"Are we going down to watch?"
"No."
The barracks and the stables were high, cherry-hued pyres, terrible enough to the eye, with their tops crooking northward in the wind. To Dallas' ear, they were far more terrible, telling of awful suffering—hinting of direful intent. For the nearer pyre sent proof of a sacrifice. She could hear the screams of a horse.
The belt found, she stepped back to the door. "Hurry, hurry," she said. The old iron resolve never to desert the shack was fusing in the heat of a panic. Her unfailing instinct was hardening a new one, that ruled for immediate flight.
Marylyn was working with her shoe-thongs, not stopping to thread them, only to wind and tie them around her ankles. She heard her sister exclaim. Then she was seized and brought forward by a trembling hand. "Marylyn! Marylyn! The boat! She's going!"
They looked, and saw a black-funnelled bulk floating across the watery strip mantled by the blaze.
"Maybe they thought it'd burn," suggested Marylyn. "See, there's sparks flying that way."
Dallas leaned back against the door. "I guess—that's it," she said slowly. Then after a moment, "But why didn't they bring her straight across? There's no place to tie up downstream."
"Why, there's fire breaking out all over now," cried the younger girl, forgetting to be afraid in her wonder and excitement. "See! One of the little houses is caught!"
It was the first cabin of Clothes-Pin Row. Two or three men were near it. At that distance they seemed gaily posturing to each other in a dance.