The fire had been burning a possible half-hour when Kent, jogging aimlessly
toward a log ridge with the lazy notion of riding to the top and taking
a look at the country to the west before returning to the ranch, first
smelled the stronger tang of burned grass and swung instinctively into the
wind. He galloped to higher ground, and, trained by long watching of the
prairie to detect the smoke of a nearer fire in the haze of those long
distant, saw at once what must have happened, and knew also the danger. His
horse was fresh, and he raced him over the uneven prairie toward the blaze.
It was tearing straight across the high ground between Dry Creek and Cold
Spring Coulee when he first saw it plainly, and he altered his course
a trifle. The roar of it came faintly on the wind, like the sound of
storm-beaten surf pounding heavily upon a sand bar when the tide is out,
except that this roar was continuous, and was full of sharp cracklings and
sputterings; and there was also the red line of flame to visualize the
sound.
When his eyes first swept the mile-long blaze, he felt his helplessness,
and cursed aloud the man who had drawn all the fighting force from the
prairie that day. They might at least have been able to harry it and hamper
it and turn the savage sweep of it into barren ground upon some rock-bound
coulee's rim. If they could have caught it at the start, or even in the
first mile of its burning--or, even now, if Blumenthall's outfit were on
the spot--or if Manley Fleetwood's fire guards held it back--He hoped some
of them had stayed at home, so that they could help fight it.
In that brief glimpse before he rode down into a hollow and so lost sight
of it, he knew that the fire they had fought and vanquished before had been
a puny blaze compared with this one. The ground it had burned was not broad
enough to do more than check this fire temporarily. It would simply burn
around the blackened area and rush on and on, until the bend of the river
turned it back to the north, where the river's first tributary stream would
stop it for good and all. But before that happened it would have done its
worst--and its worst was enough to pale the face of every prairie dweller.
Once more he caught sight of the fire as he was riding swiftly across
the level land to the east of Cold Spring Coulee. He was going to see if
Manley's fire guards were any good, and if anyone was there ready to fight
it when it came up; they could set a back fire from the guards, he thought,
even if the guards themselves were not wide enough to hold the main fire.
He pounded heavily down the long trail into the coulee, passed close by the
house with a glance sidelong to see if anybody was in sight there, rounded
the corral to follow the trail which wound zigzag up the farther coulee
wall, and overtook Val, running bareheaded up the hill, dragging a wet sack
after her. She was panting already from the climb, and she had on thin
slippers with high heels, he noticed, that impeded her progress and
promised a sprained ankle before she reached the top. Kent laughed grimly
when he overtook her; he thought it was like a five-year-old child running
with a cup of water to put out a burning house.
“Where do you think you're going with that sack?” he called out, by way of
greeting.
She turned a pale, terrified face toward him, and reached up a hand
mechanically to push her fair hair out of her eyes. “So much smoke was
rolling into the coulee,” she panted, “and I knew there must be a fire. And
I've never felt quite easy about our guards since Polycarp Jenks said--Do
you know where it is--the fire?”
“It's between here and the railroad. Give me that sack, and you go on back
to the house. You can't do any good.” And when she handed the sack up to
him and then kept on up the hill, he became autocratic in his tone. “Go on
back to the house, I tell you!”
“I shall not do anything of the kind,” she retorted indignantly, and Kent
gave a snort of disapproval, kicked his horse into a lunging gallop, and
left her.
“You'll spoil your complexion,” he cried over his shoulder, “and that's
about all you will do. You better go back and get a parasol.”
Val did not attempt to reply, but she refused to let his taunts turn her
back, and kept stubbornly climbing, though tears of pure rage filled her
eyes and even slipped over the lids to her cheeks. Before she had reached
the top, he was charging down upon her again, and the pallor of his face
told her much.
“All hell couldn't stop that fire!” he cried, before he was near her, and
the words were barely distinguishable in the roar which was growing louder
and more terrifying. _“Get back!_ You want to stand there till it comes
down on you?” Then, just as he was passing, he saw how white and trembling
she was, and he pulled up, with Michael sliding his front feet in the loose
soil that he might stop on that steep slope.
“You don't want to go and faint,” he remonstrated in a more kindly tone,
vaguely conscious that he had perhaps seemed brutal. “Here, give me your
hand, and stick your toe in the stirrup. Ah, don't waste time trying to
make up your mind--up you come! Don't you want to save the house and
corrals--and the haystacks? We've got our work cut out, let me tell you, if
we do it.”
