Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/178

160 the other night, I figured you weren't alone, so I jumped out early to close down on the gang over on our side before you B Division fellows could beat us to it and turn the tables on us. Some of 'em must have beat me across, though, because this specimen, here, came tearing over the divide like something real was after him. I gathered him in—and then the fire came. All I could think of, then, were my wife and the babies down there alone. I thought of you, but I figured you'd be almost as far on your way as I was on mine—and I was cut off from the first. No one will ever know what a night I spent there on the rocks above the burned timber, waiting for the ashes to cool, and standing guard over my prisoner. Maybe you can get some idea, when I tell you that my brightest hope was that they had managed to reach the river. I knew the scow was too heavy for her to put into the water, and I knew she couldn't make it across the ford with the babies—even if she found it. But, drowning is a heap easier than burning—I hoped they would drown. As soon as it was light enough, we hit down through the ashes—and they weren't any too cool—nor the rocks, either." He extended a boot scorched and cracked to