"I've been to the spring," she called out, resolutely cheerful, as soon as she came in sight of Manley, waiting in the kitchen door; she ran toward him lightly. "However does the water keep so deliciously cool through this hot weather? I don't wonder you call this Cold Spring Ranch."

Manley straightened proudly. "I'm glad you like it; I was afraid you might not, just at first. But you're the right stuff—I might have known it. Not every woman could come out here and appreciate this country right at the start."

Val stopped at the steps, panting a little from her run, and smiled unflinchingly up into his face.



CHAPTER VI

MANLEY'S FIRE GUARD

Hot sunlight, winds as hot, a shimmering heat which distorted objects at a distance and made the sky line a dazzling, wavering ribbon of faded blue; and then the dull haze of smoke which hung over the land, and, without tempering the heat, turned the sun into a huge coppery balloon, which drifted imperceptibly from the east to the west, and at evening time settled softly down upon a parched hilltop and disappeared, leaving behind it an ominous red glow as of hidden fires.

When the wind blew, the touch of it seared the face, as the smoke tang assailed the nostrils. All the world was a weird, unnatural tint, hard to name, never to be forgotten. The far horizons drew steadily closer as the days passed slowly and thickened the veil of smoke. The distant mountains drew daily back into dimmer distance; became an obscure, formless blot against the sky, and vanished completely. The horizon crouched then upon the bluffs across the river, moved up to the line of trees along its banks, blotted them out one day, and impudently established itself half-way up the coulee.

Time ceased to be measured accurately; events moved slowly in an unreal world of sultry heat and smoke and a red sun wading heavily through the copper-brown sky from the east to the west, and a moon as red which followed meekly after.

Men rode uneasily here and there, and when they met they talked of prairie fires and of fire guards and the direction of the wind, and of the faint prospect of rain. Cattle, driven from their accustomed feeding grounds, wandered aimlessly over the still-unburned range, and lowed often in the night as they drifted before the flame-heated wind.

Fifteen miles to the east of Cold Spring Coulee, the Wishbone outfit watched uneasily the deepening haze. Kent and Bob Royden were put to riding the range from the river north and west, and Polycarp Jenks, who had taken a claim where were good water and some shelter, and who never seemed to be there for more than a few hours at a time, because of his boundless curiosity, wandered about on his great, raw-boned sorrel with the white legs, and seemed always to have the latest fire news on the tip of his tongue, and always eager to impart it to somebody.

To the northwest there was the Double Diamond, also sleeping with both eyes open, so to speak. They also had two men out watching the range, though the fires were said to be all across the river. But there was the railroad seaming the country straight through the grassland, and though the company was prompt at plowing fire guards, contract work would always bear watching, said the stockmen, and with the high winds that prevailed there was no telling what might happen.

So Fred De Garmo and Bill Madison patrolled the country in rather desultory fashion, if the truth be known. They liked best to ride to the north and east—which, while following faithfully the railroad and the danger line, would bring them eventually to Hope, where they never failed to stop as long as they dared. For, although they never analyzed their feelings, they knew that as long as they kept their jobs and their pay was forthcoming, a few miles of blackened range concerned them personally not at all. Still, barring a fondness for the trail which led to town, they were not unfaithful to their trust.

One day Kent and Polycarp met on the brink of a deep coulee, and, as is the way of men who ride the dim trails, they stopped to talk a bit.

Polycarp, cracking his face across the middle with his habitual grin, straightened his right leg to its full length, slid his hand with difficulty into his pocket, brought up a dirty fragment of "plug" tobacco, looked it over inquiringly, and pried off the corner with his teeth. When he had rolled it comfortably into his cheek and had straightened his leg and replaced the tobacco in his pocket, he was "all set" and ready for conversation.

Kent had taken the opportunity to roll a cigarette, though smoking on the range was a weakness to be indulged in with much care. He pinched out the blaze of his match, as usual, and then spat upon it for added safety before throwing it away.

"If this heat doesn't let up," he remarked, "the grass is going to blaze up from sunburn."

"It won't need to, if you ask me. I wouldn't be su'prised to see this hull range afire any time. Between you an' me, Kenneth, them Double Diamond fellers ain't watching it as close as they might. I was away over Dry Creek way yesterday, and I seen where there was two different fires got through the company's guards, and kited off across the country. It jest happened that the grass give out in that red day soil, and starved 'em both out. They wa'n't put out. I looked close all around, and there wasn't nary a track of man or horse. That's their business—ridin' line on the railroad. The section men's been workin' off down the other way, where a culvert got scorched up pretty bad. By granny, Fred 'n' Bill Madison spend might' nigh all their time ridin' the trail to town. They're might' p'ticular about watchin' the railroad between the switches—he-he!"

"That's something for the Double Diamond to worry over," Kent rebuffed. He hated that sort of gossip which must speak ill of somebody. "Our winter range lays mostly south and east; we could stop a fire between here and the Double Diamond, even if they let one get past 'em."

Polycarp regarded him cunningly with his little, slitlike eyes. "Mebbe you could," he said doubtfully. "And then again, mebbe you couldn't. Oncet it got past Cold Spring—" He shook his wizened head slowly, leaned, and expectorated gravely.

"Man Fleetwood's keeping tab pretty close over that way."

Polycarp gave a grunt that was half a chuckle. "Man Fleetwood's keeping tab on what runs down his gullet," he corrected. "I seen him an' his wife out burnin' guards t' other day—over on his west line—and, by granny, it wouldn't stop nothing! A toad could jump it—he-he!" He sent another stream of tobacco juice afar, with the grave air as before.

"And I told him so. 'Man,' I says, 'what you think you're doing?'

"'Buildin' a fire guard,' he says. 'My wife, Mr. Jenks.'

"'Polycarp Jenks is my cognomen,' I says. 'And I don't want no misterin' in mine. Polycarp's good enough for me,' I says, and I took off my hat and bowed to 'is wife. Funny kinda eyes, she's got—ever take notice? Yeller, by granny! first time I ever seen yeller eyes in a human's face. Mebbe it was the sun in 'em, but they sure was yeller. I dunno as they hurt her looks none, either. Kinda queer lookin', but when you git used to 'em you kinda like 'em.

"'N' I says: 'Tain't half wide enough, nor a third'—spoke right up to 'im! I was thinkin' of the hull blamed country, and I didn't care how he took it. 'Any good, able-bodied wind'll jump a fire across that guard so quick it won't reelize there was any there,' I says.

"Man didn't like it none too well, either. He says to me: 'That guard'll stop any fire I ever saw,' and I got right back at him—he-he! 'Man,' I says, 'you ain't never saw a prairie fire'—just like that. 'You wait,' I says, 'till the real thing comes along. We ain't had any fires since you come into the country,' I says, 'and you don't know what they're like. Now, you take my advice and plow another four or five furrows—and plow 'em out, seventy-five or a hundred feet from here,' I says, 'an' make sure you git all the grass burned off between—and do it on a still day,' I says. 'You'll burn up the hull country if you keep on this here way you're doing,' I told him—straight out, just like that. 'And when you do it,' I says, 'you better let somebody know, so's they can come an' help,' I says. ''Tain't any job a man oughta tackle alone,' I says to him. 'Git help, Man, git help.'