He had leaned and lifted her up bodily, helped her to put her foot in the
stirrup from which he had drawn his own, and he held her beside him while
he sent Michael down the trail as fast as he dared. It was a good deal of
a nuisance, having to look after her when seconds were so precious, but
he couldn't go on and leave her, though she might easily have reached the
bottom as soon as he if she had not been so frightened. He was afraid to
trust her; she looked, to him, as if she were going to faint in his arms.
“You don't want to get scared,” he said, as calmly as he could. “It's back
two or three miles on the bench yet, and I guess we can easy stop it from
burning anything but the grass. It's this wind, you see. Manley went to
town, I suppose?”
“Yes,” she answered weakly. “He went yesterday, and stayed over. I'm all
alone, and I didn't know what to do, only to go up and try--”
“No use, up there.”
They were at the corral gate then, and he set her down carefully, then
dismounted and turned Michael into the corral and shut the gate.
“If we can't step it, and I ain't close by, I wish you'd let Michael out,”
he said hurriedly, his eyes taking in the immediate surroundings and
measuring the danger which lurked in weeds, grass, and scattered hay. “A
horse don't have much show when he's shut up, and--Out there where that dry
ditch runs, we'll back-fire. You take this sack and come and watch out my
fire don't jump the ditch. We'll carry it around the house, just the other
side the trail.” He was pulling a handful of grass for a torch, and while
he was twisting it and feeling in his pocket for a match, he looked at her
keenly. “You aren't going to get hysterics and leave me to fight it alone,
are you?” he challenged.
“I hope I'm not quite such a silly,” she answered stiffly, and he smiled to
himself as he ran along the far side of the ditch with his blazing tuft
of grass, setting fire to the tangled, brown mat which covered the coulee
bottom.
Val followed slowly behind him, watching that the blaze did not blow back
across the ditch, and beating it out when it seemed likely to do so. Now
that she could actually do something, she was no more excited than he, if
one could judge by her manner. She did look sulky, however, at his way of
treating her.
To back-fire on short notice, with no fresh-turned furrow of moist earth,
but only a shallow little dry ditch with the grass almost meeting over its
top in places, is ticklish business at best. Kent went slowly, stamping out
incipient blazes that seemed likely to turn unruly, and not trusting
Val any more than he was compelled to do. She was a woman, and Kent's
experience with women of her particular type had not been extensive enough
to breed confidence in an emergency like this.
He had no more than finished stringing his line of fire in the irregular
half circle which enclosed house, corral, stables, and haystacks, and had
for its eastern half the muddy depression which, in seasons less dry, was
a fair-sized creek fed by the spring, when a jagged line of fire with an
upper wall of tumbling, brown smoke, leaped into view at the top of the
bluff.
One thing was in his favor: The grass upon the hillside was scantier
than on the level upland, and here and there were patches of yellow soil
absolutely bare of vegetation, where a fire would be compelled to halt and
creep slowly around. Also, fire usually burns slower down a hill than over
a level. On the other hand, the long, seamlike depressions which ran to the
top were filled with dry brush, and even the coulee bottom had clumps of
rosebushes and wild currant, where the flames would revel briefly.
But already the black, smoking line which curved around the haystacks to
the north, and around the house toward the south, was widening with every
passing second.
Val had a tub half filled with water at the house, and that helped
amazingly by making it possible to keep the sacks wet, so that every blow
counted as they beat out the ragged tongues of flame which, in that wind,
would jump here and there the ditch and the road, and go creeping back
toward the stacks and the buildings. For it was a long line they were
guarding, and there was a good deal of running up and down in their
endeavor to be in two places at once.
Then Val, in turning to strike a new-born flame behind her, swept her
skirt across a tuft of smoldering grass and set herself afire. With the
excitement of watching all points at once, and with the smoke and smell of
fire all about her, she did not see what had happened, and must have paid a
frightful penalty if Kent had not, at that moment, been running past her to
reach a point where a blaze had jumped the ditch.
He swerved, and swung a newly wet sack around her with a force which would
have knocked her down if he had not at the same time caught and held her.
Val screamed, and struggled in his arms, and Kent knew that it was of
him she was afraid. As soon as he dared, he released her and backed away
sullenly.
“Sorry I didn't have time to say please--you were just ready to go up in
smoke,” he flung savagely over his shoulder. But he found himself shaking
and weak, so that when he reached the blaze he must beat out, the sack was
heavy as lead. “Afraid of _me_--women sure do beat hell!” he told himself,
when he was a bit steadier. He glanced back at her resentfully. Val was
stooping, inspecting the damage done to her dress. She stood up, looked
at him, and he saw that her face was white again, as it had been upon the
hillside.
