But he saw no one as he trailed across the open.  In soft patches of the earth he found footprints deeply made and wide apart, the footprints of hurrying men, telling him Black Roger and the Broken Man were both ahead of him, and that Black Roger was running when he crossed the clearing.

The footprints led him to a still more indistinct trail in the farther forest, a trail which went straight into the face of the fire ahead.  He followed it.  The distant murmur had grown into a low moaning over the tree-tops, and with it the wind was coming stronger, and the smoke thicker.  For a mile he continued along the path, and then he stopped, knowing he had come to the dead-line.  Over him was a swirling chaos.  The fire-wind had grown into a roar before which the tree-tops bent as if struck by a gale, and in the air he breathed he could feel a swiftly growing heat.  For a space he stood there, breathing quickly in the face of a mighty peril.  Where had Black Roger and the Broken Man gone?  What mad impulse could it be that dragged them still farther into the path of death?  Or had they struck aside from the trail?  Was he alone in danger?

As if in answer to the questions there came from far ahead of him a loud cry.  It was Black Roger’s voice, and as he listened, it called over and over again the Broken Man’s name,

“Andre—­Andre—­Andre—­”

Something in the cry held Carrigan.  There was a note of terror in it, a wild entreaty that was almost drowned in the trembling wind and the moaning that was in the air.  David was ready to turn back.  He had already approached too near to the red line of death, yet that cry of Black Roger urged him on like the lash of a whip.  He plunged ahead into the chaos of smoke, no longer able to distinguish a trail under his feet.  Twice again in as many minutes he heard Black Roger’s voice, and ran straight toward it.  The blood of the hunter rushed over all other things in his veins.  The man he wanted was ahead of him and the moment had passed when danger or fear of death could drive him back.  Where Black Roger lived, he could live, and he gripped his club and ran through the low brush that whipped in stinging lashes against his face and hands.

He came to the foot of a ridge, and from the top of this he knew Black Roger had called.  It was a huge hog’s-back, rising a hundred feet up out of the forest, and when he reached the top of it, he was panting for breath.  It was as if he had come suddenly within the blast of a hot furnace.  North and east the forest lay under him, and only the smoke obstructed his vision.  But through this smoke he could make out a thing that made him rub his eyes in a fierce desire to see more clearly.  A mile away, perhaps two, the conflagration seemed to be splitting itself against the tip of a mighty wedge.  He could hear the roar of it to the right of him and to the left, but dead ahead there was only a moaning whirlpool of fire-heated wind and smoke.  And out of this, as he looked, came again the cry,