Her arm became limp. "Where's Sam?—where's—" she pleaded feebly. Then a dull roar rang in her ears; she lay unconscious, a dead weight in his arms.
Holcomb began to stagger on the bottom step, reeling like a drunkard; again he proceeded, stumbling on through the passageway leading to Blakeman's pantry. The ceiling of varnished yellow pine above him rained down sputtering drippings of flame; they burned his neck, his hands, his hair. He dashed on through a pantry of sizzling blisters, past a glowing wall in a hot fog of yellow smoke, one burned hand covering her mouth. Then he turned sharply to the left, striking his shoulder heavily against a corner beam!
The blow made him conscious of a man crawling on his hands and knees toward them. The man rose—groped blindly like an animal driven to bay and rushed straight at him.
"Give her to me, Billy," he hissed in his ear, "Quick—save yourself!"
Then a burned fist struck straight out and missed—struck again and
Holcomb fell senseless.
With the quickness of a cat the man caught the woman in his arms, groped his way to the open, laid her prostrate body on the charred grass—sprang back into the swirl and choke of the deadly gas and smoke, and the next instant reappeared with the stunned and half-conscious Holcomb on his back, his hair singed, his clothes on fire; then he tripped and fell headlong.
The shock brought Holcomb to his senses. The man was stooping over him, his ear close to his cheek.
"It's me, Billy—Bob Dinsmore. I didn't want to hurt ye, but I see ye couldn't manage her and yerself and thar warn't no other way; ye'd both been smothered. She's all right—they're tendin' to her."
Holcomb clutched at the hide-out's sleeve.
"No—I dassent stay—nobody seen me but you"—and he was swallowed up in the shadows.
Two men and a girl now swept past the half-dazed man, halted for a moment, and with a cry of joy from the girl, aided by the trapper and the Clown, dragged him clear of the rain of burning embers.