"Well, here's work! Tell me, Gardner, is there any way those people can get out on the other side of the Reserve, down the West Fork? You know the backwater above the little dam, two miles below the big dam? Most of the timber we intended to float out that way, to the mill at the little dam. They may have gone on across in there.
"Now, Corporal, leave McQueston and two men here. I want the rest of you with me—we'll go up in the hills with my car. McQueston, take one man and go and fix the break in the line three miles down the road. We'll either come back in my car or send it back to you somehow. The fire may block us. Get your men ready. March!"
It was anxious enough waiting at the ranch, but the wait might have been longer. It was not yet eleven o'clock when the two women heard the hum of the heavily loaded car and saw the men climb out again. It was Doctor Barnes who came to the cabin.
"It's no use," said he. "The fire has cut off the Tepee Creek trail. The best fir is gone, and there's no hope of stopping the fire now. If they took their car up, they must have left it in there—some of them went back up the trail. They may be over on the West Fork; and if they've got there, they've got a shorter route down to the dams than around by the Valley road."
He turned now to Mary Gage more specifically. "We've got a company of troops down there to guard the big dam. It's safer there than it is here. What do you think of going back now, to stop until this row is over? We can take better care of you there than we can here."
She sat for a moment, her face turned away.
"Will you come?" he repeated.
"One guess!" said Annie Squires for her. "In a minute!" And by that time she was throwing things into the valises.