Big Timber Part 35

"We'll go down to the camp," Fyfe suggested. "The cook will have something left. We're camping like pioneers down there. The shacks were all burned, and somebody sank the cookhouse scow."

They went down the path to the bay, hand in hand, feeling their way through that fire-blackened area, under a black sky.

A red eye glowed ahead of them, a fire on the beach around which men squatted on their haunches or lay stretched on their blankets, sooty-faced fire fighters, a weary group. The air was rank with smoke wafted from the burning woods.

The cook's fire was dead, and that worthy was humped on his bed-roll smoking a pipe. But he had cold meat and bread, and he brewed a pot of coffee on the big fire for them, and Stella ate the plain fare, sitting in the circle of tired loggers.

"Poor fellows, they look worn out," she said, when they were again traversing that black road to the bungalow.

"We've slept standing up for three weeks," Fyfe said simply. "They've done everything they could. And we're not through yet. A north wind might set Charlie's timber afire in a dozen places."

"Oh, for a rain," she sighed.

"If wis.h.i.+ng for rain brought it," he laughed, "we'd have had a second flood. We've got to keep pegging away till it does rain, that's all. We can't do much, but we have to keep doing it. You'll have to go back to the Springs to-morrow, I'm afraid, Stella. I'll have to stay on the firing line, literally."

"I don't want to," she cried rebelliously. "I want to stay up here with you. I'm not wax. I won't melt."

She continued that argument into the house, until Fyfe laughingly smothered her speech with kisses.

An oddly familiar sound murmuring in Stella's ear wakened her. At first she thought she must be dreaming. It was still inky dark, but the air that blew in at the open window was sweet and cool, filtered of that choking smoke. She lifted herself warily, looked out, reached a hand through the lifted sash. Wet drops spattered it. The sound she heard was the drip of eaves, the beat of rain on the charred timber, upon the dried gra.s.s of the lawn.

Beside her Fyfe was a dim bulk, sleeping the dead slumber of utter weariness. She hesitated a minute, then shook him.

"Listen, Jack," she said.

He lifted his head.

"Rain!" he whispered. "Good night, Mister Fire. Hooray!"

"I brought it," Stella murmured sleepily. "I wished it on Roaring Lake to-night."

Then she slipped her arm about his neck, and drew his face down to her breast with a tender fierceness, and closed her eyes with a contented sigh.

THE END