At these and similar occupations the latter days of June slipped by. Bob
had little leisure, for the Service was undermanned for the work it must
do. Curtis sooned resigned, to everybody's joy and relief.
On only one occasion did Bob gain a chance to ride over to the scenes of
his old activities. This was on a Sunday when, by a miracle, nothing
unexpected came up to tie him to his duty. He had rather an
unsatisfactory visit with Mr. Welton. It was cordial enough on both
sides, for the men were genuinely fond of each other; but they had lost
touch of each other's interests. Welton persisted in regarding Bob with
a covert amusement, as an older man regards a younger who is having his
fling, and will later settle down. Bob asked after the work, and was
answered. Neither felt any real human interest in the questions nor
their replies. A certain constraint held them, to Bob's very genuine
regret. He rode back through the westering shadows vaguely uneasy in his
mind.
He and two of the new mountain men had been for two days cutting up some
dead and down trees that encumbered the enclosure at headquarters. They
cross-cut the trunks into handy lengths; bored holes in them with a
two-inch augur; loaded the holes with blasting powder and a fuse, and
touched them off. The powder split the logs into rough posts small
enough to handle. These fragments they carried laboriously to the middle
of the meadow, where they stacked them rack-fashion and on end. The idea
was to combine business with pleasure by having a grand bonfire the
night of the Fourth of July.
For this day other preparations were forward. Amy promised a spread for
everybody, if she could get a little help at the last moment. As many of
the outlying rangers as could manage it would come in for the occasion.
A shooting match, roping and chopping contests, and other sports were in
contemplation.
As the time drew near, various mysteries were plainly afoot. Men claimed
their turns in riding down the mountain for the mail. They took with
them pack horses. These they unpacked secretly and apart. Amy gave Bob
to understand that this holiday, when the ranks were fullest and
conditions ripe, went far as a substitute for Christmas among these men.
Then at noon of July second Charley Morton dashed down the trail from
the Upper Meadow, rode rapidly to Headquarters, flung himself from his
horse, and dove into the office. After a moment he reappeared, followed
by Thorne.
"Saddle up, boys," said the latter. "Fire over beyond Baldy. Ride and
gather in the men who are about here," he told Bob.
Bob sprang on Charley Morton's horse and rode about instructing the
workers to gather. When he returned, Thorne gave his instructions.
"We're short-handed," he stated, "and it'll be hard to get help just at
this time. Charley, you take Ware, Elliott and Carroll and see what it
looks like. Start a fire line, and do the best you can. Orde, you and
Pollock can get up some pack horses and follow later with grub,
blankets, and so forth. I'll ride down the mountain to see what I can do
about help. It may be I can catch somebody by phone at the Power House
who can let the boys know at the north end. You say it's a big fire?"
"I see quite a lot of smoke," said Charley.
"Then the boys over Jackass way and by the Crossing ought to see it for
themselves."
The four men designated caught up their horses, saddled them, and
mounted. Thorne handed them each a broad hoe, a rake and an axe. They
rode off up the trail. Thorne mounted on his own horse.
"Pack up and follow as fast as you can," he told the two who still
remained.
"What you want we should take?" asked Jack.
"Amy will tell you. Get started early as you can. You'll have to follow
their tracks."
Amy took direction of them promptly. While they caught and saddled the
pack horses, she was busy in the storeroom. They found laid out for them
a few cooking utensils, a variety of provisions tied up in strong little
sacks, several more hoes, axes and rakes, two mattocks, a half-dozen
flat files, and as many big zinc canteens.
"Now hurry!" she commanded them; "pack these, and then get some blankets
from your camp, and some hobbles and picket ropes."
