Farmers on light soil had finished cutting, and already the whistle of the steam thresher was heard in the land. The mills were working short-handed, a condition with which they would have to be content until the stooking was finished, and a run of a thousand bushels a day was considered better than no run at all. The thresher first in the field was usually able to choose his territory, and the choice might mean the difference between loss and gain at the close of the season.

On a farm adjoining the Grants' such a short-handed mill was in operation. The water haul was short, and to economise labour the same team was being used to draw water and supply straw to the engine. A small matter, as a general rule, but a very important one in this instance, as it turned out.

Having to supply both straw and water the tankman unfortunately allowed the water reserve to fall very low. The whistle was blowing incessantly for water, and the driver whipped his team with the heavy wagon across the stubble fields. Suddenly a whiff of smoke partially obscured the engine from his view, and the next moment he knew that the straw with which the engine was partially surrounded had caught fire. The water barrels were empty, and the engineer, instantly taking in the situation, drove his engine forward without so much as throwing the belt, grappled on to the separator, and backed the outfit away from the zone of danger.

All this was done in less time than is required to relate it, but already the fire was beyond control. Whisked by a hot wind from the south-west the flames leapt from the smaller pile of straw provided for the engine to the larger one behind the separator, and in a moment were away across the field, the heavy, dry stubble burning furiously. With much courage and presence of mind the tankman swung his team around and endeavoured to cross the path of the fire, at the same time drawing the plug, which allowed the water from the tank to spray out over the stubble. The ruse did temporarily check the flames, but they had already gained too much headway to be stopped by a narrow strip of half-moistened stubble, and in a moment the courageous driver found himself and team surrounded by fire. But his wit had not deserted him.

The horses, scenting the danger, plunged in frenzy as they saw the fire sweeping about them, but the driver sprang on the tongue, and, removing the draw-bolt, released them from the wagon. From that moment they could be depended upon to take care of themselves, and they dashed furiously away through the smoke and across the field. The driver, throwing his smock about his head, faced the fire, and in a moment was through the danger zone and safe on burnt ground.

Harry Grant swung his binder at the northwest corner of the field and started his team on the south stretch. Looking suddenly up he saw a cloud of smoke blowing across the lower end of the field. Already he could see the red line of flame a mile away where it swept through the neighbour's stooks. There were no fire guards so early in the season, and the road allowances stood knee-deep in dry gra.s.s. The farm buildings were safe enough, as they were surrounded by a considerable area of bare land, but the fire would lick up the stooks and even burn the standing grain, which was now dead ripe. In ten minutes they would pay an awful price for their two months' dry weather, and the nearest plough was in the implement shed, half a mile away!

In a moment Harry had his team unhitched. Throwing himself on the back of one of the horses he galloped them homeward, the trace-chains flying wildly about their heels as they ran. A wedge of hot smoke blew across their course, but they plunged into it without slackening, as a locomotive enters a fog. As they drew up in front of the implement shed Harry was just in time to meet his brother George coming out with his four-horse team and gang plough. George had been at a closer part of the field when he discovered the fire.

"Start at the south-west corner, Harry," George shouted as he drove past. "You go east. I'll go north."

The brothers did as arranged. They were able to reach the south-west corner of the farm ahead of the fire, and by ploughing a guard north and east they formed a wedge to divide the fire. The stookers had reached the scene by this time, and ran ahead of the horses, throwing the stooks out of the way. Mr. Grant started a back-fire, which steadily widened the strip of bare land between the approaching enemy and the fruit of their year's labours.

The Grant farm was safe, but the fire had been spread rather than controlled. It now raced away to the east and north, destroying every unprotected thing in its path. The wind seemed to rise as the flames gained headway, but above the roaring of the fire and the crackle of the wheat could be heard the rumble of wagons galloping along the smoke-obscured roads. All the threshers and harvesters within range were hurrying to give their a.s.sistance, but indeed it was little they could do. Further away, but still in the path of the fire, farmers were ploughing guards and settling out back-fires, and it was not until these were reached that the flames finally burned themselves out.

