Kent was backing, step by step, away from the heat of the burning stacks. The roar, and the crackle, and the heat were terrific; it was as if the whole world was burning around them, and they only were left. A brand flew low over Val's head as she ran staggeringly, with a bewildered sense that she must hurry somewhere and do something immediately, to save something which positively must be saved. A spark from the brand fell upon her hand, and she looked up stupidly. The heat and the smoke were choking her so that she could scarcely breathe.
A new crackle was added to the uproar of flames. Kent, still backing from the furnace of blazing hay, turned, and saw that the stable, with its roof of musty hay, was afire. And, just beyond, Val, her face covered with her sooty hands, was staggering drunkenly. He reached her as she fell to her knees.
“I—can't—fight—any more,” she whispered faintly.
He picked her up in his arms and hesitated, his face toward the house; then ran straight away from it, stumbled across the dry ditch and out across the blackened strip which their own back fire had swept clean of grass. The hot earth burned his feet through the soles of his riding boots, but the wind carried the heat and the smoke away, behind them. Clumps of bushes were still burning at the roots, but he avoided them and kept on to the far side hill, where a barren, yellow patch, with jutting sandstone rocks, offered a resting place. He set Val down upon a rock, placed himself beside her so that she was leaning against him, and began fanning her vigorously with his hat.
“Thank the Lord, we're behind that smoke, anyhow,” he observed, when he could get his breath. He felt that silence was not good for the woman beside him, though he doubted much whether she was in a condition to understand him. She was gasping irregularly, and her body was a dead weight against him. “It was sure fierce, there, for a few minutes.”
He looked out across the coulee at the burning stables, and waited for the house to catch. He could not hope that it would escape, but he did not mention the probability of its burning.
“Keep your eyes shut,” he said. “That'll help some, and soon as we can we'll go to the spring and give our faces and hands a good bath.” He untied his silk neckerchief, shook out the cinders, and pressed it against her closed eyes. “Keep that over 'em,” he commanded, “till we can do better. My eyes are more used to smoke than yours, I guess. Working around branding fires toughens 'em some.”
Still she did not attempt to speak, and she did not seem to have energy enough left to keep the silk over her eyes. The wind blew it off without her stirring a finger to prevent, and Kent caught it just in time to save it from sailing away toward the fire. After that he held it in place himself, and he did not try to keep talking. He sat quietly, with his arm around her, as impersonal in the embrace as if he were holding a strange partner in a dance, and watched the stacks burn, and the stables. He saw the corral take fire, rail by rail, until it was all ablaze. He saw hens and roosters running heavily, with wings dragging, until the heat toppled them over. He saw a cat, with white spots upon its sides, leave the bushes down by the creek and go bounding in terror to the house.
And still the house stood there, the curtains flapping in and out through the open windows, the kitchen door banging open and shut as the gusts of wind caught it. The fire licked as close as burned ground and rocky creek bed would let it, and the flames which had stayed behind to eat the spare gleanings died, while the main line raged on up the hillside and disappeared in a huge, curling wave of smoke. The stacks burned down to blackened, smoldering butts. The willows next the spring, and the chokecherries and wild currants withered in the heat and waved charred, naked arms impotently in the wind. The stable crumpled up, flared, and became a heap of embers. The corral was but a ragged line of smoking, half-burned sticks and ashes. Spirals of smoke, like dying camp fires, blew thin ribbons out over the desolation.
Kent drew a long breath and glanced down at the limp figure in his arms. She lay so very still that in spite of a quivering breath now and then he had a swift, unreasoning fear she might be dead. Her hair was a tangled mass of gold upon her head, and spilled over his arm. He carefully picked a flake or two of charred grass from the locks on her temples, and discovered how fine and soft was the hair. He lifted the grimy neckerchief from her eyes and looked down at her face, smoke-soiled and reddened from the heat. Her lips were drooped pitifully, like a hurt child. Her lashes, he noticed for the first time, were at least four shades darker than her hair. His gaze traveled on down her slim figure to her ringed fingers lying loosely in her lap, a long, dry-looking blister upon one hand near the thumb; down to her slippers, showing beneath her scorched skirt. And he drew another long breath. He did not know why, but he had a strange, fleeting sense of possession, and it startled him into action.