burnt ground, which
crisped hotly under her feet and sent up a rank, suffocating smell of
burned grass into her nostrils. The whole country was alight, and down
there the world seemed on fire. At times the smoke swooped blindingly,
and half strangled her. Her skirts, in passing, swept the black ashes
from grass roots which showed red in the night.

Picking her way carefully around the spots that glowed warningly,
shielding her face as well as she could from the smoke, she kept on
until she was close upon the fighters. Dick and Sir Redmond were working
side by side, the sacks they held rising and falling with the regularity
of a machine for minutes at a time. A group of strange horsemen galloped
up from the way she had come, followed by a wagon of water-barrels,
careering recklessly over the uneven ground. The horsemen stopped just
inside the burned rim, the horses sidestepping gingerly upon the hot
turf.

"I guess you want some help here. Where shall we start in?" Beatrice
recognized the voice. It was Keith Cameron.

"Sure, we do!" Dick answered, gratefully. "Start in any old place."

"I'm not sure we want your help," spoke the angry voice of Sir Redmond.
"I take it you've already done a devilish sight too much."

"What do you mean by that?" Keith demanded; and then, by the silence, it
seemed that every one knew. Beatrice caught her breath. Was this one of
the ways Dick meant that Keith could fight?

"Climb down, boys, and get busy," Keith called to his men, after a few
breaths. "This is for Dick. Wait a minute! Pete, drive the wagon ahead,
there. I guess we'd better begin on the other end and work this way.
Come on--there's too much hot air here." They clattered on across the
coulee, kicking hot ashes up for the wind to seize upon. Beatrice went
slowly up to Dick, feeling all at once very tired and out of heart with
it all.

"Dick," she called, in an anxious little voice, "Rex has run away from
me. What shall I do?"

Dick straightened stiffly, his hands upon his aching loins, and peered
through the smoke at her.

"I guess the only thing to do, then, is to get into the wagon over
there. You can drive, Trix, if you want to, and that will give us
another man here. I was just going to have some one take you home;
now--the Lord only knows!--you're liable to have to stay till morning.
Rex will go home, all right; you needn't worry about him."

He bent to the work again, and she could hear the wet sack thud, thud