Young Wolfe removed the chaplet of thorns from his brow, and put it down at his feet. "It makes me afraid," he muttered; "it makes me afraid," and he went to meet his father. Then the great, hot smokestack swooped downward with a mighty swishing roar. It was Little Buck who saw Old Buck's imminent danger first. He leaped forward, shouting, "Out of the way! Run! Quick!" His father stopped as though the words had paralyzed him. He appeared to be unaccountably dazed. The great stack loosened a beam from the roof which flew out and struck him across his shoulders, and bore him to the ground on his face. "He'p me!" he screamed smotheredly. "I'm a-burnin' to death--he'p me, fo' God's sake!" Every man of those present dashed toward him. There was no time to be lost in looking for levers; if the wheels of fate were to be cheated, bare hands must lift the smoldering beam; human flesh must voluntarily be seared. "Drag him out, Little Buck, when we raise; all together, boys--go to it!" Alex Singleton bellowed. They went to it all together, Wolfes and Singletons face to face and shoulder to shoulder, and there rose the sickening scent of scorched flesh. Little Buck Wolfe dragged his father's giant figure to safety. The others dropped the searing beam and ran. A blazing wall fell and hid the spot where Old Buck had lain. "His pore back!" wept Granny Wolfe. "It's all burnt and blistered! He'p me to take him home, Nathan, honey. Will ye go home, Buck, pore boy?" And her favorite son answered weakly, "I'll go anywhar ye wants me to go, mother. Fo' because I'm already in hell." It began to rain then. It was a slow, drizzling rain that could have saved nothing, had it begun hours before. XVIII Ten minutes after the slow rain set in, the grounds about the almost consumed building were deserted save for the general manager. Wolfe had not been able to leave the thing that had been his palm of victory and the pride of his heart. Colonel Mason and a number of others had insisted upon his seeking shelter, to no avail; they had then insisted upon remaining with him, but he wouldn't permit it. He walked slowly and alone, like a sentinel upon his beat, and watched the flames die down and leave a great pile of glowing coals and red-hot, twisted iron and steel. When finally he turned toward the house he had built for his father, he was wet to the skin. Just as he left the dimming red glare, there came to his ears a dull rumbling that was like an explosion of dynamite. He paid little attention to it then, though he remembered it vividly enough afterward. [Illustration] Already he had decided upon a course for the future. He would go to one of the lumbering districts of the Northwest, and establish himself there; he would pay back, the Masons first, every cent of the money that had been lost in the ill-starred Unaka Lumber Company. It would require the best part of his life, perhaps, but he would do it. It should be his one purpose.