"Well, by granny—he-he! Man's wife brustled up at me like a—a—" He searched his brain for a simile, and failed to find one. "'I have been helping Manley, Mr. Polycarp Jenks,' she says to me, 'and I flatter myself I have done as well as any man could do.' And, by granny! the way them yeller eyes of hern blazed at me—he-he! I had to laugh, jest to look at her. Dressed jest like a city girl, by granny! with ruffles on her skirts—to ketch afire if she wasn't mighty keerful!—and a big straw hat tied down with a veil, and kid gloves on her hands, and her yeller hair kinda fallin' around her face—and them yeller eyes snappin' like flames—by granny! if she didn't make as purty a picture as I ever want to set eyes on! Slim and straight, jest like a storybook woman—he-he! 'Course, she was all smoke an' dirt; a big flake of burned grass was on her hair, I took notice, and them ruffles was black up to her knees—he-he! And she had a big smut on her cheek—but she was right there with her stack of blues, by granny! Settin' into the game like a—a—" He leaned and spat "But burnin' guards ain't no work for a woman to do, an' I told Man so—straight out. 'You git help,' I says. 'I see you're might' near through with this here strip,' I says, 'an' I'm in a hurry, or I'd stay, right now.' And, by granny! if that there wife of Man's didn't up an' hit me another biff—he-he!

"'Thank you very much,' she says to me, like ice water. 'When we need your help, we'll be sure to let you know—but at present,' she says, 'we couldn't think of troubling you.' And then, by granny! she turns right around and smiles up at me—he-he! Made me feel like somebody'd tickled m' ear with a spear of hay when I was asleep, by granny! Never felt anything like it—not jest with somebody smilin' at me.

"'Polycarp Jenks,' she says to me, 'we do appreciate what you've told us, and I believe you're right,' she says. 'But don't insiniwate I'm not as good a fighter as any man who ever breathed,' she says. 'Manley has another of his headaches to-day—going to town always gives him a sick headache,' she says, 'and I've done nearly all of this my own, lone self,' she says. 'And I'm horribly proud of it, and I'll never forgive you for saying I—' And then, by granny! if she didn't begin to blink them eyes, and I felt like a—a—" He put the usual period to his hesitation.

"Between you an' me, Kenneth," he added, looking at Kent slyly, "she ain't having none too easy a time. Man's gone back to drinkin'—I knowed all the time he wouldn't stay braced up very long—lasted about six weeks, from all I c'n hear. Mebbe she reely thinks it's jest headaches ails him when he comes back from town—I dunno. You can't never tell what idees a woman's got tacked away under her hair—from all I c'n gether. I don't p'tend to know nothing about 'em—don't want to know—he-he! But I guess," he hinted cunningly, "I know as much about 'em as you do—hey, Kenneth? You don't seem to chase after 'em none, yourself—he-he!"

"Whereabouts did Man run his guards?" asked Kent, passing over the invitation to personal confessions.

Polycarp gave a grunt of disdain. "Just on the west rim of his coulee. About forty rod of six-foot guard, and slanted so it'll shoot a fire right into high grass at the head of the coulee and send it kitin' over this way. That's supposin' it turns a fire, which it won't. Six feet—a fall like this here! Why, I never see grass so thick on this range—did you?"

"I wonder, did he burn that extra guard?" Kent was keeping himself rigidly to the subject of real importance.

"No, by granny! he didn't—not unless he done it since yest'day. He went to town for suthin, and he might' nigh forgot to go home—he-he! He was there yest'day about three o'clock, an' I says to him—"

"Well, so-long; I got to, be moving." Kent gathered up the reins and went his way, leaving Polycarp just in the act of drawing his "plug" from his pocket, by his usual laborious method, in mental preparation for another half hour of talk.

"If you're ridin' over that way, Kenneth, you better take a look at Man's guard," he called after him. "A good mile of guard, along there, would help a lot if a fire got started beyond. The way he fixed it, it ain't no account at all."

Kent proved by a gesture that he heard him, and rode on without turning to look back. Already his form was blurred as Polycarp gazed after him, and in another minute or two he was blotted out completely by the smoke veil, though he rode upon the level. Polycarp watched him craftily, though there was no need, until he was completely hidden, then he went on, ruminating upon the faults of his acquaintances.

Kent had no intention of riding over to Cold Spring. He had not been there since Manley's marriage, though he had been a frequent visitor before, and unless necessity drove him there, it would be long before he faced again the antagonism of Mrs. Fleetwood. Still, he was mentally uncomfortable, and he felt much resentment against Polycarp Jenks because he had caused that discomfort. What was it to him, if Manley had gone bock to drinking? He asked the question more than once, and he answered always that it was nothing to him, of course. Still, he wished futilely that he had not been quite so eager to cover up Manley's weakness and deceive the girl. He ought to have given her a chance—

A cinder like a huge black snowflake struck him suddenly upon the cheek. He looked up, startled, and tried to see farther into the haze which closed him round. It seemed to him, now that his mind was turned from his musings, that the smoke was thicker, the smell of burning grass stronger, and the breath of wind hotter upon his face. He turned, looked away to the west, fancied there a tumbled blackness new to his sight, and put his horse to a run. If there were fire close, then every second counted; and as he raced over the uneven prairie he fumbled with the saddle string that held a sodden sack tied fast to the saddle, that he might lose no time.

The cinders grew thicker, until the air was filled with them, like a snowstorm done in India ink. A little farther and he heard a faint crackling; topped a ridge and saw not far ahead, a dancing, yellow line. His horse was breathing heavily with the pace he was keeping, but Kent, swinging away from the onrush of flame and heat, spurred him to a greater speed. They neared the end of the crackling, red line, and as Kent swung in behind it upon the burned ground, he saw several men beating steadily at the flames.

He was hardly at work when Polycarp came running up and took his place beside him; but beyond that Kent paid no attention to the others, though he heard and recognized the voice of Fred De Garmo calling out to some one. The smoke which rolled up in uneven volumes as the wind lifted it and bore it away, or let it suck backward as it veered for an instant, blinded him while he fought. He heard other men gallop up, and after a little some one clattered up with a wagon filled with barrels of water. He ran to wet his sack, and saw that it was Blumenthall himself, foreman of the Double Diamond, who drove the team.

"Lucky it ain't as windy as it was yesterday and the day before," Blumenthall cried out, as Kent stepped upon the brake block to reach a barrel. "It'd sweep the whole country if it was."

Kent nodded, and ran back to the fire, trailing the dripping sack after him. As he passed Polycarp and another, he heard Polycarp saying something about Man Fleetwood's fire guard; but he did not stop to hear what it was. Polycarp was always talking, and he didn't always keep too closely to facts.

