“It seems queer now, but—but it—it didn’t look like much of a fire.”
“Maybe you thought you could put it out?”
Hagle squared his shoulders. “No; I wasn’t thinking of that part of it.”
“Then perhaps you expected to wake us?”
“No; I came across just to—to look at things.”
There was a little pause. Then said Sam, very quietly:
“Jack, taking your word for what you did or didn’t do, I don’t see why you bolted away from us.”
Hagle’s shoulders sagged again. “I—I guess there’s no—no sensible explanation for that.”
“You didn’t try to fight the fire, did you?”
“What’d have been the use? It was too big to tackle.”