ot it up.
Angus grabbed a coil of lash rope and a couple of lariats, and ran up
the ladder. Making the rope fast to the top rung and taking the coil
over his arm he crawled up the steep slope of the roof. As he put his
head over the ridge smoke stung his eyes and bit at his lungs. The pitch
was fairly bubbling from the old shakes on the southern exposure.

Behind him Gus staggered up the ladder with an armful of dripping horse
blankets which he had soaked in the ditch. Angus ripped off a bit of
loose lining and tied it over his nose and mouth. Then, taking the wet
blankets on one arm and a turn of rope around the other, he drew a full
breath of good air and went over the ridge into the smoke and flying red
cinders.

Down close to the eaves he saw a little, blue flame start and die, and
start again and live. He went down, his body at right angles to the
pitch of the roof against the pull of the rope, and spread a dripping
blanket on it. As he did so a big fluff of burning hay lit above him.
He extinguished that. Little, creeping lizards of fire began to glow,
and he beat them out and yelled for more blankets. The moisture was
being sucked from his body, his eyes stabbed with pain and his lungs
ached. Sparks clung to him and burned through to the skin, the heat of
the roof struck through the soles of his moccasins. The little, creeping
flames, starting everywhere, seemed personal enemies, and he beat upon
them with wet blankets, and stamped upon them and croaked curses at
them. Then Gus was beside him, a very welcome demon in his red garments,
working like a maniac and swearing strange oaths. Together they kept the
roof till the heat lessened, and the tongues and sheets of flame snapped
no more in their faces, and blackened and gray ashes instead of red
cinders powdered them, and where Angus' fine stack of bright hay had
been was a red and glowing heap.

They came down from the roof and drank deeply from the running ditch,
and the cold wind striking their overheated bodies through burnt and
insufficient clothing, cut to the bone.

In the house, changing his burnt garments for warm clothes, Angus for
the first time thought of his brother and looked into his room. The boy
slept. He had known nothing of the fire.

"By Yimminy, dat kid sleep like a mudsill," Gus commented. "Ay holler at
him when Ay go out, too."

"Let him sleep," Angus said. "Come on and get the horses into the stable
again."

He spoke quietly, but t