Then, of a sudden, he saw men dimly when he glanced down the leaping fire line, and he knew that the fire was almost conquered. Another frenzied minute or two, and he was standing in a group of men, who dropped their charred, blackened fragments of blanket and bags, and began to feel for their smoking material, while they stamped upon stray embers which looked live enough to be dangerous.

"Well, she's out," said a voice, "But it did look for a while as if it'd get away in spite of us."

Kent turned away, wiping an eye which held a cinder fast under the lid. It was Fred De Garmo who spoke.

"If somebody'd been watchin' the railroad a leetle might closer—" Polycarp began, in his thin, rasping voice.

Fred cut him short. "I thought you laid it to Man Fleetwood, burning fire guards," he retorted. "Keep on, and you'll get it right pretty soon. This never come from the railroad; you can gamble on that."

Blumenthall had left his team and come among them. "If you want to know how it started, I can tell you. Somebody dropped a match, or a cigarette, or something, by the trail up here a ways. I saw where it started when I went to Cold Spring after the last load of water. And if I knew who it was—"

Polycarp launched his opinion first, as usual. "Well, I don't know who done it—but, by granny! I can might' nigh guess who it was. There's jest one man that I know of been traveling that trail lately when he wa'n't in his sober senses—"

Here Manley Fleetwood rode up to them, coughing at the soot his horse kicked up. "Say! you fellows come on over to the house and have something to eat—and," he added significantly, "something wet. I told my wife, when I saw the fire, to make plenty of coffee, for fighting fire's hungry work, let me tell. Come on—no hanging back, you know. There'll be lots of coffee, and I've got a quart of something better cached in the haystack!"

As he had said, fighting fire is hungry work, and none save Blumenthall, who was dyspeptic and only ate twice a day, and then of certain foods prepared by himself, declined the invitation.



CHAPTER VII

VAL'S NEW DUTIES

To Val the days of heat and smoke, and the isolation, had made life seem unreal, like a dream which holds one fast and yet is absurd and utterly improbable. Her past was pushed so far from her that she could not even long for it as she had done during the first few weeks. There were nights of utter desolation, when Manley was in town upon some errand which prevented his speedy return—nights when the coyotes howled much louder than usual, and she could not sleep for the mysterious snapping and creaking about the shack, but lay shivering with fear until dawn; but not for worlds would she have admitted to Manley her dread of staying alone. She believed it to be necessary, or he would not require it of her, and she wanted to be all that he expected her to be. She was very sensitive, in those days, about doing her whole duty as a wife—the wife of a Western rancher.

For that reason, when Manley shouted to her the news of the fire as he galloped past the shack, and told her to have something for the men to eat when the fire was out, she never thought of demurring, or explaining to him that there was scarcely any wood, and that she could not cook a meal without fuel. Instead, she waved her hand to him and let him go; and when he was quite out of sight she went up to the corrals to see if she could find another useless pole, or a broken board or two which her slight strength would be sufficient to break up with the axe. Till she came to Montana, Val had never taken an axe in her hands; but its use was only one of the many things she must learn, of which she had all her life been ignorant.

There was an old post there, lying beside a rusty, overturned plow. More than once she had stopped and eyed it speculatively, and the day before she had gone so far as to lift an end of it tentatively; but she had found it very heavy, and she had also disturbed a lot of black bugs that went scurrying here and there, so that she was forced to gather her skirts close about her and run for her life.

Where Manley had built his hayrack she had yesterday discovered some ends of planking hidden away in the rank, ripened weeds and grass. She went there now, but there were no more, look closely as she might. She circled the evil-smelling stable in discouragement, picked up one short piece of rotten board, and came back to the post. As she neared it she involuntarily caught her skirts and held them close, in terror of the black bugs.

She eyed it with extreme disfavor, and finally ventured to poke it with her slipper toe; one lone bug scuttled out and away in the tall weeds. With the piece of board she turned it over, stared hard at the yellowed grass beneath, discovered nothing so very terrifying after all, and, in pure desperation, dragged the post laboriously down to the place where had been the woodpile. Then, lifting the heavy axe, she went awkwardly to work upon it, and actually succeeded, in the course of half an hour or so, in worrying an armful of splinters off it.

She started a fire, and then she had to take the big zinc pail and carry some water down from the spring before she could really begin to cook anything. Manley's work, every bit of it—but then Manley was so very busy, and he couldn't remember all these little things, and Val hated to keep reminding him. Theoretically, Manley objected to her chopping wood or carrying water, and always seemed to feel a personal resentment when he discovered her doing it. Practically, however, he was more and more often making it necessary for her to do these things.

That is why he returned with the fire fighters and found Val just laying the cloth upon the table, which she had moved into the front room so that there would be space to seat her guests at all four sides. He frowned when he looked in and saw that they must wait indefinitely, and her cheeks took on a deeper shade of pink.

"Everything will be ready in ten minutes," she hurriedly assured him. "How many are there, dear?"

"Eight, counting myself," he answered gruffly. "Get some clean towels, and we'll go up to the spring to wash; and try and have dinner ready when we get back—we're half starved." With the towels over his arm, he led the way up to the spring. He must have taken the trail which led past the haystack, for he returned in much better humor, and introduced the men to his wife with the genial air of a host who loves to entertain largely.

Val stood back and watched them file in to the table and seat themselves with a noisy confusion. Unpolished they were, in clothes and manner, though she dimly appreciated the way in which they refrained from looking at her too intently, and the conscious lowering of their voices while they talked among themselves.

They did, however, glance at her surreptitiously while she was moving quietly about, with her flushed cheeks and her yellow-brown hair falling becomingly down at the temples because she had not found a spare minute in which to brush it smooth, and her dainty dress and crisp, white apron. She was not like the women they were accustomed to meet, and they paid her the high tribute of being embarrassed by her presence.

She poured coffee until all the cups were full, replenished the bread plate and brought more butter, and hunted the kitchen over for the can opener, to punch little holes in another can of condensed cream; and she rather astonished her guests by serving it in a beautiful cut-glass pitcher instead of the can in which it was bought.

They handled the pitcher awkwardly because of their mental uneasiness, and Val shared with them their fear of breaking it, and was guilty of an audible sigh of relief when at last it found safety upon the table.

So perturbed was she that even when she decided that she could do no more for their comfort and retreated to the kitchen, she failed to realize that the one extra plate meant an absent guest, and not a miscount in placing them, as she fancied.

She remembered that she would need plenty of hot water to wash all those dishes, and the zinc pail was empty; it always was, it seemed to her, no matter how often she filed it. She took the tin dipper out of it, so that it would not rattle and betray her purpose to Manley, sitting just inside the door with his back toward her, and tiptoed quite guiltily out of the kitchen. Once well away from the shack, she ran.

She reached the spring quite out of breath, and she actually bumped into a man who stood carefully rinsing a bloodstained handkerchief under the overflow from the horse trough. She gave a little scream, and the pail went rolling noisily down the steep bank and lay on its side in the mud.

