“Please,” he said, very low, and she got to her feet. The music was a slow, throbbing thing, built on an old slave melody; there was longing in it, and recklessness, and a little recurrent strain of poignant pathos. They danced twice the length of the Lodge without speaking. Then, without warning, when they were near the door, his arms tightened about her. “Come out,” he said, imperatively. “Come down to the creek; I must talk to you. Will you come, Ginger? You must come.” Still dancing, her feet were guided almost over the threshold, and Dean thrust out his arm to open the screen door. But he stood still, staring, and his other arm fell away from her, for a horseman was galloping furiously up the inviolate Main Street of the tidy camp. “It’s the Scout!” “Fire!” shouted Elmer Bunty, loping the Mabel horse to the very door of the Lodge and making a spectacular stop. “Forest fire, Ranger!” “Where?” Some one had turned off the phonograph and the dancers were crowding out and the card players were pushing back their chairs. “Lost Valley, coming this way with a high wind and coming fast!” This was the moment Elmer Bunty had been living for; there were thirty people looking at him and listening to him now, and Ginger saw with a little clutch at her heart that Dean Wolcott was not unmindful of it. “Good work, Scout!” he said roundly. “Doctor, my Scout brings big news and bad news--fire in Lost Valley, coming this way with a high wind.” It was the new Ranger’s first fire, every one knew. “And coming _fast_!” said Elmer Bunty, importantly. * * * * * Gayety fell from the camp, slipping from its shoulders like a bright cape. The doctor, veteran fire fighter himself, mobilized his forces to join the regulars of the vicinity--seasoned soldiers at Pfeiffer’s, at Post’s; it was said that Mateo Golinda moved on the creeping flames like a wave rolling up from the sea. The women put away their pretty needlework and made stacks of hearty sandwiches and gallons of coffee, and the boys and Ginger rode up to the first fire line and carried them to the men. Ginger’s Aunt Fan thought the most sensible thing for them to do was to take the stage back to Monterey--agony as the trip would be for her--but she found her niece adamant. “I can help the doctor,” she said. “I’m not going to leave, Aunt Fan.” She knew that the doctor had a double anxiety; beside and beyond the red terror that menaced his camp and the country he loved, there was his concern for Dean Wolcott. He had stood sponsor for him to these people, persuading their own tried Ranger to go away on leave and give his friend a chance, and now they were waiting and watching to see him make good. “Doctor,” said Ginger to him on the third day, riding up to meet him with supplies, “I wish you would let me help you! I know how--I’ve fought fire at home a dozen times with Aleck and Estrada.”