Gardiner looked at Miss Vane with an expression of alarm. He was more at home fighting a prairie fire than caring for a woman in hysteria.
Mrs. Delt seemed to read his question. “Oh, don’t be alarmed,” she said, as soon as she could control herself. “I was just thinking of the picture Miss Vane presented as she rode that tick across the field. You couldn’t see her to advantage, Mr. Gardiner. And my poor best tick at that!”
Then it was time for everybody to laugh, and when that was over and smoke clouds had cleared away and the sun looked out blood-red from the western sky, Mrs. Delt insisted first that Miss Vane share some dry clothing with her, and second that all remain for supper.
The uneasiness of the Grants was set at rest by telephone, which, despite many burnt poles, was fortunately still in service, and Gardiner, nothing loath, ’phoned his clerk that he would not be in until late.
The sun had set, and a moonless sky, studded with a million diamond points, arched over Gardiner and Miss Vane as they drove home through the smoke-scented night air. A hundred points of fire glowed like great coals on the horizon, with here and there a brighter pyramid of flame marking a burning stack or some unfortunate settler’s buildings. After the heat and excitement of the day everything was strangely cool, and quiet, and peaceful. The milch cows lay in their corrals, complacently chewing, and occasionally heaving great sighs of satisfaction; the horses, which had sniffed the smoke in terror during the day, had by this time concluded that it was all a part of the mysterious designs of their strange master, man, and settled themselves to enjoy a night free from the bane of flies and mosquitoes. A rainbow of light arose in the northern sky and deepened in colour until every fairy of auroraland seemed dancing in draperies of white and pink and yellowish green before the footlights of the Arctic circle to the music of the silence of immeasurable space.
“It is wonderful, isn’t it?” said Miss Vane, after a long silence. “These great prairies—how majestic they are, how silent, how awe-inspiring. It is the first time I have seen them in anger—at war with the puny efforts of man. And even in their anger how beautiful they are! You prairie-dwellers have, I am told, two great elements of danger—the blizzard and the prairie fire?”