Kent turned and looked at her, himself rather startled by the unexpected collision. Involuntarily he threw out his hand to steady her. "How do you do, Mrs. Fleetwood?" he said, with all the composure he could muster to his aid. "I'm afraid I scared you. My nose got to bleeding—with the heat, I guess. I just now managed to stop it." He did not consider it necessary to explain his presence, but he did feel that talking would help her recover her breath and her color. "It's a plumb nuisance to have the nosebleed so much," he added plaintively.

Val was still trembling and staring at him with her odd, yellow-brown eyes. He glanced at her swiftly, and then bent to squeeze the water from his handkerchief; but his trained eyes saw her in all her dainty allurement; saw how the coppery sunlight gave a strange glint to her hair, and how her eyes almost matched it in color, and how the pupils had widened with fright. He saw, too, something wistful in her face, as though life was none too kind to her, and she had not yet abandoned her first sensation of pained surprise that it should treat her so.

"That's what I get for running," she said, still panting a little as she watched him. "I thought all the men were at the table, you see. Your dinner will be cold, Mr. Burnett."

Kent was a bit surprised at the absence of cold hauteur in her manner; his memory of her had been so different.

"Well, I'm used to cold grub," he smiled over his shoulder. "And, anyway, when your nose gets to acting up with you, it's like riding a pitching horse; you've got to pass up everything and give it all your time and attention." Then, with the daring that sometimes possessed him like a devil, he looked straight at her.

"Sure you intend to give me my dinner?" he quizzed, his lips' lifting humorously at the corners. "I kinda thought, from the way you turned me down cold when we met before, you'd shut your door in my face if I came pestering around. How about that?"

Little flames of light nickered in her eyes. "You are the guest of my husband, here by his invitation," she answered him coldly. "Of course I shall give you your dinner, if you want any."

He inspected his handkerchief critically, decided that it was not quite clean, and held it again under the stream of water. "If I want it—yes," he drawled maliciously. "Maybe I'm not sure about that part. Are you a pretty fair cook?"

"Perhaps you'd better interview your friends," she retorted, "if you are so very fastidious. I—" She drew her brows together, as if she was in doubt as to the proper method of dealing with this impertinence. She suspected that he was teasing her purposely, but still—

"Oh, I can eat 'most any old thing," he assured her, with calm effrontery. "You look as if you'd learn easy, and Man ain't the worst cook I ever ate after. If he's trained you faithful, maybe it'll be safe to take a change. How about that? Can you make sour-dough bread yet?"

"No!" she flung the word at him. "And I don't want to learn," she added, at the expense of her dignity.

Kent shook his head disapprovingly. "That sure ain't the proper spirit to show," he commented. "Man must have to beat you up a good deal, if you talk back to him that way." He eyed her sidelong. "You're a real little wolf, aren't you?" He shook his head again solemnly, and sighed. "A fellow sure must build himself lots of trouble when he annexes a wife—a wife that won't learn to make sour-dough bread, and that talks back. I'm plumb sorry for Man. We used to be pretty good friends—" He stopped short, his face contrite.

Val was looking away, and she was winking very fast. Also, her lips were quivering unmistakably, though she was biting them to keep them steady.

Kent stared at her helplessly. "Say! I never thought you'd mind a little joshing," he said gently, when the silence was growing awkward. "I ought to be killed! You—you must get awful lonesome—"

She turned her face toward him quickly, as if he were the first person who had understood her blank loneliness. "That," she told him, in an odd, hesitating manner, "atones for the—the 'joshing.' No one seems to realize—"

"Why don't you get out and ride around, or do something beside stick right here in this coulee like a—a cactus?" he demanded, with a roughness that somehow was grateful to her. "I'll bet you haven't been a mile from the ranch since Man brought you here. Why don't you go to town with him when he goes? It'd be a whole lot better for you—for both of you. Have you got acquainted with any of the women here yet? I'll gamble you haven't!" He was waving the handkerchief gently like a flag, to dry it.

Val watched him; she had never seen any one hold a handkerchief by the corners and wave it up and down like that for quick drying, and the expedient interested her, even while she was wondering if it was quite proper for him to lecture her in that manner. His scolding was even more confusing than his teasing.

"I've been down to the river twice," she defended weakly, and was angry with herself that she could not find words with which to quell him.

"Really?" He down at her indulgently. "How did you ever manage to get so far? It must be all of half a mile!"

"Oh, you're perfectly horrible!" she flashed suddenly. "I don't see how it can possibly concern you whether I go anywhere or not."

"It does, though. I'm a lot public-spirited. I hate to see taxes go up, and every lunatic that goes to the asylum costs the State just that much more. I don't know an easier recipe for going crazy than just to stay off alone and think. It's a fright the way it gets sheep-herders, and such."

"I'm such, I suppose!"

Kent glanced at her, approved mentally of the color in her cheeks and the angry light in her eyes, and laughed at her quite openly.

"There's nothing like getting good and mad once in a while, to take the kinks out of your brain," he observed. "And there's nothing like lonesomeness to put 'em in. A good fighting mad is what you need, now and then; I'll have to put Man next, I guess. He's too mild."

"No one could accuse you of that," she retorted, laughing a little in spite of herself. "If I were a man I should want to blacken your eyes—" And she blushed hotly at being betrayed into a personality which seemed to her undignified, and, what was worse, unrefined. She turned her back squarely toward him, started down the path, and remembered that she had not filled the water bucket, and that without it she could not consistently return to the house.

Kent interpreted her glance, went sliding down the steep bank and recovered the pail; he was laughing to himself while he rinsed and filled it at the spring, but he made no effort to explain his amusement. When he came back to where she stood watching him, Val gave her head a slight downward tilt to indicate her thanks, turned, and led the way back to the house without a word. And he, following after, watched her slim figure swinging lightly down the hill before him, and wondered vaguely what sort of a hell her life was going to be, out here where everything was different from what she had been accustomed to, and where she did not seem to "fit into the scenery," as he put it.

"You ought to learn to ride horseback," he advised unexpectedly.

"Pardon me—you ought to learn to wait until your advice is wanted," she replied calmly, without turning her head. And she added, with a sort of defiance: "I do not feel the need of either society or diversion, I assure you; I am perfectly contented."

"That's real nice," he approved. "There's nothing like being satisfied with what's handed out to you." But, though he spoke with much unconcern, his tone betrayed his skepticism.

The others had finished eating and were sitting upon their heels in the shade of the house, smoking and talking in that desultory fashion common to men just after a good meal. Two or three glanced rather curiously at Kent and his companion, and he detected the covert smile on the scandal-hungry face of Polycarp Jenks, and also the amused twist of Fred De Garmo's lips. He went past them without a sign of understanding, set the water pail down in its proper place upon a bench inside the kitchen door, tilted his hat to Val, who happened to be looking toward him at that moment, and went out again.

