Though Justin Wingate was no longer connected with the Davison ranch he was not the less concerned when he beheld the sudden flare of flame near the head of the caÑon and the cloud of smoke which now concealed it. A fire starting there in the tall grass and sedge might destroy much of the Davison range, and would endanger the unharvested crops and the homes of the valley farmers. Forest fires were ravaging the mountains, and for days the air had been filled with a haze of smoke through which the sun shone like a ball of copper. The drought of late summer had made mountain and mesa a tinder box. Hence Justin turned from the trail and rode rapidly toward the fire.

There had been many changes in Paradise Valley; but except that it had grown more bitter with the passage of time, there had been none in the attitude of the farmers and cattlemen toward each other. William Sanders was still vindictively hostile to the people of the ranch, and they disliked him with equal intensity of feeling. As for Justin, he had developed rather than changed. He was stronger mentally and physically, better poised, more self-reliant and resourceful. He had come to maturity.

He was on his way to Borden’s ranch, with some medicines for one of Clayton’s patients there. The distance was long, and he had a pair of blankets and a slicker tied together in a roll behind his saddle. Lucy Davison was in the town, making a call on an acquaintance, and he was journeying by the valley trail, hoping to meet her, or see her, as he passed that way. But thoughts of Lucy fled when he saw that fire. As he rode toward it and passed through the strong gate into the fenced land, he wondered uneasily if any plum gatherers were in the sand-plum thickets by the caÑon.

Justin had not proceeded far when he heard a pounding of hoofs, and looking back he beheld Steve Harkness riding toward him at top speed. He drew rein to let Harkness approach.

“Seen Pearl and Helen anywhere?” Harkness bellowed at him.

Helen was the child of Steve and Pearl Harkness, and was now nearly two years old.

“No,” said Justin, thinking of the plum bushes. “Are they out this way?”

“I dunno where they air; but they said at the house Pearl come this way with Helen. That was more’n an hour ago. They was on horseback, she carryin’ Helen in front of her; and she had a tin bucket. So she must have been goin’ after plums. That fire made me worried about ’em.”

He rode on toward the plum bushes, and Justin followed him, through the smoke that now filled the air and obscured the sun. Harkness’s horse was the speedier, and he disappeared quickly. As he vanished, Ben Davison dashed out of the smoke and rode across the mesa. In the roar and crackle of the fire Justin heard Harkness shout at Ben, but he could not distinguish the words. Justin called to Ben, repeating what he believed had been Harkness’s question, asking if he had seen Pearl and Helen; but Ben did not hear him, or did not wish to answer. He rode right on, as if frightened. And indeed that fire, which pursued him even as he fled, was not a thing to be regarded lightly. Yet Justin wondered at Ben’s action, his wonder changing to bewilderment when he saw that a woman’s saddle was on the horse Ben rode.

A horrible suspicion was forced upon him. He knew that Ben had deteriorated; had become little better than a loafer about the stores of the little town, consorting with Clem Arkwright and kindred spirits. Arkwright had also changed for the worse. He had lost his position as justice-of-the-peace, and was now often seedy and much given to drinking. He was said to be an inveterate gambler, gaining an uncertain livelihood by the gambler’s arts. Ben Davison was never seedy. Whether he obtained his money from Davison or secured it in other ways Justin did not know, but Ben was always well dressed and had an air of prosperity.

Ben was again the candidate of the ranch interests for the legislature. Lemuel Fogg, also representing the ranch interests, had secured for himself a nomination to the state senate; for which purpose he had become temporarily a resident of the town of Cliveden, some miles away, where he had established a branch of his Denver store.

Justin’s desire for justice made him put aside the conclusion almost inevitably forced upon him by that sight of Ben Davison riding wildly away from the fire in a woman’s saddle.

Following Harkness toward the plum thickets, where the roar of the fire was loudest, he heard a woman’s scream. It was off at one side, away from the fire. Justin pulled his horse about and galloped toward the fire through the pall of smoke. In a few moments he beheld the plump form of Pearl Harkness. Helen was not with her. Seeing Justin, she ran toward him, screaming frantically.

“Helen! Helen!”

Justin stopped his horse.

“What is it? Where is she?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know! I’ve lost her! She was right here a while ago. The fire started, and I left her to get the horse; but the horse was gone, and when I tried to find her I couldn’t, the smoke was so thick. I must have got turned round.” She started on again, wildly. “Helen! Helen!”

“Can you stay here just a minute? I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her to you. Stay right here. The fire can’t get here for at least ten minutes. Stay right here.”

He feared to leave her, yet felt that he must if he hoped to save the child. Pearl Harkness seemed not to hear him. Calling the name of her child she ran on, in an agony of apprehension, choking and gasping. Lifted high above her by his horse, Justin found breathing difficult. His mind was in a puzzled whirl, when he heard the fog-horn bellow of Harkness’s heavy voice. Pearl heard it also, and ran toward Harkness with hysterical cries. Justin rode after her. Harkness appeared out of the smoke like a spectre, his horse at a dead run. When he saw Pearl he drew rein and jumped to the ground.

“Helen! Helen!” she screamed at him, stretching out her hands.

