The wind, riffling past them now, was sweeping the fire in their direction at a steady pace, but it was at least two miles away, perhaps even further, estimated Janet.
“Does it look serious?” asked Helen.
“I should say it does,” replied Janet quickly. “One of us must get back to the bus at once and warn Curt. This is what he’s feared.”
“I’ll stay,” said Helen, but Janet noted that her companion’s face paled at the thought of staying on top of the ridge and watching the fire sweep toward her.
“No you won’t. If there’s any staying to be done up here, I’ll be the one,” decided Janet. “Besides, I can run faster than you and your shoes are in no condition to go racing over this rough ground. You start down now and tell Curt exactly what’s happening. Tell him the fire is moving steadily in our direction and I can’t see that anyone is in front of it attempting to beat it out or to build barriers to halt it.”
“But I hate to leave you here alone,” protested Helen.
“Never mind that. You get back to the bus. Hurry!” There was an anxious note of appeal in Janet’s last words and Helen flung down the stick she had been carrying and started back down the slope.
Janet watched her for a time as she darted around outcroppings of rock. Then she turned and gazed at the low wall of smoke which was being whipped along by the wind.
From that distance it was hard to imagine that the advancing smoke and fire could be such a deadly thing—that it could lay waste to everything in its path, leaving, where it had passed, only a sear and desolate landscape.
The wind seemed to be strengthening with the passing of each minute. The crest of the advancing fire topped the ridge of another valley and started down the near slope, but it was still better than a mile and a half away. Occasionally a jet of flame rose higher than the others, as though some madman had tossed a torch high into the air at his exhilaration over the destruction the flames were causing.