And, lo! in a moment it was a consuming fire they were called upon to fight.

A fire—the realization swept these twenty chips of that grand old block called Woman, like a wind which made their teeth chatter—a fire which had unusual elements of horror in it.

“The Pasture! The Sidehill! The Horses!... Revel!” The last blanched cry came from Una.

“If—the grass catches, they’d have hard work to save them. And the farmer—the farmer is away—at Bennington. And his assistant was kicked by a horse, has a broken leg. Only his son, Sanbie—seventeen!... Long before help could come from the Fire Warden—anywhere.... Girls! Quick! Dress! ‘Up to us’!”

They were scrambling into their clothes again in a hurry, even as the Guardian spoke.

“Plen-ty of water! But the stream’s oh! a hundred feet from the shed,” panted Terry Ross, Assistant Guardian, helping Dorothy into her sweater—then tugging on Una’s, fine and soft as the figurative cotton wool in which this girl-heiress had been always wrapped. “Buckets, girls! Every bucket you can find!”

“Only—four!” Pemrose’s eyes in the emergency had the blue of the blind, or bottled gentian, cowering in the smoke without,—the heavy reek driving upon fickle gusts up the mountain or across it, now with the awful carmine on its wings.

Girls moaned softly at the sight. But there was no confusion. They were accustomed to fire drill.

“Our camp may go, if it spreads up the mountain. But—the horses!... Brooms, too, to beat out the fire; dip them, wet them, in the stream, as you run! Scrub—evergreen scrub—that’s good for beating out a brush fire; break it off as you pass.... Could it, possibly, have been that awful lightning?”

“The storm last night! Nonsense!” Thus Terry Ross, Assistant Guardian, answered the excited chorus, which had in it no disorder. “The fire seed couldn’t have smouldered so long. The barn we saw blazed right off. But the wood of the shed—that may have been damp, still, from the deluge—didn’t dry up like the scrub and grass ... caused the heavy smoke. But—now!”

Now the flames were rising red-mad—and gaining every moment.

Pine, spruce, hemlock-scrub, the girls tore it off, broke it off as they ran, those who, at the Guardian’s heels, were not armed with buckets or brooms—in six minutes from the alarm the vanguard had reached the corner of the Long Pasture, the eastern corner where the tool shed, a gray twenty by twenty structure, had withstood gales for forty years.

But they were not the earliest fire fighters.

“There—there’s old ‘Burn-the-Wind’,” said Pemrose. “‘Burn-the-Wind’—and Sanbie. They—they’re getting the stuff out—stuff out of the shed!”

Mowing machine, tractor, harrow, plows, the two male figures were hurling them out, the latter a long-legged high school boy—the former a gray-haired, bare-armed blacksmith—the “wind” was now having its turn at “burning” him. Both had galloped, barebacked, up from the farm. “Burn-the-wind”—the nickname sounded cheering, in a fight frivolity has its uses—who could, at seventy-odd, shoe a horse with his eyes shut, was not in other respects very spry.

It was Sanbie of the shankums, the long ungainly limbs, who had a “leg-on” in the red fight.

He had played the one can of chemical, with the little hose attached, upon the flames—and still they gained—red-mad.

The grass around the shed was catching—had caught.

“Water!” They heard him shriek, Guardian and girls, as they reached the scene. “Water! Buckets! Oh! fill ’em first and think about it afterwards.”

“He’s game,” gasped Pem. “If he was burning up himself, he’d joke. Ugh-h!” She coughed and sputtered as the red smoke caught her.

“Here—here’s another bucket,” screamed the Guardian. “That makes five. Ten of you girls fall in, form a line, quick—bucket brigade,—ten feet between you to the stream.” Already, at a hundred-foot dash, she had filled two buckets herself, passed them to Sanbie who tossed them up to the blazing roof. “Eight girls beat out—beat out the brush fire, the grass ... take care you don’t get in among the frightened horses. Terry and I will help the men.”

