The Mexican found nothing to his displeasure in the work. The pay was good, and there had been a certain, savage rapture in aiding in the destruction of the forest and its people. But the work before him now promised best of all. It was just straight shooting and clean killing, and he had been well educated for such work as this. He had known the deserts, the hot battles of his own land; his eyes were true and his hand steady. Best of all, the interview with the girl afforded pleasing conjectures. José had not often operated among women. His eyes were lurid with a fire of different source from the red glamor that was over all the land.
It was eight o’clock, and the fire was only a little behind time. Fargo had estimated with really astonishing accuracy. Already the flames played on the ridges at each side, the tall trees caught, flashed, swayed and fell, and the fiery wall was slowly working down into the canyon’s depths. Once there, no passing could be made. He couldn’t wait much longer. Fargo would have to forego the detailed report of how Hugh lurched and fell from the saddle at the rifle report. José had to think of his own safety.
And at that instant he flattened in the trail. The butt-plate of his rifle nestled against his shoulder. Of course it might be just the footfall of the running elk, fleeing in terror before the fire, but this possibility died quickly. Before ever the rider came in sight, he recognized the sound as the hoofbeats of a racing horse. Thus he was to have his pleasure, after all.
No deer, quietly grazing toward the thicket where the puma lay crouched, no blind gopher, venturing forth from his burrow in the icy gaze of a rattler stretched still and lifeless in the moonlight, ever sped so straight and unsuspecting into an ambush as Alice, riding toward the shadowed mouth of the canyon. A little gleam of hope had returned to her, for she saw that the fire advanced but slowly from the ridge above the canyon, and that she could not only ride to safety but that there was some hope, at least, of Hugh driving his flocks through in time. True, a long ride still remained before her, but even the longest chance was worth praying for. And even as the prayers rose, sweet and appealing, from her lips, José saw her speeding horse through his rifle sights.
His finger was perfectly steady as he pressed back against the trigger. Except for one little telltale curl of his lips, his dark face was impassive. The rifle cracked, a little dart of flame that was scarcely distinguishable in the eerie and terrible glow of the fire spat from the muzzle and the horse shot forward with a strange effect of diving into the dead pine needles. There was no need to shoot twice. The noble heart of the animal was pierced through with the wicked lead. He had done his last service—willingly and well—and what need had he of a more eloquent epitaph?
Alice was fairly hurled through the air, and it seemed an incredible thing that human flesh should endure such a fall and yet retain life. She shot down into a heavy clump of brush a few feet in front of the head of the dead horse. No second rider followed. Fargo’s enemy had evidently stayed with his sheep. And for a moment José thought the rest of his own anticipated pleasure would be lacking too: the girl lay very still and curiously huddled in the dry brush.
José sped forward, but in a moment he saw that she was not seriously hurt. The thicket had broken the force of her fall, and although she was unconscious, deep scratches at her throat and arms were her only visible wounds. Once more a flood of dark conjectures returned to him. It would be pleasant, he thought, to have a short chat with her when she wakened—a grim, exciting little talk at the threshold of the flame. The meeting possessed all kinds of possibilities.
At that instant he saw the pistol that swung at her belt, and he remembered Fargo’s word to take no chances. He took hold of her shoulders: and he liked the touch of her warm flesh in his hands. Very softly he drew her to a young tree, letting her half-recline with her shoulders against its trunk. And at the first glance it would have seemed that he was only trying to make her comfortable. The real truth could only be determined when he drew her hands back around the slender trunk and tied them fast.
Hugh had not heard the shot that had killed the horse. The distance was not far and in the silent summer nights he would have heard the sharp sound with ease, but tonight the forest was full of the roar of the fire. And perhaps his senses had already lost some of their acuteness. It seemed to him that a curious stupor was stealing over him, a sadness and a despair that he could not fight off.
In the first place he was terribly fatigued. As the moments had passed, one by one with a dreadful slowness that only men in the peril of death may know, the chances for his escape seemed ever less. The fire steadily encroached upon him, the heat increased, the red glow over the wilderness brightened until the world no longer seemed that into
