mehow it pleased me. Then I started the pony toward Holston.

He was tired and I was ready to drop, and those last few miles were
long. We reached the outskirts of the town perhaps a couple of hours
before sundown. A bank of clouds had spread out of the west and
threatened rain.

The first person I met was Cless, and he put the pony in his corral and
hurried me round to the hotel. On the way he talked so fast and said so
much that I was bewildered before we got there. The office was full of
men, and Cless shouted to them. There was the sound of a chair scraping
hard on the floor, then I felt myself clasped by brawny arms. After
that all was rather hazy in my mind. I saw Dick and Jim and old Hiram,
though, I could not see them distinctly, and I heard them all talking,
all questioning at once. Then I was talking in a somewhat silly way, I
thought, and after that some one gave me a hot, nasty drink, and I felt
the cool sheets of a bed.

The next morning all was clear. Dick came to my room and tried to keep
me in bed, but I refused to stay. We went down to breakfast, and sat at
a table with Jim and Hiram. It seemed to me that I could not answer any
questions till I had asked a thousand.

What news had they for me? Buell had escaped, after firing the slash.
His sawmill and lumber-camp and fifty thousand acres of timber had been
burned. The fire had in some way been confined to the foot-hills. It had
rained all night, so the danger of spreading was now over. My letter had
brought the officers of the forest service; even the Chief, who had been
travelling west over the Santa Fe, had stopped off and was in Holston
then. There had been no arrests, nor would there be, unless Buell or
Stockton could be found. A new sawmill was to be built by the service.
Buell's lumbermen would have employment in the mill and as rangers in
the forest.

But I was more interested in matters which Dick seemed to wish to avoid.

"How did you get out of the burning forest?" I asked, for the second
time.

"We didn't get out. We went back to the pool where we sent you. The
pack-ponies were there, but you were gone. By George! I was mad,
and then I was just broken up. I was... afraid you'd been burned. We
weathered the fire all right, and then rode in to Holston. Now the
mystery is where were you?"

"Then you saved all the ponies?"

"Yes, and brought your outfit in. But, Ken, we--that was awful of us to
forget those poor fellows tied fast in th