“Am I going the right way?” she asked herself in some alarm. To this question she could form no answer.
The wind changed again. The smoke was less dense. She pushed on.
Fifteen minutes later, billows of smoke once more bore down upon her. And this time the air seemed hot to her flushed cheek.
“What a dunce I was,” she exclaimed. “I—”
She did not finish, for, at that second, the smoke appeared to rise straight in the air. And there, not a hundred yards away, was a wall of fire. Even as she watched, the flames, reaching the foot of a great spruce tree, raced to its very top with a great whoosh. A second tree went up like a rocket, then a third.
She did not wait for more. She turned and ran. Over rocks and fallen trees, through masses of thimbleberry bushes, through a low swampy spot that sank to her tread, she raced until, with staring eyes and wildly beating heart, she came squarely up against one more wall of fire.
All but exhausted, she sank down upon a great, hot rock to think. What had happened? The wind had shifted. This had brought the fire in from a new direction. Perhaps that boy in the crimson sweater had set fresh fires. Perhaps she was completely surrounded.
“Trapped,” she thought with a shudder.
“But I must keep my head,” she told herself. “There should be a way out. There must be. There—there just has to be.”
Strangely enough at that very moment her good friend, Captain Frey, was talking about that very question. He was speaking to a dozen of his boys. Among them were Mike and Tony.