Her Prairie Knight Part 13

"Meaning, I suppose, that Sir Redmond doesn't. I didn't think you would be so unjust. Sir Redmond is a perfect gentleman."

"Well, you've got a chance to marry your 'perfect gentleman," d.i.c.k retorted, savagely. "It's a wonder you don't take him if you think so highly of him."

"I probably shall. At any rate, he isn't a male flirt."

"You don't seem to fancy a fellow that can give you as good as you send," d.i.c.k rejoined. "I thought you wouldn't find Keith such easy game, even if he does live on a cattle ranch. You can't rope him into making a fool of himself for your amus.e.m.e.nt, and I'm glad of it."

"Don't do your shouting too soon. If you could overhear some of the things he says you wouldn't be so sure--"

"I suppose you take them all for their face value," grinned d.i.c.k ironically.

"No, I don't! I'm not a simple country girl, let me remind you. Since you are so sure of him, I'll have the pleasure of saying, 'No, thank you, sir,' to your Keith Cameron--just to convince you I can."

"Oh, you will! Well, you just tell me when you do, Trix, and I'll give you your pick of all the saddle horses on the ranch."

"I'll take Rex, and you may as well consider him mine. Oh, you men!

A few smiles, judiciously dispensed, and--" Beatrice smiled most exasperatingly at her brother, and d.i.c.k went moody and was very poor company the rest of the way home.

CHAPTER 10. Pine Ridge Range Ablaze.

At dusk that night a glow was in the southern sky, and the wind carried the pungent odor of burning gra.s.s. d.i.c.k went out on the porch after dinner, and sniffed the air uneasily.

"I don't much like the look of it," he admitted to Sir Redmond. "It smells pretty strong, to be across the river. I sent a couple of the boys out to look a while ago. If it's this side of the river we'll have to get a move on."

"It will be the range land, I take it, if it's on this side," Sir Redmond remarked.

Just then a man thundered through the lane and up to the very steps of the porch, and when he stopped the horse he was riding leaned forward and his legs shook with exhaustion.

"The Pine Ridge Range is afire, Mr. Lansell," the man announced quietly.

d.i.c.k took a long pull at his cigar and threw it away. "Have the boys throw some barrels and sacks into a wagon--and git!" He went inside and grabbed his hat, and when he turned Sir Redmond was at his elbow.

"I'm going, too, d.i.c.k," cried Beatrice, who always seemed to hear anything that promised excitement. "I never saw a prairie-fire in my life."

"It's ten miles off," said d.i.c.k shortly, taking the steps at a jump.

"I don't care if it's twenty--I'm going. Sir Redmond, wait for me!"

"Be-atrice!" cried her mother detainingly; but Beatrice was gone to get ready. A quick job she made of it; she threw a dark skirt over her thin, white one, slipped into the nearest jacket, s.n.a.t.c.hed her riding-gauntlets off a chair where she had thrown them, and then couldn't find her hat. That, however, did not trouble her. Down in the hall she appropriated one of d.i.c.k's, off the hall tree, and announced herself ready. Sir Redmond laughed, caught her hand, and they raced together down to the stables before her mother had fully grasped the situation.

"Isn't Rex saddled, d.i.c.k?"

d.i.c.k, his foot in the stirrup, stopped long enough to glance over his shoulder at her. "You ready so soon? Jim, saddle Rex for Miss Lansell."

He swung up into the saddle.

"Aren't you going to wait, d.i.c.k?"

"Can't. Milord can bring you." And d.i.c.k was away on the run.

Men were hurrying here and there, every move counting something done.

While she stood there a wagon rattled out from the shadow of a haystack, with empty water-barrels dancing a mad jig behind the high seat, where the driver perched with feet braced and a whip in his hand. After him dashed four or five riders, silent and businesslike. In a moment they were mere fantastic shadows galloping up the hill through the smothery gloom.

Then came Jim, leading Rex and a horse for himself; Sir Redmond had saddled his gray and was waiting. Beatrice sprang into the saddle and took the lead, with nerves a-tingle. The wind that rushed against her face was hot and reeking with smoke. Her nostrils drank greedily the tang it carried.

"You gipsy!" cried Sir Redmond, peering at her through the murky gloom.

"This--is living!" she laughed, and urged Rex faster.