News of the fire had soon reached the little town of Plainville, and business men of all cla.s.ses did not hesitate to close their stores and shops and drive to the scene of the conflagration in wagons, buggies and automobiles. It was little a.s.sistance they could give at best, but there is a satisfaction and a suggestion of heroism in even _appearing_ to a.s.sist. And the face of a merchant looming up through the smoke that enveloped a farmer's building might be the drawing card which would establish another good account on that merchant's books.

When the telephone brought the first word of the fire Gardiner hitched up his horse and buggy and drove straight to the Grant homestead, but before he arrived the fire zone had swept onward. Some one said that young Mrs. Delt was alone at the mercy of the fire, as her husband was away a.s.sisting a distant neighbour, and Gardiner at once whipped his horse in that direction. Heavy banks of smoke lay across the road, and at places it was with difficulty he could fill his lungs with air.

Suddenly, in such a smoke-cloud, his horse threw itself back on the brechin, and Gardiner fancied he heard a girl's voice raised in alarm.

Springing out, he went to the horse's head, and could there distinguish the form of a woman now standing by the side of the road.

"Why, Miss Vane! What are you doing here?"

"I might answer with the same question, Mr. Gardiner, if there were time to play with words. But I want to ride with you to poor Mrs. Delt's.

Come, let's hurry."

"Just where I was going," said Gardiner. "I might have known I would find you wherever an errand of mercy called."

"The crack of that whip would sound better than a compliment just now, Mr. Gardiner. There may not be a moment to lose."

The young man answered by urging his horse to a run, and in a few moments they were at Mrs. Delt's door.

"Oh, Mr. Gardiner and Miss Vane!" cried the farmer's wife, as soon as she recognised her visitors. "What _shall_ I do? There are no horses here and nothing to work with. Whatever _can_ we do?"

But Gardiner had already taken in the situation.

"You are protected to the west by the summer-fallow," he said, "so your only danger is from the south. There's a strip of stubble a hundred yards wide there that the fire would lick up in a moment. We must throw a break across it in some way."

"Oh, do hurry and think what is to be done," cried Miss Vane. "You know all about prairie fires and I am quite useless. I keep looking all the time for the hose reel."

Gardiner smiled, even as he turned over in his mind the expedients that might be adopted. The girl's voice was music in his ears, and the sense of danger and emergency seemed to deepen the acquaintance between them, as a moment of crisis rises superior to a century of convention.

Gardiner's eye fell on the full water trough beside the well.

"You have a rope?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, there is plenty of rope in the stable," Mrs. Delt answered, and all three at once ran in that direction. They found a coil of rope hanging on a harness pin. Gardiner seized the coil bodily, and the ladies, anxious to help, found an end apiece. As they ran the rope became entangled and dragged along the ground, and presently all three were precipitated in a knot which required some moments to untie.

"Now a bed tick. You have a bed tick, Mrs. Delt?"

"Such a question!" gasped Myrtle, as all three rushed away again, this time to the house. Following Mrs. Delt up the narrow stairway they found the good lady in the spare room, littering quilts and pillows to right and left.

"But we want an old tick-not the best you have," Gardiner remonstrated.

"The best tick I have is none too good for Mr. Gardiner," was Mrs.

Delt's reply, which left the young man speechless. There was no time for explanation, so tick and trio crowded down the stairs and out into the yard. Gardiner bundled the tick into a roll and made a couple of loops around it with the rope.

"Now, into the tank with it," he shouted, and the bedding was promptly immersed. A hotter blast of smoke hastened them in their efforts, as the women soused the tick up and down in the water to get it thoroughly saturated, while Gardiner hitched it to the rear axle of the buggy by means of the rope.

"Now, all together!" he shouted, springing into the buggy and speaking to his horse. "One of you sit on the tick."

With the discipline of a regular Mrs. Delt instantly obeyed, but at the first tug of the rope found herself unhorsed, if the term is permissible. Miss Vane immediately took her place and was whisked in an uncertain course across the hundred yards of stubble, the water dripping from the tick all the way.

