FIRE
It was Garen Shepherd who stood at Piñon’s head, cap in hand, as Dawn
released Damon from a kangaroo-like hug. Perhaps the Irish in her helped
Dawn to recover from her surprise, her disappointment.
“Didn’t you bring any water with you, Mr. Irrigation Expert?” she
grinned, taking his outstretched hand. Well, it was rather nice seeing
him again. She just hadn’t been expecting him.
“I’m only an engineer, alas!” Garen was frankly smiling his pleasure.
“And I don’t seem to be able to engineer much.”
Damon was exhausted, his worried face scorched and smudged with
fire-fighting. He had been more upset than he would admit at Dawn’s
disappearance. He himself had gone at four of the preceding day to look
for her signal. Seeing neither signal nor smoke at the time, he decided
that she had found matters not so bad and had returned to the Cascada.
He had fought fire all night and just before sunrise had managed a few
hours’ sleep, leaving the conflagration whipped. The fire brigade, made
up of specially hired helpers and volunteers from the homesteaders and
mountaineers, lay down behind the lines for a well-earned rest. Around
ten that morning Damon woke, rode over to the nearest phone, and called
his cabin. Hinray answered. He had been at the cabin all night. No, Dawn
had not been home.
Then Damon had sent Hinray to Lake Peak lookout, from which point he had
seen and reported Dawn’s signal. The next half hour Damon spent calling
the different stations for help. Having sent Hinray on ahead, he himself
followed to the northeastern slopes. For five hours he and his men had
been fighting fire in the ground—ever since noon. They had it beaten out
now; just about licked, at any rate, thanks to Garen Shepherd, the four
Bentys, and a couple of summer folks who sure were men and had
volunteered gladly.
“Let’s get back up the mountain,” Damon concluded the story. “I want to
get a fresh breath of air in my lungs.” He turned to thank Hal James for
riding up with Dawn.
“Keep a watch on this side of the mountain, now you’re back, James, will
you?” he cautioned the ranchman. “Use the fire lookout on the other side
the canyon to signal us. And say, can you ride over in the morning first
thing and take down the signal Dawn left? This humus is as dry as
tinder.” Wearily he remounted Little Sorrel and turned her head back up
the trail.
“Oh, James,” Damon remembered and called back over his shoulder, “you
can move your stock now, goats too, over to the far side of the canyon.”
They rode on. “That’ll please him and help make up for the hard season,”
Damon explained in a tired voice to Shepherd, who rode between Dawn and
her father. “It takes seventy-five acres to keep one cow alive down on
the desert range, but the other side of the canyon’s covered with scrub,
fine browse, piñon, juniper, and acorns ripe by now—the best sort of
mast. That shows the wisdom of closing the foothill pastures for a
while.
“The goats’ll do it good too, for once. They can break up that rocky
hard-baked soil with their hoofs so that when it does rain it’ll soak
in.”
“Rain, did you say?” Shepherd laughed. “Does it ever rain anywhere? I
came back up to the mountains to see if there was such a thing as rain
left.”
“I wondered what brought you,” Dawn remarked, meaning to be polite.
“Well, not just the hope of rain, to tell the truth,” Garen replied
boldly. “If that were the sole reason I might have joined the Indian
dances at any one of the pueblos down below, for they surely are working
overtime at their ceremonies, being unable to coax water onto their corn
any other way.”
A light wind had risen from the south and was blowing the smoke away
from them. As the air cleared the sun sank and they moved through an
orchid twilight. The forest ranger was in a tired daze, but Garen felt
vitally alive and happy. Dawn was more subdued than she had ever been.
Desolation and the shadow of death on the desert from which she had
come, devastation on the mountain side. As the men talked her depression
grew.
“Two to three floods a year now,” Garen was saying to her father.
“Everywhere that unsupervised cutting has been practiced. Fatal with
this soil. Of course the problem this year is _no_ rain.”
