“Logs are as different as fingerprints. Pine logs are lighter than
spruce, for example, and roll much faster. Cedar logs ride higher in the
water. Thin bark is a different proposition than thick spongy bark—” He
broke off as the two birlers both sent the log spinning madly in the
water. “Here now, watch old Charley go to town.”
Faster and faster the log spun; then with a display of skill that set
Jonas to clapping his hands, Charley braked the spin and sent the log
twirling in the opposite direction before poor Pete could shift his
feet. He flipped over backward into the pond with a loud splash.
The boys joined in the round of applause for Charley, as Pete surfaced
and good-naturedly shoved the log in to shore, so the winner wouldn’t
get his feet wet.
“I’m out of practice,” Pete puffed, as he waded in, dripping wet.
“No excuses,” Jonas laughed. “Anyway, that saves you taking a bath
tonight.”
He turned to Jerry. “Still think it’s easy, young fellow?”
“Well-l-l,” Jerry drawled, “I think with a little practice I could do
it.”
“No time like the present,” Jonas declared. “How about it, Sandy? You
game to take your pal on?”
Sandy grinned. “Sure thing. I don’t care if I do fall in. It’s so darned
hot.”
Jonas brought the log in closer to the bank and braced it with his pole.
“Okay, boys, climb aboard.”
Sandy bowed with a flourish to the dark-haired boy. “After you, my dear
Alphonse.”
Stepping out on the log as cautiously as a tightrope walker on the high
wire, Jerry planted his feet firmly, crouching very low.
“Why don’t you sit down and straddle it,” Quiz heckled him.
“No remarks from the gallery,” Jerry grunted. “I’m just getting the feel
of it.”
Sandy took his place a trifle more confidently, and Jonas shoved the log
into the middle of the pond. Jerry tottered and flailed his arms wildly
in the air as the log started to roll beneath him.
“Hey, cut that out! We didn’t get the signal to start yet,” he protested
to Sandy.
“I’m not doing a thing.” Sandy was concentrating on keeping his feet
moving rhythmically with the motion of the log. In spite of his efforts
to slow it down, it kept picking up momentum, largely because of Jerry’s
frenzied footwork.
On shore, Quiz, Russ Steele and the loggers were doubled up with
laughter. Jonas gasped, “He looks like a clown I saw at a circus running
on a treadmill with a dog hanging onto the seat of his pants.”
The thought was too much for Sandy. Choking hysterically, he went
headfirst into the pond. But still Jerry’s mad marathon went on. “How do
you stop this thing?” he shouted.
“Just turn off your ignition,” Charley joked.
The tears were rolling down Pete’s face. “I ain’t seen a birler like
that boy in all my days. He’d be a sensation at the fall festival.”
“No use,” Jerry screamed desperately. “I’m going to bail out before it’s
too late.” Holding his nose he ran off the end of the log into thin air.
His legs were still driving like pistons as the water closed over him.
When the boys waded ashore, Jerry grinned sheepishly at the loggers. “I
was doing great till my accelerator got stuck.”
Jonas patted him on the back. “You’re all right, Jerry. Best show I’ve
seen all year.”
Walking up the hill, Jonas asked Russ, “How long will you be with us?”
“Oh, I guess we’ll be heading back to Red Lake tomorrow morning.”
“Better follow the river south as far as you can,” Jonas cautioned him.
“It wouldn’t do to get caught in the deep woods if a fire gets started.”
By this time the sun had sunk below the trees, and the loggers were
boarding the trucks for the ride back to camp. Russ and Quiz rode back
with Jonas in the cab of the lead truck, while Sandy and Jerry piled in
the one behind it.
“Do you fellows live in the woods all year?” Sandy asked the driver.
“Most of us single men do,” the driver told him. “It saves board money
living in the company barracks and eating three squares in the mess
hall. A few of the married boys live in town. We got a couple of little
towns within a comfortable distance. Some weekends we go in and stay at
a rooming house.”
“Don’t you ever get to the big city?” Jerry asked wonderingly.
“Maybe once a year, we go to Duluth.” He began to laugh uproariously.
“It usually takes us another year to get over a spree like that.”
Back at camp, Russ Steele spoke earnestly with Jonas Driscoll off to one
side. Then he went into the office alone and closed the door behind him.
The foreman walked over to where the boys were throwing sticks for the
two dogs to fetch and told Sandy that his uncle was making an important
phone call.
“He’ll be a while,” he said. “Why don’t you boys come down to my shack
and wash up before supper?”
