CHAPTER VII

FIRE

It was Garen Shepherd who stood at Piñon’s head, cap in hand, as Dawn released Damon from a kangaroo-like hug. Perhaps the Irish in her helped Dawn to recover from her surprise, her disappointment.

“Didn’t you bring any water with you, Mr. Irrigation Expert?” she grinned, taking his outstretched hand. Well, it was rather nice seeing him again. She just hadn’t been expecting him.

“I’m only an engineer, alas!” Garen was frankly smiling his pleasure. “And I don’t seem to be able to engineer much.”

Damon was exhausted, his worried face scorched and smudged with fire-fighting. He had been more upset than he would admit at Dawn’s disappearance. He himself had gone at four of the preceding day to look for her signal. Seeing neither signal nor smoke at the time, he decided that she had found matters not so bad and had returned to the Cascada.

He had fought fire all night and just before sunrise had managed a few hours’ sleep, leaving the conflagration whipped. The fire brigade, made up of specially hired helpers and volunteers from the homesteaders and mountaineers, lay down behind the lines for a well-earned rest. Around ten that morning Damon woke, rode over to the nearest phone, and called his cabin. Hinray answered. He had been at the cabin all night. No, Dawn had not been home.

Then Damon had sent Hinray to Lake Peak lookout, from which point he had seen and reported Dawn’s signal. The next half hour Damon spent calling the different stations for help. Having sent Hinray on ahead, he himself followed to the northeastern slopes. For five hours he and his men had been fighting fire in the ground—ever since noon. They had it beaten out now; just about licked, at any rate, thanks to Garen Shepherd, the four Bentys, and a couple of summer folks who sure were men and had volunteered gladly.

“Let’s get back up the mountain,” Damon concluded the story. “I want to get a fresh breath of air in my lungs.” He turned to thank Hal James for riding up with Dawn.

“Keep a watch on this side of the mountain, now you’re back, James, will you?” he cautioned the ranchman. “Use the fire lookout on the other side the canyon to signal us. And say, can you ride over in the morning first thing and take down the signal Dawn left? This humus is as dry as tinder.” Wearily he remounted Little Sorrel and turned her head back up the trail.

“Oh, James,” Damon remembered and called back over his shoulder, “you can move your stock now, goats too, over to the far side of the canyon.” They rode on. “That’ll please him and help make up for the hard season,” Damon explained in a tired voice to Shepherd, who rode between Dawn and her father. “It takes seventy-five acres to keep one cow alive down on the desert range, but the other side of the canyon’s covered with scrub, fine browse, piñon, juniper, and acorns ripe by now—the best sort of mast. That shows the wisdom of closing the foothill pastures for a while.

“The goats’ll do it good too, for once. They can break up that rocky hard-baked soil with their hoofs so that when it does rain it’ll soak in.”

“Rain, did you say?” Shepherd laughed. “Does it ever rain anywhere? I came back up to the mountains to see if there was such a thing as rain left.”

“I wondered what brought you,” Dawn remarked, meaning to be polite.

“Well, not just the hope of rain, to tell the truth,” Garen replied boldly. “If that were the sole reason I might have joined the Indian dances at any one of the pueblos down below, for they surely are working overtime at their ceremonies, being unable to coax water onto their corn any other way.”

A light wind had risen from the south and was blowing the smoke away from them. As the air cleared the sun sank and they moved through an orchid twilight. The forest ranger was in a tired daze, but Garen felt vitally alive and happy. Dawn was more subdued than she had ever been.

Desolation and the shadow of death on the desert from which she had come, devastation on the mountain side. As the men talked her depression grew.

“Two to three floods a year now,” Garen was saying to her father. “Everywhere that unsupervised cutting has been practiced. Fatal with this soil. Of course the problem this year is _no_ rain.”