Weary as he was, Damon could not let the statement rest undefended. “The
average rainfall will be the same,” he persisted. “True, this has been
an extraordinary year. You can laugh! But usually at our elevation we
have a light rain _every afternoon_ during the summer. There hasn’t been
a drop for over four weeks now. But it will come. You’ll see. Under
natural conditions dry periods are easily tided over.”
Fanned by the pine-scented southern breeze, they mounted the trail
slowly. Gradually the violet light diffused into a mellow glow. The moon
was out, riding full and high. Day had exchanged for night without
darkness. They were going through the burned-over area and beyond could
see the line that had been beaten out by the fire-fighters.
Damon, who was riding ahead, looked back, calling out to ask what had
kept Dawn at the James ranch. He stopped to rest his horse, and Dawn and
Garen reined up beside him. Dawn explained why she had been unable to
put up the fire signal until that morning. “Good girl.” Damon’s tired
smile was guerdon for Dawn. “I’m mighty glad you happened by in time.
James was trying to cheer his wife, but the things _are_ deadly just the
same. Many a grown man’s been laid under grass because of a rattler.”
Dawn’s spirits began to rise, perhaps because they were getting back up
on the mountain, or because she could breathe freely. Her heart was
light and she whistled gayly, “Oh, Mariana.” Soon they were
singing—plaintive Mexican folk airs learned from the despised sheep
herders. Garen’s baritone joined the chorus.
“I like love-songs,” Dawn announced in a matter-of-fact way when they
had ridden in silence for a while. Garen’s expression quickened
hopefully; he reined his shabby pony closer. But at this moment Hinray
stepped out from the trees before them. Hinray had been keeping guard,
and there was no sign now of any more smoldering. Just the same, young
Benty and a couple of the men boarders were going to stay on watch all
that night. The other fighters had already left for home.
Garen promptly offered to spend the night on the mountain with the boys,
but Damon and Hinray thought that was not necessary. With a word to the
three fellows who came down through the pines to hail them, Damon led
the way up the trail. They were still quite a way from home. A mile up
to Box Canyon Pass, a half mile through to the canyon, a mile over the
mountain, three miles down the Amarillo, and another mile up to the
cabin on the Cascada. The long ride was made for the most part in
silence. Garen rode beside Dawn in a thrall of happiness: he was in
love. He had been surprised at the persistence of this attraction, had
been tormented to return to the mountains, giving himself a half dozen
vague reasons why he should go. Now he knew why he had come.
But he had made up his mind that he would never tell Dawn until he felt
sure that she cared a little bit to have him around, that she enjoyed
his company. He would keep it a secret until she was older. So much was
Garen enjoying the tender discovery that he rode in selfish contentment
beside her.
Dawn too was content to ride silently. She was not given to analysis,
but the difference between Garen and Jack was plain. As they neared the
forks of the Amarillo and the Cascada she asked her father, “Why didn’t
some of the folks at Perry’s cabin go?”
Damon was half asleep in the saddle. “Eh?” he queried. “We telephoned
Benty’s to send over word if they could lend a hand with the fire, but
none of them turned up.” He called out to Garen, who was riding on
ahead, “Better come up and stop the night with us, Shepherd. It’s
late—and quite a piece yet down to Benty’s.”
Garen hesitated. Would it be putting them out? He would like to accept,
but Dawn was already riding ahead. “I’d better go on down,” he said;
“it’s easy going, all down hill from here on.” He turned his horse’s
head toward the ford, which sparkled and leaped in the brilliant
moonlight.
If she’d wanted him to stay she would have stopped and seconded the
invitation. As a matter of fact Dawn had not heard her father. She had
ridden on, eager to get home, tired out, disappointed in Jack.
Hinray had gone on ahead, making good time on his little mountain
“mosquito.” When they dragged themselves into the cabin, after
unsaddling Piñon and Little Sorrel, he was already snoring lustily on
the swing seat before the fire.
“Even snoring couldn’t keep me awake tonight,” laughed Dawn. “Good
night, Damon, dearest. You’re the only man I love!”
“Faith, I thought so!” He brushed her hair back affectionately. Now why
did she say that? But Damon was too exhausted to think long about
anything. All was soon silent in the aspen log cabin, humble and crude,
but shining with a silvery brightness under the moon.
