The sun rolled into a clear blue sky and warmed her. She made her way down the long flank of the mountain and into the tiny meadow. For upward of two hours she remained there, nibbling at roots which she dug up with a broken stick, seeking edible growths which she knew, finding little, but enough to keep the life in her, the heart warm in her breast. Then she went on, over a ridge again, down into a cañon and along the stream which rose here and flowed westward.
By noon she was faint and sick and had to stop often to rest, her legs shaking under her. Again she made a scant meal. She had stumbled on a tiny field of wild potatoes and ate what she could of them, thinking longingly of a match for a fire. The match which Ruth had dropped she still had, but she carefully reserved it now, thinking how perhaps a trout, caught in a pool, might save her life.
In her already half-starved condition and with the demands constantly put on her strength, she would grow weaker and weaker if help did not soon come. But she was still filled with the glory of freedom.
It was a heart-weary, trembling Judith who late that afternoon made her way upward along another ridge, seeking anxiously to find from this lookout some landmark which she had sought in vain last night. In her blouse were the few roots she had brought with her from the field discovered at noon. Lying in a little patch of dry grass, resting, she watched the day go down and the night drift into the mountains, filling the ravines, creeping up the slopes, rising slowly to the peak to which she had climbed, seeping into her soul. Never had the passing of the day seemed to her so majestic a thing, truly filled with awe. Never until now had the solitudes seemed so vast, so utterly, stupendously big. Never until now, as she lay staring up into the limitless sky, having given up the world about her as unknown, had she drunk to the lees of the cup of loneliness.
So great was the weariness of her tired body that as she lay still, watching the stars come out one by one, she was half-resigned to lie so and let death come to find her. It seemed to her that there in the rude arms of Mother Earth a human life was a matter of no greater consequence than the down upon a moth's wing. But she rested a little and this mood, foreign to her intrepid heart, passed, and she sat up, again resolute, again ready to make her fight as long as life beat through her blood. At last she took the one match from her pocket. She scarcely dared breathe when, with dry grass and twigs piled against a rock, her dress shielding them from the wind, she rubbed the match softly against her boot. A sputtering flame, making the blue light of burning sulphur, died down, creating panic in her breast, then flared, crackled, licked at the grass. She had a fire and she knew how to use it!
When a log was blazing, assuring her that her fire was safe, she rose swiftly and went in search of the tree she meant to burn. She found a giant pine, pitch-oozing, standing in a rocky open space where there was little danger of the fire spreading. Fagged out and eager as she was, she had not come to the point of forgetting what a great forest-fire meant.
She went back to her burning log, for a blazing dry branch which she carried swiftly to the tree. Then she piled dry grass and dead twigs, logs as heavy as she could carry, bits of brush. The flames licked at the tree, ran up it, seemed to fall away, sprang at it again, hungering. Now and then a long tongue of fire went crackling high up along the side of the tree. Judith went back to a spot where, in a ring of boulders, there was another grassy plot, threw herself down an lay staring at the tongues of fire which were climbing higher and higher.
Some one would see her beacon. A forest ranger, perhaps, whose duty it was to ride fast and far to battle with the first spark threatening the wooded solitudes; perhaps some crew in a logging-camp, than whom none knew better the danger of spreading fires; perhaps some cow-boy, even one of her own men—perhaps Quinnion and Ruth? She then would hide among the rocks until they had come and gone. Even now, against the sleep falling upon her, she drew farther back through the tumbled boulders. Perhaps, Bud Lee.…
She went to sleep beyond the circle of bright light, tired and hungry and striving against a returning hopelessness, her young body curled up in the nest she had found, a cheek cuddled against her arm, wondering vaguely if some one would see her fire and come—if that some one might be Bud Lee.