“Here, let me talk,” commanded Marion suddenly, and took the receiver out of Jack’s hand.  “I’ll tell you where he was,” she called crisply to the accusing voice at the other end.  “I was down the hill, right in the track of the fire, and I couldn’t get back to the cabin at all, and—­ah—­this gentleman saw me through the telescope and ran down there and got me out of it.  And right where I had been sitting on a rock, the fire has burned just everything!  And I wish you would get word somehow to Miss Kate Humphrey, at Toll-Gate cabin, that Marion Rose is all right and will be home just as soon as she can get down there without burning her shoes.  And—­oh, will you please tell her that I took the bread out of the oven before I left, and that it’s under the box the cream came in?  I put it there to keep the bluejays away from it till she woke up, and she may not know where to look....  Yes, thank you, I think that will be all....  But listen!  This man up here saved my life, though of course it is a pity he was not here to answer the phone, every minute of the day.  What I want to say is that it was my fault, and I hope you’ll please excuse me for having a life that needed to be saved just when you called!  I wouldn’t for the world....  Oh, don’t mention it!  I just didn’t want you to blame him, is all.  Good-by.”

She turned to Jack with a little frown.  “People seem to think, just because you work for a living, that your whole mission in life is to take orders on the jump.  It was that way at the Martha Washington, and every other place I ever worked.  That man down there seems to think that your life begins and ends right here in this little glass box.  What made you apologize for keeping a telephone call waiting while you went out and saved a perfectly good life?  Men are the queerest things!”

She went out and climbed upon the rock where Jack had lain watching her, and set herself down as comfortably as possible, and stared at the fire while Jack located on the chart the present extent of the blazing area, and sent in his report.  When he had finished he did not go out to her immediately.  He stood staring down the hill with his eyebrows pinched together.  Now and then he lifted his hand unconsciously and pushed his heavy thatch of hair straight back from his forehead, where it began at once to lie wavy as of old.  He was feeling again the personal sense of tragedy and loss in that fire; cursing again his helplessness to check it or turn it aside from that beautiful stretch of timber over toward Genessee.

Now the shadows had crept down the slope again to where the fire glow beat them back while it crisped the balsam thicket.  Behind him the sun, sinking low over the crest of a far-off ridge, sent flaming banners across the smoke cloud.  The sky above was all curdled with gold and crimson, while the smoke cloud below was a turgid black shot through with sparks and tongues of flame.

Where were the fire-fighters, that they did not check the mad race of flames before they crossed that canyon?  It seemed to Jack that never had a fire burned with so headlong a rush.  Then his eyes went to the blackened manzanita slope where Marion had been idling, and he shivered at what might have happened down there.  To comfort himself with the sight of her safe and serene, he turned and went out, meaning to go up where she was.