Weary as he was, Damon could not let the statement rest undefended. “The average rainfall will be the same,” he persisted. “True, this has been an extraordinary year. You can laugh! But usually at our elevation we have a light rain _every afternoon_ during the summer. There hasn’t been a drop for over four weeks now. But it will come. You’ll see. Under natural conditions dry periods are easily tided over.”

Fanned by the pine-scented southern breeze, they mounted the trail slowly. Gradually the violet light diffused into a mellow glow. The moon was out, riding full and high. Day had exchanged for night without darkness. They were going through the burned-over area and beyond could see the line that had been beaten out by the fire-fighters.

Damon, who was riding ahead, looked back, calling out to ask what had kept Dawn at the James ranch. He stopped to rest his horse, and Dawn and Garen reined up beside him. Dawn explained why she had been unable to put up the fire signal until that morning. “Good girl.” Damon’s tired smile was guerdon for Dawn. “I’m mighty glad you happened by in time. James was trying to cheer his wife, but the things _are_ deadly just the same. Many a grown man’s been laid under grass because of a rattler.”

Dawn’s spirits began to rise, perhaps because they were getting back up on the mountain, or because she could breathe freely. Her heart was light and she whistled gayly, “Oh, Mariana.” Soon they were singing—plaintive Mexican folk airs learned from the despised sheep herders. Garen’s baritone joined the chorus.

“I like love-songs,” Dawn announced in a matter-of-fact way when they had ridden in silence for a while. Garen’s expression quickened hopefully; he reined his shabby pony closer. But at this moment Hinray stepped out from the trees before them. Hinray had been keeping guard, and there was no sign now of any more smoldering. Just the same, young Benty and a couple of the men boarders were going to stay on watch all that night. The other fighters had already left for home.

Garen promptly offered to spend the night on the mountain with the boys, but Damon and Hinray thought that was not necessary. With a word to the three fellows who came down through the pines to hail them, Damon led the way up the trail. They were still quite a way from home. A mile up to Box Canyon Pass, a half mile through to the canyon, a mile over the mountain, three miles down the Amarillo, and another mile up to the cabin on the Cascada. The long ride was made for the most part in silence. Garen rode beside Dawn in a thrall of happiness: he was in love. He had been surprised at the persistence of this attraction, had been tormented to return to the mountains, giving himself a half dozen vague reasons why he should go. Now he knew why he had come.

But he had made up his mind that he would never tell Dawn until he felt sure that she cared a little bit to have him around, that she enjoyed his company. He would keep it a secret until she was older. So much was Garen enjoying the tender discovery that he rode in selfish contentment beside her.

Dawn too was content to ride silently. She was not given to analysis, but the difference between Garen and Jack was plain. As they neared the forks of the Amarillo and the Cascada she asked her father, “Why didn’t some of the folks at Perry’s cabin go?”

Damon was half asleep in the saddle. “Eh?” he queried. “We telephoned Benty’s to send over word if they could lend a hand with the fire, but none of them turned up.” He called out to Garen, who was riding on ahead, “Better come up and stop the night with us, Shepherd. It’s late—and quite a piece yet down to Benty’s.”

Garen hesitated. Would it be putting them out? He would like to accept, but Dawn was already riding ahead. “I’d better go on down,” he said; “it’s easy going, all down hill from here on.” He turned his horse’s head toward the ford, which sparkled and leaped in the brilliant moonlight.

If she’d wanted him to stay she would have stopped and seconded the invitation. As a matter of fact Dawn had not heard her father. She had ridden on, eager to get home, tired out, disappointed in Jack.

Hinray had gone on ahead, making good time on his little mountain “mosquito.” When they dragged themselves into the cabin, after unsaddling Piñon and Little Sorrel, he was already snoring lustily on the swing seat before the fire.

“Even snoring couldn’t keep me awake tonight,” laughed Dawn. “Good night, Damon, dearest. You’re the only man I love!”

“Faith, I thought so!” He brushed her hair back affectionately. Now why did she say that? But Damon was too exhausted to think long about anything. All was soon silent in the aspen log cabin, humble and crude, but shining with a silvery brightness under the moon.

