“You will have to go on, girls,” he said. “The fire is gaining fast. This foot—I can’t go any faster.”
“We are not going any faster than you can go, Burd Alling,” Amy flashed out at him fiercely. “Do you think for a moment we would go and leave you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“I am,” said Burd, with an imitation of his old grin.
The next moment he stumbled heavily and fell into a hole caused by the uprooting of a giant tree. When the girls bent over him he grimaced with pain.
“Better go on,” he said. “Done for the old ankle this time, I guess. Feels sort of busted up generally.”
“But, Burd, you must try to get up. You must, you must!” cried Amy, shaking him desperately. “We will help you. You can lean on Jessie and me. That horrible smoke. It—is—choking me——” She broke off, half-strangled, and Burd, with Jessie’s aid, struggled to his feet.
He said no word as they helped him out of the hole and to solid ground again, but his lips were white with pain.
“Come on,” he said, limping ahead, manfully, though he alone knew how much that effort cost him. “There is a lot of fight left in the old carcass yet. Got the compass, Jess? That’s right. All you have to do is to keep us steered in the right direction.”
They could hear the roar of the flames now, the voices of the fire-fighters as they urged each other on. Above the scene of battle hovered the airplanes, watching keenly the progress of the fire, directing each step in the fight. The whirring of their engines, like the noise of gigantic beetles, came faintly to the ears of Jessie and Amy as, with the crippled Burd, they struggled onward toward the haven of the water.
It seemed to them as though the forest had suddenly become a sentient thing, reaching out horrible nightmare fingers to halt their progress, pushing them backward toward the fire and destruction.