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.
