“I say thanks, Miss Joyce, to your father and his daughter.”

“Which means you’ll be with us to-morrow.”

“I’ll be with you.”

But he was not.  Even as he made the promise a shadow darkened the doorsill and Bob Hart stepped into the office.

His first words were ominous, but before he spoke both of those looking at him knew he was the bearer of bad news.  There was in his boyish face an unwonted gravity.

“Fire in the chaparral, Dave, and going strong.”

Sanders spoke one word.  “Where?”

“Started in Bear Canon, but it’s jumped out into the hills.”

“The wind must be driving it down toward the Jackpot!”

“Yep.  Like a scared rabbit.  Crawford’s trying to hold the mouth of the canon.  He’s got a man’s job down there.  Can’t spare a soul to keep it from scootin’ over the hills.”

Dave rose.  “I’ll gather a bunch of men and ride right out.  On what side of the canon is the fire running?”

“East side.  Stop at the wells and get tools.  I got to rustle dynamite and men.  Be out soon as I can.”

They spoke quietly, quickly, decisively, as men of action do in a crisis.

Joyce guessed the situation was a desperate one.  “Is Dad in danger?” she asked.

Hart answered.  “No—­not now, anyhow.”

“What can I do to help?”

“We’ll have hundreds of men in the field probably, if this fire has a real start,” Dave told her.  “We’ll need food and coffee—­lots of it.  Organize the women.  Make meat sandwiches—­hundreds of them.  And send out to the Jackpot dozens of coffee-pots.  Your job is to keep the workers well fed.  Better send out bandages and salve, in case some get burnt.”

Her eyes were shining.  “I’ll see to all that.  Don’t worry, boys.  You fight this fire, and we women will ’tend to feeding you.”

Dave nodded and strode out of the room.  During the fierce and dreadful days that followed one memory more than once came to him in the fury of the battle.  It was a slim, straight girl looking at him, the call to service stamped on her brave, uplifted face.

Sanders was on the road inside of twenty minutes, a group of horsemen galloping at his heels.  At the Jackpot locations the fire-fighters equipped themselves with shovels, sacks, axes, and brush-hooks.  The party, still on horseback, rode up to the mouth of Bear Canon.  Through the smoke the sun was blood-red.  The air was heavy and heated.

From the fire line Crawford came to meet these new allies.  “We’re holdin’ her here.  It’s been nip an’ tuck.  Once I thought sure she’d break through, but we beat out the blaze.  I hadn’t time to go look, but I expect she’s just a-r’arin’ over the hills.  I’ve had some teams and scrapers taken up there, Dave.  It’s yore job.  Go to it.”

The old cattleman showed that he had been through a fight.  His eyes were red and inflamed, his face streaked with black, one arm of his shirt half torn from the shoulder.  But he wore the grim look of a man who has just begun to set himself for a struggle.