With Bob's rather awkward help everything was made fast. By the time the
two had packed the blankets and returned to headquarters on their way to
the upper trail, they found Amy had changed her clothes, caught and
saddled her own horse, tied on well-filled saddle bags, and stood
awaiting them. She wore her broad hat looped back by the pine tree badge
of the Service, a soft shirtwaist of gray flannel, a short divided skirt
of khaki and high-laced boots. A red neckerchief matched her cheeks,
which were glowing with excitement. Immediately they appeared, she swung
aboard with the easy grace of one long accustomed to the saddle. Bob's
lower jaw dropped in amazement.
"You going?" he gasped, unable even yet to comprehend the everyday fact
that so many gently nurtured Western girls are accustomed to those
rough-and-ready bivouacs.
"I wouldn't stay away for worlds!" she cried, turning her pony's head up
the trail.
Beyond the upper meadow this trail suddenly began to climb. It made its
way by lacets in the dry earth, by scrambles in the rocks until, through
the rapidly thinning ranks of the scrubby trees, Bob could look back
over all the broad shelf of the mountain whereon grew the pines. It lay
spread before him as a soft green carpet of tops, miles of it, wrinkling
and billowing gently as here and there the conformation of the country
changed. At some distance it dropped over an edge. Beyond that, very
dimly, he realized the brown shimmer rising from the plain. Far to the
right was a tenuous smoke, a suggestion of thinning in the forest, a
flash of blue water. This, Bob knew, must be the mill and the lake.
The trail shortly made its way over the shoulder of the ridge and
emerged on the wide, gentle rounding of the crest. Here the trees were
small, stunted and wind-blown. Huge curving sheets of unbroken granite
lay like armour across the shoulder of the mountain. Decomposing granite
shale crunched under the horses' hoofs. Here and there on it grew
isolated tiny tufts of the hardy upland flowers. Above, the sky was
deeply, intensely blue; bluer than Bob had ever seen a sky before. The
air held in it a tang of wildness, as though it had breathed from great
spaces.
"I suppose this is the top of our ridge, isn't it?" Bob asked Jack
Pollock.
The boy nodded.
Suddenly the trail dipped sharp to the left into a narrow and shallow
little ravine. The bed of this was carpeted by a narrow stringer of
fresh grass and flowers, through which a tiny stream felt its hesitating
way. This ravine widened and narrowed, turned and doubled. Here and
there groups of cedars on a dry flat offered ideal shelter for a camp.
Abruptly the stringer burst through a screen of azaleas to a round green
meadow surrounded by the taller trees of the eastern slope of the
mountain.
In other circumstances Bob would have liked to stop for a better sight
of this little gem of a meadow. It was ankle deep with new grasses,
starred with flowers, bordered with pink and white azaleas. The air,
prisoned in a pocket, warmed by the sun, perfumed heavily by the
flowers, lay in the cup of the trees like a tepid bath. A hundred birds
sang in June-tide ecstasy.
But Jack Pollock, without pause, skirted this meadow, crossed the tiny
silver creek that bubbled from it down the slope, and stolidly mounted a
little knoll beyond. The trained pack horses swung along behind him,
swaying gently from side to side that they might carry their packs
comfortably and level. Bob turned involuntarily to glance at Amy. Their
eyes met. She understood; and smiled at him brightly.
Jack led the way to the top of the knoll and stopped.
Here the edge of the mountain broke into a tiny outcropping spur that
shook itself free from the pines. It constituted a natural lookout to
the east. Bob drew rein so violently that even his well-trained mountain
horse shook its head in protest.
Before him, hushed with that tremendous calm of vast distances, lay the
Sierras he had never seen, as though embalmed in the sunlight of a
thousand afternoons. A tremendous, deep cañon plunged below him, blue
with distance. It climbed again to his level eventually, but by that
time it was ten miles away. And over against him, very remote, were pine
ridges looking velvety and dark and ruffled and full of shadows, like
the erect fur of a beast that has been alarmed. From them here and there
projected granite domes. And beyond them bald ranges; and beyond them,
splintered granite with snow in the crevices; and beyond this the dark
and frowning Pinnacles; and still beyond, other mountains so distant, so
ethereal, so delicately pink and rose and saffron that almost he
expected they might at any moment dissolve into the vivid sky. And,
strangely enough, though he realized the tremendous heights and depths
of these peaks and cañons, the whole effect to Bob was as something
spread out broad. The sky, the wonderful over-arching, very blue sky,
was the most important thing in the universe. Compared to its
infinitudes these mountains lay spread like a fair and wrinkled footrug
to a horizon inconceivably remote and mysterious.
