fire. And you can't
cross that burning strip now--not on a bet, you couldn't. And if you
could," he added determinedly, "I wouldn't let you try it. Come
on--we'll go up and do that little thing, telephone to the office and
have them look after Kate."

Marion, to his great relief, yielded to the point of facing up hill
with him and taking a step or two. "But you don't know Kate," she
demurred, turning her face again toward the welter of burning timber.
"She'll be worried to death about me, and it would be just like her to
start right out to hunt me up. I've simply got to get back and let her
know I'm all right."

Jack threw back his head and laughed aloud--think how long it had been
since he really had laughed! "What's the matter with phoning that
you're all right? I guess the wire will stand that extra sentence,
maybe--and you can phone in yourself, if you want to convince them
ab-so-lutely. What?"

"Well, who'd ever have thought that I might phone a message to Kate!
Down there in that hole of a place where we live, one can scarcely
believe that there are telephones in the world. Let's hurry, then.
Kate will be perfectly wild till she hears that I am safe. And then--"
she quirked her lips in a little smile, "she'll be wilder still
because I'm not there where she supposed I'd be when she waked up."

Jack replied with something slangy and youthful and altogether like
the old Jack Corey, and led her up the steep trail to the peak. They
took their time, now that they were beyond the fire zone. They turned
often to watch the flames while they got their breath; and every time
Marion stopped, she observed tritely that it was a shame such
beautiful timber must burn, and invariably added, "But isn't it
beautiful?" And to both observations Jack would agree without any
scorn of the triteness. Whereas he would have been furious had a mere
tourist exclaimed about the beauty of a forest fire, which to him had
always seemed a terrible thing.

They found the telephone ringing like mad, and Jack turned red around
the ears and stuttered a good deal before he was through answering the
questions of the supervisor, and explaining why he had not answered
the phone in the last hour.

"Here, let me talk," commanded Marion suddenly, and took the receiver
out of Jack's hand. "I'll tell you where he was," she called crisply
to the accusing voice at the other end. "I was down the hill, right in
the track of the fire, and I couldn't get bac