The men understood, as did Colonel Barrington, that they were being warned, above their leader’s head; and his niece, while resenting the slight, admitted the courage of the man. Barrington’s face was sardonic, and a less resolute man would have winced under the implication as he said:
“This is, no doubt, intuition. I fancy you told us you had no dealings on the markets at Winnipeg.”
Witham looked steadily at the speaker, and the girl noticed with a curious approval that he smiled.
“Perhaps it is, but I believe events will prove me right. In any case, what I had the honour of telling you and Miss Barrington was the fact,” he said.
Nobody spoke, and the girl was wondering by what means the strain, which, though few heard what Barrington said, all seemed to feel, could be relieved, when out of the darkness came a second beat of hoofs, and by and by a man swaying on the driving-seat of a jolting wagon swept into the light from the windows. Then there were voices outside, and a breathless lad came in.
“A big grass fire coming right down on Courthorne’s farm!” he said. “It was tolerably close when I got away.”
In an instant there was commotion, and every man in Silverdale Grange was on his feet. For the most part they took life lightly, and looked upon their farming as an attempt to combine the making of dollars with gentlemanly relaxation; but there were no laggards among them when there was perilous work to be done, and they went out to meet the fire joyously. Inside five minutes scarcely a horse remained in the stables, and the men were flying at a gallop across the dusky prairie, laughing at the risk of a stumble in a deadly badger hole. Yet in the haste of saddling, they found time to arrange a twenty-dollar sweepstake and the allowance for weight.
Up the long rise and down the back of it they swept, stirrup as yet by stirrup and neck by neck, while the roar of the hoofs reft the silence of the prairie like the roll of musketry. Behind came the wagons, lurching up the slope, and the blood surged to the brave young faces as the night wind smote them and fanned into brightness the crimson smear on the horizon. They were English lads, and healthy Englishmen, of the stock that had furnished their nation’s fighting line, and not infrequently counted no sacrifice too great that brought their colours home first on the racing turf. Still, careless to the verge of irresponsibility as they were in most affairs that did not touch their pride, the man who rode with red spurs and Dane next behind him, a clear length before the first of them, asked no better allies in what was to be done.
Then the line drew out as the pace began to tell, though the rearmost rode grimly, knowing the risks the leaders ran, and that the chance of being first to meet the fire might yet fall to them. There was not one among them who would not have killed his best horse for that honour, and for further incentive the Colonel’s niece, in streaming habit, flitted in front of them. She had come up from behind them, and passed them on a rise, for Barrington disdained to breed horses for dollars alone, and there was blood well known on the English turf in the beast she rode.
By-and-by a straggling birch bluff rose blackly across their way, but nobody swung wide. Swaying low while the branches smote them, they went through, the twigs crackling under foot, and here and there the red drops trickling down a flushed, scarred face, for the slanting rent of a birch bough cuts like a knife. Dim trees whirled by them, undergrowth went down, and they were out on the dusty grass again, while hurled straight, like field guns wanted at the front, the bouncing wagons went through behind. Then the fire rose higher in front of them, and when they topped the last rise the pace grew faster still. The slope they thundered down was undermined by gophers and seamed by badger-holes, but they took their chances gleefully, sparing no effort of hand and heel, for the sum of twenty dollars and the credit of being first man in. Then the smoke rolled up to them, and when eager hands drew bridle at last a youthful voice rose breathlessly out of it: