Then she knew what it was that lay before her, the task for which this great new strength had been bestowed. She left the boy and ran up the yard in the rear of that raging fire. She did not feel the stones under her feet. The seething crowd of men and horses became no more than shadows on the wall. Twice as she went she narrowly escaped death from the plunging hoofs, and knew it not....
The heat was terrific, but the smoke was all blown away from her. She felt no suffocation. But when she reached the stone passage that led to the group of loose-boxes where once she had stood horror-stricken and listened to Jake reprimanding Dick Stevens in the language of the stables, she realized the truth of what the boy had said. It was like an open furnace.
Yet there seemed a chance--the faintest chance--that that one loose-box at the southern corner, the best loose-box in the whole of the Stables--might yet be untouched by the devouring flames. The block of buildings was alight and burning fiercely, but it was not yet alight from end to end. It looked like a lane of fire at the end of that stone passage, but she could see the line of loose-boxes beyond, fitfully through wreaths of smoke. All the doors stood open as far as she could see. They had evidently taken the animals in order, and it had been the fate of The Hundredth Chance to be left till last.
And how to reach him! It had baffled his rescuers. For the moment it baffled her also. She stood at the entrance to the stone passage looking through, feeling the stones under her feet hot like a grid, seeing the red flames leaping from roof to roof.
Then the driving wind came swirling behind her, and she felt as if a hand had pushed her. She plunged into the passage and ran before it.
She emerged in that lane of fire. It roared all around her. She felt the heat envelop her with a fiery, blistering intensity, but ever that unseen hand seemed to urge her. She hesitated no more, though she rushed into a seething cauldron of flame.
And ever the thought of Jake was with her, Jake who loved his animals as he loved nothing else on earth.
She reached that line of boxes, how she knew not. The roof was burning now from end to end, but as she tore past the open doors there came to her an awful cry, and she knew that the colt still lived.
The smoke came down on her here, blinding her, but though it stopped her breath it could not stop her progress. It seemed as though no power on earth could do that now until she had reached her goal. Crouching, with lungs that felt like bursting, she forced a way over those last desperate yards.
Every door was open save that one, and against that one there came a maddened wild tattoo. The Hundredth Chance was fighting for life.