“Why, Miss Vane! What are you doing here?”
“I might answer with the same question, Mr. Gardiner, if there were time to play with words. But I want to ride with you to poor Mrs. Delt’s. Come, let’s hurry.”
“Just where I was going,” said Gardiner. “I might have known I would find you wherever an errand of mercy called.”
“The crack of that whip would sound better than a compliment just now, Mr. Gardiner. There may not be a moment to lose.”
The young man answered by urging his horse to a run, and in a few moments they were at Mrs. Delt’s door.
“Oh, Mr. Gardiner and Miss Vane!” cried the farmer’s wife, as soon as she recognised her visitors. “What _shall_ I do? There are no horses here and nothing to work with. Whatever _can_ we do?”
But Gardiner had already taken in the situation.
“You are protected to the west by the summer-fallow,” he said, “so your only danger is from the south. There’s a strip of stubble a hundred yards wide there that the fire would lick up in a moment. We must throw a break across it in some way.”
“Oh, do hurry and think what is to be done,” cried Miss Vane. “You know all about prairie fires and I am quite useless. I keep looking all the time for the hose reel.”
Gardiner smiled, even as he turned over in his mind the expedients that might be adopted. The girl’s voice was music in his ears, and the sense of danger and emergency seemed to deepen the acquaintance between them, as a moment of crisis rises superior to a century of convention.
Gardiner’s eye fell on the full water trough beside the well.
“Oh, yes, there is plenty of rope in the stable,” Mrs. Delt answered, and all three at once ran in that direction. They found a coil of rope hanging on a harness pin. Gardiner seized the coil bodily, and the ladies, anxious to help, found an end apiece. As they ran the rope became entangled and dragged along the ground, and presently all three were precipitated in a knot which required some moments to untie.
“Now a bed tick. You have a bed tick, Mrs. Delt?”
“Such a question!” gasped Myrtle, as all three rushed away again, this time to the house. Following Mrs. Delt up the narrow stairway they found the good lady in the spare room, littering quilts and pillows to right and left.