Sandy looked meaningfully at Jerry and Quiz. “You guys go ahead with
Jonas. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
As soon as they were out of sight, Sandy went over and sat down on the
steps of the office. Prince and Bruce camped at his feet, wagging their
tails and pleading with their eyes for more play. Finally Sandy gave in
and lobbed a few more sticks for them. After about ten minutes, Russ
Steele came out of the office. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts
that he almost stumbled over his nephew.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t see you.”
Sandy nodded sympathetically. “Still no news?”
“Not a trace. It begins to look more and more as if they ditched the
bomb over this area. Search teams are working in toward us methodically
from both Lake Superior and Manitoba where the plane crashed. We’ll just
have to do what we can until reinforcements arrive.”
To the west heat lightning lit up the sky like a monster flash bulb.
Sandy shivered as they walked slowly in the direction of the foreman’s
cottage. The air seemed to be buzzing with electricity.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fire!
After breakfast the next morning, Russ Steele and the boys said goodbye
to Jonas Driscoll and started back in the direction of Red Lake. Once
again they fanned out at 1500-foot intervals, as soon as they were out
of sight of the logging camp.
“It seems like such a waste of time,” Jerry complained. “We’re never
going to find that bomb, just four guys in a big woods like this.”
“Most likely we won’t,” Russ admitted. “Our team is only a small cog in
the vast search machinery, but the ultimate success of the operation
depends on how well each small team does its job. The military doesn’t
expect us to march straight to where the bomb is and say, ‘Here it is,
fellows!’ What they do expect is for us to be able to say with certainty
where the bomb is _not_ lying. Gradually, by a process of elimination,
they’ll be able to pinpoint its exact location.”
The trek south was just as unrewarding as the trek north. They covered
twenty-five miles by dusk, when they made camp and cooked a simple
supper of beans and bacon. The boys were so weary that they sacked in
before it was completely dark. Russ Steele sat outside awhile smoking
his pipe and watching the moon climb into the cloudless heavens.
In the early afternoon of the following day, they arrived back at the
ranger station. Dick Fellows signaled them with a flashing mirror from
the tower when they were still a half mile away. By the time they
arrived, he had a pitcher of iced tea frosting on the table.
“No luck,” he said flatly, as soon as he saw their faces.
Russ shook his head. “How about yourself? Still no rain in sight?”
The ranger sighed. “Just got the forecast before you got here. Fair and
hot for the rest of the week. I’ve been on twenty-four-hour duty for the
past two days. Headquarters has declared a state of emergency.”
“Why don’t you grab a couple of hours’ sleep?” Sandy suggested. “We’ll
keep a careful watch for you.”
“Thanks,” Dick said, “maybe I will. I’ve been sleeping with one eye open
these nights, and one ear on the alarm clock. How long are you fellows
going to stay around?”
“Until tomorrow morning,” Russ told him.
“We’ll cover the ground between here and Red Lake next trip.”
It was 2:30 P.M. Dick Fellows had been asleep for about an hour. Quiz
and Jerry had left to take a bath in a nearby stream. Russ Steele was
relaxing in the big easy chair with his pipe and a book from the
ranger’s library. Sandy was on watch. Standing at the north window, he
swept the horizon from east to west with a pair of binoculars.
Three-quarters of the way across, he stopped and trained them down on a
tall trunk that stood out bleak and spare against the thick foliage of
the other trees. With a frown, he dropped the glasses and blinked his
eyes, squinting through the distant haze.
“Uncle Russ,” he said steadily, “it’s probably an illusion, but I think
I see smoke.”
Russ Steele rose quickly, dumping the book off his lap onto the floor.
“Where?” he asked tensely, coming to the window.
Sandy passed the binoculars to him. “That big snag due north-northwest.”
While his uncle was studying the location, Sandy went back to the table
and picked up a pair of sunglasses specially treated to penetrate haze.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Russ said tightly. “It could be heat waves shimmering
through the ground haze.” He turned to look at the sleeping figure of
the ranger on the bunk. “In any case, I think it rates the attention of
an expert. Better wake Dick.”
Dick Fellows sat up promptly the instant Sandy’s hand touched his
shoulder. “Trouble?” he asked grimly. He was at the window focusing the
binoculars before Sandy had finished explaining. After a brief look, he
put down the binoculars and studied the trouble spot through the haze
glasses.
Then he announced matter-of-factly: “Smoke, all right. Well, we’ve got
ourselves a fire.”