"What's the hurry, Kenneth?" quizzed Polycarp, when Kent started toward the corral.

"Follow my trail long enough and you'll find out—maybe," Kent snapped in reply. He felt that the whole group was watching hum, and he knew that if he looked back and caught another glimpse of Fred De Garmo's sneering face he would feel compelled to strike it a blow. There would be no plausible explanation, of course, and Kent was not by nature a trouble hunter; and so he chose to ride away without his dinner.

While Polycarp was still wondering audibly what was the matter, Kent passed the house on his gray, called "So-long, Man," with scarcely a glance at his host, and speedily became a dim figure in the smoke haze.

"He must be runnin' away from you, Fred," Polycarp hinted, grinning cunningly. "What you done to him—hey?"

Fred answered him with an unsatisfactory scowl. "You sure would be wise, if you found out everything you wanted to know," he said contemptuously, after an appreciable Wait. "I guess we better be moving along, Bill." He rose, brushed off his trousers with a downward sweep of his hands, and strolled toward the corrals, followed languidly by Bill Madison.

As if they had been waiting for a leader, the others rose also and prepared to depart. Polycarp proceeded, in his usual laborious manner, to draw his tobacco from his pocket, and pry off a corner.

"Why don't you burn them guards now, Manley, while you got plenty of help?" he suggested, turning his slit-lidded eyes toward the kitchen door, where Val appeared for an instant to reach the broom which stood outside.

"Because I don't want to," snapped Manley: "I've got plenty to do without that."

"Well, they ain't wide enough, nor long enough, and they don't run in the right direction—if you ask me." Polycarp spat solemnly off to the right.

"I don't ask you, as it happens." Manley turned and went into the home.

Polycarp looked quizzically at the closed door. "He's mighty touchy about them guards, for a feller that thinks they're all right—he-he!" he remarked, to no one in particular. "Some of these days, by granny, he'll wisht he'd took my advice!"

Since no one gave him the slightest attention, Polycarp did not pursue the subject further. Instead, with both ears open to catch all that was said, he trailed after the others to the corral. It was a matter of instinct, as well as principle, with Polycarp Jenks, to let no sentence, however trivial, slip past his hearing and his memory.



CHAPTER VIII

THE PRAIRIE FIRE

A calamity expected, feared, and guarded against by a whole community does sometimes occur, and with a suddenness which finds the victims unprepared in spite of all their elaborate precautions. Compared with the importance of saving the range from fire, it was but a trivial thing which took nearly every man who dwelt in Lonesome Land to town on a certain day when the wind blew free from out the west. They were weary of watching for the fire which did not come licking through the prairie grass, and a special campaign train bearing a prospective President of our United States was expected to pass through Hope that afternoon.

Since all trains watered at the red tank by the creek, there would be a five-minute stop, during which the prospective President would stand upon the rear platform and deliver a three-minute address—a few gracious words to tickle the self-esteem of his listeners—and would employ the other two minutes in shaking the hand of every man, woman, and child who could reach him before the train pulled out. There would be a cheer or two given as he was borne away—and there would be something to talk about afterward in the saloons. Scarce a man of then had ever seen a President, and it was worth riding far to look upon a man who even hoped for so exalted a position.

Manley went because he intended to vote for the man, and called it an act of loyalty to his party to greet the candidate; also because it took very little, now that haying was over and work did not press, to start him down the trail in the direction of Hope.

At the Blumenthall ranch no man save the cook remained at home, and he only because he had a boil on his neck which sapped his interest in all things else. Polycarp Jenks was in town by nine o'clock, and only one man remained at the Wishbone. That man was Kent, and he stayed because, according to his outraged companions, he was an ornery cuss, and his bump of patriotism was a hollow in his skull. Kent had told them, one and all, that he wouldn't ride twenty-five miles to shake hands with the Deity Himself—which, however, is not a verbatim report of his statement. The prospective President had not done anything so big, he said, that a man should want to break his neck getting to town just to watch him go by. He was dead sure he, for one, wasn't going to make a fool of himself over any swell-headed politician.

Still, he saddled and rode with his fellows for a mile or two, and called them unseemly names in a facetious tone; and the men of the Wishbone answered his taunts with shrill yells of derision when he swung out of the trail and jogged away to the south, and finally passed out of sight in the haze which still hung depressingly over the land.

Oddly enough, while all the able-bodied men save Kent were waiting hilariously in Hope to greet, with enthusiasm, the brief presence of the man who would fain be their political chief, the train which bore him eastward scattered fiery destruction abroad as it sped across their range, four minutes late and straining to make up the time before the next stop.

They had thought the railroad safe at last, what with the guards and the numerous burned patches where the fire had jumped the plowed boundary and blackened the earth to the fence which marked the line of the right of way, and, in some places, had burned beyond. It took a flag-flying special train of that bitter Presidential campaign to find a weak spot in the guard, and to send a spark straight into the thickest bunch of wiry sand grass, where the wind could fan it to a blaze and then seize it and bend the tall flame tongues until they licked around the next tuft of grass, and the next, and the next—until the spark was grown to a long, leaping line of fire, sweeping eastward with the relentless rush of a tidal wave upon a low-lying beach.

Arline Hawley was, perhaps, the only citizen of Hope who had deliberately chosen to absent herself from the crowd standing, in perspiring expectation, upon the depot platform. She had permitted Minnie, the "breed" girl, to go, and had even grudgingly consented to her using a box of cornstarch as first aid to her complexion. Arline had not approved, however, of either the complexion or the occasion.

"What you want to go and plaster your face up with starch for, gits me," she had criticised frankly. "Seems to me you're homely enough without lookin' silly, into the bargain. Nobody's going to look at you, no matter what you do. They're out to rubber at a higher mark than you be. And what they expect to see so great, gits me. He ain't nothing but a man—and, land knows, men is common enough, and ornery enough, without runnin' like a band of sheep to see one. I don't see as he's any better, jest because he's runnin' for President; if he gits beat, he'll want to hide his head in a hole in the ground. Look at my Walt. He was the biggest man in Hope, and so swell-headed he wouldn't so much as pack a bucket of water all fall, or chop up a tie for kindlin'—till the day after 'lection. And what was he then but a frazzled-out back number, that everybody give the laugh—till he up and blowed his brains out! Any fool can run for President—it's the feller that gits there that counts.

"Say, that red-white-'n'-blue ribbon sure looks fierce on that green dress—but I reckon blood will tell, even if it's Injun blood. G'wan, or you'll be late and have your trouble for your pay. But hurry back soon's the agony's over; the bread'll be ready to mix out."

Even after the girl was gone, her finery a-flutter in the sweeping west wind, Arline muttered aloud her opinion of men, and particularly of politicians who rode about in special trains and expected the homage of their fellows.

She was in the back yard, taking her "white clothes" off the line, when the special came puffing slowly into town. To emphasize her disapproval of the whole system of politics, she turned her back square toward it, and laid violent hold of a sheet. There was a smudge of cinders upon its white surface, and it crushed crisply under her thumb with the unmistakable feel of burned grass.