Over on the northeast slope young Benty too slept the sleep of exhaustion. The two tenderfoot lads made the rounds of the fire area, and as they saw no flames, sat down on the soft mattress of pine needles beneath the trees. Relaxed with a sense of security, they too dozed. It was almost dawn. They did not see the slowly creeping ground fire that emerged from the beaten-out area. Fanned by the warm south wind it glowed now, sending out tentative little tongues of flame. Curling about the dry twigs, the new blaze spread slowly through the still hours. There was little for it to feed on yet.

It was late when the cabin on the Cascada roused itself with a yawn. The sun stood at nine, an unheard-of-hour for a ranger to lie abed. Damon was already coming up from a dip in the Cascada when Dawn appeared on the stoop, stretching. Hinray had made his toilet, modest and befitting his circumstances—one dip of the head in a bucket, a vigorous drying with a towel never thereafter to be used.

“Another hot day, Dad,” Dawn called, holding up a wet finger to the warm south breeze. “I’ll go up to Lake Peak lookout after breakfast just for luck, shall I?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “The thermometer must be at all of sixty-five. But the air does seem a bit heavy yet.” His nostrils dilated with the memory of smoke on the air, the effort to detect it still.

They were at breakfast when Garen came trotting up to the stoop and swung off with a “Cheerio. How’re all the fire-eaters this morning?”

“Does the air seem heavy to you?” Damon asked.

“Not a bit,” Garen replied. “I just came down from the Lake Peak lookout. James evidently took the signal down first thing and it was apparently all fair and serene over there. I think it’s amazing the air’s so fresh and moist,” he added, “considering the drouth below and the number of fires in this vicinity.”

“Never will have no dry air s’long’s there’s trees standin’,” said Hinray between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs. “Did you ever figger that every good-size tree exhales a barrel of moisture every twenty-four hours? But it’s sure dry down below, I’ll admit.

“Drouth and death,” Hinray paused significantly, “and depression; I notice as they come in fifteen-year cycles, just as the almanac says. They’ve had drouth, they’ve had death a-plenty; and now—” he paused dramatically—“watch out for the depression.”

“Oh, Hinray, don’t be so gloomy at breakfast,” Dawn protested. “I feel uncomfortable anyway.”

“Oh, we’ll git rain a-plenty,” Hinray reassured her quickly. “The cycle’s bound to be up. That’s what I was aimin’ to say. And we’ll need it, with these fires and short-handed as the service is. Do you know, Mr. Shepherd”—he wagged his pipe at Garen—“that with a million acres to a forest unit in this country we’ve got only one range to one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres?” Hinray’s plaint was cut short by the jangling of the telephone. It was Jack Perry.

Dawn smiled as she put the receiver to her ear, but she answered in noncommittal monosyllables; Jack was tied up with his father’s guests. If he could get away, or get them to ride, he’d ride up that afternoon sometime and see her. All right. She hung up the receiver.

Damon had gone outside and now called out to ask if the folks didn’t smell smoke. Dawn thought she did. She telephoned Benty’s to talk with the boy. He hadn’t got back yet. Chances were he’d gone to sleep right on the ground. It was now nearly eleven o’clock, and Damon had some work to do at his desk. Hinray set off for the Lake Peak lookout again and Dawn washed the dishes while Garen dried them. Garen mentioned that he’d seen young Jack Perry again the day before. He’d been fishing along the Cascada with some company from the East as Garen rode by with Benty’s son on his way to the fire.

“I wonder he didn’t volunteer,” Damon commented over his shoulder. He made no other disparaging remark. He liked Jack.

“May I stay to dinner if I peel the potatoes?” inquired Garen boldly. “I’m a swell K. P.”

“You can stay to dinner,” Dawn agreed solemnly, “and if you’ll wash dishes you can board all year round.”

