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All this, every possible contingency, took form as potential action in his obsessed mind, with neither perception nor consideration of consequences. The consummation alone urged him. The most primitive instinct swayed him. The ultimate consequences were as nothing. This plan was scarcely formed in Hollister's brain before he modified it.
Blocked in the valley, the fire, as if animated by some deadly purpose, crept into the mouth of a brushy canyon and ran uphill with demoniac energy until it was burning fiercely over a benchland to the west of Hollister's timber. The fight began once more. With varying phases it raged for a week. They would check it along a given line and rest for awhile, thinking it safely under control.
And the man was Bland, doing precisely what Hollister was doing, looking through a pair of field glasses. Hollister stood well back in the room. He was certain Bland could not see that he himself was being watched. In any case, Bland was not looking at Hollister's house.
On the level road she kept step without faltering or effort, holding Hollister's hand, not because she needed it for guidance, but because it was her pleasure. They came under a high wooded slope. "Listen to the birds," she said, with a gentle pressure on his fingers. "I can smell the woods and feel the air soft as a caress.
If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had paused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would formerly have evoked, I suppose I should have found him falling short of my notion of a gentleman; it had been my father's opinion; but Mr. Watling's marriage to Gene Hollister's aunt had given him a standing with us at home.
Gretchen and Anna had learned in crises, such as the present to restrain the superabundant vitality they had inherited. If their cheekbones were a little too high, their Delft blue eyes a little too small, their colour was of the proverbial rose-leaves and cream. Gene Hollister's difficulty was to know which to marry.
All this time the price of shingles in the open market rose and rose, like a tide strongly on the flood, of which no man could prophesy the high-water mark. Money flowed to Hollister's pockets, to the pockets of his men. The value of his standing timber grew by leaps and bounds. And always Sam Carr, who had no economic illusions, urged Hollister on, predicting before long the inevitable reaction.
With a strange perverseness, his mind dwelt upon the most complete breaking up of his domestic life. It persisted in shadowing forth scenes in which he and Doris took part, in which it was made plain how and why they could no longer live together. In Hollister's mind these scenes always ended by his crying despairingly "If you can't, why, you can't, I suppose. I don't blame you."
Casey sent the most wonderful barrels of apples and potatoes from his own place to the Hollisters, and when he came to New York he'd order fruit from the most expensive fruiterers to be sent three times a week, say nothing of boxes of flowers which came regularly throughout the entire winter. On one of Mr. Casey's flying trips to the city it happened to be Mrs. Hollister's birthday.
The man was Mills, whom he had thought once more far from the Toba with the rest of his scattered crew. Nevertheless this was Mills drawing near Bland's house with quick strides. Hollister's uneasiness doubled. There was a power for mischief in that situation when he thought of Jim Bland scowling from his hiding place in the willows. He set out along the path.
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