"Now, what in time—" began Arline aloud, after the manner of women whose tongues must keep pace with their thoughts. "That there feels fresh and"—with a sniff at the spot—"smells fresh."

With the wisdom of much experience she faced the hot wind and sniffed again, while her eyes searched keenly the sky line, which was the ragged top of the bluff marking the northern boundary of the great prairie land. A trifle darker it was there, and there was a certain sullen glow discernible only to eyes trained to read the sky for warning signals of snow, fire, and flood.

"That's a fire, and it's this side of the river. And if it is, then the railroad set it, and there ain't a livin' thing to stop it. An' the wind's jest right—" A curdled roll of smoke showed plainly for a moment in the haze. She crammed her armful of sheets into the battered willow basket, threw two clothespins hastily toward the same receptacle, and ran.

The special had just come to a stop at the depot. The cattlemen, cowboys, and townspeople were packed close around the rear of the train, their backs to the wind and the disaster sweeping down upon them, their browned faces upturned to the sleek, carefully groomed man in the light-gray suit, with a flaunting, prairie sunflower ostentatiously displayed in his buttonhole and with his campaign smile upon his lips and dull boredom looking out of his eyes.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he was saying, as he smiled, "you favoured ones whose happy lot it is to live in the most glorious State of our glorious union, I greet you, and I envy you—"

Arline, with her soiled kitchen apron, her ragged coil of dust-brown hair, her work-drawn face and faded eyes which blazed with excitement, pushed unceremoniously through the crowd and confronted him undazzled.

"Mister Candidate, you better move on and give these men a chancet to save their prope'ty," she cried shrilly. "They got something to do besides stand around here and listen at you throwin' campaign loads. The hull country's afire back of us, and the wind bringin' it down on a long lope."

She turned from the astounded candidate and glared at the startled crowd, every one of whom she knew personally.

"I must say I got my opinion of a bunch that'll stand here swallowin' a lot of hot air, while their coat tails is most ready to ketch afire!" Her voice was rasping, and it carried to the farthest of them. "You make me tired! Political slush, all of it—and the hull darned country a-blazin' behind you!"

The crowd moved uneasily, then scattered away from the shelter of the depot to where they could snuff inquiringly the wind, like dogs in the leash.

"That's right," yelled Blumenthall, of the Double Diamond. "There's a fire, sure as hell!" He started to run.

The man behind him hesitated but a second, then gripped his hat against the push of the wind, and began running. Presently men, women, and children were running, all in one direction.

The prospective President stood agape upon the platform of his bunting-draped car, his chosen allies grouped foolishly around him. It was the first time men had turned from his presence with his gracious, flatteringly noncommittal speech unuttered, his hand unshaken, his smiling, bowing departure unmarked by cheers growing fainter as he receded. Only Arline tarried, her thin fingers gripping the arm of her "breed girl," lest she catch the panic and run with the others.

Arline tilted back her head upon her scrawny shoulders and eyed the prospective President with antagonism unconcealed.

"I got something to say to you before you go," she announced, in her rasping voice, with its querulous note. "I want to tell you that the chances are a hundred to one you set that fire yourself, with your engine that's haulin' you around over the country, so you can jolly men into votin' for you. Your train's the only one over the road since noon, and that fire started from the railroad. The hull town's liable to burn, unless it can be stopped the other side the creek, to say nothing of the range, that feeds our stock, and the hay, and maybe houses—and maybe people!"

She caught her breath, and almost shrieked the last three words, as a dreadful probability flashed into her mind.

"I know a woman—just a girl—and she's back there twenty mile—alone, and her man's here to look at you go by! I hope you git beat, just for that!

"If this town ketches afire and burns up, I hope you run into the ditch before you git ten mile! If you was a man, and them fellers with you was men, you'd hold up your train and help save the town. Every feller counts, when it comes to fightin' fire."

She stopped and eyed the group keenly. "But you won't. I don't reckon you ever done anything with them hands in your life that would grind a little honest dirt into your knuckles and under them shiny nails!"

The prospective President turned red to his ears, and hastily removed his immaculate hands from where they had been resting upon the railing. And he did not hold up the train while he and his allies stopped to help save the town. The whistle gave a warning toot, the bell jangled, and the train slid away toward the next town, leaving Arline staring, tight-lipped, after it.

"The darned chump—he'd 'a' made votes hand over fist if he'd called my bluff; but. I knew he wouldn't, soon as I seen his face. He ain't man enough."

"He's real good-lookin'," sighed Minnie, feebly attempting to release her arm from the grasp of her mistress. "And did you notice the fellow with the big yellow mustache? He kept eyin' me—"

"Well, I don't wonder—but it ain't anything to your credit," snapped Arline, facing her toward the hotel, "You do look like sin a-flyin', in that green dress, and with all that starch on your face. You git along to the house and mix that bread, first thing you do, and start a fire. And if I ain't back by that time, you go ahead with the supper; you know what to git. We're liable to have all the tables full, so you set all of 'em."

She was hurrying away, when the girl called to her.

"Did you mean Mis' Fleetwood, when you said that about the woman burning? And do you s'pose she's really in the fire?"

"You shut up and go along!" cried Arline roughly, under the stress of her own fears. "How in time's anybody going to tell, that's twenty miles away?"

She left the street and went hurrying through back yards and across vacant lots, crawled through a wire fence, and so reached, without any roundabout method, the trail which led to the top of the bluff, where the whole town was breathlessly assembling. Her flat-chested, un-corseted figure merged into the haze as she half trotted up the steep road, swinging her arms like a man, her skirts flapping in the wind. As she went, she kept muttering to herself:

"If she really is caught by the fire—and her alone—and Man more'n half drunk—" She whirled, and stood waiting for the horseman who was galloping up the trail behind her. "You going home, Man? You don't think it could git to your place, do you?" She shouted the questions at him as he pounded past.

Manley, sallow white with terror, shook his head vaguely and swung his heavy quirt down upon the flanks of his horse. Arline lowered her head against the dust kicked into her face as he went tearing past her, and kept doggedly on. Some one came rattling up behind her with empty barrels dancing erratically in a wagon, and she left the trail to make room. The hostler from their own stable it was who drove, and at the creek ahead of them he stopped to fill the barrels. Arline passed him by and kept on.

At the brow of the hill the women and children were gathered in a whimpering group. Arline joined them and gazed out over the prairie, where the smoke was rolling toward them, and, lifting here and there, let a flare of yellow through.

"It'll show up fine at dark," a fat woman in a buggy remarked. "There's nothing grander to look at than a prairie fire at night. I do hope," she added weakly, "it don't do no great damage!"

"Oh, it won't," Arline cut in, with savage sarcasm, panting from her climb. "It's bound to sweep the hull country slick an' clean, and maybe burn us all out—but that won't matter, so long as it looks purty after dark!"