Damon was still nervous. As they ate lunch he was on the alert.

“If I don’t hear from Hinray he’s to go on to the southwest timber stands,” he said. “D’Orsay is an expert timber cruiser,” he explained to Garen, “and he’ll be gone the next two or three weeks, marking the mature trees. They’ve been sold on the stump to Gershwin, and Hinray will show the lumber company where they can construct their roads to get the lumber out and not damage the young trees.”

The dishes were soon finished and Dawn and Garen sat in the swing seat, resting. Dawn treated Garen with a respect she never accorded Jack, yet somehow she kept listening for Jack’s whistle. Was he going to spend the whole afternoon with those tenderfeet? Couldn’t they breathe mountain air alone?

“Show me your books of flowers, Dawn,” Garen suggested. She brightened and sprang to get them. Damon had returned to his work at the high desk. The afternoon had grown warmer, but the little weathervane outside the window swung its arms about, showing that the wind was veering slowly but surely from the south to the northeast. Dawn jumped up to open the windows facing north. A fresh breeze whisked Damon’s papers from his desk and almost simultaneously the telephone began to ring violently.

Damon sprang to answer it while Garen picked up the papers. They heard him exclaim, saw astonishment and distress on his face. “Get every one possible together,” he shouted into the phone. “I’ll call in the Southern Reserves and we’ll go straight over.” The forester was all action. “Dawn,” he instructed tersely while he gathered pick, gunnysacking, and other things together, “call Benty’s again. Fire’s broken out on the northeast slope once more.”

Young Benty had just got back. The kids had slept on the job; let the fire gain headway from nothing! When he waked they’d fought it awhile but saw it was useless; they were helpless. The south wind had blown it into fresh fields and kept the smoke away. Damon talked in terse sentences. Hinray had seen James’s signal from the other side of the mountain, but when he went to telephone there was something wrong with the line. He had started to ride back down the trail to the cabin, but on the way had seen what the trouble was with the wire, mended it, and returned to Lake Peak lookout, as that was the quickest thing to do.

The change in the wind had turned the blaze in their direction. Flames were near the divide and a crown fire was raging.

“The wind’s rising,” Damon said. “We must get every station we can reach. Dawn, ride up to Lake Peak lookout and relieve Hinray. He’ll go on down to the fire zone as soon as he’s done phoning. Some one should have been up there all morning. Shepherd, can you fight with us? Dawn, phone me at McGuire’s what direction it’s headed. We’ll be there by the time you reach the peak or shortly after. We’ll start from beyond there and fight back.”

Dawn was already at the phone, ringing the stations. Over the wires the call went out and was passed along by word of mouth, and from every mountain ranch and isolated homestead volunteers set forth with shovel, pick, or gunnysacking, to gather before the fire. Dawn rang the base camp of the fire-fighters that had been organized to protect the southern slopes of the range which Damon had left only the morning before. She caught them just as they were setting out to disband. Some of the emergency helpers had already gone, but the young ranger in charge was there.

Damon took the receiver in his hand. The ranger said he would be on the ground in three hours at most. “Three hours,” Damon repeated as he hung up. “Three hours. And it’s now after three o’clock. A crown fire, a northeast wind!—Good-by, honey.” He strode back to kiss Dawn, who had made a rapid change into her riding-clothes and was halfway to the door.

Garen held her stirrup. “Take care, Dawn. Take care,” he said in a low voice.

She hardly heard him. “Good-by. Come on, Shep.”

Piñon had never been so cruelly pressed by the adored being to whom he always responded with all his spirit. The speed of the wolf, the sureness of the great-horned sheep, were called upon now, as Dawn turned from the trail, urging him by difficult short cuts to the summit. The dog asked no lifts but crept with hanging tongue at a steady pace as they mounted higher and higher. Near the summit of Lake Peak he fell behind, but overtook them as they stopped for a moment of enforced rest. At last Dawn saw above her the lookout, built on the summit of a spur of Lake Peak. As her head cleared the tree tops the distant forests came to view.

