“He’s game,” gasped Pem. “If he was burning up himself, he’d joke. Ugh-h!” She coughed and sputtered as the red smoke caught her.
“Here—here’s another bucket,” screamed the Guardian. “That makes five. Ten of you girls fall in, form a line, quick—bucket brigade,—ten feet between you to the stream.” Already, at a hundred-foot dash, she had filled two buckets herself, passed them to Sanbie who tossed them up to the blazing roof. “Eight girls beat out—beat out the brush fire, the grass ... take care you don’t get in among the frightened horses. Terry and I will help the men.”
The “wickering” horses were a menace. They added the last element of wildness to the scene. Bunched together, in terror or curiosity, they rushed up to the fence, along by the four-foot fence, at a corner of which was the raging blaze. Necks arched, whinnying low and nervously, or snorting madly, they would come to within fifteen feet of the Red Horror, stamping even upon the lighting grass; the leaders, then, in a panic, would wheel and dart off again, circling, cavorting round—the mother horses stamping protest, with their fluffy foals beneath, or their half-weaned colts beside them.
Somewhere among them was Revel. Was that her plaintive “wicker”, her whinny? It sounded as if she had been caught—protestingly caught—in the darkness, the spark-swarming darkness, thought Una as, with a frenzy of saving her more than anything else, the girl who had been wheeled through life, softly shielded, took her place in the bucket line.
Across the pasture to the little bush-fringed stream the night was seized with a changeable blush, now a deep, furious black-burning that faded out into moonless darkness, mystifying darkness, as the water dashed upon the shed roof beat the flames down.
There was not much hope of saving the gray old building, but, burning furiously, it was a fire-brand to the whole mountainside.
“Maybe, this isn’t some blaze! Bring on the ice water. Talk of your broiled lobster, I’m a pretty good imitation!... Oh! shake it up down there—in the brigade. Slide the buckets along—along—slide ’em faster ... faster, if you can!” It was Sanbie’s prayer, with ever the note of levity, to meet the flames’ hiss.
And the brigade of ten rose to meet it, in ever-shifting line, the momentary head of the procession of girls, stationed ten feet apart, passing her full bucket to the Guardian, in the forefront of battle, who handed it on to the scorched men—they throwing it as high as they could on to the hissing roof—then the bucket was passed back to the breathless girl who wheeling, made for the stream with it again.
Thus making the most of their five buckets, Dorothy, Naomi, Beulah, Robin, Frances—others—had all, in turn, headed the single line, for a burning half-minute, seeing the brush fighters working in the red glare, beating in towards the blaze.
It was Una’s turn now.