His voice sounded almost relieved. The waiting and the anxiety were over
now, at least. The enemy was out in the open—something tangible you
could see and fight.
Immediately, the ranger made a compass reading. Then he took a fix on
the smoking tree with an Osborne fire finder, an instrument roughly
resembling a sextant.
“The fire finder measures both horizontal and vertical angles,” he
explained to Sandy. “If we know the height of the fire tower and the
angle of the fire with respect to the top of the tower, it’s a
relatively easy matter to locate the site on a good topographical map.”
“What’s a topographical map?” Sandy asked.
“A map that charts the surface features of the terrain,” Dick said. He
went back to the table and made some rapid calculations on a pad,
stopping occasionally to measure off distances and angles on the big map
spread out before him. At last he stuck a red pin at an X that marked
the intersection of two lines. “That’s where she is,” he said with
finality. “Now I’ll radio the news in to headquarters. They’ll try and
get a sighting from another tower and double-check my fix on the fire.”
“What do we do in the meantime?” Russ Steele asked anxiously. Sandy
could see that, underneath the heavy tan, his uncle was pale. He had a
flitting mental image of the missing A-bomb lying in some desolate part
of the forest with flames licking in all around it, and he felt the
short hairs at the base of his skull bristle.
“I’ll go straight to the fire and see what I can do until a crew shows
up,” the ranger said.
“You’ve got yourself a crew,” Russ volunteered. “What can we do to
help?”
Dick Fellows smiled gratefully. “That’s wonderful. I’ve got plenty of
tools stored out in the shed. With any luck, maybe we can get it under
control before it spreads too far.”
At that moment, they heard Prince barking at the foot of the tower and
footsteps vibrating on the metal steps. “That must be Quiz and Jerry,”
Sandy said. He ran to the door, opened it and called down. “Stay where
you are. We’ll be right down. We’re going to fight a fire.”
Within fifteen minutes, the five of them were double-timing it through
the woods, loaded down with long-handled shovels, burlap sacks, fire
swatters and strange-looking implements that the boys had never seen
before. One resembled a giant fly swatter; another, the Pulaski tool,
was a combination ax and grub hoe. They had covered, perhaps, ten miles,
when Prince, who had gone running far ahead, began to yelp excitedly.
Before they even sighted the flames, they could hear the crackle and
roar of a formidable blaze.
Dick Fellows ran his tongue nervously over dry lips. “Not much smoke.
She had a good start before we spotted her.”
In spite of the ranger’s words, Sandy felt a wave of relief when they
finally reached the fire. It didn’t look nearly as bad as he had
expected it to be. At most, it ranged over a quarter of an acre, blazing
lazily in the surface litter that covered the forest floor.
“Gee, it’s just a little brush fire.” Jerry echoed his friend’s
sentiments.
“So far,” the ranger said grimly. “But all it will take is a little
breeze—” He left the thought unfinished, as without warning a dead tree
that stood in the center of the fire, blackened and smoldering, burst
into flame like a torch. The rotten wood gave off great flaming sparks
that were carried high into the air by the updraft. Sandy traced the
journey of one glowing ember as it plummeted down like a shooting star
into the woods about a half mile away.
“That could mean more trouble,” the ranger said. “Before you know it,
you have a half dozen spot fires burning in addition to the one you’re
fighting. I’ll have a look over in that direction later on. The first
thing we’re going to do is to build a fire line across the head of the
fire; I’d say maybe fifteen feet in front of it.”
Quiz nodded. “The head of the fire is determined by the direction in
which it’s spreading the fastest. Right?”
“Right. All fires have a roughly circular shape to begin with. But
depending on air currents, slope of the terrain and available fuel, they
soon take on direction. Usually they assume an elliptical shape, sort of
like an egg, with the fat part of the egg representing the head. We
always attack the head first—stop the advance. Then we can work down the
flanks to the rear.
“Our fire line will be about one hundred feet long. I’d say this
particular fire calls for a trench about two feet wide through the duff
and litter; we’ve got to get down to mineral soil. Everything
inflammable must be cleared off this path. Bushes or low-hanging
branches that the flames can reach have to be removed or avoided.”
At this point, he stopped talking to lay out the fire line, tracing its
path through the forest with a hoe. It was a zigzag route which detoured
around bushes that were too large to be uprooted and low-hanging tree
branches. “We avoid anything that would give the flames a chance to leap
the fire line,” Dick explained.
