"I raced Stapleton for it. Loose your hold, confound you. It's mine,"

he said.

Dane turned and laughed at him as he signed to one of the Ontario hired men to take the near horse's head.

"You're a plucky lad, and you've done what you could," he said.

"Still, if you get in the way of a grown man now, I'll break your head for you."

He was off in another moment, crossed Winston, who had found fresh beasts, in his furrow, and had turned and doubled it before the fire that had pa.s.sed the other barrier came close upon them. Once more the smoke grew blinding, and one of Dane's beasts went down.

"I'm out of action now," he said. "Try back. That team will never face it, Courthorne."

Winston's face showed very grim under the tossing flame. "They've got to. I'm going through," he said. "If the others are to stop it behind there, they must have time."

Then he and the husband of the woman who had spoken to Maud Barrington pa.s.sed on with the frantic team into the smoke that was streaked with flame.

"Good Lord!" said Dane, and added more as sitting on the horse's head he turned his tingling face from the fire.

It was some minutes before he and the hired man who came up loosed the fallen horse, and led it and its fellow back towards the last defenses the rest had been raising, while the first furrows checked but did not stay the conflagration. There he presently came upon the man who had been with Winston.

"I don't know where Courthorne is," he said. "The beasts bolted with us just after we'd gone through the worst of it, and I fancy they took the plow along. Any way, I didn't see what became of them, and don't fancy anybody would have worried much about them after being trampled on by a horse in the lumbar region."

Dane saw that the man was limping and white in face, and asked no more questions. It was evident to him that Courthorne would be where he was most needed, and he did what he could with those who were adding furrow to furrow across the path of the fire. It rolled up to them roaring, stopped, flung a shower of burning filaments before it, sank and swept aloft again, while the sparks rained down upon the gra.s.s before the draught it made.

Blackened men with smoldering clothes were, however, ready, and they fought each incipient blaze with soaked grain bags, and shovels, some of them also, careless of blistered arms, with their own wet jackets.

As fast as each fire was trampled out another sprang into life, but the parent blaze that fed them sank and died, and at last there was a hoa.r.s.e cheer. They had won, and the fire they had beaten pa.s.sed on divided across the prairie, leaving the homestead unscathed between.

Then they turned to look for their leader, and did not find him until a lad came up to Dane.

"Courthorne's back by the second furrows, and I fancy he's badly hurt,"

he said. "He didn't appear to know me, and his head seems all kicked in."

It was not apparent how the news went round, but in a few more minutes Dane was kneeling beside a limp, blackened object stretched amid the gra.s.s, and while his comrades cl.u.s.tered behind her, Maud Barrington bent over him. Her voice was breathless as she asked, "You don't believe him dead?"

Somebody had brought a lantern, and Dane felt inclined to gasp when he saw the girl's white face, but what she felt was not his business then.

"He's of a kind that is very hard to kill. Hold that lantern so I can see him," he said.

The rest waited silent, glad that there was somebody to take a lead, and in a few moments Dane looked round again.

"Ride in to the settlement, Stapleton, and bring that Doctor fellow out if you bring him by the neck. Stop just a moment. You don't know where you're to bring him to."

"Here, of course," said the lad, breaking into a run.

"Wait," and Dane's voice stopped him. "Now, I don't fancy that would do. It seems to me that this is a case in which a woman to look after him would be necessary."

Then, before any of the married men or their wives who had followed them could make an offer, Maud Barrington touched his shoulder.

"He is coming to the Grange," she said.

Dane nodded, signed to Stapleton, then spoke quickly to the men about him and turned to Maud Barrington.

"Ride on at a gallop and get everything ready. I'll see he comes to no harm," he said.

The girl felt curiously grateful as she rode out with her companion, and Dane, who laid Winston carefully in a wagon, drew two of the other men aside when it rolled away towards the Grange.

"There is something to be looked into. Did you notice anything unusual about the affair?" he said.

"Since you asked me, I did," said one of the men. "I, however, scarcely cared to mention it until I had time for reflection, but while I fancy the regulation guards would have checked the fire on the boundaries without our help, I don't quite see how one started in the hollow inside them."

"Exactly," said Dane, very dryly. "Well, we have got to discover it, and the more quickly we do it the better. I fancy, however, that the question who started it is what we have to consider."

The men looked at one another, and the third of them nodded.

"I fancy it comes to that--though it is horribly unpleasant to admit it," he said.

CHAPTER XVII

MAUD BARRINGTON IS MERCILESS

Dane overtook the wagon close by the birch bluff at Silverdale Grange. It was late then, but there were lights in the windows that blinked beyond the trees, and, when the wagon stopped, Barrington stood in the entrance with one or two of his hired men. Accidents are not infrequent on the prairie, where surgical a.s.sistance is not always available, and there was a shutter ready on the ground beside him, for the Colonel had seen the field hospital in operation.

"Unhook the tailboard," he said sharply. "Two of you pick up the shutter. Four more here. Now, arms about his shoulders, hips, and knees. Lift and lower--step off with right foot, leading bearer, with your left in the rear!"

It was done in a few moments, and when the bearers pa.s.sed into the big hall that rang with their shuffling steps, Maud Barrington shivered as she waited with her aunt in an inner room. That trampling was horribly suggestive, and she had seen but little of sickness and grievous wounds. Still, the fact scarcely accounted for the painful throbbing of her heart, and the dizziness that came upon her. Then the bearers came in, panting, with Barrington and Dane behind them, and the girl was grateful to her aunt, who laid a hand upon her arm when she saw the singed head, and blackened face that was smeared with a ruddier tint, upon the shutter.

"Lower!" said Colonel Barrington. "Lift, as I told you," and the huddled object was laid upon the bed. Then there was silence until the impa.s.sive voice rose again.

"We shall not want you, Maud. Dane, you and I will get these burnt things off him."

The girl went out, and while she stood, feeling curiously chilly in an adjoining room, Barrington bent over his patient.

"Well put together!" he said thoughtfully. "Most of his people were lighter in the frame. Well, we can only oil the burns, and get a cold compress about his head. All intact, so far as I can see, and I fancy he'd pull through a good deal more than has happened to him. I am obliged for your a.s.sistance, but I need not keep you."

The men withdrew, and when a rattle of wheels rose from the prairie, Maud Barrington waylaid her uncle in the hall. Her fingers were trembling, and, though her voice was steady, the man glanced at her curiously as she asked, "How is he?"

"One can scarcely form an opinion yet," he said slowly. "He is burned here and there, and his head is badly cut, but it is the concussion that troubles me. A frantic horse kicks tolerably hard you know, but I shall be able to tell you more when the doctor comes to-morrow. In the meanwhile you had better rest, though you could look in and see if your aunt wants anything in an hour or two."

Maud Barrington pa.s.sed an hour in horrible impatience, and then stole quietly into the sick-room. The windows were open wide, and the shaded lamp burned unsteadily as the cool night breeze flowed in.

Its dim light just touched the man who lay motionless with a bandage round his head, and the drawn pallor of his face once more sent a shiver through the girl. Then Miss Barrington rose and lifted a warning hand.

"Quite unconscious still," she said softly. "I fancy he was knocked down by one of the horses and trampled on, but your uncle has hopes of him. He has evidently led a healthy life."

The girl was a little less serene than usual then, and drew back into the shadow.

"Yes," she said. "We did not think so once."