the furnace-man with some compunction, though with his own anxiety and errand upper-most; “but I saw the horse, like you was startin’ away and I wanted to stop you. We’ve had an accident down to the Furnace. I went in to your place, but Liza said you’d gone this way, so I come along expectin’ to meet you. Eli Ridenour fell over the Narrows.”

“I’ll come,” said the doctor. “Is he at the Furnace?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you go in and tell the family. Cautiously, mind; his mother isn’t strong yet. And have them send a wagon with plenty of bedding to bring him home.”

The furnace-man entered the house without ceremony, according to the custom of the country, and Doctor Garde swung himself again into the saddle, taking his little girl this time before him.

“You ought to be in bed,” he observed as they flew up the slope. “Guess I better let you down where the lane turns off. You can run along then, can’t you?”

Run along that dark lane, half a mile in length, through blackness, all alone! Fathers are not mothers; and this father, though the tenderest in intention, was so accustomed to heroic methods himself, that he did not realize what terror his proposition held for his little girl.

“Don’t make me get off,” she pleaded, patting his shaven cheek. She thought of Billy Bowl. It is impossible to explain how this mythical character could haunt her after dark. He was a monster of ingratitude in a story, and Bluebell had a greater horror of him than of any other image her mind could call up. Billy Bowl was a bow-legged fellow who slipped into a pit: there he lay bellowing for help--Bluebell could fancy his hoarse cries--until some good man came along and pulled him out. It was easy to picture this excellent person reaching into the pit and taking hold of Billy’s repulsive hand. And being pulled out, what did the bow-legged Billy do? He turned around--how strongly the case was stated in that!--he _turned around_ and pushed in the man who pulled him out! Many a night Bluebell wished Billy Bowl had been left in the pit! Many a time did she regret Liza had ever told her the story. She believed him always abroad, an element of evil on the air! She could not tell any grown person about it. Father would laugh, and show the absurdity of the fancy.

Father had not the slightest idea that his little girl nursed any Bugaboo or felt her flesh creep at braving Billy Bowl the whole length of that lane! With a shade of disapproval, however, he did observe:

“I hope my little girl isn’t a coward?”

Fear of Billy Bowl and general cowardice were two distinct things in Bluebell’s mind.

“Course I’m not!” she answered with direct truth. “Didn’t I hold tight and not get throwed off? And I didn’t scream, either. But do take me along, you never took me to see any patients. I like to go with you, father,” confessed Bluebell, half-ashamed to reveal how much she enjoyed his society. And she added, patting his shaven cheek again:

“Little father!”

“Little father” was not displeased by the caress. He kissed her on the forehead, and thought what a companion she would grow to be for him. They cantered past the turning off of their lane. The road soon required all his attention. They entered what was known about Rocky Fork as the Narrows: a shelf dug out along a precipice. It was only a mile or so in extent, but being of semi-circular shape, those who used the pass could see but a few yards ahead of them. Above it the hill rose perpendicularly in masses of rock and distorted pines as high as Bluebell could see. Below it--many jagged, straight-down yards below it--the Rocky Fork murmured along a bed of boulders.

About the middle of the Narrows a huge mass of rock hung over the way, threatening every passer: it was called the Table. Every hard storm brought part of it down, and a dangerous gully was worn under it. The road was comfortably wide for horsemen, though in passing, the one who had a right to the wall was thankful therefor; but vehicles could not possibly pass each other.

Whenever two carriages met on the Narrows, the driver nearest the entrance unhitched his horses, fastened them to the rear of his vehicle and drew it backward into a broader place. No railing of any sort protected the edge. No one but a native, or a person perfectly familiar with every step of the way, would cross the Narrows, especially after night.

The doctor’s horse picked her way, not too close to the mountain-wall. Rock-splinters and flint-dust rolled over the edge and were heard dropping and dropping until the brain turned dizzy following them. She knew every foot of the road, but snorted frequently as if her disapproval of it was unconquerable. Bluebell’s fingers tightened on her father’s coat. Her face was toward the ravine. It was a gulf of darkness: there was no moon, and it was just as well that little could be seen except the white flinty track. Just after they passed the Table rock, where Ballie had to tread quite on the outside to keep from knocking her rider’s head, they heard footfalls advancing toward them. Bluebell knew father would take care of her! still they must turn to the right, and the right was the outside.

