upon the ground. Other sacks and blankets went thud, thud, and down here
at close range the fire was not so beautiful as it had been from the
hilltop. Down here the glamour was gone. She climbed up to the high
wagon seat and took the reins from the man, who immediately seized upon
a sack and went off to the fight. She felt that she was out of touch.
She was out on the prairie at night, miles away from any house, driving
a water-wagon for the men to put out a prairie fire. She had driven a
coaching-party once on a wager; but she had never driven a lumber-wagon
with barrels of water before. She could not think of any girl she knew
who had.

It was a new experience, certainly, but she found no pleasure in it; she
was tired and sleepy, and her eyes and throat smarted cruelly with the
smoke. She looked back to the hill she had just left, and it seemed
a long, long time since she sat upon a rock up there and watched the
little, new fire grow and grow, and the strange shadows spring up from
nowhere and beat it vindictively till it died.

Again she wondered vaguely who had done it; not Keith Cameron, surely,
for Sir Redmond had all but accused him openly of setting the range
afire. Would he stamp out a blaze that was just reaching a size to do
mischief, if left a little longer? No one would have seen it for hours,
probably. He would undoubtedly have let it run, unless--But who else
could have set the fire? Who else would want to see the Pine Ridge
country black and barren? Dick said Keith Cameron would not sit down and
take his medicine--perhaps Dick knew he would do this thing.

As the fighters moved on across the coulee she drove the wagon to keep
pace with them. Often a man would run up to the wagon, climb upon a
wheel and dip a frayed gunny sack into a barrel, lift it out and run
with it, all dripping, to the nearest point of the fire. Her part was
to keep the wagon at the most convenient place. She began to feel the
importance of her position, and to take pride in being always at the
right spot. From the calm appreciation of the picturesque side, she
drifted to the keen interest of the one who battles against heavy odds.
The wind had veered again, and the flames rushed up the long coulee
like an express train. But the path it left was growing narrower every
moment. Keith Cameron was doing grand work with his crew upon the other
side, and the space between them was shortening perceptibly.

Beatrice found herself watchin