Over on the northeast slope young Benty too slept the sleep of
exhaustion. The two tenderfoot lads made the rounds of the fire area,
and as they saw no flames, sat down on the soft mattress of pine needles
beneath the trees. Relaxed with a sense of security, they too dozed. It
was almost dawn. They did not see the slowly creeping ground fire that
emerged from the beaten-out area. Fanned by the warm south wind it
glowed now, sending out tentative little tongues of flame. Curling about
the dry twigs, the new blaze spread slowly through the still hours.
There was little for it to feed on yet.
It was late when the cabin on the Cascada roused itself with a yawn. The
sun stood at nine, an unheard-of-hour for a ranger to lie abed. Damon
was already coming up from a dip in the Cascada when Dawn appeared on
the stoop, stretching. Hinray had made his toilet, modest and befitting
his circumstances—one dip of the head in a bucket, a vigorous drying
with a towel never thereafter to be used.
“Another hot day, Dad,” Dawn called, holding up a wet finger to the warm
south breeze. “I’ll go up to Lake Peak lookout after breakfast just for
luck, shall I?”
“Yes,” he smiled. “The thermometer must be at all of sixty-five. But the
air does seem a bit heavy yet.” His nostrils dilated with the memory of
smoke on the air, the effort to detect it still.
They were at breakfast when Garen came trotting up to the stoop and
swung off with a “Cheerio. How’re all the fire-eaters this morning?”
“Does the air seem heavy to you?” Damon asked.
“Not a bit,” Garen replied. “I just came down from the Lake Peak
lookout. James evidently took the signal down first thing and it was
apparently all fair and serene over there. I think it’s amazing the
air’s so fresh and moist,” he added, “considering the drouth below and
the number of fires in this vicinity.”
“Never will have no dry air s’long’s there’s trees standin’,” said
Hinray between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs. “Did you ever figger that
every good-size tree exhales a barrel of moisture every twenty-four
hours? But it’s sure dry down below, I’ll admit.
“Drouth and death,” Hinray paused significantly, “and depression; I
notice as they come in fifteen-year cycles, just as the almanac says.
They’ve had drouth, they’ve had death a-plenty; and now—” he paused
dramatically—“watch out for the depression.”
“Oh, Hinray, don’t be so gloomy at breakfast,” Dawn protested. “I feel
uncomfortable anyway.”
“Oh, we’ll git rain a-plenty,” Hinray reassured her quickly. “The
cycle’s bound to be up. That’s what I was aimin’ to say. And we’ll need
it, with these fires and short-handed as the service is. Do you know,
Mr. Shepherd”—he wagged his pipe at Garen—“that with a million acres to
a forest unit in this country we’ve got only one range to one hundred
and twenty-five thousand acres?” Hinray’s plaint was cut short by the
jangling of the telephone. It was Jack Perry.
Dawn smiled as she put the receiver to her ear, but she answered in
noncommittal monosyllables; Jack was tied up with his father’s guests.
If he could get away, or get them to ride, he’d ride up that afternoon
sometime and see her. All right. She hung up the receiver.
Damon had gone outside and now called out to ask if the folks didn’t
smell smoke. Dawn thought she did. She telephoned Benty’s to talk with
the boy. He hadn’t got back yet. Chances were he’d gone to sleep right
on the ground. It was now nearly eleven o’clock, and Damon had some work
to do at his desk. Hinray set off for the Lake Peak lookout again and
Dawn washed the dishes while Garen dried them. Garen mentioned that he’d
seen young Jack Perry again the day before. He’d been fishing along the
Cascada with some company from the East as Garen rode by with Benty’s
son on his way to the fire.
“I wonder he didn’t volunteer,” Damon commented over his shoulder. He
made no other disparaging remark. He liked Jack.
“May I stay to dinner if I peel the potatoes?” inquired Garen boldly.
“I’m a swell K. P.”
“You can stay to dinner,” Dawn agreed solemnly, “and if you’ll wash
dishes you can board all year round.”
