Manley raged, sitting helpless there upon his horse. They would not let him ride out toward that sweeping wave of fire. He could not have gone five miles toward home before he met the flames. He stood in the stirrups and shook his fists impotently. He strained his eyes to see what it was impossible for him to see—his ranch and Val, and how they had fared. He pictured mentally the guard he had burned beyond the coulee to protect them from just this danger, and his heart squeezed tight at the realization of his own shiftlessness. That guard! A twelve-foot strip of half-burned sod, with tufts of grass left standing here and there—and he had meant to burn it wider, and had put it off from day to day, until now. Now!
His clenched fist dropped upon the saddle horn, and he stared dully at the rushing, rolling smoke and fire. It was not that he saw—it was Val, with cinder-blackened ruffles, grimy face, and yellow hair falling in loose locks upon her cheeks—locks which she must stop to push out of her eyes, so that she could see where to swing the sodden sack while she helped him—him, Manley, who had permitted her to do work it for none but a man's hard muscles, so that he might finish the sooner and ride to town upon some flimsy pretext. And he could not even reach her now—or the place where she had been!
The group had thinned around him, for there was something to do besides give sympathy to a man bereaved. Unless they bestirred themselves, they might all be in need of sympathy before the day was done. Manley took his eyes from the coming fire and glanced around him, saw that he was alone, and, with a despairing oath, wheeled his horse and raced back down the hill to town, as if fiends rode behind the saddle.
At the saloon opposite the Hawley Hotel he drew up; rather, his horse stopped there of his own accord, as if he were quite at home at that particular hitching pole. Manley dismounted heavily and lurched inside. The place was deserted save for Jim, who was paid to watch the wares of his employer, and was now standing upon a chair at the window, that he might see over the top of Hawley's coal shed and glimpse the hilltop beyond. Jim stepped down and came toward him.
“How's the fire?” he demanded anxiously. “Think she'll swing over this way?”
But Manley had sunk into a chair and buried his face in his arms, folded upon a whisky-spotted card table.
“Val—my Val!” he wailed, “Back there alone—get me a drink,” he added thickly, “or I'll go crazy!”
Jim hastily poured a full glass, and stood over him anxiously.
“Here it is. Drink 'er down, and brace up. What you mean? Is your wife—”
Manley lifted his head long enough to gulp the whisky, then dropped it again upon his arms and groaned.