The bear seemed distressed. For a moment he stood quite still, then turned his great head this way and that. And then he turned back, running at top speed, toward the fire.
Even before his senses made verification, Hugh knew beyond all question what the sign betokened. While he took one breath he stood strangely silent and bowed, the lines of his face graven deep, his eyes darkened with shadows. Then he straightened. The eyes cleared and looked out straight. The lips set, the muscles seemed to gather and bunch beneath his brown skin,—as if for some crucial test.
Strength was upon him. The dog circled by, seemed to sense it, and paused for an instant at his feet. Hugh listened. The air was charged full with the roar of the fire behind, but there was a new sound too. And far ahead a gray haze lay over the trees.
He signaled to the girl, then motioned toward it. He watched her face, and a great weight came upon his heart when he read in her expression the fact that she also had discerned the truth.
“We can’t go on,” he said simply. “There’s a fire in front, too.”
CHAPTER XXV
In the glow of the fire, and speaking just loud enough to be heard above its roar, Alice and Hugh made swift appraisal of their situation. It was not easy to be calm, to hold the body in subjugation to the brain in that death valley, between two walls of flame. Yet the calm strength of the wilderness itself seemed to be in their thews.
“Wait, wait,” the girl whispered. “Every second is precious—but give me time to think. I know this country, and I’ve got to remember how the canyons lie.”
Hugh stood silent, and endless hours seemed to go by before the girl had marshalled all her memories of the geographical nature of Smoky Land. In reality, her thoughts came quickly and surely.
“There’s only one way,” she told him at last, “and that’s only a chance. It depends on how far the fire has advanced behind us. We might ride out through the old Dark Canyon, back from the camp at Two Pines.”