oned and cast off the long rubber coat and Brent felt as if
he had seen the unveiling of a sculptured figure which transcended
mediocrity. A flannel shirt, open on a splendidly rounded throat,
emphasized shoulders that fell straight and, for a woman unusually
broad, though not too broad for grace. She was an Amazon in physique
yet so nicely balanced of proportion that one felt more conscious of
delicate litheness than of size. As her breath came fast with
excitement the fine arch of her heaving bosom was that of a Diana.
Belted about a waist that had never known the cramp of stays, she wore
a pair of trousers thrust into her boot tops and no man there was more
unself-conscious.

The exhausted men stirred restlessly as they watched her go down to the
dam, and one of those who had dropped to a sitting posture came
lumberingly to his feet again.

"I reckon I've got my second wind now," he lamely announced. "Mebby
thar's a leetle mite more work left in me yit atter all," and he
started back, stumbling with the ache of tired bones, to the task he
had renounced, while his fellows grumbled a little and followed his
lead.

Throughout the day Brent had felt himself an ineffective. He had done
what he could but his activities had always seemed to be on the less
strenuous fringe of things like a bee who works on the edge of a honey
comb.

Now as the replenished fire leaped high and the hills resounded to an
occasional peal of unseasonable thunder the figure of the woman who had
assumed a man's responsibility became a pattern of action. In the
flare and the shadow he watched it, fascinated. It was always in the
forefront, frequently in actual but unconsidered peril, leading like
the white plume of Navarre.

It was all as lurid and as turgid a picture as things seen in nightmare
or remembered from mythology--this turmoil of emergency effort through
a fire-lit night of storm and flood; figures thrown into exaggeration
as the flames leaped or dwindled--faces haggard with weariness.

To Brent came a new and keener spirit of combat. The outskirts of
action no longer sufficed, but with an elemental ardor and elation his
blood glowed in his veins.

When at last all that could be done had been done, the east was
beginning to take on a sort of ashen light--the forerunner of dawn.
Alexander had held to the sticking-point the quailing energies of spent
men for more than six agonized hours. Below them the river bed that
had