The roosters announced the dawn before
she slept.
Late the next morning old Joe Cumberland knocked again at her door. He
was beginning to fear that this illness might be serious. Moreover, he
had a definite purpose in rousing her.
"Yes?" she called, after the second knock.
"Look out your window, honey, down to Morgan's place. You remember I
said I was goin' to clean up the landscape?"
The mention of Morgan's place cleared the sleep from Kate's mind and
it brought back the horror of the night before. Shivering she slipped
from her bed and went to the window. Morgan's place was a mass of
towering flames!
She grasped the window-sill and stared again. It could not be. It must
be merely another part of the nightmare, and no reality. Her father's
voice, high with exultation, came dimly to her ears, but what she saw
was Dan as he had laid there the night before, hurt, helpless, too
weak to move!
"There's the end of it," Joe Cumberland was saying complacently
outside her door. "There ain't goin' to be even a shadow of the saloon
left nor nothin' that's in it. I jest travelled down there this
mornin' and touched a match to it!"
Still she stared without moving, without making a sound.
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