She gasped with horror. From the northeast a great blaze rolled. With field glass leveled she could see it as though it were just opposite. The acrid smoke was actually in her nostrils and she fancied she could feel the scorch of its breath on her cheek. She left Piñon at the foot of the steps and leaped up to the telephone. McGuire’s ring was two short and one very long. There was no answer for some time. Then McGuire took down the receiver.

Yes, this was McGuire; he kept repeating it over and over. Oh, fire, she said. Fire? He couldn’t see nothing, but he sort of thought he’d smelt smoke all afternoon, but the sky was so hazy anyways. Dawn was wild with the delay.

“My father, isn’t he there? Didn’t he telephone you?” McGuire and all his family had been down in the canyon, fishing and berrying, nearly all day. He couldn’t tell. Just came in. Hadn’t been near the phone. Wait! Here was the ranger now!

“Damon,” Dawn’s tense words came clear and crisp, “it’s a crown fire all right, traveling with the wind. Not very wide; about a quarter of a mile maybe. It’s _crossed_ the divide. It might be stopped by a cross fire between the upper Amarillo and the lake.”

“All right, daughter. Well send a man up to the Amarillo ridge.” He rang off. Dawn gazed through the windows of the lookout station. Two hours dragged by, incredibly long, nerve-racking. She answered a few hurried, frantic calls on the telephone, and the rest of the time her eyes were glued to the field glass. Where were the men working? At the end of an hour she saw that they had started a cross fire not far above Corona meadow, from which she had driven out the goats at the beginning of the summer. She saw their fire creep from the rocky Amarillo ridge to the granite ramparts of the meadow. She saw the flames rise and die smolderingly away, as the men at the far end met and beat them out. But this was such a short stretch compared to the whole!

The sky to the west was still rosy with sunset, and now the blaze to the northeast was reflected against dark skies. Night was coming on, a fiery night. Before her and on the left rose the Coronado Peaks, jeweled patches like rubies showing where snow banks caught the red firelight. Behind Dawn the slope dropped to Lost Lake where she had bathed only two mornings ago. It seemed weeks away.

She watched the scene in helpless distress. It occurred to her to call Benty’s Lodge again. The line was busy. She rang persistently. Some one was probably talking to the little store, telling the news, or just gossiping. After ten minutes Mrs. Benty’s voice came shrilly over the wire.

“Everybody’s gone over to Snow Lake. Perrys and them just left here to see the fire.”

“They’ll see it all right pretty soon, wherever they are!” Dawn exclaimed. “Tell folks, Mrs. Benty, to keep out of the way. Who knows what may happen tonight!” When Dawn turned from the phone the whole sky was lit by the galloping fire. Night had fallen now, but the moon had not yet risen. It was a terrific but magnificent sight. So must the forest have been swept from primeval times by lightning-lit fires, ranging unhindered over the Cordilleran summits, watched with awe and superstition by the red man.

Dawn tore her fascinated gaze away long enough to try the lookout station on the southern watershed. There was no answer. Every one had left to meet at Snow Lake. She rang McGuire’s again. Shep whined, crouching beside her, his ears pricked forward. There was no answer from McGuire’s. Even Mrs. McGuire must be outside, the two babies with her, and that sturdy little nine-year Bonny was probably carrying drinking-water to the men.

There was no change in the wind, no veering of the fiery danger at the north. Dawn could bear it no longer. No use sticking here. She could fight with the men down below. The moon was rising slowly and in a few minutes its radiance would flood the trail. Yet even now the starlight was enough to show the way. She hurried down the rock steps, found Piñon patiently waiting, and with Shep at her heels took the trail down Lake Peak to McGuire’s homestead. It was not as far as the distance to her own cabin, but as the trail led through heavy timber the moon could scarcely pierce, it took longer.

