His question remained unfinished. At that instant Buck sprang from his seat and leant out of the window. The Padre was at his side in an instant.
"What----?"
"Holy Mackinaw! Look!" cried Buck, in an awed tone.
He was pointing with one arm outstretched in a direction where the ruined stockade had fallen, leaving a great gaping space. The opening was sharply silhouetted against a wide glow of red and yellow light, which, as they watched, seemed to grow brighter with each passing moment.
Each man was striving to grasp the full significance of what he beheld. It was fire. It needed no second thought to convince them of that. But where--what? It was away across the valley, beyond the further lip which rose in a long, low slope. It was to the left of Devil's Hill, but very little. For that, too, was dimly silhouetted, even at that distance.
The Padre was the first to speak.
"It's big. But it's not the camp," he said. "Maybe it's the--forest."
For a moment Buck made no answer. But a growing look of alarm was in his straining eyes.
"It's not a prairie fire," the Padre went on. "There's not enough grass that way. Say, d'you think----" A sudden fear had leapt into his eyes, too, and his question remained unfinished.
Buck stirred. He took a deep breach. The alarm in his eyes had suddenly possessed his whole being. Something seemed to be clutching his heart, so that he was almost stifled.
"It's none o' them things," he said, striving to keep his voice steady. Then of a sudden he reached out, and clutched the arm of his friend, so that his powerful fingers sank deep into its flesh.
"It's the--farm!" he cried, in a tone that rang with a terrible dread. "Come on! The hosses!" And he dashed from the room before the last sound of his voice had died out.
The Padre was hard on his heels. With danger abroad he was no laggard. Joan--poor little Joan! And there were miles to be covered before her lover could reach her.
But the dark shadows of disaster were crowding fast. Evil was abroad searching every corner of the mountain world for its prey. Almost in a moment the whole scene was changed, and the dull inertia of past days was swept aside amidst a hurricane of storm and demoniacal tempest.
A crash of appalling thunder greeted the ears of the speeding men. The earth seemed to shake to its very foundations. Ear-splitting detonations echoed from crag to crag, and down deep into the valleys and canyons, setting the world alive with a sudden chaos. Peal after peal roared over the hills, and the lightning played, hissing and shrieking upon ironstone crowns, like a blinding display of pyrotechnics.