Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/278

 with a score of spreading fire-spots. He rolled on the ground to smother them, the bridle reins turned securely around his arm.

He staggered up, and on a little way, pausing to drag his hands over his face, in which there was a harsh feeling of incineration. His eyebrows and lashes were gone, the beard below his temples was only hard stumps; when he touched his hair it broke like glass and vanished. But he breathed again, he stood erect, and hope unfolded at his feet.

Here the side of the mountain was mangy and almost bare. Below him the burned patch of wild oats lay black; a weak line of fire was clambering up the slope, leaping on the wind from bush to bush, clump to clump. If he could pass the thicker fringe of bushes along the ridge before the fire had sprung that high, he could continue down without more risk. It was steep going, the horse, almost blinded by the last dash, stumbled insecurely after him. Whether Don Geronimo still lived, he did not know.

How viciously those unlikely shrubs blazed! What a torch sprung out of every drab grey sage! Juan met the line of fire where yucca stalks stood among stunted gray sage not much higher than his knees, sparse and sad and drouth-cursed, but more eager to burn, it seemed, for its very insignificance. The fire sprang from these sage-clumps into his face in vicious gusts, and the horse, unable to stand the charge, turned to lumber up the mountain.

Juan stopped the beast after a doubly perilous