Damon was still nervous. As they ate lunch he was on the alert.
“If I don’t hear from Hinray he’s to go on to the southwest timber
stands,” he said. “D’Orsay is an expert timber cruiser,” he explained to
Garen, “and he’ll be gone the next two or three weeks, marking the
mature trees. They’ve been sold on the stump to Gershwin, and Hinray
will show the lumber company where they can construct their roads to get
the lumber out and not damage the young trees.”
The dishes were soon finished and Dawn and Garen sat in the swing seat,
resting. Dawn treated Garen with a respect she never accorded Jack, yet
somehow she kept listening for Jack’s whistle. Was he going to spend the
whole afternoon with those tenderfeet? Couldn’t they breathe mountain
air alone?
“Show me your books of flowers, Dawn,” Garen suggested. She brightened
and sprang to get them. Damon had returned to his work at the high desk.
The afternoon had grown warmer, but the little weathervane outside the
window swung its arms about, showing that the wind was veering slowly
but surely from the south to the northeast. Dawn jumped up to open the
windows facing north. A fresh breeze whisked Damon’s papers from his
desk and almost simultaneously the telephone began to ring violently.
Damon sprang to answer it while Garen picked up the papers. They heard
him exclaim, saw astonishment and distress on his face. “Get every one
possible together,” he shouted into the phone. “I’ll call in the
Southern Reserves and we’ll go straight over.” The forester was all
action. “Dawn,” he instructed tersely while he gathered pick,
gunnysacking, and other things together, “call Benty’s again. Fire’s
broken out on the northeast slope once more.”
Young Benty had just got back. The kids had slept on the job; let the
fire gain headway from nothing! When he waked they’d fought it awhile
but saw it was useless; they were helpless. The south wind had blown it
into fresh fields and kept the smoke away. Damon talked in terse
sentences. Hinray had seen James’s signal from the other side of the
mountain, but when he went to telephone there was something wrong with
the line. He had started to ride back down the trail to the cabin, but
on the way had seen what the trouble was with the wire, mended it, and
returned to Lake Peak lookout, as that was the quickest thing to do.
The change in the wind had turned the blaze in their direction. Flames
were near the divide and a crown fire was raging.
“The wind’s rising,” Damon said. “We must get every station we can
reach. Dawn, ride up to Lake Peak lookout and relieve Hinray. He’ll go
on down to the fire zone as soon as he’s done phoning. Some one should
have been up there all morning. Shepherd, can you fight with us? Dawn,
phone me at McGuire’s what direction it’s headed. We’ll be there by the
time you reach the peak or shortly after. We’ll start from beyond there
and fight back.”
Dawn was already at the phone, ringing the stations. Over the wires the
call went out and was passed along by word of mouth, and from every
mountain ranch and isolated homestead volunteers set forth with shovel,
pick, or gunnysacking, to gather before the fire. Dawn rang the base
camp of the fire-fighters that had been organized to protect the
southern slopes of the range which Damon had left only the morning
before. She caught them just as they were setting out to disband. Some
of the emergency helpers had already gone, but the young ranger in
charge was there.
Damon took the receiver in his hand. The ranger said he would be on the
ground in three hours at most. “Three hours,” Damon repeated as he hung
up. “Three hours. And it’s now after three o’clock. A crown fire, a
northeast wind!—Good-by, honey.” He strode back to kiss Dawn, who had
made a rapid change into her riding-clothes and was halfway to the door.
Garen held her stirrup. “Take care, Dawn. Take care,” he said in a low
voice.
She hardly heard him. “Good-by. Come on, Shep.”
Piñon had never been so cruelly pressed by the adored being to whom he
always responded with all his spirit. The speed of the wolf, the
sureness of the great-horned sheep, were called upon now, as Dawn turned
from the trail, urging him by difficult short cuts to the summit. The
dog asked no lifts but crept with hanging tongue at a steady pace as
they mounted higher and higher. Near the summit of Lake Peak he fell
behind, but overtook them as they stopped for a moment of enforced rest.
