Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/292

284 progress down the glades, leaping with indescribable ferocity through the green branches of the ancient trees, slashing through a brush wall and crossing in one pounce the streams and the trails. This last hour was one of weird and terrible beauty, at least. The three of them stood beside the silent flocks, quietly waiting for their fate.

There was no use in trying to drive the sheep. There was no place for them to go. True, to the right and left of the flock the flame-wall was slightly more distant than to the front and rear, but it was as impassable one place as another. Besides, the sheep themselves refused to be driven. They too were quietly waiting for the end.

"One more hour," Hugh whispered. His arms went about her, silently and strongly, as if to shelter her. "It can't be over an hour more. And then we go—some place—together."

The girl shivered in his arms. "I wish it would come soon. It hurts—to breathe."

It was so. The heated air tortured the lungs. There was none of the cool delight that usually precedes the hour of dawn in the mountain realms. Above them the pines stood in their dark watch: silent, somber, noble sentries of the wilderness. But for all their venerable years and their great strength, they could not stand against the enemy that menaced them now. The red tongues would sweep through them, they would