Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/287

Rh would not seem so terrible and long. But she was helpless and alone, and all hope of aid was gone.

The way out of the fire trap was irremediably closed. True, there was a territory of large extent behind her not yet burned over, and she knew that if Hugh and his flock still lived they were in that space. In all directions raged the fire, and now the flames had stretched their terrible barrier clear across the little canyon in which she was a prisoner. Even if by some miracle her arms should be freed she could not escape. No human being could pass that flaming wall in front and yet live. Because she was in the deepest part of the canyon, its shadowed mouth where it met the broader canyon of Silver Creek, the fire had not yet burned down to her, but by no thousandth chance could this last little space of forest be spared. A few moments or many: the issue was unmistakable in the end. If the fire continued its present slow advance, perhaps the fevered cycle of her blood might be repeated many times; but at any instant a falling pine top from the flaming forest above might catch the tree against which she was bound and bring the end. There was only one thing left to pray for, now. There was still the fond wish that by some miracle the passing might come swiftly, that her soul might wing its way swift and free, not struggling from a pain-racked body, out of this dreadful land of glaring sky