“I can’t be sure, but I think the fire must be nearer,” she said. “Had we better tell Curt?”
“Yes. He’ll want to know.”
The girls called the lanky cowboy aside and Janet confided her fears to him.
Curt spun on his heels and stared into the flame-rent sky.
“Maybe I’m imagining things, but it looks bad,” he muttered. Then he called Billy Fenstow over to him and the rotund little director agreed that the fire must be getting nearer.
Curt sniffed the smoke. “It’s getting thicker. We’d better get out of here.”
“What about the bus?” demanded the director.
“We’ll use that as far as we can. There’s a trail that goes at least a mile back in the hills. After that we’ll have to go on afoot.”
Orders snapped from Curt’s lips. Back into the bus piled the company, Janet and Helen were among the last and they stopped long enough beside the well for deep drinks of the cool water. It might be many an hour before they would have such an opportunity again.
Curt took the wheel for he knew the trail into the hills. The motor roared with a heavy song of power and they were away once more, fleeing before the ever-hungry flames.