As soon as the boundaries were clearly defined, he distributed the tools
and assigned specific jobs to everyone. Russell Steele showed as much
respect for the young ranger as any enlisted man had ever accorded a
general. Sandy and Jerry worked with the hoes, breaking the first
ground. Their job consisted mainly in clearing a swath through the loose
litter, shoving it in toward the advancing flames.
Dick Fellows and Russ Steele came in back of them with Pulaski tools,
hacking out stubborn roots and small shrubs and cutting deeper into the
duff. Quiz brought up the rear with a shovel, scooping up loose matter
that had tumbled back into the ditch and sluicing a light layer of soil
across the ground in front of the line. They worked intently, without
speaking, to conserve their wind; and the line grew rapidly. Still, the
fire was within two feet of the barrier when Quiz sent the last shovel
of dirt rattling into the waist-high flames.
The heat was searing, and their lobster-red faces streamed with
perspiration. Their clothing was soaked and streaked with dirt. Jerry
and Quiz staggered back from the line and collapsed on the ground.
The ranger waved Sandy and his uncle back too. “Better take a breather,”
he warned them. “The worst is yet to come.” He took a long drink, then
emptied the rest of his canteen over his head.
After a five-minute break, Dick passed out the long-handled beaters to
the three boys. He handed Russ Steele a burlap bag soaked in water.
“We’ll do the best we can with these. The idea is to patrol the line and
keep a sharp watch for embers that fly over it.”
They stationed themselves at 25-foot intervals, with Russ and Dick each
holding down an end of the line. The flames reached the edge of the
break and leaned hungrily across it.
Sandy brought the flat of his rubber beater down on a spark that kindled
on his side of the line. “It gives me the creeps the way the fire seems
to be reaching out for you,” he yelled to Jerry. “It’s almost as if it
was alive.”
Jerry was too busy swatting to answer him. Down at one end of the line,
Dick tossed aside his smoking burlap sack and grabbed a shovel. With
horror, Sandy saw a thin trail of fire race along the edge of the ditch,
skirt the end and blaze up in a patch of grass around the ranger’s legs.
Sandy dashed down to attack the breach with Dick, and together they
extinguished the flames and the long fuse of burning grass that had
kindled it.
“Thanks,” Dick gasped, as Sandy raced back to beat at a fiery tongue
that was licking at the brush in his sector.
For at least a half hour they battled the tenacious foe, and then the
flames began to subside, their frantic efforts to leap the line growing
more and more feeble.
At last Dick Fellows announced hesitantly, “Looks like we have her,
men.”
The boys let out a lusty cheer, and Jerry did a comical little waltz
with his long beater. But their exultation was short-lived. For some
time, no one had paid much attention to the dead tree in the center of
the burned-out area, now a solid pillar of fire reaching into the sky.
The ranger had been relieved to note that it stood a safe distance apart
from the other trees, and he decided that its chief hazard lay in the
sparks that kept rising intermittently from it. Then disaster struck.
Crumbling from decay and the ravages of termites, and further weakened
by the flames, the towering snag unexpectedly gave way at the base. As
the fire fighters stared in hypnotic fascination, the tree toppled in
slow motion toward a thick cluster of pines on the left flank of the
fire. It went crashing down into their midst, sending a spray of sparks
and flame over the thick, dry foliage. Instantly the crowns of the trees
erupted simultaneously in a huge balloon of flame with a noise like an
exploding bomb. A blast of red-hot air singed Sandy’s hair and eyelashes
and sent him stumbling backward with his hands over his face.
Rejuvenated, the front of the fire leaped the barrier and blazed up
beyond control at a dozen separate points.
“She’s crowned!” the ranger yelled in despair. “That snag did it. The
surface fire had heated the foliage to the point of combustion and it
was just like touching a match to a gas jet.”
Sandy was aware of a strange rustling in the trees overhead. “What’s
that?” he asked the ranger. “It can’t be wind.”
“It’s wind all right,” Dick told him. “Once these fires get really
going, they make their own wind.”
“It’s simple,” Quiz explained. “You can even feel it standing near a big
bonfire. The updraft of hot air creates a partial vacuum over the fire
area, sucking in cool air from all around it.”
“What do we do now?” Russ demanded.
The ranger pointed to the crown fire, which was spreading from tree to
tree fairly rapidly. “Only thing to do is get out of here. We don’t want
to get caught if this thing really takes off. There’s a firebreak about
one mile back, where we can wait for reinforcements.”
