"They smell the smoke and hear the noise," Bob replied, speaking in jerks as he ran. "Perhaps they may never have seen a fire before, but they know what it means. And there goes a stag! Look at the tremendous leaps he is taking! No danger of his being caught by the flames!" "Don't I wish we could run as fast! What a pair of horns for this time of year!" said Sandy, who knew that it was the season when stags lose their antlers, to be replaced with a new pair. "Too bad we could not get one of those buffalo," observed Bob; "but it would be wicked to kill the poor beast when we could never save the meat. Let them live to another day." "Yes, we have all we want to do now, trying to save ourselves," panted Sandy, who was not his brother's equal in running, and was already beginning to show evident signs of exhaustion. Bob noticed this with increasing uneasiness. "We can never get away by running," he declared, as he shortened his pace; and Sandy hastened to do likewise, with evident relief. "Would it do to climb high up in a tree?" the latter hazarded at a venture. "Not at all, for we should be smothered with the smoke, even if we managed to keep from being cured like bacon. But I was thinking that if only we could run across a hollow tree we might find refuge in it," said Bob, looking eagerly to the right and left. Already the smoke, driven ahead of the flames, was beginning to make objects indistinct around them. It burned their eyes, and caused a shortness of breath that was a sample of what it might be when the full force of the forest fire swept down upon them. "But suppose the tree caught fire, and burned," said Sandy, in bewilderment; "how could we save ourselves then?" "You don't understand, Sandy," returned the other, quickly. "The trees will hardly burn at this season of the year, being full of sap. This fire is made up of all the dead leaves and ground stuff. It is fierce while it lasts; but it burns out in a short time. All we need is some shelter that can hold out against that wall of flame coming down on us." Something in his brother's words caused Sandy to glance back just then. What the alarmed lad saw was a terrifying spectacle indeed. The fire was in sight, and coming on at headlong speed. The vast amount of dry material waiting to be snatched up by the leaping tongues of flame caused the fire to mount upward fully twenty feet in the air. [Illustration: "THE FIRE WAS ... COMING ON AT HEADLONG SPEED."] "It lies in both directions as far as I can see!" gasped Sandy, surprised at the extent of the conflagration that menaced them. "Yes. I knew it, and that was why we could not get beyond the end of the line. That wind is something terrible. Look out for that herd of deer, brother; they are heading straight for us, crazed with fear!"