Then, before either Harkness or Justin could reach her, she pitched forward, overcome by excitement and the thick smoke. Harkness lifted her in his strong arms, clinging to his bridle rein as he did so. The bronchos were snorting and uneasy.

“I’ve got to git her out of here,” said Harkness, with tender solicitude. “Where’s Helen?”

“She must be right here somewhere; over that way, your wife said. I’ll find her.”

Harkness glared at the smoke.

“Yes, find her, and find her quick! That fire will be right on top of this place in another minute.”

He swung Pearl toward the saddle. Justin assisted him to hoist the heavy woman to the back of the horse, and held her there while he mounted. Harkness took the limp form in his arms.

“We ain’t got any time to lose!” he gasped. “Find Helen! For God’s sake, save Helen! It will kill Pearl, and me too, if you don’t. The fire is right here. For God’s sake, save her; I know you’ll do it if anybody can.”

Justin was in the saddle.

“Save your wife!” he cried. “Save your wife! I’ll find Helen! I’ll find her!”

“You’ve got to find her! Don’t stop till you find her! I reckon I’d better help you look for her.”

He could not abandon Helen; and holding his wife in his arms he rode toward the fire.

“Save your wife!” Justin shouted to him.

He was already moving off, forcing the broncho toward the point where the smoke lay heaviest. Again he shouted to Harkness, begging him to save his wife. Then a moving wall of smoke swept between them.

“Helen! Helen!” Justin began to call, circling swiftly about the spot where Pearl Harkness believed she had left her child.

The heat and smoke were becoming unbearable.

“I must find her!” was his thought, as he recalled Pearl’s hysterical screams and the anguished face of Steve Harkness.

Then, as if in a fire-framed picture, he saw her, well up toward the head of the caÑon, whither she had fled in a panic of fright. The strong upward pull of the heated air, lifting the smoke for an instant, revealed her, clad in her short dress of striped calico, her yellow head bare.

As the flames flared thus on high, their angry red blending and tangling with the thick black smoke on the rim of the caÑon, Justin’s broncho became almost unmanageable. He struck it now, pounding his fist against its body, kicking it mercilessly, and jerking like a madman at the sharp bit. Fighting with the scared broncho, he drove it toward the child.

She heard him call to her; and seeing him, she began to run toward him. She stumbled and fell, and rose crying. Her small face was smeared with soot and tears, with charred plum leaves and with sand. All about her, as the flames and the smoke lifted and fell under the force of the wind, flakes of soot, plum leaves, and burning grass, floated and flew. It was a wonder to Justin that her striped dress was not already ablaze. In a few moments he was at her side.

“I want my mamma!” she wailed, as he leaped down by her. “Where is my mamma?”

She pushed back the tangle of yellow hair that the wind tumbled into her face, and coughed violently. Her chubby hands were stained with tears and soot. She doubled one of them and gouged it into her eyes.

“I want my mamma!”

“I will take you to her,” Justin promised, as he tore the blankets and slicker from behind the saddle.

One of the blankets he wrapped about her; the other he threw over his shoulders and secured in place with a pin. The slicker he cast away, fearing its coating of oil would make it inflammable. Having done this, he clambered into the saddle, with the child in his arms.

But the fire had been as busy. A long red prong thrown in the direction of the ranch buildings had widened and was drawing back toward the caÑon. It lapped across the open grassy space toward which he rode before he could gallop a dozen rods, thus hemming them in.

As Justin dashed furiously at this wall of flame, he drew the hood of the blanket well over his head; and while still holding the child closely wrapped, and clinging to the rein, he sought protection for his hands in the folds of the blanket. There was no protection for the horse. Yet he drove it to the plunge, which it took with blind and maddened energy.

The fire flashed about him and roared like a furnace. The flesh of his hands and face cried out in pain and seemed to crisp under the lash of that whip of flame. Giddy and reeling, he set his teeth hard and gouged his booted heels furiously into the broncho’s flanks. The blanket seemed to be burning about his head.

For a few brief moments after that he was but half conscious; then he felt the broncho fall under him, and was pitched from the saddle. He staggered to his feet, still holding the child. His blanket had been torn aside by the fall; and he saw that he had broken through the cordon of flame, and that the fire was behind him. The broncho lay quivering where it had dropped, having run to the last gasp. He could not have recognized it. Its hair was burnt off, and blood gushed from its nostrils.

Helen seemed to be uninjured, though she cried lustily. Still resolved to save her from the fire, Justin began to stagger with her across the unburned grass. As he did so he heard a shout, followed by galloping hoofs. He saw the horsemen dimly as they rode toward him, and he ran in their direction. As he thus ran on he fell.

When he came to himself he was on a horse in front of some one who clasped him firmly about the body. Horses’ feet were rustling noisily over the grass. The sky was black with smoke; its taste was in his mouth, it cut his lungs and pinched his quivering nostrils. His face and eyes; his hands, his whole body, throbbed with the smarting pain of fire.

“You’re still all right, air ye?”

It was the voice of Dicky Carroll, one of the cowboys.

It was Dicky’s arms that held him, and he was on Dicky’s horse. He drew himself up, looked about, and saw Steve Harkness galloping at Dicky’s side with Helen in his arms.

“He’s got to be made all right if he ain’t,” he heard Harkness shout. “He’s too gamy to be let die!”