They drove across the field and back, and then, with the added protection of a couple of water pails and three wet sacks, they started a back-fire. Several times it jumped the dampened streak, but on each occasion they beat it out with the wet sacks. The back-fire worked steadily backward against the wind, gradually widening the margin of protection, and by the time the fire came speeding down upon them a strip of burnt stubble twenty yards wide baffled its designs. For a few minutes the flames stood up, snapping far into the air, and throwing detached ribbons of fire toward the Delt buildings. But their fury was soon spent, and, admitting defeat, they slunk back shamefacedly and died down among the ashes.

When Gardiner had a.s.sured himself that the danger was past he turned to his companions and found Miss Vane busily sprinkling water from the well on the face of Mrs. Delt, who when the height of the excitement was over, had availed herself of a woman's privilege to faint away. But the fresh water soon restored her. For a moment her eyes wandered uncertainly from one of her rescuers to the other, and presently she burst out in a ringing laugh.

Gardiner looked at Miss Vane with an expression of alarm. He was more at home fighting a prairie fire than caring for a woman in hysteria.

Mrs. Delt seemed to read his question. "Oh, don't be alarmed," she said, as soon as she could control herself. "I was just thinking of the picture Miss Vane presented as she rode that tick across the field. You couldn't see her to advantage, Mr. Gardiner. And my poor best tick at that!"

Then it was time for everybody to laugh, and when that was over and smoke clouds had cleared away and the sun looked out blood-red from the western sky, Mrs. Delt insisted first that Miss Vane share some dry clothing with her, and second that all remain for supper.

The uneasiness of the Grants was set at rest by telephone, which, despite many burnt poles, was fortunately still in service, and Gardiner, nothing loath, 'phoned his clerk that he would not be in until late.

The sun had set, and a moonless sky, studded with a million diamond points, arched over Gardiner and Miss Vane as they drove home through the smoke-scented night air. A hundred points of fire glowed like great coals on the horizon, with here and there a brighter pyramid of flame marking a burning stack or some unfortunate settler's buildings. After the heat and excitement of the day everything was strangely cool, and quiet, and peaceful. The milch cows lay in their corrals, complacently chewing, and occasionally heaving great sighs of satisfaction; the horses, which had sniffed the smoke in terror during the day, had by this time concluded that it was all a part of the mysterious designs of their strange master, man, and settled themselves to enjoy a night free from the bane of flies and mosquitoes. A rainbow of light arose in the northern sky and deepened in colour until every fairy of auroraland seemed dancing in draperies of white and pink and yellowish green before the footlights of the Arctic circle to the music of the silence of immeasurable s.p.a.ce.

"It is wonderful, isn't it?" said Miss Vane, after a long silence.

"These great prairies-how majestic they are, how silent, how awe-inspiring. It is the first time I have seen them in anger-at war with the puny efforts of man. And even in their anger how beautiful they are! You prairie-dwellers have, I am told, two great elements of danger-the blizzard and the prairie fire?"

"Three," said Gardiner.

"Three? And what is the third?"

"Love."

For the moment she was taken off her guard. It was the one subject she did not care to discuss with Gardiner. But she answered, in a quiet impersonal voice,

"Love is not peculiar to the prairies."

"No, but the love of the prairies is peculiar. How can a soul, hemmed in by the works of man, seeing life in all the seaminess of man's-and woman's-depravity, and knowing that it is but one drop in the ocean of humanity, rise to the sublime heights experienced by the dweller on the prairie, where all the works of nature seem combined to elevate the individual? The greatest organisms come out of the cities, but the greatest individuals will always come out of the country. And love is individual."

"Inhale that 'prairie-fire smell in the gloaming,' Mr. Gardiner. Is it not exquisite?"

"Miss Vane-Myrtle-why do you close your eyes to that which must be obvious? You have seen to-day the ravages of material fire-do you imagine the fire of the heart burns less deeply, or that it abates with the pa.s.sing of time? Rather it grows from day to day and from month to month. The fact I declared to you that night-that memorable night of your unfortunate accident-seems a thousand times more a fact now than it was then. I realise the prize I ask, and I am astonished that I dare ask it, but what will one not do when life is at stake? And for me more than life is at stake; if you deny me this prize I ask no longer anything that life can give."