“We fooled him that time!” cried Elliott.

“Bet you!” growled Pollock.

The other men and the woman stood leaning on the long handles of their implements staring at the advancing flames.

Morton aroused himself with an effort.

“Do your best boys,” said he briefly.  “There she comes.  Another hour will tell whether we’ve stopped her.  Then we’ve got to hold her.  Scatter!”

The day had passed without anybody’s being aware of the fact.  The cool of the evening was already falling, and the fierceness of the conflagration was falling in accord.

They held the line until the flames had burned themselves out against it.  Then they took up their weary patrol.  Last night, when Bob was fresh, this part of fire-fighting had seemed the hardest kind of hard work.  Now, crippled and weary as he was, in contrast to the day’s greater labour, it had become comparatively easy.  About eight o’clock Amy, having found a way through, appeared leading all the horses, saddled and packed.

“You boys came a long way,” she explained simply, “and I thought I’d bring over camp.”

She distributed food, and made trips down the fire line with coffee.

In this manner the night passed.  The line had been held.  No one had slept.  Sunrise found Bob and Jack Pollock far down the mountain.  They were doggedly beating back some tiny flames.  The camp was a thousand feet above, and their canteens had long been empty.  Bob raised his weary eyes.

Out on a rock inside the burned area, like a sentinel cast in bronze, stood a horseman.  The light was behind him, so only his outline could be seen.  For a minute he stood there quite motionless, looking.  Then he moved forward, and another came up behind him on the rock.  This one advanced, and a third took his place.  One after the other, in single file, they came, glittering in the sun, their long rakes and hoes slanted over their shoulders like spears.

“Look!” gasped Bob weakly.

The two stood side by side spellbound.  The tiny flames licked past them in the tarweed; they did not heed.  The horsemen rode up, twenty strong.  It seemed to Bob that they said things, and shouted.  Certainly a half-dozen leaped spryly off their horses and in an instant had confined the escaping fire.  Somebody took Bob’s hoe from him.  A cheery voice shouted in his ear: 

“Hop along!  You’re through.  We’re on the job.  Go back to camp and take a sleep.”

He and Pollock turned up the mountain.  Bob felt stupid.  After he had gone a hundred feet, he realized he was thirsty, and wondered why he had not asked for a drink.  Then it came to him that he might have borrowed a horse, but remembered thickly after a long time the impassable dikes between him and camp.

“That’s why I didn’t,” he said aloud.

By this time it was too late to go back for the drink.  He did not care.  The excitement and responsibility had drained from him suddenly, leaving him a hollow shell.