Hazel ran to the stable. She
could get the horses out, perhaps, before the log walls became their
crematory. But Bill, coming in from his traps, reached the stable
first, and there was nothing for her to do but stand and watch with a
sickening self-reproach. He untied and clubbed the reluctant horses
outside. Already the stable end against the hay was shooting up
tongues of flame. As the blaze lapped swiftly over the roof and ate
into the walls, the horses struggled through the deep drift, lunging
desperately to gain a few yards, then turned to stand with ears pricked
up at the strange sight, shivering in the bitter northwest wind that
assailed their bare, unprotected bodies.
Bill himself drew back from the fire, and stared at it fixedly. He
kept silence until Hazel timidly put her hand on his arm.
"You watched that fire all right, didn't you?" he said then.
"Bill, Bill!" she cried. But he merely shrugged his shoulders, and
kept his gaze fixed on the burning stable.
To Hazel, shivering with the cold, even close as she was to the intense
heat, it seemed an incredibly short time till a glowing mound below the
snow level was all that remained; a black-edged pit that belched smoke
and sparks.
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