swiftly and went in search of the tree she meant to burn. She found a
giant pine, pitch-oozing, standing in a rocky open space where there
was little danger of the fire spreading. Fagged out and eager as she
was, she had not come to the point of forgetting what a great
forest-fire meant.

She went back to her burning log, for a blazing dry branch which she
carried swiftly to the tree. Then she piled dry grass and dead twigs,
logs as heavy as she could carry, bits of brush. The flames licked at
the tree, ran up it, seemed to fall away, sprang at it again,
hungering. Now and then a long tongue of fire went crackling high up
along the side of the tree. Judith went back to a spot where, in a
ring of boulders, there was another grassy plot, threw herself down an
lay staring at the tongues of fire which were climbing higher and
higher.

Some one would see her beacon. A forest ranger, perhaps, whose duty it
was to ride fast and far to battle with the first spark threatening the
wooded solitudes; perhaps some crew in a logging-camp, than whom none
knew better the danger of spreading fires; perhaps some cow-boy, even
one of her own men--perhaps Quinnion and Ruth? She then would hide
among the rocks until they had come and gone. Even now, against the
sleep falling upon her, she drew farther back through the tumbled
boulders. Perhaps, Bud Lee. . . .

She went to sleep beyond the circle of bright light, tired and hungry
and striving against a returning hopelessness, her young body curled up
in the nest she had found, a cheek cuddled against her arm, wondering
vaguely if some one would see her fire and come--if that some one might
be Bud Lee.

XXVIII

BACON, KISSES, AND A CONFESSION

Throughout the night the tree blazed unseen. Judith's eyes were closed
in the heavy sleep of exhaustion. The flames roared and leaped high
skyward, burning branches felt crashingly, to lie smouldering on the
rocky soil, the upstanding trunk glowed, vivid against the sky-line.

In the early morning at least two pairs of eyes found the plume of
smoke above the still burning giant pine. A man named Greene, one of
the government forest rangers, blazing a new trail over Devil's Ridge,
came out upon a height, saw it and watched it frowningly across the
miles. It called him to a hard ride, perhaps to a difficult journey on
foot after he must leave his horse. He turned promptly from the work
in hand, ran to his horse, swung up and