"You bet we gotter hurry!" gasped the man, as he crawled into the car and she banged to the door so that he would not fall out.

Into her own seat Hester sprang. The car was jarring with the throb of the engine. If it should balk now, what would become of them?

The frightened girl turned the switch carefully. The car rolled on. It moved faster and faster along the narrow road. The smoke was now so thick that she was running the car blindly. At any moment the wheels might hit a stump at the side of the road, for she could not be sure that she was keeping in the main-traveled path.

While they were in the cut she heard nothing from the man behind. But when the car shot up the hill out of the cut to the ridge-ground, and left the smoke behind, the man struggled up into the seat and leaned over to speak to her.

"You air a brave gal!" he gasped. "Woof! my lungs is burnt to a crisp--I swallered so much smoke. Ye jest erbout saved my life, Miss."

Hester made no reply. She was winking the tears out of her eyes, and the pressure in her own lungs hurt.

"But there air a lot of folks goin' to be caught similar over the ridge, if we can't warn 'em."

"What's that?" she demanded, quickly, but without looking around at him.

"My name's Billson. I live back in the bottoms yonder. I got an acre or two cleared around my cabin; but the bresh warn't burned up. It is now, by jinks!" added Mr. Billson, with a grim cackle.

"When the wind veered thar so suddent, it caught me. I had to run through a wall of fire at one place. Then I got acrost the crick and that saved me for a while. But the fire would have caught me again if it hadn't been for you. I am sure mighty much obleeged to ye."

"I--I'm glad I was there with the car," faltered Hester.

"And we've got to warn those other folks over the hill," cried the man, coughing. "Gee! I guess I'll never get this smoke out o' my lungs."

"But how can we get to those other farms?" gasped Hester.

"I'll show ye. There's a crossroad along here a spell. An automobile can git through it on a pinch. And there's two families live on that road, too."

"Do you s'pose they'll be in danger?" asked Hester, slowly.

"In course they are. Say! you ain't afraid, are you?" demanded the man. "I tell ye the fire is coming. It's going to sweep this whole ridge."

"Won't--won't they see it?"

"Did _I_ see it?" demanded the squatter. "Not soon enough, you bet.

Drive on, Miss. Surely you ain't goin' to show a yaller streak now?"

"But my--my chauffeur is waiting for me along the road here toward town."

"Let him wait. He's out of danger. There are plenty of open fields in that direction. _He_ won't get into no trouble. You drive through this side road like I tell you, and we'll get clear around by Sitz's farm ahead of the fire. But drive hard!"

Inspired by the man's excitement, Hester did as she was told. They came to the crossroad, which she remembered, and turned into it. There was little smoke here beyond the ridge. n.o.body would have suspected the raging pit of flame down there in the cut to the southeast.

Yet the flames were advancing on the wings of the wind. Hester had seen enough to a.s.sure her that the case was serious indeed. Once the fire topped the ridge the whole northern slope would be swept by a billow of flame!

The picture of these farmsteads burning and the people being unable to escape with their livestock and sundry possessions began to take form in Hester's mind. She speeded up the car and it rushed through the gathering twilight like a locomotive of a fast express.

At the first house they stopped for only a moment. Hester turned on the car lamps, for the shadows were gathering in the narrow places along the road now. The squatter did not have to urge the danger upon the farmers. A look at his condition told its own story. A forest fire is a terrible thing, and once it gets under way usual means of fire-fighting are of no avail.

On and on raced the motor car. Along the summit of the wooded ridge behind them the glow of the fire spread to a deep rose--then to a crimson--against the sky. It was an angry light and the smoke that billowed up from it began to canopy the heavens.

From certain heights Hester could see far down into the city of Centerport, with its countless twinkling lights. The forest fire must burn out long before it reached the edge of the city; but detached houses, here and there, were in peril--and many farmers got out their teams and ploughed fresh furrows around their stacks and buildings.

They rushed through Tentorville at a speed that made the dogs howl and the women run to the doors of their houses, leaving their suppers to burn. Beyond this straggling little settlement there were better farms. The village was not endangered by the flames, for there were open fields all around it.

At the next house the occupants had been warned by telephone; for news of the advancing fire had been wired from beyond the ridge, toward Keyport.

The better cla.s.s of farmers were supplied with 'phones, and they were warned; but the man who had been burned out of his own place was interested in the other poor people--the tenant farmer and squatter cla.s.s.

"Them fellers can't stand the expense of telephones," he told Hester.

"And they work moughty hard and will go to bed airly. If they haven't kalkerlated on the veering of the wind they won't know anything about it till the fire's upon 'em."

Thirty-seven of such farmers and settlers did the rushing auto visit.

Hester and her comrade must have startled some of these people dreadfully, for the auto dashed up to the little farmsteads with the noise of an express train, and the scorched man yelled his loudest to the inmates:

"Git up! Git up! The fire's comin'. It'll be over the ridge before midnight and this hull mountainside'll crackle in flames. Git out!"

Then, at the first word in reply from the aroused inmates, the girl and her companion rushed on in their car, and sometimes before the people in the house realized what had pa.s.sed, the car was out of sight.

For nearly two hours from the time Hester had helped the man into her car did she speed about the country. By that time both he, and the girl--and the gasoline--were about exhausted.

They pulled up at a country store where they sold gasoline, and Hester refilled her tank. There she telephoned home to her family, too.

Joseph had come in on another auto and Hester's father was about to send out a general alarm for his absent daughter.

"What in thunder are you doing, riding over the country alone?" her father demanded over the telephone.

"Now, don't you mind. I'm all right," said Hester, tartly. "I'm coming home now--by the way of the Sitz place and Robinson's Woods. We've done all we can to rouse up the farmers."

And she shut her angry father off before he could say more, and ran out to the car--to find her companion senseless in the bottom of the tonneau, and a local doctor bending over him.

CHAPTER XV

THE KEYPORT GAME

"These are bad burns," said the physician, looking up at the wide-eyed crowd. "And I believe he is hurt internally. Where did he come from?"

"This gal brought him in her car, Doc," said the storekeeper, who had forgotten trade for the moment.

"Who is he?" asked the physician, with his hand on the man's pulse, but looking curiously at Hester.

"I don't know--oh, yes! I remember! He said his name was Billson."

"Jeffers-pelters!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the storekeeper. "I'd never ha' knowed him. His whiskers is burned off, that's a fac'."

"Then you know all about him, Carey?" pursued the medical man.