"They say it's a good ten mile away yet," another woman volunteered encouragingly. "They'll git it stopped, all right. There's lots of men here to fight it, thank goodness!"

Arline moved on to where a plow was being hurriedly unloaded from a wagon, the horses hitched to it, and a man already grasping the handles in an aggressive manner. As she came up he went off, yelling his opinions and turning a shallow, uneven furrow for a back fire. Within five minutes another plow was tearing up the sod in an opposite direction.

"If it jumps here, or they can't turn it, the creek'll help a lot," some one was yelling.

The plowed furrows lengthened, the horses sweating and throwing their heads up and down with the discomfort of the pace they must keep. Whiplashes whistled and the drivers urged them on with much shouting. Blumenthall, cut off, with his men, from reaching his own ranch, was directing a group about to set a back fire. His voice boomed as if he were shouting across a milling herd. A roll of his eye brought his attention momentarily from the work, and he ran toward a horseman who was gesticulating wildly and seemed on the point of riding straight toward the fire.

"Hi! Fleetwood, we need you here!" he yelled. "You can't get home now, and you know it. The fire's past your place already; you'd have to ride through it, you fool! Hey? Your wife home alone—alone!"

He stood absolutely still and stared out to the southwest, where the smoke cloud was rolling closer with every breath. He drew his fingers across his forehead and glanced at the men around him, also stunned into inactivity by the tragedy behind the words.

"Well—get to work, men. We've got to save the town. Fine time to burn guards—when a fire's loping up on you! But that's the way it goes, generally. This ought to've been done a month ago. Put it off and put it off—while they haggle over bids—Brinberg, you and I'll string the fire. The rest of you watch it don't jump back. And, say!" he shouted to the group around Manley. "Don't let that crazy fool start off now. Put him to work. Best thing for him. But—my God, that's awful!" He did not shout the last sentence. He spoke so that only the nearest man heard him—heard, and nodded dumb assent.

Manley raged, sitting helpless there upon his horse. They would not let him ride out toward that sweeping wave of fire. He could not have gone five miles toward home before he met the flames. He stood in the stirrups and shook his fists impotently. He strained his eyes to see what it was impossible for him to see—his ranch and Val, and how they had fared. He pictured mentally the guard he had burned beyond the coulee to protect them from just this danger, and his heart squeezed tight at the realization of his own shiftlessness. That guard! A twelve-foot strip of half-burned sod, with tufts of grass left standing here and there—and he had meant to burn it wider, and had put it off from day to day, until now. Now!

His clenched fist dropped upon the saddle horn, and he stared dully at the rushing, rolling smoke and fire. It was not that he saw—it was Val, with cinder-blackened ruffles, grimy face, and yellow hair falling in loose locks upon her cheeks—locks which she must stop to push out of her eyes, so that she could see where to swing the sodden sack while she helped him—him, Manley, who had permitted her to do work it for none but a man's hard muscles, so that he might finish the sooner and ride to town upon some flimsy pretext. And he could not even reach her now—or the place where she had been!

The group had thinned around him, for there was something to do besides give sympathy to a man bereaved. Unless they bestirred themselves, they might all be in need of sympathy before the day was done. Manley took his eyes from the coming fire and glanced around him, saw that he was alone, and, with a despairing oath, wheeled his horse and raced back down the hill to town, as if fiends rode behind the saddle.

At the saloon opposite the Hawley Hotel he drew up; rather, his horse stopped there of his own accord, as if he were quite at home at that particular hitching pole. Manley dismounted heavily and lurched inside. The place was deserted save for Jim, who was paid to watch the wares of his employer, and was now standing upon a chair at the window, that he might see over the top of Hawley's coal shed and glimpse the hilltop beyond. Jim stepped down and came toward him.

"How's the fire?" he demanded anxiously. "Think she'll swing over this way?"

But Manley had sunk into a chair and buried his face in his arms, folded upon a whisky-spotted card table.

"Val—my Val!" he wailed, "Back there alone—get me a drink," he added thickly, "or I'll go crazy!"

Jim hastily poured a full glass, and stood over him anxiously.

"Here it is. Drink 'er down, and brace up. What you mean? Is your wife—"

Manley lifted his head long enough to gulp the whisky, then dropped it again upon his arms and groaned.



CHAPTER IX

KENT TO THE RESCUE

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.



CHAPTER X

DESOLATION

For more than two hours Kent sat outside in the shade of the house, and stared out over the black desolation of the coulee. His horse was gone, so that he could not ride anywhere—and there was nowhere in particular to ride. For twenty miles around there was no woman whom he could bring to Val's assistance, even if he had been sure that she needed assistance. Several times he tiptoed into the kitchen, opened the door into the front room an inch or so, and peered in at her. The third time, she had relaxed from the corpselike position, and had thrown an arm up over her face, as if she were shielding her eyes from something. He took heart at that, and went out and foraged for firewood.

There was a hard-beaten zone around the corral and stables, which had kept the fire from spreading toward the house, and the wind had borne the sparks and embers back toward the spring, so that the house stood in a brown oasis of unburned grass and weeds, scanty enough, it is true, but yet a relief from the dead black surroundings.

The woodpile had not suffered. A chopping block, a decrepit sawhorse, an axe, and a rusty bucksaw marked the spot; also three ties, hacked eloquently in places, and just five sticks of wood, evidently chopped from a tie by a man in haste. Kent looked at that woodpile, and swore. He had always known that Manley had an aversion to laboring with his hands, but he was unprepared for such an exhibition of shiftlessness.

He savagely attacked the three ties, chopped them into firewood, and piled them neatly, and then, walking upon his toes, he made a fire in the kitchen stove, filled the woodbox, the teakettle, and the water pail, sat out in the shade until he heard the kettle boiling over on the stove, took another peep in at Val, and then, moving as quietly as he could, proceeded to cook supper for them both.

He had been perfectly familiar with the kitchen arrangements in the days when Manley was a bachelor, and it interested him and filled him with a respectful admiration for woman in the abstract and for Val in particular, to see how changed everything was, and how daintily clean and orderly. Val's smooth, white hands, with their two sparkly rings and the broad wedding band, did not suggest a familiarity with actual work about a house, but the effect of her labor and thought confronted him at every turn.

"You can see your face in everything you pick up that was made to shine," he commented, standing for a moment while he surveyed the bottom of a stewpan. "She don't look it, but that yellow-eyed little dame sure knows how to keep house." Then he heard her cough, and set down the stewpan hurriedly and went to see if she wanted anything.

Val was sitting upon the couch, her two hands pushing back her hair, gazing stupidly around her.

"Everything's all ready but the tea," Kent announced, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. "I was just waiting to see how strong you want it."

Val turned her yellow-brown eyes upon him in bewilderment. "Why, Mr. Burnett—maybe I wasn't dreaming, then. I thought there was a fire. Was there?"