At last Dawn saw above her the lookout, built on the summit of a spur of
Lake Peak. As her head cleared the tree tops the distant forests came to
view.
She gasped with horror. From the northeast a great blaze rolled. With
field glass leveled she could see it as though it were just opposite.
The acrid smoke was actually in her nostrils and she fancied she could
feel the scorch of its breath on her cheek. She left Piñon at the foot
of the steps and leaped up to the telephone. McGuire’s ring was two
short and one very long. There was no answer for some time. Then McGuire
took down the receiver.
Yes, this was McGuire; he kept repeating it over and over. Oh, fire, she
said. Fire? He couldn’t see nothing, but he sort of thought he’d smelt
smoke all afternoon, but the sky was so hazy anyways. Dawn was wild with
the delay.
“My father, isn’t he there? Didn’t he telephone you?” McGuire and all
his family had been down in the canyon, fishing and berrying, nearly all
day. He couldn’t tell. Just came in. Hadn’t been near the phone. Wait!
Here was the ranger now!
“Damon,” Dawn’s tense words came clear and crisp, “it’s a crown fire all
right, traveling with the wind. Not very wide; about a quarter of a mile
maybe. It’s _crossed_ the divide. It might be stopped by a cross fire
between the upper Amarillo and the lake.”
“All right, daughter. Well send a man up to the Amarillo ridge.” He rang
off. Dawn gazed through the windows of the lookout station. Two hours
dragged by, incredibly long, nerve-racking. She answered a few hurried,
frantic calls on the telephone, and the rest of the time her eyes were
glued to the field glass. Where were the men working? At the end of an
hour she saw that they had started a cross fire not far above Corona
meadow, from which she had driven out the goats at the beginning of the
summer. She saw their fire creep from the rocky Amarillo ridge to the
granite ramparts of the meadow. She saw the flames rise and die
smolderingly away, as the men at the far end met and beat them out. But
this was such a short stretch compared to the whole!
The sky to the west was still rosy with sunset, and now the blaze to the
northeast was reflected against dark skies. Night was coming on, a fiery
night. Before her and on the left rose the Coronado Peaks, jeweled
patches like rubies showing where snow banks caught the red firelight.
Behind Dawn the slope dropped to Lost Lake where she had bathed only two
mornings ago. It seemed weeks away.
She watched the scene in helpless distress. It occurred to her to call
Benty’s Lodge again. The line was busy. She rang persistently. Some one
was probably talking to the little store, telling the news, or just
gossiping. After ten minutes Mrs. Benty’s voice came shrilly over the
wire.
“Everybody’s gone over to Snow Lake. Perrys and them just left here to
see the fire.”
“They’ll see it all right pretty soon, wherever they are!” Dawn
exclaimed. “Tell folks, Mrs. Benty, to keep out of the way. Who knows
what may happen tonight!” When Dawn turned from the phone the whole sky
was lit by the galloping fire. Night had fallen now, but the moon had
not yet risen. It was a terrific but magnificent sight. So must the
forest have been swept from primeval times by lightning-lit fires,
ranging unhindered over the Cordilleran summits, watched with awe and
superstition by the red man.
Dawn tore her fascinated gaze away long enough to try the lookout
station on the southern watershed. There was no answer. Every one had
left to meet at Snow Lake. She rang McGuire’s again. Shep whined,
crouching beside her, his ears pricked forward. There was no answer from
McGuire’s. Even Mrs. McGuire must be outside, the two babies with her,
and that sturdy little nine-year Bonny was probably carrying
drinking-water to the men.
There was no change in the wind, no veering of the fiery danger at the
north. Dawn could bear it no longer. No use sticking here. She could
fight with the men down below. The moon was rising slowly and in a few
minutes its radiance would flood the trail. Yet even now the starlight
was enough to show the way. She hurried down the rock steps, found Piñon
patiently waiting, and with Shep at her heels took the trail down Lake
Peak to McGuire’s homestead. It was not as far as the distance to her
own cabin, but as the trail led through heavy timber the moon could
scarcely pierce, it took longer.