Then his eye fell to the ridge opposite, across the blue cañon. From one
point on it a straight column of smoke rolled upward, to mushroom out
and hang motionless above the top of the ridge. Its base was shot by
half-seen, half-guessed flaming streaks.
Bob had vaguely expected to see a whole country-side ablaze. This
single, slender column was almost absurd. It looked like a camp-fire,
magnified to fit the setting, of course.
"There's the fire, all right," said Jack. "We got to get across to it
somehow. Trail ends here."
"Why, that doesn't amount to much!" cried Bob.
"Don't it?" said Jack. "Well, I'd call that some shakes of a fire
myself. It's covered mighty nigh three hundred acres by now."
"Three hundred acres! Better say ten."
"You're wrong," said Jack; "I've rode all that country with cattle."
"You'll find it fire enough, when you get there," put in Amy. "It's
right in good timber, too."
"All right," agreed Bob; "I'll believe anything--after this." He waved
his hand abroad. "Jack," he called, as that young man led the way off
the edge, "can you see where Jack Main's Cañon is from here?"
"Jack Main's!" repeated young Pollock. "Why, if you was on the top of
the farthest mountain in sight, you couldn't see any place you could see
it from."
"Good Lord!" said Bob.
The way zigzagged down the slope of the mountain. As Jack had said,
there was no trail, but the tracks left by the four rangers were plainly
to be discerned. Bob, following the pack horses, had leisure to observe
how skilfully this way had been picked out. Always it held to the easy
footing, but always it was evident that if certain turns had not been
made some distance back this easy footing would have lacked. At times
the tracks led far to the left at nearly the same level until one, two
or three little streams had been crossed. Then without apparent reason
they turned directly down the backbone of a steep ridge exactly like a
half-dozen others they had passed over. But later Bob saw that this
ridge was the only one of the lot that dipped over gently to lower
levels; all the rest broke off abruptly in precipitous rocks. Bob was a
good woodsman, but this was his first experience in that mountaineering
skill which noses its way by the "lay of the country."
In the meantime they were steadily descending. The trees hemmed them
closer. Thickets of willows and alders had to be crossed. Dimly through
the tree-tops they seemed to see the sky darkening by degrees as they
worked their way down. At first Bob thought it the lateness of the
afternoon; then he concluded it must be the smoke of the fire; finally,
through a clear opening, he saw this apparent darkening of the horizon
was in reality the blue of the cañon wall opposite, rising as they
descended. But, too, as they drew nearer, the heavy smoke of the
conflagration began to spread over them. In time it usurped the heavens,
and Bob had difficulty in believing that it could appear to any one
anywhere as so simple a mushroom-head over a slender smoke column.
By the time the horses stepped from the slope to the bed of the cañon,
it was quite dark. Jack turned down stream.
"We'll cut the trail to Burro Rock pretty quick," said he.
Within five minutes of travel they did cut it; a narrow brown trough,
trodden by the hoofs of many generations of cattlemen bound for the back
country. Almost immediately it began to mount the slope.
Now ahead, through the gathering twilight, lights began to show,
sometimes scattered, sometimes grouped, like the camp-fires of an
immense army. These were the stubs, stumps, down logs and the like left
still blazing after all the more readily inflammable material had been
burned away. As the little cavalcade laboured upward, stopping every few
minutes to breathe the horses, these flickering lights defined
themselves. In particular one tall dead yellow pine standing boldly
prominent, afire to the top, alternately glowed and paled as the wind
breathed or died. A smell of stale burning drifted down the damp night
air. Pretty soon Jack Pollock halted for a moment to call back:
"Here's their fire line!"