Kent grinned. "Kinda. You worked like a son of a gun, too—till there wasn't any more to do, and then you laid 'em down for fair. You were all in, so I packed you in and put you there where you could be comfortable. And supper's ready—but how strong do you want your tea? I kinda had an idea," he added lamely, "that women drink tea, mostly. I made coffee for myself."

Val let herself drop back among the pretty pillows. "I don't want any. If there was a fire," she said dully, "then it's true. Everything's all burned up. I don't want any tea. I want to die!"

Kent studied her for a moment. "Well, in that case—shall I get the axe?"

Val had closed her eyes, but she opened them again. "I don't care what you do," she said.

"Well, I aim to please," he told her calmly. "What I'd do, in your place, would be to go and put on something that ain't all smoked and scorched like a—a ham, and then I'd sit up and drink some tea, and be nice about it. But, of course, if you want to cash in—"

Val gave a sob. "I can't help it—I'd just as soon be dead as alive. It was bad enough before—and now everything's burned up—and all Manley's nice—ha-ay—"

"Well," Kent interrupted mercilessly, "I've heard of women doing all kinds of fool things—but this is the first time I ever knew one to commit suicide over a couple of measly haystacks!" He went out and slammed the door so that the house shook, and tramped three times across the kitchen floor. "That'll make her so mad at me she won't think about anything else for a while," he reasoned shrewdly. But all the while his eyes were shiny, and when he winked, his lashes became unaccountably moist. He stopped and looked out at the blackened coulee. "Shut into this hole, week after week, without a woman to speak to—it must be—damned tough!" he muttered.

He tiptoed up and laid his ear against the inner door, and heard a smothered sobbing inside. That did not sound as if she were "mad," and he promptly cursed himself for a fool and a brute. With his own judgment to guide him, he brewed some very creditable tea, sugared and creamed it lavishly, browned a slice of bread on top of the stove—blowing off the dust beforehand—after Arline's recipe for making toast, buttered it until it dripped oil, and carried it in to her with the air of a man who will have peace even though he must fight for it. The forlorn picture she made, lying there with her face buried in a pink-and-blue cushion, and with her shoulders shaking with sobs, almost made him retreat, quite unnerved. As it was, he merely spilled a third of the tea and just missed letting the toast slide from the plate to the floor; when he had righted his burden he had recovered his composure to a degree.

"Here, this won't do at all," he reproved, pulling a chair to the couch by the simple method of hooking his toe under a round and dragging it toward him. "You don't want Man to come and catch you acting like this. He's liable to feel pretty blue himself, and he'll need some cheering up—don't you think? I don't know for sure—but I've always been kinda under the impression that's what a man gets a wife for. Ain't it? You don't want to throw down your cards now. You sit up and drink this tea, and eat this toast, and I'll gamble you'll feel about two hundred per cent better.

"Come," he urged gently, after a minute. "I never thought a nervy little woman like you would give up so easy. I was plumb ashamed of myself, the way you worked on that back fire. You had me going, for a while. You're just tired out, is all ails you. You want to hurry up and drink this, before it gets cold. Come on. I'm liable to feel, insulted if you pass up my cooking this way."

Val choked back the tears, and, without taking her face from the pillow, put out the burned hand gropingly until it touched his knee.

"Oh, you—you're good," she said brokenly. "I used to think you were—horrid, and I'm a—ashamed. You're good, and I—"

"Well, I ain't going to be good much longer, if you don't get your head outa that pillow and drink this tea!" His tone was amused and half impatient. But his face—more particularly his eyes—told another story, which perhaps it was as well she did not read. "I'll be dropping the blamed stuff in another minute. My elbow's plumb getting a cramp in it," he added complainingly.

Val made a sound half-way between a sob and a laugh, and sat up. With more haste than the occasion warranted, Kent put the tea and toast on the chair and started for the kitchen.

"I was bound you'd eat before I did," he explained, "and I could stand a cup of coffee myself. And, say! If there's anything more you want, just holler, and I'll come on the long lope."

Val took up the teaspoon, tasted the tea, and then regarded the cup doubtfully. She never drank sugar in her tea. She wondered how much of it he had put in. Her head ached frightfully, and she felt weak and utterly hopeless of ever feeling different.

"Everything all right?" came Kent's voice from the kitchen.

"Yes," Val answered hastily, trying hard to speak with some life and cheer in her tone. "It's lovely—all of it."

"Want more tea?" It sounded, out there, as though he was pushing back his chair to rise from the table.

"No, no, this is plenty." Val glanced fearfully toward the kitchen door, lifted the teacup, and heroically drank every drop. It was, she considered, the least that she could do.

When he had finished eating he came in, and found her nibbling apathetically at the toast. She looked up at him with an apology in her eyes.

"Mr. Burnett, don't think I am always so silly," she began, leaning back against the piled pillows with a sigh. "I have always thought that I could bear anything. But last night I didn't sleep much. I dreamed about fires, and that Manley was—dead—and I woke up in a perfect horror. It was only ten o'clock. So then I sat up and tried to read, and every five minutes I would go out and look at the sky, to see if there was a glow anywhere. It was foolish, of course. And I didn't sleep at all to-day, either. The minute I would lie down I'd imagine I heard a fire roaring. And then it came. But I was all used up before that, so I wasn't really—I must have fainted, for I don't remember getting into the house—and I do think fainting is the silliest thing! I never did such a thing before," she finished abjectly.

"Oh, well—I guess you had a license to faint if you felt that way," he comforted awkwardly. "It was the smoke and the heat, I reckon; they were enough to put a crimp in anybody. Did Man say about when he would be back? Because I ought to be moving along; it's quite a walk to the Wishbone."

"Oh—you won't go till Manley comes! Please! I—I'd go crazy, here alone, and—and he might not come—he's frequently detained. I—I've such a horror of fires—" She certainly looked as if she had. She was sitting up straight, her hands held out appealingly to him, her eyes big and bright.

"Sure I won't go if you feel that way about it." Kent was half frightened at her wild manner. "I guess Man will be along pretty soon, anyway. He'll hit the trail as soon as he can get behind the fire, that's a cinch. He'll be worried to death about you. And you don't need to be afraid of prairie fires any more, Mrs. Fleetwood; you're safe. There can't be any more fires till next year, anyway; there's nothing left to burn." He turned his face to the window and stared out somberly at the ravaged hillside. "Yes—you're dead safe, now!"

"I'm such a fool," Val confessed, her eyes also turning to the window, "If you want to go, I—" Her mouth was quivering, and she did not finish the sentence.

"Oh, I'll stay till Man comes. He's liable to be along any time, now." He glanced at her scorched, smoke-stained dress. "He'll sure think you made a hand, all right!"

Val took the hint, and blushed with true feminine shame that she was not looking her best. "I'll go and change," she murmured, and rose wearily. "But I feel as if the world had been 'rolled up in a scroll and burned,' as the Bible puts it, and as if nothing matters any more."

"It does, though. We'll all go right along living the same as ever, and the first snow will make this fire seem as old as the war—except to the cattle; they're the ones to get it in the neck this winter."