The footfalls quickened, they thumped tumultuously: it was a horse galloping. No man in his senses would make a horse gallop along that perilous cut. Bluebell could feel her father gathering himself, tightening his hold on the bridle and around her little body to a cruel clench. He leaned forward and whispered, “H----st!” to the mare, and then shouted ahead:

“Look out there!”

The galloping horse, which they could see was riderless, plunged back and reared directly in front of them. The Arabian recoiled, her hind feet went over the precipice, and she scrambled like a cat to hang on with her front hoofs and regain her hold. Father leaned to her neck--Bluebell felt almost crushed for an instant; then they were on the solid road, the riderless horse had dashed around the curve, and the agile Arabian, trembling in every limb, turned her head back to throw the glare of her eye upon her master’s face.

“Well done!” he said, patting her.

She uttered an exultant neigh, and hurried forward with a quicker step.

“Did I hurt you?” the doctor asked his little girl.

“No, sir,” she replied, breathing hard, but proud of having controlled herself in this second fright. “There isn’t another horse in the world as smart as Ballie!”

“She has brought me out of so many tight places,” said the doctor, “I could trust my life to her. But I wish you were in bed.”

“I didn’t make any fuss!”

“No,” said father, “I’m glad you didn’t; you showed your old Irish pluck, the pluck of your great-great-grandfather, old Sir James. During the Irish rebellion in the last century, rough mobs gathered with pikes at every bridge to spear men of his belief.”

“What’s a pike, father?”

“A pole with a sharp knife on the end. Once when he came by with his followers the bridge was full, and he rode straight through, fighting them on all hands, and the rioters missed the pleasure of throwing his speared body in the stream.”

“It was right for him to fight, was it, father?”

“It is right to meet any emergency with pluck, and overcome it.”

Bluebell felt her heart swell. She determined to show her Irish pluck in every emergency of life.

The road broadened and a glare fell across it: they had reached the Furnace. The Furnace, which was called Mary Ann to distinguish it from other furnaces in the ore region, was an open brick building built into the hillside. It furnished an industry for many poor men. Here iron was melted, and the fires seldom went out. Even in sunny days smoke hung over the cluster of houses in a valley below, which was named from the Furnace, Mary Ann Post-office.

It was a wonderfully picturesque sight which the riders came upon. A flare lit up the coal-dust road, and you could look between brick pillars at what seemed to be the centre of the earth on fire. Men passed to and fro, thrown into strong relief, and each one wore a red-flannel blouse known thereabouts as a “wamus,” a name which probably came from “warm us”; the “wamuses” did not lessen the general effect.

Bluebell felt excited. She did not miss a point of the picture. Her father, she thought, was like old Sir James riding through danger.

But the doctor dismounted at once to serious business. One furnace-man tied his horse, and another gave Bluebell a seat on a stool behind one of the brick pillars.

“I met a horse galloping around the Narrows,” said Doctor Garde.

“’Twas Eli’s,” said a furnace-man. “It throwed him just at this end of the Narrows, and went gallopin’ down to Mary Ann. And just a few minutes ago back it came on the homeward road. We tried to catch it, and that set it off on the run again. You had a pretty close shave of it, didn’t you, Doc?”

“Very close,” replied the doctor. He went to his patient, who lay outside on a bed of coats.

Bluebell sat quietly watching the fires and feeling sorry for the injured man when he groaned. She heard somebody say it might have gone worse with him, and that he was not badly hurt after all. Her head settled against the brick pillar, and the men came and went before her like figures in a dream. She wondered if it were true, as John Tegarden said, that all the coal underground for rods around had been on fire since the old furnace burnt down some years before. He said horses’ feet sunk through and were in danger of burning off! Then she heard frogs in the Rocky Fork singing their loudest, as if to drown the far-reaching cry of insects which make the summer night ring; and the cool wind and a smell of blossoming laurel rushed over her face.

But, waking next morning on her own bed, she had not the least idea how she got there. Nor had she dreamed that the events of that finished day were to make a great change in her life.