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 passed 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 Dick, 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.