“It's between here and the railroad. Give me that sack, and you go on back to the house. You can't do any good.” And when she handed the sack up to him and then kept on up the hill, he became autocratic in his tone. “Go on back to the house, I tell you!”
“I shall not do anything of the kind,” she retorted indignantly, and Kent gave a snort of disapproval, kicked his horse into a lunging gallop, and left her.
“You'll spoil your complexion,” he cried over his shoulder, “and that's about all you will do. You better go back and get a parasol.”
Val did not attempt to reply, but she refused to let his taunts turn her back, and kept stubbornly climbing, though tears of pure rage filled her eyes and even slipped over the lids to her cheeks. Before she had reached the top, he was charging down upon her again, and the pallor of his face told her much.
“All hell couldn't stop that fire!” he cried, before he was near her, and the words were barely distinguishable in the roar which was growing louder and more terrifying. “Get back! You want to stand there till it comes down on you?” Then, just as he was passing, he saw how white and trembling she was, and he pulled up, with Michael sliding his front feet in the loose soil that he might stop on that steep slope.
“You don't want to go and faint,” he remonstrated in a more kindly tone, vaguely conscious that he had perhaps seemed brutal. “Here, give me your hand, and stick your toe in the stirrup. Ah, don't waste time trying to make up your mind—up you come! Don't you want to save the house and corrals—and the haystacks? We've got our work cut out, let me tell you, if we do it.”
He had leaned and lifted her up bodily, helped her to put her foot in the stirrup from which he had drawn his own, and he held her beside him while he sent Michael down the trail as fast as he dared. It was a good deal of a nuisance, having to look after her when seconds were so precious, but he couldn't go on and leave her, though she might easily have reached the bottom as soon as he if she had not been so frightened. He was afraid to trust her; she looked, to him, as if she were going to faint in his arms.
“You don't want to get scared,” he said, as calmly as he could. “It's back two or three miles on the bench yet, and I guess we can easy stop it from burning anything but the grass. It's this wind, you see. Manley went to town, I suppose?”
“Yes,” she answered weakly. “He went yesterday, and stayed over. I'm all alone, and I didn't know what to do, only to go up and try—”
“No use, up there.”