Bob spurred forward. Just beyond Jack's horse the country lay blackened.
The pine needles had burned down to the soil; the seedlings and younger
trees had been withered away; the larger trees scorched; the fuel with
which every forest is littered consumed in the fierceness of the
conflagration. Here and there some stub or trunk still blazed and
crackled, outposts of the army whose camp-fires seemed to dot the hills.
The line of demarcation between the burned and the unburned areas seemed
extraordinarily well defined. Bob looked closer and saw that this
definition was due to a peculiar path, perhaps two yards wide. It looked
as though some one had gone along there with a huge broom, sweeping as
one would sweep a path in deep dust. Only in this case the broom must
have been a powerful implement as well as one of wide reach. The brushed
marks went not only through the carpet of pine needles, but through the
tarweed, the snow brush, the manzañita. This was technically the fire
line. At the sight of the positiveness with which it had checked the
spread of the flames, Bob's spirits rose.
"They seem to have stopped it here easy enough, already," he cried.
"Being as how this is the windward side of the fire, and on a down
slope, I should think they might," remarked Jack Pollock drily.
Bob chuckled and glanced at the girl.
"I'm finding out every day how little I know," said he; "at my age,
too!"
"The hard work is down wind," said Amy.
"Of course."
They entered the burned area, and climbed on up the hill. Though
evidently here the ferocity of the conflagration had passed, it had left
its rear guard behind. Fallen trees still blazed; standing trees flamed
like torches--but all harmlessly within the magic circle drawn by the
desperate quick work of the rangers. They threaded their way cautiously
among these isolated fires, watching lest some dead giant should fall
across their path. The ground smoked under their feet. Against the
background of a faint and distant roaring, which now made itself
evident, the immediate surroundings seemed very quiet. The individual
cracklings of flames were an undertone. Only once in a while a dull
heavy crash smote the air as some great tree gave up the unequal
struggle.
They passed as rapidly as they could through this stricken field. The
night had fallen, but the forest was still bright, the trail still
plain. They followed it for an hour until it had topped the lower ridge.
Then far ahead, down through the dark trunks of trees, they saw,
wavering, flickering, leaping and dying, a line of fire. In some places
it was a dozen feet high; in others it sank to within a few inches of
the ground--but nowhere could the eye discern an opening through it. A
roar and a crackling filled the air. Sparks were shooting upward in the
suction. A blast of heat rushed against Bob's cheek. All at once he
realized that a forest fire was not a widespread general conflagration,
like the burning of a city block. It was a line of battle, a ring of
flame advancing steadily. All they had passed had been negligible. Here
was the true enemy, now charging rapidly through the dry, inflammable
low growth, now creeping stealthily in the needles and among the rocks;
always making way, always gathering itself for one of its wild leaps
which should lay an entire new province under its ravaging. Somewhere on
the other side of that ring of fire were four men. They were trying to
cut a lane over which the fire could not leap.
Bob gazed at the wall of flame with some dismay.
"How we going to get through?" he asked.
"We got to find a rock outcrop somewheres up the ridge," explained Jack,
"where there'll be a break in the fire."
He turned up the side of the mountain again, leading the way. After a
time they came to an outcrop of the sort described, which, with some
difficulty and stumbling, they succeeded in crossing.
Ahead, in the darkness, showed a tiny licking little fire, only a few
inches high.
"The fire has jumped!" cried Bob.
"No, that's their backfire," Pollock corrected him.
They found this to be true. The rangers had hastily hoed and raked out a
narrow path. Over this a very small fire could not pass; but there could
be no doubt that the larger conflagration would take the slight obstacle
in its stride. Therefore the rangers had themselves ignited the small
fire. This would eat away the fuel, and automatically widen the path.
