Beatrice wondered who had done it. Then she came back to her surroundings and realized that Rex had left her, and she was alone. She shivered--this time not in ecstasy, but partly from loneliness--and went down the hill toward where Dick and Sir Redmond and the others were fighting steadily the larger fire, unconscious of the younger, new one that had stolen away from them and was beaten to death around the hill. Once in the coulee, she was compelled to take to the burnt ground, which crisped hotly under her feet and sent up a rank, suffocating smell of burned grass into her nostrils. The whole country was alight, and down there the world seemed on fire. At times the smoke swooped blindingly, and half strangled her. Her skirts, in passing, swept the black ashes from grass roots which showed red in the night. Picking her way carefully around the spots that glowed warningly, shielding her face as well as she could from the smoke, she kept on until she was close upon the fighters. Dick and Sir Redmond were working side by side, the sacks they held rising and falling with the regularity of a machine for minutes at a time. A group of strange horsemen galloped up from the way she had come, followed by a wagon of water-barrels, careering recklessly over the uneven ground. The horsemen stopped just inside the burned rim, the horses sidestepping gingerly upon the hot turf. “I guess you want some help here. Where shall we start in?” Beatrice recognized the voice. It was Keith Cameron. “Sure, we do!” Dick answered, gratefully. “Start in any old place.” “I'm not sure we want your help,” spoke the angry voice of Sir Redmond. “I take it you've already done a devilish sight too much.” “What do you mean by that?” Keith demanded; and then, by the silence, it seemed that every one knew. Beatrice caught her breath. Was this one of the ways Dick meant that Keith could fight? “Climb down, boys, and get busy,” Keith called to his men, after a few breaths. “This is for Dick. Wait a minute! Pete, drive the wagon ahead, there. I guess we'd better begin on the other end and work this way. Come on--there's too much hot air here.” They clattered on across the coulee, kicking hot ashes up for the wind to seize upon. Beatrice went slowly up to Dick, feeling all at once very tired and out of heart with it all. “Dick,” she called, in an anxious little voice, “Rex has run away from me. What shall I do?” Dick straightened stiffly, his hands upon his aching loins, and peered through the smoke at her. “I guess the only thing to do, then, is to get into the wagon over there. You can drive, Trix, if you want to, and that will give us another man here. I was just going to have some one take you home; now--the Lord only knows!--you're liable to have to stay till morning. Rex will go home, all right; you needn't worry about him.”