"I got the _Waterbug_," Barlow told her. "I'm goin' right straight
back."
Stella looked out over the smoky lake and back at the logger again, a
sudden resolution born of intolerable uncertainty, of a feeling that she
could only characterize as fear, sprang full-fledged into her mind.
"Wait for me," she said. "I'm going with you."
CHAPTER XXIV
"OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME"
The _Waterbug_ limped. Her engine misfired continuously, and Barlow
lacked the mechanical knowledge to remedy its ailment. He was satisfied
to let it pound away, so long as it would revolve at all. So the boat
moved slowly through that encompassing smoke at less than half speed.
Outwardly the once spick and span cruiser bore every mark of hard usage.
Her topsides were foul, her decks splintered by the tramping of calked
boots, grimy with soot and cinders. It seemed to Stella that everything
and every one on and about Roaring Lake bore some mark of that holocaust
raging in the timber, as if the fire were some malignant disease
menacing and marring all that it affected, and affecting all that
trafficked within its smoky radius.
But of the fire itself she could see nothing, even when late in the
afternoon they drew in to the bay before her brother's camp. A heavier
smoke cloud, more pungent of burning pitch, blanketed the shores, lifted
in blue, rolling masses farther back. A greater heat made the air
stifling, causing the eyes to smart and grow watery. That was the only
difference.
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