The “wickering” horses were a menace. They added the last element of wildness to the scene. Bunched together, in terror or curiosity, they rushed up to the fence, along by the four-foot fence, at a corner of which was the raging blaze. Necks arched, whinnying low and nervously, or snorting madly, they would come to within fifteen feet of the Red Horror, stamping even upon the lighting grass; the leaders, then, in a panic, would wheel and dart off again, circling, cavorting round—the mother horses stamping protest, with their fluffy foals beneath, or their half-weaned colts beside them.

Somewhere among them was Revel. Was that her plaintive “wicker”, her whinny? It sounded as if she had been caught—protestingly caught—in the darkness, the spark-swarming darkness, thought Una as, with a frenzy of saving her more than anything else, the girl who had been wheeled through life, softly shielded, took her place in the bucket line.

Across the pasture to the little bush-fringed stream the night was seized with a changeable blush, now a deep, furious black-burning that faded out into moonless darkness, mystifying darkness, as the water dashed upon the shed roof beat the flames down.

There was not much hope of saving the gray old building, but, burning furiously, it was a fire-brand to the whole mountainside.

“Maybe, this isn’t some blaze! Bring on the ice water. Talk of your broiled lobster, I’m a pretty good imitation!... Oh! shake it up down there—in the brigade. Slide the buckets along—along—slide ’em faster ... faster, if you can!” It was Sanbie’s prayer, with ever the note of levity, to meet the flames’ hiss.

And the brigade of ten rose to meet it, in ever-shifting line, the momentary head of the procession of girls, stationed ten feet apart, passing her full bucket to the Guardian, in the forefront of battle, who handed it on to the scorched men—they throwing it as high as they could on to the hissing roof—then the bucket was passed back to the breathless girl who wheeling, made for the stream with it again.

Thus making the most of their five buckets, Dorothy, Naomi, Beulah, Robin, Frances—others—had all, in turn, headed the single line, for a burning half-minute, seeing the brush fighters working in the red glare, beating in towards the blaze.

It was Una’s turn now.

Her eyes very wide—fugitive and dark—her skin, naturally white and transparent, glowing like a filmy lamp shade in the glare—panting—she gave her brimming bucket into the Guardian’s hands.

“Well done, dear! You girls are—doing—splendidly. Look out for the horses, as you run back,” breathed the half-charred older woman, grasping the handle.

The fascinated horses were at that moment making another inquisitive rush. They galloped up to within fourteen feet of the center of excitement, threatening the brush fighters.

Their “wickering” snorts circled round Una in the fiery seconds while she stood waiting—waiting for her bucket to be returned. Awful seconds!

A beam fell in and frightened them—frightened her, too—as flame and sparks flew up; they wheeled and dashed off a hundred yards.

“I wonder if Revel was among them,” breathed the trembling girl to herself. “That sound she made a while ago—I’d know her soft ‘wicker’ anywhere—it sounded just as if she had been caught—caught against her will.... Oh-h! I must save Revel. If the whole pasture were to blaze....”

Grasping the handle of her empty bucket again, she wheeled, too, and made a dash for the distant stream edge. The brilliant patchwork with which it glowed as the beam fell in darkened now into ebony gloom—the red checkers fading out when the flames sank again.

“If the fire spread through the whole pasture, Revel might not think of jumping the fence,” she whispered to herself again, with the soft earth-din of the horses’ hoofs in her ears—in her brain, it seemed, maddening it.

The ground was hummocky here—low mounds! And she was running very fast, as she had never run before, to reach the stream-edge, leaving other girls’ fleet footsteps behind.

In a dark little bush-belt girdling a mound she suddenly tripped—there had been nothing to trip on before. The bucket rolled away from her, down into a hollow, black as a pit.

The swift fall was stupefying. She lay for a minute—numb. A dark, soft form brushed by her—she felt it was Dorothy, next in line to her, and made no outcry; they were saving Revel.

Picking herself up, presently, she groped for the bucket—found it.

What! was the metal handle on fire, too? Red hot. It stung her—stung her furiously.

She rubbed her fingers across her lips.