He glanced up at the sky, and for the first time Sandy was aware that a
helicopter and a small observation plane were circling the area. “They
should be rallying a gang up there within a few hours,” Dick said.
“What’s a firebreak, Dick?” Quiz asked.
“A king-sized fire line similar to the one we made. It can be anywhere
from ten feet to a hundred feet wide. Nowadays critical areas are
interlaced with firebreaks, just in case. The one we’re heading for is a
road really; the idea is to take advantage of natural defenses as much
as possible when planning firebreaks—roads, rivers, clearings, railroad
right of ways.”
As they followed the ranger at a slow trot in the direction of the road,
Prince leaped out from behind a bush and fell in beside Russ.
“I was beginning to wonder what had happened to him,” Sandy said.
“Animals are deathly afraid of fire,” Russ said. “I’m surprised he isn’t
on his way back to Red Lake.”
Jerry snorted. “Some hero! And I thought dogs were supposed to be
fearless.”
Russ looked at Jerry solemnly. “Only fools are fearless. I can tell you
I’m plenty scared right now—for more reasons than one.”
CHAPTER NINE
Battling the Flames
By the time they reached the firebreak, men and trucks were streaming
down the dirt road from both directions; rangers and volunteers from the
logging camps and small towns in the area.
“Do we sit back here like soldiers in trenches and wait for the fire to
come to us?” Sandy wanted to know.
Dick Fellows shook his head. “It’s not likely. That’s too much timber to
give up without a fight. Most likely the fire boss will try and contain
the fire within some area much closer to the front. We’ll construct
another fire line—a lot bigger than the one we made, of course—and
backfire from that, probably.”
“Backfire?” Jerry looked puzzled.
“Yes, light more fires all along that line.” He had to smile at the
boy’s incredulous stare. “Fires that we know we can control. It’s the
only way to stop a running crown fire. A running fire picks up a lot of
momentum—you saw how those flames jumped our line. The idea is to light
the backfires right on the edge of your fire line so that they’ll burn
in the opposite direction, toward the main fire. Actually, the air
currents created by a big blaze tend to draw in the smaller backfires.
Under ideal conditions, the two fires meet head-on and die because all
the fuel has been exhausted.”
“That’s a fascinating image,” Russ said. “Like two greedy monsters
destroying each other.”
“Now I know where they got that old saying about fighting fire with
fire,” Sandy said.
“That’s right,” the ranger acknowledged. “It’s an old trick that goes
back earlier than the Christian era. Tricky business, though, and you
have to have a gang that knows what it’s doing every second. If anything
goes wrong, the backfire may get out of control and leap the fire line
itself.”
He looked up as a tall gray-haired man in riding breeches and high boots
got out of a truck on the far side of the road and hailed him.
“Dick Fellows! How does it look?” the tall man came across and joined
them.
“Hi, Paul! Not too good. We thought we had her for a time. Then
everything burst loose.”
He introduced Paul Landers, the district ranger chief, to Russ Steele
and the boys, describing their unsuccessful effort to stop the fire
before it crowned.
Landers shook his head grimly. “Nice try, anyway, Dick. And many thanks
to you, General Steele, and the boys, for lending a hand.”
Russ smiled. “Anything else we can do? We’re still available.”
The fire boss took off his ranger hat and mopped his brow with a
handkerchief. “Plenty to do, all right, General. Soon as they get my
headquarters tent set up over there, we’ll be having a meeting of crew
chiefs. I’d welcome it if you’d sit in. You ever had any experience
fighting fires? Before today, I mean?”
“I’m a greenhorn,” Russ admitted. “Just like the boys.”
“But we’re learning fast,” Jerry chimed in.
Landers laughed. “Good. That tent’s up now. Come along and I’ll show you
how we map out our battle strategy.” He glanced at Russ. “You’re going
to find, General, that a forest fire can be as diabolical and
treacherous as any human enemy you ever fought.”
“I’m beginning to suspect that already,” Russ said somberly.
Inside the big pyramidal tent, technicians were installing short-wave
radio equipment, electric lights and telephones. On a large square table
in the center of the tent, a topographical map was spread out; alongside
it was a vivid aerial photograph of the same region.
Landers indicated a section on the map shaded in red pencil. “This
represents the burned-out area, as it stands at this time. Roughly, the
front is about twelve hundred feet across, and she’s spreading fast.”
Dick Fellows whistled. “I’ll say she’s spreading fast. I don’t figure it
was more than a hundred feet when we pulled out.”