red.

The dusk deepened to dark, and they could no longer see the racing
shadows. The rattle of the wagon came mysteriously back to them through
the black.

Once Rex stumbled over a rock and came near falling, but Beatrice only
laughed and urged him on, unheeding Sir Redmond's call to ride slower.

They splashed through a shallow creek, and came upon the wagon, halted
that the cowboys might fill the barrels with water. Then they passed by,
and when they heard them following the wagon no longer rattled glibly
along, but chuckled heavily under its load.

The dull, red glow brightened to orange. Then, breasting at last a long
hill, they came to the top, and Beatrice caught her breath at what lay
below.

A jagged line of leaping flame cut clean through the dark of the coulee.
The smoke piled rosily above and before, and the sullen roar of it
clutched the senses--challenging, sinister. Creeping stealthily,
relentlessly, here a thin gash of yellow hugging close to the earth,
there a bold, bright wall of fire, it swept the coulee from rim to rim.

"The wind is carrying it from us," Sir Redmond was saying in her ear.
"Are you afraid to stop here alone? I ought to go down and lend a hand."

Beatrice drew a long gasp. "Oh, no, I'm not afraid. Go; there is Dick,
down there."

"You're sure you won't mind?" He hesitated, dreading to leave her.

"No, no! Go on--they need you."

Sir Redmond turned and rode down the ridge toward the flames. His
straight figure was silhouetted sharply against the glow.

Beatrice slipped off her horse and sat down upon a rock, dead to
everything but the fiendish beauty of the scene spread out below her.
Millions of sparks danced in and out among the smoke wreaths which
curled upward--now black, now red, now a dainty rose. Off to the left a
coyote yapped shrilly, ending with his mournful howl.

Beatrice shivered from sheer ecstasy. This was a world she had never
before seen--a world of hot, smoke-sodden wind, of dead-black shadows
and flame-bright light; of roar and hoarse bellowing and sharp crackles;
of calm, star-sprinkled sky above--and in the distance the uncanny
howling of a coyote.

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