A Girl Brigade
“Smoke! Smoke!” It was a cry from Frances Goddard and Naomi, the artist,
together. “Smoke! Smoke! Don’t you smell it? There’s a brush
fire—somewhere.”
“It seems—near! The air’s thick—getting thicker,” the responsive scream
was from others, “oh! choking thickness.... Heavens! The—shed!”
A banner of flame flung forth challengingly to the night air, at the
moment, left no doubt as to where the heavy reek was coming from.
The gray shed at the corner of the Long Pasture!
Twenty campers, twenty in all, had been preparing for bed—Devotions
over. Devotions and the singing of the Camp Fire hymn, so dear to
girlish hearts:
“Lay me to rest in Shelt’ring Flame,
Oh—Master of the Hidden Fire!”
And, lo! in a moment it was a consuming fire they were called upon to
fight.
A fire—the realization swept these twenty chips of that grand old block
called Woman, like a wind which made their teeth chatter—a fire which
had unusual elements of horror in it.
“The Pasture! The Sidehill! The Horses!... Revel!” The last blanched cry
came from Una.
“If—the grass catches, they’d have hard work to save them. And the
farmer—the farmer is away—at Bennington. And his assistant was kicked by
a horse, has a broken leg. Only his son, Sanbie—seventeen!... Long
before help could come from the Fire Warden—anywhere.... Girls! Quick!
Dress! ‘Up to us’!”
They were scrambling into their clothes again in a hurry, even as the
Guardian spoke.
“Plen-ty of water! But the stream’s oh! a hundred feet from the shed,”
panted Terry Ross, Assistant Guardian, helping Dorothy into her
sweater—then tugging on Una’s, fine and soft as the figurative cotton
wool in which this girl-heiress had been always wrapped. “Buckets,
girls! Every bucket you can find!”
“Only—four!” Pemrose’s eyes in the emergency had the blue of the blind,
or bottled gentian, cowering in the smoke without,—the heavy reek
driving upon fickle gusts up the mountain or across it, now with the
awful carmine on its wings.
Girls moaned softly at the sight. But there was no confusion. They were
accustomed to fire drill.
“Our camp may go, if it spreads up the mountain. But—the horses!...
Brooms, too, to beat out the fire; dip them, wet them, in the stream, as
you run! Scrub—evergreen scrub—that’s good for beating out a brush fire;
break it off as you pass.... Could it, possibly, have been that awful
lightning?”
“The storm last night! Nonsense!” Thus Terry Ross, Assistant Guardian,
answered the excited chorus, which had in it no disorder. “The fire seed
couldn’t have smouldered so long. The barn we saw blazed right off. But
the wood of the shed—that may have been damp, still, from the
deluge—didn’t dry up like the scrub and grass ... caused the heavy
smoke. But—now!”
Now the flames were rising red-mad—and gaining every moment.
Pine, spruce, hemlock-scrub, the girls tore it off, broke it off as they
ran, those who, at the Guardian’s heels, were not armed with buckets or
brooms—in six minutes from the alarm the vanguard had reached the corner
of the Long Pasture, the eastern corner where the tool shed, a gray
twenty by twenty structure, had withstood gales for forty years.
But they were not the earliest fire fighters.
“There—there’s old ‘Burn-the-Wind’,” said Pemrose. “‘Burn-the-Wind’—and
Sanbie. They—they’re getting the stuff out—stuff out of the shed!”
Mowing machine, tractor, harrow, plows, the two male figures were
hurling them out, the latter a long-legged high school boy—the former a
gray-haired, bare-armed blacksmith—the “wind” was now having its turn at
“burning” him. Both had galloped, barebacked, up from the farm.
“Burn-the-wind”—the nickname sounded cheering, in a fight frivolity has
its uses—who could, at seventy-odd, shoe a horse with his eyes shut, was
not in other respects very spry.
It was Sanbie of the shankums, the long ungainly limbs, who had a
“leg-on” in the red fight.
He had played the one can of chemical, with the little hose attached,
upon the flames—and still they gained—red-mad.
The grass around the shed was catching—had caught.
“Water!” They heard him shriek, Guardian and girls, as they reached the
scene. “Water! Buckets! Oh! fill ’em first and think about it
afterwards.”
“He’s game,” gasped Pem. “If he was burning up himself, he’d joke.
Ugh-h!” She coughed and sputtered as the red smoke caught her.
“Here—here’s another bucket,” screamed the Guardian. “That makes five.
