But now she needed all her courage and coolness to get her out of the hot corner into which she had so heedlessly driven the automobile. The road was not more than thirty feet wide and the thick woods bordered it on either hand. Out of the covert dashed a flash of rusty brown that was gone in an instant. Hester knew it to be a fox. Already she had seen the rabbits running, and not a bird was in sight.
The fire was coming—and coming by leaps and bounds!
It smote upon Hester Grimes’s mind that not alone were she and the innocent animals of the wood in peril; but there were lonely farms, deep in the forest, where the houses were so near the woods that the fire was sure to destroy them.
Who would warn those squatters and small farmers of the danger down here in the cut? When once the flames rose over the ridge, with the wind behind them, they would descend the other side with the swiftness of an express train.
Crops, orchards, outbuildings, and dwellings would all be sacrificed to the demon of flame. And some of the families along that far road on which the Sitz farm lay would scarcely have time to flee.
But Hester, as she often said herself, “was no namby-pamby girl.” She made a deal of fun of her chum, Lily, because the latter was always so helpless—or appeared to be—in time of trouble.
She was alone, at the edge of this burning forest, with this big car. It had to be turned around, and then she must run it out of the line of the fire. Her father would have something to say—and that to much purpose—if she lost this brand new car, which he had not even paid for as yet.
She started the car on the reverse, and twisted the wheel. The car backed, and shook, and she stopped it just as a rear tire collided with a stump. She must go ahead, and back, and go ahead again, and reverse once more, and repeat the operation half a dozen times before the car would be headed in the proper direction.
The smoke grew thicker and thicker—and more choking. Her eyes were half blinded by tears, for the smoke stung them sadly. But soon she was free. The car could fly back over the road which it had lately descended, and once out of the cut her peril would be past.
But on the very moment of starting ahead again Hester heard a great crashing in the bushes. Out into the road ahead of the car sprawled on hands and knees a man—or the semblance of one. For the instant Hester scarcely knew what to make of the figure sprawling there before the car. But she shut down again so as not to run over it.