The way seemed interminable, and when at last Piñon burst into McGuire’s meadow Dawn could see a mighty glare in the heavens. Now they could run. She pressed heels into the chestnut pony’s quivering flanks. Through the upland valley they raced up the ridge. On the other side lay the lake, where in June she had swum Piñon across after her encounter with the goat trespassers. Beyond and above lay the meadows. She had circled by the Amarillo ridge to reach them then and had crossed the lake from the far side. Now, from the top of McGuire’s ridge, a terrible panorama spread before her.

With a roar greater than a rushing wind the fire swept through the tree tops, consuming itself utterly in its speed, so that only black ruin and coals smoldering among the seedlings were left in its wake. Ah! Dad had started another blaze above Snow Lake, from the barren escarpment sheering away from the upland meadow, north, in the path of the fire. Could it give battle to that oncoming holocaust? If not, the summit of her beautiful mountain would be ruined. McGuire’s homestead that he had worked so hard to improve would be laid bare. His cabin and barn were right in the path of this demon of the elements.

She saw the two fires meet, roll together. Fire fighting fire. The onward march had been stopped in the north. The fire crew and the tumbling stream that fed Snow Lake halted the spread of flames on their side. She must get down to the dead-line where the men were working to the south. Garen and her father would be there. Beyond the lake the forest narrowed to a vale thick with timber, tall, between two barriers of granite a quarter of a mile apart. Damon had started another blaze at the edge of this boxed vale, and now he and his band fought the vanguard that leaped up among the resinous boles. As she rode she could see them beating at the flames that licked the ground—beating, shoveling dirt, trying to stamp out an area of fifty feet, one hundred, to push the fire over into the path of Snow Lake.

Dawn left Piñon near the lake. “Swim for it, Buddy, if you must”—she spoke to him as though he were a human being—“but come if I whistle. I may need you. All right, Shep, come if you like, but mind you don’t get in the way, boy. Find Damon.”

Now the forest was filled with a heat such as she had never known. Hal James, who had ridden up through the Box Canyon to try to overtake the blaze and join the workers, said that the fire passed him a mile away roaring like an express train through the tops of the trees. He never saw anything so beautiful or so terrible. By the time he reached Snow Lake, however, it was all over, for he had been cut off for two hours.

To the spectators from Benty’s Lodge and from Perry’s place the spectacle was superb too, but to the workers that galloping demon of speed struck terror. It froze the heart and scorched the brain. Now they had beaten out a stretch of several hundred feet. Dawn beat with the rest, working side by side with a slender Mexican lad who sobbed as he toiled, “_Mis bacas, mis bacas._” His cows were somewhere on the range beyond.

A great tree crashed not far beyond and McGuire staggered from beneath its flaming branches, pulling his sixteen-year-old son out of the way barely in time. Damon O’Neill was at the south end of the fire’s path, near Amarillo ridge, trying to close the narrowing gap, to stop the fire there. Unless the fire-fighters could cover the remaining distance to the lake, the fire would leap along an unburned path through McGuire’s homestead.

They were working north, trying to stop the gap between the lake and the mother rock that thrust up around the sheltered meadows above. Dawn was racing through the stretch of yellow pine, down whose slopes she had chased the goats. The firefighters were obliged to fall back. Beyond them their world was roofed with flame, leaping from tree to tree. It would burn itself out, down to the waters of Snow Lake, and if God willed, no farther. Had Damon and the brigade of toilers stopped it at both sides?

Stumbling along the pasture fence, whistling for Piñon, Dawn saw two women coming on a staggering run through the trees. They were the wives of herders. She turned back and headed them toward McGuire’s cabin. They could take refuge in the fields, could hide somewhere, even if the flames had not been stopped on the right flank of attack. The women stumbled on, their shawls pulled over their faces. Dawn turned once more to find Piñon.

