The Padre was more leisurely. He remained in his seat and raked out the bowl of his pipe with the care of a keen smoker. Then he cut his tobacco carefully from his plug, and rolled it thoughtfully in the palms of his hands.
“Say, about little Joan,” he said abruptly. “Will she join us on——?”
His question remained unfinished. At that instant Buck sprang from his seat and leant out of the window. The Padre was at his side in an instant.
“What——?”
“Holy Mackinaw! Look!” cried Buck, in an awed tone.
He was pointing with one arm outstretched in a direction where the ruined stockade had fallen, leaving a great gaping space. The opening was sharply silhouetted against a wide glow of red and yellow light, which, as they watched, seemed to grow brighter with each passing moment.
Each man was striving to grasp the full significance of what he beheld. It was fire. It needed no second thought to convince them of that. But where—what? It was away across the valley, beyond the further lip which rose in a long, low slope. It was to the left of Devil’s Hill, but very little. For that, too, was dimly silhouetted, even at that distance.
The Padre was the first to speak.
“It’s big. But it’s not the camp,” he said. “Maybe it’s the—forest.”