Kent turned away, wiping an eye which held a cinder fast under the lid. It was Fred De Garmo who spoke.
“If somebody'd been watchin' the railroad a leetle might closer—” Polycarp began, in his thin, rasping voice.
Fred cut him short. “I thought you laid it to Man Fleetwood, burning fire guards,” he retorted. “Keep on, and you'll get it right pretty soon. This never come from the railroad; you can gamble on that.”
Blumenthall had left his team and come among them. “If you want to know how it started, I can tell you. Somebody dropped a match, or a cigarette, or something, by the trail up here a ways. I saw where it started when I went to Cold Spring after the last load of water. And if I knew who it was—”
Polycarp launched his opinion first, as usual. “Well, I don't know who done it—but, by granny! I can might' nigh guess who it was. There's jest one man that I know of been traveling that trail lately when he wa'n't in his sober senses—”
Here Manley Fleetwood rode up to them, coughing at the soot his horse kicked up. “Say! you fellows come on over to the house and have something to eat—and,” he added significantly, “something wet. I told my wife, when I saw the fire, to make plenty of coffee, for fighting fire's hungry work, let me tell. Come on—no hanging back, you know. There'll be lots of coffee, and I've got a quart of something better cached in the haystack!”
As he had said, fighting fire is hungry work, and none save Blumenthall, who was dyspeptic and only ate twice a day, and then of certain foods prepared by himself, declined the invitation.
CHAPTER VII. VAL'S NEW DUTIES
To Val the days of heat and smoke, and the isolation, had made life seem unreal, like a dream which holds one fast and yet is absurd and utterly improbable. Her past was pushed so far from her that she could not even long for it as she had done during the first few weeks. There were nights of utter desolation, when Manley was in town upon some errand which prevented his speedy return—nights when the coyotes howled much louder than usual, and she could not sleep for the mysterious snapping and creaking about the shack, but lay shivering with fear until dawn; but not for worlds would she have admitted to Manley her dread of staying alone. She believed it to be necessary, or he would not require it of her, and she wanted to be all that he expected her to be. She was very sensitive, in those days, about doing her whole duty as a wife—the wife of a Western rancher.