--little black shack won't have to stand all alone any more--little
black shack's just black ashes--little black shack's all burnt up!" And
then the woman laughed shrilly, with that terrible, meaningless laughter
of hysteria.

She was a pretty woman, and young. Her hair was that bright shade of red
that goes with a skin like thin, rose-tinted ivory. Her eyes were big
and so dark a blue that they sometimes looked black, and her mouth was
sweet and had a tired droop to match the mute pathos of her eyes. Her
husband was a coarse lout of a man who seldom spoke to her when they
were together. The Little Doctor had felt that all the tragedy of
womanhood and poverty and loneliness was synthesized in this woman with
the unusual hair and skin and eyes and expression. She had been coming
every day to see her; the woman was rather seriously ill, and needed
better care than she could get out there on the bald prairie, even with
the Little Doctor to watch over her. If she died her face would haunt
the Little Doctor always. Even if she did not die she would remain a
vivid memory. Just now even the Little Doctor's mother instinct was
submerged under her professional instincts and her woman sympathy. She
did not stop to wonder whether she was perfectly sure that the Kid was
with Chip. She took it for granted and dismissed the Kid from her mind,
and worked to save the woman.

Yes, the little diversion of a prairie fire that would call all hands
to the westward so that the Kid might be lured away in another direction
without the mishap of being seen, proved a startling success. As a
diversion it could scarcely be improved upon--unless Florence Grace
Hallman had ordered a wholesale massacre or something like that.

CHAPTER 26. ROSEMARY ALLEN DOES A SMALL SUM IN ADDITION

Miss Rosemary Allen, having wielded a wet gunny sack until her eyes were
red and smarting and her lungs choked with cinders and her arms so tired
she could scarcely lift them, was permitted by fate to be almost the
first person who discovered that her quarter of the four-room shack
built upon the four contiguous corners of four claims, was afire in the
very middle of its roof. Miss Rosemary Allen stood still and watched it
burn, and was a trifle surprised because she felt so little regret.

Other shacks had caught fire and burned hotly, and she had wept with
sympathy for the owners. But she did not weep when her own shack began
to crackle and show yellow, licking