Chapter 9

KENT TO THE RESCUE

The fire had been burning a possible half-hour when Kent, jogging aimlessly toward a log ridge with the lazy notion of riding to the top and taking a look at the country to the west before returning to the ranch, first smelled the stronger tang of burned grass and swung instinctively into the wind. He galloped to higher ground, and, trained by long watching of the prairie to detect the smoke of a nearer fire in the haze of those long distant, saw at once what must have happened, and knew also the danger. His horse was fresh, and he raced him over the uneven prairie toward the blaze.

It was tearing straight across the high ground between Dry Creek and Cold Spring Coulee when he first saw it plainly, and he altered his course a trifle. The roar of it came faintly on the wind, like the sound of storm-beaten surf pounding heavily upon a sand bar when the tide is out, except that this roar was continuous, and was full of sharp cracklings and sputterings; and there was also the red line of flame to visualize the sound.

When his eyes first swept the mile-long blaze, he felt his helplessness, and cursed aloud the man who had drawn all the fighting force from the prairie that day. They might at least have been able to harry it and hamper it and turn the savage sweep of it into barren ground upon some rock-bound coulee's rim. If they could have caught it at the start, or even in the first mile of its burning--or, even now, if Blumenthall's outfit were on the spot--or if Manley Fleetwood's fire guards held it back--He hoped some of them had stayed at home, so that they could help fight it.

In that brief glimpse before he rode down into a hollow and so lost sight of it, he knew that the fire they had fought and vanquished before had been a puny blaze compared with this one. The ground it had burned was not broad enough to do more than check this fire temporarily. It would simply burn around the blackened area and rush on and on, until the bend of the river turned it back to the north, where the river's first tributary stream would stop it for good and all. But before that happened it would have done its worst--and its worst was enough to pale the face of every prairie dweller.

Once more he caught sight of the fire as he was riding swiftly across the level land to the east of Cold Spring Coulee. He was going to see if Manley's fire guards were any good, and if anyone was there ready to fight it when it came up; they could set a back fire from the guards, he thought, even if the guards themselves were not wide enough to hold the main fire.

He pounded heavily down the long trail into the coulee, passed close by the house with a glance sidelong to see if anybody was in sight there, rounded the corral to follow the trail which wound zigzag up the farther coulee wall, and overtook Val, running bareheaded up the hill, dragging a wet sack after her. She was panting already from the