Fear drew Buck Daniels one way but a fine impulse drew him another. He
turned away from the window with a curse; he turned back to it with a
curse, and then, muttering: "He went through hell for me; and him and me
together, we'll go through hell again!" he ran from the room and
thundered down the crazy stairs.
As he left the house he found Kate Cumberland, and they went on
together, running without a word to each other. Only, when he came
beside her, she stopped short and flashed one glance at him. By that
glance he knew that she understood why he was there, and that she
accepted his sacrifice.
They hurried around the outer edge of the corrals, and as they
approached the flaming barn from one side the men from the bunk-house
rushed up from the other. It was Buck Daniels who reached Dan as the
latter stumbled back from the door of the barn, surrounded by a
following cloud of smoke, and fell stumbling to the ground. And Buck
raised him.
The girl was instantly beside them.
She had thrown on a white dressing gown when she rose from bed. It was
girded high across her breast, and over it showered her bright hair,
flashing like liquid gold in growing light. She, now, received the
semi-conscious burden of Dan Barry, and Buck Daniels stepped forward,
close to the smoke. He began to shout directions which the two watchers
behind the hill could not hear, though they saw his long arms point and
gesticulate and they could see his speaking lips. But wild confusion
was on the crowd of cowpunchers. They ran here and there. One or two
brought buckets of water and tossed the contents uselessly into the
swirling, red-stained hell of smoke. But most of them ran here and
there, accomplishing nothing.
"An' all this come from one little match, Mac," cried Haw-Haw
ecstatically at the ear of Mac Strann. "All what we're seein'! Look at
the gal, Mac! She's out of her wits! She's foolin' about Barry, doin' no
good."
A gust of smoke and fire must have met Barry face to face when he
entered the barn, for he seemed now as helpless as if he were under a
strong narcotic influence. He leaned heavily back into the arms of the
girl, his head rolling wildly from side to side. Then, clearer than
before, dominating all the confusion of noise, and with a ringing,
trumpet note of courage in it, the black stallion neighed again from his
burning stall. It had a magic effect upon Barry. He stood up and tore
himself from the arms of the girl. They saw her gesture and cry to the
surrounding men for help, and a dozen hands were stretched out to keep
the madman from running again into the fire. They might better have
attempted to hold a wild horse with their naked hands. He slipped and
broke through their grips, and a second later had leaped into the
inferno of smoke, running bent close to the ground where the pure air,
if there were any, was sure to be.
"The gal's sick!" said Haw-Haw Langley. "Look, Mac!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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