A moment later he was near her again.
“Mr. Burnett, I'm--ashamed--but I didn't know, and you--you startled me,”
she stopped him long enough to confess, though she did not meet his eyes.
“You saved--”
“You'll be startled worse, if you let the fire hang there in that bunch of
grass,” he interrupted coolly. “Behind you, there.”
She turned obediently, and swung her sack down several times upon a
smoldering spot, and the incident was closed.
Speedily it was forgotten, also. For with the meeting of the fires, which
they stood still to watch, a patch of wild rosebushes was caught fairly
upon both sides, and flared high, with a great snapping and crackling.
The wind seized upon the blaze, flung it toward them like a great, yellow
banner, and swept cinders and burning twigs far out over the blackened
path of the back fire. Kent watched it and hardly breathed, but Val was
shielding her face from the searing heat with her arms, and so did not
see what happened then. A burning branch like a long, flaming dagger flew
straight with the wind and lighted true as if flung by the hand of an
enemy. A long, neatly tapered stack received it fairly, and Kent's cry
brought Val's arms down, and her scared eyes staring at him.
“That settles the hay,” he exclaimed, and raced for the stacks knowing all
the while that he could do nothing, and yet panting in his hurry to reach
the spot.
Michael, trampling uneasily in the corral, lifted his head and neighed
shrilly as Kent passed him on the run. Michael had watched fearfully the
fire sweeping down upon him, and his fear had troubled Val not a little.
When she saw Kent pass the gate, she hurried up and threw it open,
wondering a little that Kent should forget his horse. He had told her to
see that he was turned loose if the fire could not be stopped--and now he
seemed to have forgotten it.
Michael, with a snort and an upward toss of his head to throw the dragging
reins away from his feet, left the corral with one jump, and clattered
away, past the house and up the hill, on the trail which led toward home.
Val stood for a moment watching him. Could he out-run the fire? He was
holding his head turned to one side now, so that the reins dangled away
from his pounding feet; once he stumbled to his knees, but he was up in a
flash, and running faster than ever. He passed out of sight over the hill,
and Val, with eyes smarting and cheeks burning from the heat, drew a long
breath and started after Kent.
Kent was backing, step by step, away from the heat of the burning stacks.
The roar, and the crackle, and the heat were terrific; it was as if the
whole world was burning around them, and they only were left. A brand flew
low over Val's head as she ran staggeringly, with a bewildered sense that
she must hurry somewhere and do something immediately, to save something
which positively must be saved. A spark from the brand fell upon her hand,
and she looked up stupidly. The heat and the smoke were choking her so that
she could scarcely breathe.
A new crackle was added to the uproar of flames. Kent, still backing from
the furnace of blazing hay, turned, and saw that the stable, with its roof
of musty hay, was afire. And, just beyond, Val, her face covered with her
sooty hands, was staggering drunkenly. He reached her as she fell to her
knees.
“I--can't--fight--any more,” she whispered faintly.
He picked her up in his arms and hesitated, his face toward the house; then
ran straight away from it, stumbled across the dry ditch and out across the
blackened strip which their own back fire had swept clean of grass. The hot
earth burned his feet through the soles of his riding boots, but the wind
carried the heat and the smoke away, behind them. Clumps of bushes were
still burning at the roots, but he avoided them and kept on to the far side
hill, where a barren, yellow patch, with jutting sandstone rocks, offered
a resting place. He set Val down upon a rock, placed himself beside her so
that she was leaning against him, and began fanning her vigorously with his
hat.
“Thank the Lord, we're behind that smoke, anyhow,” he observed, when he
could get his breath. He felt that silence was not good for the woman
beside him, though he doubted much whether she was in a condition to
understand him. She was gasping irregularly, and her body was a dead weight
against him. “It was sure fierce, there, for a few minutes.”
He looked out across the coulee at the burning stables, and waited for the
house to catch. He could not hope that it would escape, but he did not
mention the probability of its burning.
“Keep your eyes shut,” he said. “That'll help some, and soon as we can
we'll go to the spring and give our faces and hands a good bath.” He untied
his silk neckerchief, shook out the cinders, and pressed it against her
closed eyes. “Keep that over 'em,” he commanded, “till we can do better. My
eyes are more used to smoke than yours, I guess. Working around branding
fires toughens 'em some.”
