Tense and alert, she threw back her head. A puff of wind, feather light, almost imperceptible, touched her face.
"It's coming from the west," she breathed.
"Will you take the animals to the pool, Deirdre," Mrs. Cameron said sharply. "Jock'll keep them there. Jenny, you bring the beaters up here. I'll stay and watch to see if the fire breaks. If the wind's from the west, it'll strike us first here."
CHAPTER XIV
When Deirdre returned from the pool, where she had left Lass, the crate of fowls, and the cows with the old dog standing guard over them, Mrs. Cameron was already beating an arrow of flame that had struck the paddock on the hill-top, and Jenny on the other edge of the fences was also beating.
Darkness had fallen. The glare of the fire was visible above the thick standing wall of haze.
Deirdre saw a glittering line break through the grass at a little distance from Mrs. Cameron, and seizing one of the green branches Jenny had thrown down in the centre of the paddock, beat the fire until it went out. Other threads of fire appeared near her, and she followed them along the fence, slashing with the branch until they died down, leaving blackened earth and breaths of virulent blue smoke.
"Stay near the top of the hill, Deirdre," Mrs. Cameron called, "and watch to see if there's a break on the front clearing, or the pool side, or near the sheds!"
Then the fire began to show in a dozen places at once, wriggling lizard-like through the dry, palely-gleaming grass. Beating became automatic, an unflagging lashing and thrashing, and watch had to be kept that the enemy was not attacking in another part of the clearing. The blackened earth smoked under a dead flame one moment, the next a spark kindled and wispish fire was running through the grass again. Far down the hillside, through the smoke mists, to Deirdre on the top, Mrs. Cameron and Jenny looked wraith-like in their white cotton dresses.