The swift fall was stupefying. She lay for a minute—numb. A dark, soft form brushed by her—she felt it was Dorothy, next in line to her, and made no outcry; they were saving Revel.
Picking herself up, presently, she groped for the bucket—found it.
What! was the metal handle on fire, too? Red hot. It stung her—stung her furiously.
She rubbed her fingers across her lips.
CHAPTER XX
No Answer
“Una Grosvenor!” A weary Guardian, who had done the work of ten women, in saving the sidehill, in saving thousands of dollars worth of thoroughbred horseflesh, in saving the whole mountain, was calling the roll—a panting victory-roll.
One after another her girls answered, some from the charred, wet ground where they had wearily thrown themselves flat, without another breath in their bodies.
It came to the last name on the alphabetical roll; a name which to each of them had a sort of lily-like aroma about it, savoring of a choice lily who toiled not neither did she spin, nor look after young brothers and sisters, nor earn her Camp Fire favors, yet who lacked nothing lovely that Life could give—for whose sake a grim horse-breeder would drive his tandem up the mountain in the thick of a raving “thunder-plump”, to save her from exposure.
“Una Grosvenor!... Gros-ven-or!”
There was no answer, save the pounding earth-din of the horses’ hoofs, still circling, restlessly—their blowing snorts, now quieting down.