Between the main fire and the back fire were still several hundred yards
of good, unburned country. To Bob's expression of surprise Amy added to
the two principles of fire-fighting he had learned from Pollock.
"It doesn't do to try to stop a fire anywhere and everywhere," said she.
"A good man knows his country, and he takes advantage of it. This fire
line probably runs along the line of natural defence."
They followed it down the mountain for a long distance through the
eddying smoke. The flames to their right shot up and died and crept. The
shadows to their left--their own among the number--leaped and fell.
After a while, down through the mists, they made out a small figure,
very busy at something. When they approached, they found this to be
Charley Morton. The fire had leaped the cleared path and was greedily
eating in all directions through the short, pitchy growth of tarweed. It
was as yet only a tiny leak, but once let it get started, the whole
forest beyond the fire line would be ablaze. The ranger had started to
cut around this a half-circle connected at both ends with the main fire
line. With short, quick jabs of his hoe, he was tearing away at the
tough tarweed.
"Hullo!" said he without looking up. "You'll find camp on the bald ridge
north the fire line. There's a little feed there."
Having completed his defence, he straightened his back to look at them.
His face was grimed a dingy black through which rivulets of sweat had
made streaks.
"Had it pretty hot all afternoon," he proffered. "Got the fire line
done, though. How're those canteens--full? I'll trade you my empty one."
He took a long draught. "That tastes good. Went dry about three o'clock,
and haven't had a drop since."
They left him there, leaning on the handle of his hoe. Jack Pollock
seemed to know where the place described as the camp-site was located,
for after various détours and false starts, he led them over the brow of
a knoll to a tiny flat among the pine needles where they were greeted by
whinnies from unseen animals. It was here very dark. Jack scraped
together and lit some of the pine needles. By the flickering light they
saw the four saddles dumped down in a heap.
"There's a side hill over yander with a few bunches of grass and some of
these blue lupins," said Jack. "It ain't much in the way of hoss-feed,
but it'll have to do."
He gathered fuel and soon had enough of a fire to furnish light.
"It certainly does seem plumb foolish to be lightin' _more_ fires!" he
remarked.
In the meantime Amy had unsaddled her own horse and was busy unpacking
one of the pack animals. Bob followed her example.
"There," she said; "now here are the canteens, all full; and here's six
lunches already tied together that I put up before we started. You can
get them to the other boys. Take your tools and run along. I'll
straighten up, and be ready for you when you can come back."
"What if the fire gets over to you?" asked Bob.
"I'll turn the horses loose and ride away," she said gaily.
"It won't get clost to there," put in Jack. "This little ridge is rock
all round it. That's why they put the camp here."
"Where's water?" asked Amy.
"I don't rightly remember," confessed Pollock. "I've only been in here
once."
"I'll find out in the morning. Good luck!"
Jack handed Bob three of the canteens, a hoe and rake and one of the
flat files.
"What's this for?" asked Bob.
"To keep the edge of your hoe sharp," replied Jack.
They shouldered their implements and felt their way in the darkness over
the tumbled rock outcrop. As they surmounted the shoulder of the hill,
they saw once more flickering before them the fire line.
V
Charley Morton received the lunch with joy.
"Ain't had time to get together grub since we came," said he, "and
didn't know when I would."
"What do you want us to do?" asked Bob.
"The fire line's drawn right across from Granite Creek down there in the
cañon over to a bald dome. We got her done an hour ago, and pretty well
back-fired. All we got to do now is to keep her from crossing anywheres;
and if she does cross, to corral her before she can get away from us."
"I wish we could have got here sooner!" cried Bob, disappointed that the
little adventure seemed to be flattening out.
