Dick’s young mistress does not need a second bidding. She is out waiting by the garden-gate long before Smuttie is caught and harnessed. Away to the west she can see the long glare of fire shooting up tongues of flame into the still sunlight, and brightening the river into a very sea of blood.
“I don’t think you should go, Ruby,” says her mother, who has come out on the verandah. “It isn’t safe, and you are so venturesome. I am dreadfully anxious about your father too. Dick says he and the men are off to help putting out the fire; but in such weather as this I don’t see how they can ever possibly get it extinguished.”
“I’ll be very, very careful, mamma,” Ruby promises. Her brown eyes are ablaze with excitement, and her cheeks aglow. “And I’ll be there to watch dad too, you know,” she adds persuasively in a voice which expresses the belief that not much danger can possibly come to dad while his little girl is near.
Dick has brought Smuttie round to the garden-gate, and in a moment he and his little mistress are off, cantering as fast as Smuttie can be got to go, to the scene of the fire.
Those who have witnessed a fire in the bush will never forget it. The first spark, induced sometimes by a fallen match, ignited often by the excessive heat of the sun’s rays, gains ground with appalling rapidity, and where the growth is dry, large tracts of ground have often been laid waste. In excessively hot weather this is more particularly the case, and it is then found almost impossible to extinguish the fire.
“Look at it!” Dick cries excitedly. “Goin’ like a steam-engine just. Wish we hadn’t brought Smuttie, Miss Ruby. He’ll maybe be frightened at the fire. My! they’ve got the start of it. Do you see that other fire on ahead? That’s where they’re burning down!”
Ruby looks. Yes, there are two fires, both, it seems, running, as Dick has said, “like steam-engines.”
“My!” the boy cries suddenly; “it’s the old wicked one’s house. It’s it that has got afire. My! they’ll never get that out. There’s not enough of them to do that, and to stop the fire too. And it’ll be on to your pa’s land if they don’t stop it pretty soon. I’ll have to help them, Miss Ruby. And what’ll you do? You’ll have to get off Smuttie and hold him in case he gets scared at the fire.”
“Oh, Dick!” the little girl cries. Her face is very pale, and her eyes are fixed on that lurid light, ever growing nearer. “Do you think he’ll be dead? Do you think the old man’ll be dead?”
“Not him,” Dick returns, with a grin. “He’s too bad to die, he is. Those wicked old ones always live the longest. Nothing ever harms them. My! but I wish he was dead!” the boy ejaculates. “It would be a good riddance of bad rubbish, that’s what it would.”