Still she did not attempt to speak, and she did not seem to have energy
enough left to keep the silk over her eyes. The wind blew it off without
her stirring a finger to prevent, and Kent caught it just in time to save
it from sailing away toward the fire. After that he held it in place
himself, and he did not try to keep talking. He sat quietly, with his arm
around her, as impersonal in the embrace as if he were holding a strange
partner in a dance, and watched the stacks burn, and the stables. He saw
the corral take fire, rail by rail, until it was all ablaze. He saw hens
and roosters running heavily, with wings dragging, until the heat toppled
them over. He saw a cat, with white spots upon its sides, leave the bushes
down by the creek and go bounding in terror to the house.
And still the house stood there, the curtains flapping in and out through
the open windows, the kitchen door banging open and shut as the gusts of
wind caught it. The fire licked as close as burned ground and rocky creek
bed would let it, and the flames which had stayed behind to eat the
spare gleanings died, while the main line raged on up the hillside and
disappeared in a huge, curling wave of smoke. The stacks burned down
to blackened, smoldering butts. The willows next the spring, and the
chokecherries and wild currants withered in the heat and waved charred,
naked arms impotently in the wind. The stable crumpled up, flared, and
became a heap of embers. The corral was but a ragged line of smoking,
half-burned sticks and ashes. Spirals of smoke, like dying camp fires, blew
thin ribbons out over the desolation.
Kent drew a long breath and glanced down at the limp figure in his arms.
She lay so very still that in spite of a quivering breath now and then he
had a swift, unreasoning fear she might be dead. Her hair was a tangled
mass of gold upon her head, and spilled over his arm. He carefully picked a
flake or two of charred grass from the locks on her temples, and discovered
how fine and soft was the hair. He lifted the grimy neckerchief from her
eyes and looked down at her face, smoke-soiled and reddened from the heat.
Her lips were drooped pitifully, like a hurt child. Her lashes, he noticed
for the first time, were at least four shades darker than her hair. His
gaze traveled on down her slim figure to her ringed fingers lying loosely
in her lap, a long, dry-looking blister upon one hand near the thumb; down
to her slippers, showing beneath her scorched skirt. And he drew another
long breath. He did not know why, but he had a strange, fleeting sense of
possession, and it startled him into action.
“You gone to sleep?” he called gently, and gave her a little shake. “We can
get to the spring now, if you feel like walking that far; if you don't, I
reckon I'll have to carry you--for I sure do want a drink!”
She half lifted her lashes and let them drop again, as if life were not
worth the effort of living. Kent hesitated, set his lips tightly together,
and lifted her up straighter. His eyes were intent and stern, as though
some great issue was at stake, and he must rouse her at once, in spite of
everything.
“Here, this won't do at all,” he said--but he was speaking to himself and
his quivering nerves, more than to her.
She sighed, made a conscious effort, and half opened her eyes again. But
she seemed not to share his anxiety for action, and her mental and physical
apathy were not to be mistaken. The girl was utterly exhausted with
fire-fighting and nervous strain.
“You seem to be all in,” he observed, his voice softly complaining. “Well,
I packed you over here, and I reckon I better pack you back again--if you
_won't_ try to walk.”
She muttered something, of which Kent only distinguished “a minute.” But
she was still limp, and absolutely without interest in anything, and so,
after a moment of hesitation, he gathered her up in his arms and carried
her back to the house, kicked the door savagely open, took her in through
the kitchen, and laid her down upon the couch, with a sigh of relief that
he was rid of her.
The couch was gay with a bright, silk spread of “crazy” patchwork, and
piled generously with dainty cushions, too evidently made for ornamental
purposes than for use. But Kent piled the cushions recklessly around her,
tucked her smudgy skirts close, went and got a towel, which he immersed
recklessly in the water pail, and bathed her face and hands with clumsy
gentleness, and pushed back her tangled hair. The burn upon her hand showed
an angry red around the white of the blister, and he laid the wet towel
carefully upon it. She did not move.
He was a man, and he had lived all his life among men. He could fight
anything that was fightable. He could save her life, but after this slight
attention to her comfort he had reached the limitations set by his purely
masculine training. He lowered the shades so that the room was dusky and as
cool as any other place in that fire-tortured land, and felt that he could
no do more for her.
He stood for a moment looking down at the inert, grimy little figure
stretched out straight, like a corpse, upon the bright-hued couch, her eyes
closed and sunken, with blue shadows beneath, her lips pale and still with
that tired, pitiful droop. He stooped and rearranged the wet towel on her
burned hand, held his face close above hers for a second, sighed, frowned,
and tiptoed out into the kitchen, closing the door carefully behind him.