So they raced recklessly over the hills, toward where the night was aglow. Before them the wagon pounded over untrailed prairie sod, with shadowy figures fleeing always before.

Here, wild cattle rushed off at either side, to stop and eye them curiously as they whirled past. There, a coyote, squatting unseen upon a distant pinnacle, howled, long-drawn and quavering, his weird protest against the solitudes in which he wandered.

The dusk deepened to dark, and they could no longer see the racing shadows. The rattle of the wagon came mysteriously back to them through the black.

Once Rex stumbled over a rock and came near falling, but Beatrice only laughed and urged him on, unheeding Sir Redmond's call to ride slower.

They splashed through a shallow creek, and came upon the wagon, halted that the cowboys might fill the barrels with water. Then they pa.s.sed by, and when they heard them following the wagon no longer rattled glibly along, but chuckled heavily under its load.

The dull, red glow brightened to orange. Then, breasting at last a long hill, they came to the top, and Beatrice caught her breath at what lay below.

A jagged line of leaping flame cut clean through the dark of the coulee.

The smoke piled rosily above and before, and the sullen roar of it clutched the senses--challenging, sinister. Creeping stealthily, relentlessly, here a thin gash of yellow hugging close to the earth, there a bold, bright wall of fire, it swept the coulee from rim to rim.

"The wind is carrying it from us," Sir Redmond was saying in her ear.

"Are you afraid to stop here alone? I ought to go down and lend a hand."

Beatrice drew a long gasp. "Oh, no, I'm not afraid. Go; there is d.i.c.k, down there."

"You're sure you won't mind?" He hesitated, dreading to leave her.

"No, no! Go on--they need you."

Sir Redmond turned and rode down the ridge toward the flames. His straight figure was silhouetted sharply against the glow.

Beatrice slipped off her horse and sat down upon a rock, dead to everything but the fiendish beauty of the scene spread out below her.

Millions of sparks danced in and out among the smoke wreaths which curled upward--now black, now red, now a dainty rose. Off to the left a coyote yapped shrilly, ending with his mournful howl.

Beatrice shivered from sheer ecstasy. This was a world she had never before seen--a world of hot, smoke-sodden wind, of dead-black shadows and flame-bright light; of roar and hoa.r.s.e bellowing and sharp crackles; of calm, star-sprinkled sky above--and in the distance the uncanny howling of a coyote.

Time had no reckoning there. She saw men running to and fro in the glare, disappearing in a downward swirl of smoke, coming to view again in the open beyond. Always their arms waved rhythmically downward, beating the ragged line of yellow with water-soaked sacks. The trail they left was a wavering, smoke-traced rim of sullen black, where before had been gay, dancing, orange light. In places the smolder fanned to new life behind them and licked greedily at the ripe gra.s.s like hungry, red tongues. One of these Beatrice watched curiously. It crept slyly into an unburned hollow, and the wind, veering suddenly, pushed it out of sight from the fighters and sent it racing merrily to the south. The main line of fire beat doggedly up against the wind that a minute before had been friendly, and fought bravely two foes instead of one. It dodged, ducked, and leaped high, and the men beat upon it mercilessly.

But the little, new flame broadened and stood on tiptoes defiantly, proud of the wide, black trail that kept stretching away behind it; and Beatrice watched it, fascinated by its miraculous growth. It began to crackle and send up smoke wreaths of its own, with sparks dancing through; then its voice deepened and coa.r.s.ened, till it roared quite like its mother around the hill.

The smoke from the larger fire rolled back with the wind, and Beatrice felt her eyes sting. Flakes of blackened gra.s.s and ashes rained upon the hilltop, and Rex moved uneasily and pawed at the dry sod. To him a prairie-fire was not beautiful--it was an enemy to run from. He twitched his reins from Beatrice's heedless fingers and decamped toward home, paying no attention whatever to the command of his mistress to stop.

Still Beatrice sat and watched the new fire, and was glad she chanced to be upon the south end of a sharp-nosed hill, so that she could see both ways. The blaze dove into a deep hollow, climbed the slope beyond, leaped exultantly and bellowed its challenge. And, of a sudden, dark forms sprang upon it and beat it cruelly, and it went black where they struck, and only thin streamers of smoke told where it had been. Still they beat, and struck, and struck again, till the fire died ingloriously and the hillside to the south lay dark and still, as it had been at the beginning.