The way seemed interminable, and when at last Piñon burst into McGuire’s
meadow Dawn could see a mighty glare in the heavens. Now they could run.
She pressed heels into the chestnut pony’s quivering flanks. Through the
upland valley they raced up the ridge. On the other side lay the lake,
where in June she had swum Piñon across after her encounter with the
goat trespassers. Beyond and above lay the meadows. She had circled by
the Amarillo ridge to reach them then and had crossed the lake from the
far side. Now, from the top of McGuire’s ridge, a terrible panorama
spread before her.
With a roar greater than a rushing wind the fire swept through the tree
tops, consuming itself utterly in its speed, so that only black ruin and
coals smoldering among the seedlings were left in its wake. Ah! Dad had
started another blaze above Snow Lake, from the barren escarpment
sheering away from the upland meadow, north, in the path of the fire.
Could it give battle to that oncoming holocaust? If not, the summit of
her beautiful mountain would be ruined. McGuire’s homestead that he had
worked so hard to improve would be laid bare. His cabin and barn were
right in the path of this demon of the elements.
She saw the two fires meet, roll together. Fire fighting fire. The
onward march had been stopped in the north. The fire crew and the
tumbling stream that fed Snow Lake halted the spread of flames on their
side. She must get down to the dead-line where the men were working to
the south. Garen and her father would be there. Beyond the lake the
forest narrowed to a vale thick with timber, tall, between two barriers
of granite a quarter of a mile apart. Damon had started another blaze at
the edge of this boxed vale, and now he and his band fought the vanguard
that leaped up among the resinous boles. As she rode she could see them
beating at the flames that licked the ground—beating, shoveling dirt,
trying to stamp out an area of fifty feet, one hundred, to push the fire
over into the path of Snow Lake.
Dawn left Piñon near the lake. “Swim for it, Buddy, if you must”—she
spoke to him as though he were a human being—“but come if I whistle. I
may need you. All right, Shep, come if you like, but mind you don’t get
in the way, boy. Find Damon.”
Now the forest was filled with a heat such as she had never known. Hal
James, who had ridden up through the Box Canyon to try to overtake the
blaze and join the workers, said that the fire passed him a mile away
roaring like an express train through the tops of the trees. He never
saw anything so beautiful or so terrible. By the time he reached Snow
Lake, however, it was all over, for he had been cut off for two hours.
To the spectators from Benty’s Lodge and from Perry’s place the
spectacle was superb too, but to the workers that galloping demon of
speed struck terror. It froze the heart and scorched the brain. Now they
had beaten out a stretch of several hundred feet. Dawn beat with the
rest, working side by side with a slender Mexican lad who sobbed as he
toiled, “_Mis bacas, mis bacas._” His cows were somewhere on the range
beyond.
A great tree crashed not far beyond and McGuire staggered from beneath
its flaming branches, pulling his sixteen-year-old son out of the way
barely in time. Damon O’Neill was at the south end of the fire’s path,
near Amarillo ridge, trying to close the narrowing gap, to stop the fire
there. Unless the fire-fighters could cover the remaining distance to
the lake, the fire would leap along an unburned path through McGuire’s
homestead.
They were working north, trying to stop the gap between the lake and the
mother rock that thrust up around the sheltered meadows above. Dawn was
racing through the stretch of yellow pine, down whose slopes she had
chased the goats. The firefighters were obliged to fall back. Beyond
them their world was roofed with flame, leaping from tree to tree. It
would burn itself out, down to the waters of Snow Lake, and if God
willed, no farther. Had Damon and the brigade of toilers stopped it at
both sides?
Stumbling along the pasture fence, whistling for Piñon, Dawn saw two
women coming on a staggering run through the trees. They were the wives
of herders. She turned back and headed them toward McGuire’s cabin. They
could take refuge in the fields, could hide somewhere, even if the
flames had not been stopped on the right flank of attack. The women
stumbled on, their shawls pulled over their faces. Dawn turned once more
to find Piñon.
Last among the forest creatures to flee the flames was the golden eagle.
