is all well--with
Inez? The women?"

"Don't know," said Benito, half bewildered. The woman's wail for a lost
child leaped terrifyingly into his recollection. His hand went up as if
to ward off something. "Don't know," he repeated. "Wasn't home
when--fire started."

It came to him weirdly that he was talking like a drunken man; that
Adrian eyed him with a sharp disfavor. "Where the devil were you, then?"

"At the ranch," he answered. Suddenly he laughed. It all seemed very
funny. He had meant to give his wife a Christmas present; later he had
ridden madly to her rescue, yet here he was passing buckets in a fire
brigade. And Adrian, regarding him with suspicion, accusing him silently
with his eyes.

"You take the pail," he cried. "You fight the fire." And while Stanley
looked puzzledly after him, Benito charged through a circle of
spectators up the hill. He did not know that his face was almost black;
that his eyebrows and the little foreign moustache of which they had
made fun at the mines was charred and grizzled. He knew only that Alice
might be in danger. That the fire might have spread west as well as east
and north.

As he sped up Washington street another loud explosion drummed against
his ears. A shout followed it. Benito neither knew nor cared for its
significance. Five minutes later he stumbled across his own doorsill,
calling his wife's name. There was no answer. Frenziedly he shouted
"Alice! Alice!" till at last a neighbor answered him.

"She and Mrs. Stanley and the baby went to Preacher Taylor's house. Is
the fire out?"

"No," returned Benito. Once more he plunged down hill, seized a bucket
and began the interminable passing of water. He looked about for Adrian
but did not see him. He became a machine, dully, persistently,
desperately performing certain ever-repeated tasks.

Hours seemed to pass. Then, of a sudden, something interrupted the
accustomed trend. He held out his hands and no bucket met it. With a
look of stupid surprise he stared at the man behind him. He continued to
hold out his hand.

"Wake up," cried the other, and gave him a whack across the shoulders.
"Wake up, Benito, man. The fire's out."

Robert Parker, whose hotel was a litter of smoking timbers, and Tom
Maguire, owner of what once had been the Eldorado gambling house, were
discussing their losses.

"Busted?" Parker asked.

"Cleaned!" Maguire answered.

"Goin' to rebuild?"

"Yep. And you?"

"Sartin. Sure. Soon as