Last among the forest creatures to flee the flames was the golden eagle. Now he rested on a crag above the lake. As the roaring heat came nearer he flapped from one tree to another. Now even the haven of the lake seemed menaced. He rose up, his seven-foot spread looming against the fire-lit heavens, winging his way to the blasted pine that stood stark beyond the waterfall. No one saw him but the dog Shep, who barked with passion, though now he had no lambs to defend.

Once upon his favorite lookout, the eagle folded his wings majestically. He would flee no farther. He awaited the oncoming holocaust as though defying it to destroy him or the dead tree which he had made his throne.

The fire-fighters were still divided into two squads, one at either end of the attack. The lake must be their bulwark in the center. On the eastern slope, running wildly along in the path of the oncoming flames, Dawn saw people, well-dressed strangers, fleeing in terror of their lives from the great fire which they had come out to see, to be entertained by. On the far side of the fence, some distance behind them, she saw Jack, and heard his excited shouting; but he could not hear her. The men reached the fence, jumped over, and were almost immediately in the glade that opened into McGuire’s valley and safety.

But Jack had stopped, bewildered, dazed. Now he saw the fire dragon rushing down on him. “The lake, the lake!” Dawn shrieked, and above the roar overhead he appeared to hear her. Plunging through the underbrush. Jack made for the shore of Snow Lake.

“Piñon, Piñon” Dawn shouted. Her frantic whistle pierced the crackling of the fire. She wondered if the pony had become panic-stricken with the smell of smoke and would refuse to move. No, he was a wild horse! A high, familiar nicker close at hand answered her piercing whistle. Piñon trotted up, tail outstretched, head high, his nostrils distended, afraid but faithful. Dawn flung into the saddle, crouching low while they fled before the heat of the flames. She would leap the fence and be behind the lines with Garen and her father, out of the path of danger in a few minutes. They were probably looking for her now.

Through an opening in the trees she saw that the little lake was illumined with unearthly brilliance. Already the fire’s hungry advance guard had in places reached the shore-line. As Piñon sprang down the slope Dawn remembered Jack. Then she saw him, backing out into the water, farther, farther, his hands over his face as he crouched away from the scorching heat. She gasped, called to him then to go out no deeper. But as she raced down to the lake he slipped out of sight.

Probably Jack never heard her call as he struggled to the surface and struck wildly out. His limbs were numbed to all but uselessness by the cold water which seemed to drag him down, pull him under to its black depths. With one leap Piñon, responding to Dawn’s pressure, cleared the little beach and entered the water. In three steps the horse was beyond his depth, swimming. By the time he reached Jack’s side the boy was unconscious, sinking slowly, only his white face and useless hands above the water. Dawn seized the bulging sweater and pulled it towards her just as the water closed over Jack’s face.

It was the feat of an Amazon to lift the dead weight up from the heavy depths, with Piñon milling around beneath her, and her vigor was too spent with fire-fighting. She was almost pulled from the saddle. Get both her arms about him, under his arms, lift him up—that was it. “Keep on, go on, Piñon.”

With the unconscious and demoniacal struggle for life of the drowning, Jack’s arms clutched her shoulders with a grasp, sudden, unexpected, dragging her off the horse, down into the water. Her foot in the stirrup saved Dawn. As she came up she doubled her right fist and caught Jack on the jaw, putting all her strength in the blow. He ceased struggling. The cold water revived and stimulated Dawn, and she was able to pull herself and the boy over Piñon’s back. But the weight was overmuch for him, and he sank so that Jack’s head went under.

She pushed the unconscious boy face downward on Piñon’s outstretched neck, and with one hand twisted in the chestnut pony’s mane, neck and neck she swam by his side to the far shore. Behind them the lake was rimmed with flame, the pine glade a field of giant flambeaux. Before them firelight lit the shore where watchers were waiting with outstretched hands to pull them from the water.

Beyond the lake the bare granite cliffs had stopped the fire’s flight, and at the base of the cliff tired men wiped sweat and tears and grime from their eyes and gratefully threw themselves down on the hot smoking earth.