Now he rested on a crag above the lake. As the roaring heat came nearer
he flapped from one tree to another. Now even the haven of the lake
seemed menaced. He rose up, his seven-foot spread looming against the
fire-lit heavens, winging his way to the blasted pine that stood stark
beyond the waterfall. No one saw him but the dog Shep, who barked with
passion, though now he had no lambs to defend.
Once upon his favorite lookout, the eagle folded his wings majestically.
He would flee no farther. He awaited the oncoming holocaust as though
defying it to destroy him or the dead tree which he had made his throne.
The fire-fighters were still divided into two squads, one at either end
of the attack. The lake must be their bulwark in the center. On the
eastern slope, running wildly along in the path of the oncoming flames,
Dawn saw people, well-dressed strangers, fleeing in terror of their
lives from the great fire which they had come out to see, to be
entertained by. On the far side of the fence, some distance behind them,
she saw Jack, and heard his excited shouting; but he could not hear her.
The men reached the fence, jumped over, and were almost immediately in
the glade that opened into McGuire’s valley and safety.
But Jack had stopped, bewildered, dazed. Now he saw the fire dragon
rushing down on him. “The lake, the lake!” Dawn shrieked, and above the
roar overhead he appeared to hear her. Plunging through the underbrush.
Jack made for the shore of Snow Lake.
“Piñon, Piñon” Dawn shouted. Her frantic whistle pierced the crackling
of the fire. She wondered if the pony had become panic-stricken with the
smell of smoke and would refuse to move. No, he was a wild horse! A
high, familiar nicker close at hand answered her piercing whistle. Piñon
trotted up, tail outstretched, head high, his nostrils distended, afraid
but faithful. Dawn flung into the saddle, crouching low while they fled
before the heat of the flames. She would leap the fence and be behind
the lines with Garen and her father, out of the path of danger in a few
minutes. They were probably looking for her now.
Through an opening in the trees she saw that the little lake was
illumined with unearthly brilliance. Already the fire’s hungry advance
guard had in places reached the shore-line. As Piñon sprang down the
slope Dawn remembered Jack. Then she saw him, backing out into the
water, farther, farther, his hands over his face as he crouched away
from the scorching heat. She gasped, called to him then to go out no
deeper. But as she raced down to the lake he slipped out of sight.
Probably Jack never heard her call as he struggled to the surface and
struck wildly out. His limbs were numbed to all but uselessness by the
cold water which seemed to drag him down, pull him under to its black
depths. With one leap Piñon, responding to Dawn’s pressure, cleared the
little beach and entered the water. In three steps the horse was beyond
his depth, swimming. By the time he reached Jack’s side the boy was
unconscious, sinking slowly, only his white face and useless hands above
the water. Dawn seized the bulging sweater and pulled it towards her
just as the water closed over Jack’s face.
It was the feat of an Amazon to lift the dead weight up from the heavy
depths, with Piñon milling around beneath her, and her vigor was too
spent with fire-fighting. She was almost pulled from the saddle. Get
both her arms about him, under his arms, lift him up—that was it. “Keep
on, go on, Piñon.”
With the unconscious and demoniacal struggle for life of the drowning,
Jack’s arms clutched her shoulders with a grasp, sudden, unexpected,
dragging her off the horse, down into the water. Her foot in the stirrup
saved Dawn. As she came up she doubled her right fist and caught Jack on
the jaw, putting all her strength in the blow. He ceased struggling. The
cold water revived and stimulated Dawn, and she was able to pull herself
and the boy over Piñon’s back. But the weight was overmuch for him, and
he sank so that Jack’s head went under.
She pushed the unconscious boy face downward on Piñon’s outstretched
neck, and with one hand twisted in the chestnut pony’s mane, neck and
neck she swam by his side to the far shore. Behind them the lake was
rimmed with flame, the pine glade a field of giant flambeaux. Before
them firelight lit the shore where watchers were waiting with
outstretched hands to pull them from the water.
Beyond the lake the bare granite cliffs had stopped the fire’s flight,
and at the base of the cliff tired men wiped sweat and tears and grime
from their eyes and gratefully threw themselves down on the hot smoking
earth.