Molly felt a rush of hot air; surging, actual flame singed the ends of her hair.  She felt his hand again and again sweep over her skirts, wiping out the fire as it caught.  It was blackly hot, stifling—­and then it was past!

Before her lay a wide black world.  Her wagon stood, even its white top spared by miracle of the back fire.  But beyond came one more line of smoke and flame.  The black horse neighed now in the agony of his hot hoofs.  His rider swung him to a lower level, where under the tough cover had lain moist ground, on which uncovered water now glistened.  He flung her into the mire of it, pulled up his horse there and himself lay down, full length, his blackened face in the moist mud above which still smoked stubbles of the flame-shorn grass.  He had not spoken to her, nor she to him.  His eyes rested on the singed ends of her blown hair, her charred garments, in a frowning sympathy which found no speech.  At length he brought the reins of his horse to her, flirting up the singed ends of the long mane, further proof of their narrow escape.

“I must try once more,” he said.  “The main fire might catch the wagon.”

He made off afoot.  She saw him start a dozen nucleuses of fires; saw them advance till they halted at the edge of the burned ground, beyond the wagon, so that it stood safe in a vast black island.  He came to her, drove his scorched boots deep as he could into the mud and sat looking up the valley toward the emigrant train.  An additional curtain of smoke showed that the men there now were setting out back fires of their own.  He heard her voice at last: 

“It is the second time you have saved me—­saved my life, I think.  Why did you come?”

He turned to her as she sat in the edge of the wallow, her face streaked with smoke, her garments half burned off her limbs.  She now saw his hands, which he was thrusting out on the mud to cool them, and sympathy was in her gaze also.

“I don’t know why I came,” said he.  “Didn’t you signal for me?  Jackson told me you could.”

“No, I had no hope.  I meant no one.  It was only a prayer.”

“It carried ten miles.  We were all back-firing.  It caught in the sloughs—­all the strips of old grass.  I thought of your camp, of you.  At least your signal told me where to ride.”

At length he waved his hand.

“They’re safe over there,” said he.  “Think of the children!”

“Yes, and you gave me my one chance.  Why?”

“I don’t know.  I suppose it was because I am a brute!” The bitterness of his voice was plain.

“Come, we must go to the wagons,” said Molly at length, and would have risen.

“No, not yet.  The burned ground must cool before we can walk on it.  I would not even take my horse out on it again.”  He lifted a foot of the black Spaniard, whose muzzle quivered whimperingly.  “All right, old boy!” he said, and stroked the head thrust down to him.  “It might have been worse.”