For a moment Buck made no answer. But a growing look of alarm was in his straining eyes.
“It’s not a prairie fire,” the Padre went on. “There’s not enough grass that way. Say, d’you think——” A sudden fear had leapt into his eyes, too, and his question remained unfinished.
Buck stirred. He took a deep breach. The alarm in his eyes had suddenly possessed his whole being. Something seemed to be clutching his heart, so that he was almost stifled.
“It’s none o’ them things,” he said, striving to keep his voice steady. Then of a sudden he reached out, and clutched the arm of his friend, so that his powerful fingers sank deep into its flesh.
“It’s the—farm!” he cried, in a tone that rang with a terrible dread. “Come on! The hosses!” And he dashed from the room before the last sound of his voice had died out.
The Padre was hard on his heels. With danger abroad he was no laggard. Joan—poor little Joan! And there were miles to be covered before her lover could reach her.
But the dark shadows of disaster were crowding fast. Evil was abroad searching every corner of the mountain world for its prey. Almost in a moment the whole scene was changed, and the dull inertia of past days was swept aside amidst a hurricane of storm and demoniacal tempest.
A crash of appalling thunder greeted the ears of the speeding men. The earth seemed to shake to its very foundations. Ear-splitting detonations echoed from crag to crag, and down deep into the valleys and canyons, setting the world alive with a sudden chaos. Peal after peal roared over the hills, and the lightning played, hissing and shrieking upon ironstone crowns, like a blinding display of pyrotechnics.
There was no pause in the sudden storm. There was no mercy for wretched human nerves. The blinding light was one endless chain, sweeping across the heavens as though bent on forever wresting from its path the black shadows that defied it.
And amidst all this turmoil, amidst all the devastating roar, which shook the earth as though bent on wrecking the very mountains themselves, amidst all the blinding, hellish light, so fierce, so intense, that the last secrets of the remotest forest depths must be yielded up, two horsemen dashed down the trail from the fur fort as fast as sharp spurs could drive their eager beasts.