Ten of you girls fall in, form a line, quick—bucket brigade,—ten feet
between you to the stream.” Already, at a hundred-foot dash, she had
filled two buckets herself, passed them to Sanbie who tossed them up to
the blazing roof. “Eight girls beat out—beat out the brush fire, the
grass ... take care you don’t get in among the frightened horses. Terry
and I will help the men.”
The “wickering” horses were a menace. They added the last element of
wildness to the scene. Bunched together, in terror or curiosity, they
rushed up to the fence, along by the four-foot fence, at a corner of
which was the raging blaze. Necks arched, whinnying low and nervously,
or snorting madly, they would come to within fifteen feet of the Red
Horror, stamping even upon the lighting grass; the leaders, then, in a
panic, would wheel and dart off again, circling, cavorting round—the
mother horses stamping protest, with their fluffy foals beneath, or
their half-weaned colts beside them.
Somewhere among them was Revel. Was that her plaintive “wicker”, her
whinny? It sounded as if she had been caught—protestingly caught—in the
darkness, the spark-swarming darkness, thought Una as, with a frenzy of
saving her more than anything else, the girl who had been wheeled
through life, softly shielded, took her place in the bucket line.
Across the pasture to the little bush-fringed stream the night was
seized with a changeable blush, now a deep, furious black-burning that
faded out into moonless darkness, mystifying darkness, as the water
dashed upon the shed roof beat the flames down.
There was not much hope of saving the gray old building, but, burning
furiously, it was a fire-brand to the whole mountainside.
“Maybe, this isn’t some blaze! Bring on the ice water. Talk of your
broiled lobster, I’m a pretty good imitation!... Oh! shake it up down
there—in the brigade. Slide the buckets along—along—slide ’em faster ...
faster, if you can!” It was Sanbie’s prayer, with ever the note of
levity, to meet the flames’ hiss.
And the brigade of ten rose to meet it, in ever-shifting line, the
momentary head of the procession of girls, stationed ten feet apart,
passing her full bucket to the Guardian, in the forefront of battle, who
handed it on to the scorched men—they throwing it as high as they could
on to the hissing roof—then the bucket was passed back to the breathless
girl who wheeling, made for the stream with it again.
Thus making the most of their five buckets, Dorothy, Naomi, Beulah,
Robin, Frances—others—had all, in turn, headed the single line, for a
burning half-minute, seeing the brush fighters working in the red glare,
beating in towards the blaze.
It was Una’s turn now.
Her eyes very wide—fugitive and dark—her skin, naturally white and
transparent, glowing like a filmy lamp shade in the glare—panting—she
gave her brimming bucket into the Guardian’s hands.
“Well done, dear! You girls are—doing—splendidly. Look out for the
horses, as you run back,” breathed the half-charred older woman,
grasping the handle.
The fascinated horses were at that moment making another inquisitive
rush. They galloped up to within fourteen feet of the center of
excitement, threatening the brush fighters.
Their “wickering” snorts circled round Una in the fiery seconds while
she stood waiting—waiting for her bucket to be returned. Awful seconds!
A beam fell in and frightened them—frightened her, too—as flame and
sparks flew up; they wheeled and dashed off a hundred yards.
“I wonder if Revel was among them,” breathed the trembling girl to
herself. “That sound she made a while ago—I’d know her soft ‘wicker’
anywhere—it sounded just as if she had been caught—_caught_ against her
will.... Oh-h! I must save Revel. If the whole pasture were to
blaze....”
Grasping the handle of her empty bucket again, she wheeled, too, and
made a dash for the distant stream edge. The brilliant patchwork with
which it glowed as the beam fell in darkened now into ebony gloom—the
red checkers fading out when the flames sank again.
“If the fire spread through the whole pasture, Revel might not think of
jumping the fence,” she whispered to herself again, with the soft
earth-din of the horses’ hoofs in her ears—in her brain, it seemed,
maddening it.
The ground was hummocky here—low mounds! And she was running very fast,
as she had never run before, to reach the stream-edge, leaving other
girls’ fleet footsteps behind.
In a dark little bush-belt girdling a mound she suddenly tripped—there
had been nothing to trip on before. The bucket rolled away from her,
down into a hollow, black as a pit.
The swift fall was stupefying. She lay for a minute—numb. A dark, soft
form brushed by her—she felt it was Dorothy, next in line to her, and
made no outcry; they were saving Revel.
Picking herself up, presently, she groped for the bucket—found it.
What! was the metal handle on fire, too? Red hot. It stung her—stung her
furiously.
She rubbed her fingers across her lips.