“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Smoke agreed. “We’ll need wet sacks to control the flames of the back-fire, to keep them going in the right direction.”
With improvised torches, Clay and the others crossed a shallow coulee and began setting fire to the tangled, brown mat which covered the ground just on the other side.
The men were setting the fires while Sally and Rebecca followed slowly behind them carrying wet sacks, making certain that the flames did not blow back across the ditch. When an errant blaze did attempt to come back, the women would beat it out while it was still small.
They were working under the most difficult of conditions, attempting to set a back-fire with no freshly plowed break of dirt, but only a shallow little dry ditch between the herd and the fire. And even the ditch had dry, tinder-like grass growing so high that it almost met over its top in places. This was anything but an ideal situation, but they had no choice but to try it.
They had barely gotten the back-fire started when a jagged line of fire with an upper wall of tumbling, brown smoke leaped into view at the top of the bluff.
“Smoke!” Sally called pointing to the fire.
“It’s closer than I thought it was,” Smoke said.
“We’ve got one thing in our favor,” Falcon said. “There is less grass on the hillside than there is down here.”
“Aye,” Duff said. “And on some places there is nae grass at all.” He pointed to a few patches of gray dirt, absolutely bare of vegetation.
When the fire reached those places it would not be able to leap over, but would have to move around. They had one more advantage. The fire was burning noticeably slower coming down a hill than it did while it was on level ground. But even that advantage was somewhat offset by the fact that there were a few long, narrow ditches that ran to the top of the bluff, and they were filled with dry brush. Those long seams would act as flues, drawing the fire down them as easily as flame following a wick.
Because Rebecca was driving a wagon instead of riding a horse, she had been alternating her apparel, wearing pants one day and a dress the next. As luck would have it, she had chosen this day to wear a dress, a choice that turned out to be unfortunate for her.
Maria was keeping the sacks wet, so that not only Rebecca and Sally, but Tom and Dalton also were carrying wet sacks with them. That helped as they beat out the errant little tongues of flame which managed to escape the back-fire line and retreat down one of the seams, or jump across the break to take up new residence.
Rebecca, in turning to extinguish a new outbreak of flames behind her, inadvertently swept her skirt across a clump of burning grass and set it aflame. Because she was intent upon her work, running from one outbreak of flame to another, and with the smoke and smell of fire all about her, she was totally unaware of what had happened.
Tom saw it, and moving quickly, wrapped a wet sack around her. Startled, and still unaware of the flaming skirt, Rebecca called out in shock.
“Tom! What are you doing?”
“Your dress was on fire,” Tom said.
Rebecca looked down to inspect the damage done to her dress. When she raised up again, her face was pale.
“Oh, Tom, I ...”
Tom saw that she was about to faint and he moved toward her quickly, catching her before she fell. She leaned into him, and as he held her, he could feel her heart beating rapidly. He remembered once having picked up a bird with a wounded wing. The little bird’s heart was beating rapidly, and it looked at him with eyes full of fear. He had felt nothing but compassion for that bird, and wished with all his heart he could comfort it, let it know that it had nothing to fear from him.
He felt that way now about Rebecca, holding her to him, wishing that he could turn time back a few months and start over with her. He knelt down, bringing her down with him, lying her down on the ground, with her face up. He then positioned her across his lap so that her heart was above her head, and her feet above her heart. After that, he tilted her head to one side to reduce the risk of her swallowing her own tongue.
“Yeah! Oh yeah!” Dusty shouted.
Tom looked to see what Dusty was shouting about, and saw that the back-fire was now well on the way to meeting the approaching fires, leaving behind it a long, very wide strip of black from the charred grass. As the fires met, there would no longer be fuel to sustain them, and they would quickly burn out. The herd was no longer in danger.
“Oh!” Rebecca said, coming to. She looked up at him, suddenly realizing that she was lying, for the most part, on his lap.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, what happened?”
“You fainted,” Tom said.
“I must get up.” She struggled to do so, but Tom restrained her. He restrained her gently, but he did restrain her.
“Get up slowly,” he said. “Other wise you could pass out again.”
She stopped struggling, then he got up, reached down, and helped her up.
A little unsteady on her feet, she fell into him again, and he held her tightly for a long moment.
“Are you all right?” Tom asked after a moment.
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” Rebecca said. “You saved my life, didn’t you?”
Tom smiled at her. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “But I might have kept you from getting a painful burn.”
Rebecca put her arms around his neck to steady herself. As she did so, their lips came in close proximity as they had before when he set her down from the horse. That time, the unexpected flushing of a quail stopped them. Nothing stopped them this time, and he pulled her to him, crushing his lips against hers.
Rebecca was pleasantly surprised by the kiss, and she reacted to it with a heat that thrilled her to her soul. The kiss went on, much longer than she would have thought, until, finally, it was Tom who broke off the kiss.
Rebecca felt as limp as a rag doll, and she looked at him with her senses reeling.
“I’m sorry,” Tom said, self-consciously. “I had no right to do that.”
“Oh, Tom,” Rebecca said. “You have every right. Don’t you know that?”
“We should get back to the camp.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The day after the fire, as they were having their breakfast they were surprised to look up and see an Indian, his face lined with age and wizened with experience. The Indian was standing less than ten feet away.
Clay smiled. “Ashki,” he said. “I see that you are still able to walk like a bird.”
“You did not hear?” Ashki asked.
“I did not.”
“You did not see me?”
“I did not.”
Ashki smiled. “I am old,” he said. “But still I can walk like a warrior.”
“Would you like breakfast?” Sally asked.
Ashki made a motion of drinking. “Coffee,” he said.
Sally poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “Won’t you try a biscuit?”
“Biscuit has no taste,” Ashki said.
“Sally, offer him a sinker,” Smoke said.
Sally gave the Indian a doughnut. He held it to his nose, sniffed, held it out and looked at it for a long moment before he took a tentative taste. At the first taste a huge smile spread across his face, and he nodded.
