“Why, you’ve been running!” she cried, in a surprised tone.  “Were you down there in it?  I thought you had to stay up on top.”  She had to raise her voice to make him hear her.

Her absolute ignorance of the danger exasperated him.  He took her by the arm and swung her up the trail.  “We’ve got to beat it!” he yelled in her ear.  “Can’t you see it’s coming this way?”

“It can’t come fast enough to catch us,” she answered impatiently.  “It’s away back there down the hill yet.  Wait!  I want to watch it for a minute.”

A bushy cedar tree ten feet away to their left suddenly burst into flame and burned viciously, each branch a sheet of fire.

“Well, what do you know about that?” cried Marion Rose.  “It jumped from away down there!”

“Come on!” Pulling her by the arm, Jack began running again up the hill, leaving the road where it swung to the east and taking a short cut through the open space in the brush.  “Run!” he urged, still pulling at her arm.  “We’ve—­got to—­swing around it—­”

She ran with him, a little of their peril forcing itself upon her consciousness and making her glance often over her shoulder.  And Jack kept pulling at her arm, helping her to keep her feet when she stumbled, which she did often, because she would not look where she was going.

“Don’t look—­run!” he urged, when another brand fell in a fir near them and set the whole tree ablaze.  The air around them was hot, like the breath of a furnace.

She did not answer him, but she let him lead her whither he would.  And they came breathless to the rocky outcropping through which the pack trail wormed its way farther down the hill.  There he let her stop, for he knew that they had passed around the upper edge of the fire, and were safe unless the wind changed.  He helped her upon a high, flat-topped boulder that overlooked the balsam thicket and manzanita slope, and together they faced the debauchery of the flames.

Even in the few minutes since Jack had stopped on that rocky knoll the fire had swept far.  It had crossed the Crystal Lake road and was now eating its way steadily up the timbered hillside beyond.  The manzanita slope where the girl had sat and signalled with her mirror was all charred and stripped bare of live growth, and the flames were licking up the edges beyond.

Jack touched her arm and pointed to the place.  “You said it couldn’t travel very fast,” he reminded her.  “Look down there where you sat fooling with the little mirror.”

Marion looked and turned white.  “Oh!” she cried.  “It wasn’t anywhere near when I started up the road.  Oh, do you suppose it has burned down as far as the cabin?  Because there’s Kate—­can’t we go and see?”

“We can’t, and when I left the lookout the fire was away up this side of Toll-Gate, and not spreading down that way.  Wind’s strong.  Come on—­I expect I better beat it back up there.  They might phone.”