Time had no reckoning there. She saw men running to and fro in the glare, disappearing in a downward swirl of smoke, coming to view again in the open beyond. Always their arms waved rhythmically downward, beating the ragged line of yellow with water-soaked sacks. The trail they left was a wavering, smoke-traced rim of sullen black, where before had been gay, dancing, orange light. In places the smolder fanned to new life behind them and licked greedily at the ripe grass like hungry, red tongues. One of these Beatrice watched curiously. It crept slyly into an unburned hollow, and the wind, veering suddenly, pushed it out of sight from the fighters and sent it racing merrily to the south. The main line of fire beat doggedly up against the wind that a minute before had been friendly, and fought bravely two foes instead of one. It dodged, ducked, and leaped high, and the men beat upon it mercilessly.
But the little, new flame broadened and stood on tiptoes defiantly, proud of the wide, black trail that kept stretching away behind it; and Beatrice watched it, fascinated by its miraculous growth. It began to crackle and send up smoke wreaths of its own, with sparks dancing through; then its voice deepened and coarsened, till it roared quite like its mother around the hill.
The smoke from the larger fire rolled back with the wind, and Beatrice felt her eyes sting. Flakes of blackened grass and ashes rained upon the hilltop, and Rex moved uneasily and pawed at the dry sod. To him a prairie-fire was not beautiful--it was an enemy to run from. He twitched his reins from Beatrice's heedless fingers and decamped toward home, paying no attention whatever to the command of his mistress to stop.
Still Beatrice sat and watched the new fire, and was glad she chanced to be upon the south end of a sharp-nosed hill, so that she could see both ways. The blaze dove into a deep hollow, climbed the slope beyond, leaped exultantly and bellowed its challenge. And, of a sudden, dark forms sprang upon it and beat it cruelly, and it went black where they struck, and only thin streamers of smoke told where it had been. Still they beat, and struck, and struck again, till the fire died ingloriously and the hillside to the south lay dark and still, as it had been at the beginning.
Beatrice wondered who had done it. Then she came back to her surroundings and realized that Rex had left her, and she was alone. She shivered--this time not in ecstasy, but partly from loneliness--and went down the hill toward where Dick and Sir Redmond and the others were fighting steadily the larger fire, unconscious of the younger, new one that had stolen away from them and was beaten to death around the hill.
Once in the coulee, she was compelled to take to the burnt ground, which crisped hotly under her feet and sent up a rank, suffocating smell of burned grass into her nostrils. The whole country was alight, and down there the world seemed on fire. At times the smoke swooped blindingly, and half strangled her. Her skirts, in passing, swept the black ashes from grass roots which showed red in the night.
Picking her way carefully around the spots that glowed warningly, shielding her face as well as she could from the smoke, she kept on until she was close upon the fighters. Dick and Sir Redmond were working side by side, the sacks they held rising and falling with the regularity of a machine for minutes at a time. A group of strange horsemen galloped up from the way she had come, followed by a wagon of water-barrels, careering recklessly over the uneven ground. The horsemen stopped just inside the burned rim, the horses sidestepping gingerly upon the hot turf.
"I guess you want some help here. Where shall we start in?" Beatrice recognized the voice. It was Keith Cameron.
"Sure, we do!" Dick answered, gratefully. "Start in any old place.""I'm not sure we want your help," spoke the angry voice of Sir Redmond.
"I take it you've already done a devilish sight too much.""What do you mean by that?" Keith demanded; and then, by the silence, it seemed that every one knew. Beatrice caught her breath. Was this one of the ways Dick meant that Keith could fight?
"Climb down, boys, and get busy," Keith called to his men, after a few breaths. "This is for Dick. Wait a minute! Pete, drive the wagon ahead, there. I guess we'd better begin on the other end and work this way.
Come on--there's too much hot air here." They clattered on across the coulee, kicking hot ashes up for the wind to seize upon. Beatrice went slowly up to Dick, feeling all at once very tired and out of heart with it all.
"Dick," she called, in an anxious little voice, "Rex has run away from me. What shall I do?"Dick straightened stiffly, his hands upon his aching loins, and peered through the smoke at her.
"I guess the only thing to do, then, is to get into the wagon over there. You can drive, Trix, if you want to, and that will give us another man here. I was just going to have some one take you home;now--the Lord only knows!--you're liable to have to stay till morning.
Rex will go home, all right; you needn't worry about him."He bent to the work again, and she could hear the wet sack thud, thud upon the ground. Other sacks and blankets went thud, thud, and down here at close range the fire was not so beautiful as it had been from the hilltop. Down here the glamour was gone. She climbed up to the high wagon seat and took the reins from the man, who immediately seized upon a sack and went off to the fight. She felt that she was out of touch.
She was out on the prairie at night, miles away from any house, driving a water-wagon for the men to put out a prairie fire. She had driven a coaching-party once on a wager; but she had never driven a lumber-wagon with barrels of water before. She could not think of any girl she knew who had.
