The smoke ate its stinging way into her cringing lungs, choking her, gagging her. She sought to scream—but the screams were lost in the wild conglomeration of noises from below, the shrieks of fear maddened horses, the surging work of rescue. Here, there, back again she struggled, only to face everywhere a wall of fire that inch by inch was eating toward her—a lining, writhing, all consuming circle of death!
The flames had eaten their way through portions of the roof now and were spreading the flare of their flames against the sky. Over in the railroad yards, Harrison Grant, receiving the reports of his men as they checked up the list of captured spies, glanced into the distance, started, then whirled to the members of the Criminology Club.
"Shackle those men together!" he ordered sharply. "Leave them in charge of Sisson—he can handle them. Then everyone come with me—there's a fire at the stockyards!"
Quickly the orders were obeyed. Quickly the men swept forward under the leadership of Harrison Grant to aid the hundreds of horse wranglers and cattlemen in their maddened efforts to release the flame threatened animals. And as they did so, Dixie Mason was making her last desperate effort at escape.
Death in the flames or death in a leap—Dixie Mason chose the chance of the latter. She had fought her way forward, beating out the flames that caught her dress, smothering her free hand against her nostrils to shut out the paralyzing effect of smoke and gasoline vapors, seeking from the sounds from below to ascertain an area into which she might leap with some opportunity for safety.
At last it came. A lull in the milling rush from below. Dixie fought her way to a railing, swung under it, hung there for one, long, trembling instant, then, just as a whirling rush of horses cleared the way beneath her, she dropped.
The fall stunned her for a second. Then the roaring sound of plunging animals brought her to her senses, just in time to enable her to scramble out of the way of a flame crazed group of horses as they surged past her, then reeling, to seek through the smoke the freedom of the open air.
Someway, somehow, she managed to waver to the outer doors of the big barn, there to gasp at the cold, life-giving atmosphere that surged into her lungs—then to run forward whitefaced at the sight before her.
Everywhere was fire—fire which raged about the sheds, fire which licked its way along the railings of the cattlepans, which ate at the chutes and connections, fire which seethed and spit and crackled. From far in the distance came the clanging of bells and the hissing of steam—the hastily called fire apparatus of twenty stations, fighting against the flames—but fighting a losing fight. Dixie's hands clenched.
"The cowards!" she exclaimed, "the fiends!"