"So?" commented Charley drily. "Well, there's plenty yet. If she gets
out in one single, lonesome place, this fire line of ours won't be worth
a cent. She's inside now--if we can hold her there." He gazed
contemplatively aloft at a big dead pine blazing merrily to its very
top. Every once in a while a chunk of bark or a piece of limb came
flaring down to hit the ground with a thump. "There's the trouble," said
he. "What's to keep a spark or a coal from that old coon from falling or
rolling on the wrong side of the line? If it happens when none of us are
around, why the fire gets a start. And maybe a coal will roll down hill
from somewhere; or a breeze come up and carry sparks. One spark over
here," he stamped his foot on the brushed line, "and it's all to do over
again. There's six of us," added the ranger, "and a hundred of these
trees near the line. By rights there ought to be a man camped down near
every one of them."
"Give us our orders," repeated Bob.
"The orders are to patrol the fire line," said Morton. "If you find the
fire has broken across, corral it. If it gets too strong for you, shoot
your six-shooter twice. Keep a-moving, but take it easy and save
yourself for to-morrow. About two o'clock, or so, I'll shoot three
times. Then you can come to camp and get a little sleep. You got to be
in shape for to-morrow."
"Why especially to-morrow?" asked Bob.
"Fire dies in the cool of night; it comes up in the middle of the day,"
explained Morton succinctly.
Bob took to the right, while Jack went in the opposite direction. His
way led down hill. He crossed a ravine, surmounted a little ridge. Now
he was in the worse than total darkness of the almost extinct area.
Embers and coals burned all over the side hill like so many evil winking
eyes. Far ahead, down the mountain, the rising smoke glowed incandescent
with the light of an invisible fire beneath, Bob, blinded by this glow,
had great difficulty in making his way. Once he found that he had
somehow crept out on the great bald roundness of a granite dome, and had
to retrace his steps. Twice he lost his footing utterly, but fortunately
fell but a short distance. At last he found himself in the V of a narrow
ravine.
All this time he had, with one exception, kept close track of the fire
line. The exception was when he strayed out over the dome; but that was
natural, for the dome had been adopted bodily as part of the system of
defence. Everywhere the edge of the path proved to be black and dead. No
living fire glowed within striking distance of the inflammable material
on the hither side the path.
But here, in the bottom of the ravine, a single coal had lodged, and had
already started into flame the dry small brush. It had fallen originally
from an oak fully a hundred feet away; and in some mysterious manner had
found a path to this hidden pocket. The circumstances somewhat shook
Bob's faith in the apparent safety of the country he had just traversed.
However, there were the tiny flames, licking here and there,
insignificant, but nevertheless dangerous. Bob carefully laid his
canteens and the rake on a boulder, and set to work with his sharpened
hoe. It looked to be a very easy task to dig out a path around this
little fire.
In the course of the miniature fight he learned considerable of the ways
of fire. The brush proved unexpectedly difficult. It would not stand up
to the force of his stroke, but bent away. The tarweed, especially, was
stubborn under even the most vigorous wielding of his sharpened hoe.
He made an initial mistake by starting to hoe out his path too near the
blaze, forgetting that in the time necessary to complete his half-circle
the flames would have spread. Discovering this, he abandoned his
beginning and fell back twenty feet. This naturally considerably
lengthened the line he would have to cut. When it was about half done,
Bob discovered that he would have to hustle to prevent the fire breaking
by him before he could complete his half-circle. It became a race. He
worked desperately. The heat of the flames began to scorch his face and
hands, so that it was with difficulty he could face his work.
Irrelevantly enough there arose before his mind the image of Jack
Pollock popping corn before the fireplace at headquarters. Continual
wielding of the hoe tired a certain set of muscles to the aching point.
His mouth became dry and sticky, but he could not spare time to hunt up
his canteen. The thought flashed across his mind that the fire was
probably breaking across elsewhere, just like this. The other men must
be in the same fix. There were six of them. Suppose the fire should
break across simultaneously in seven places? The little licking flames
had at last, by dint of a malignant persistence, become a personal
enemy. He fought them absorbedly, throwing his line farther and farther
as the necessity arose, running to beat down with green brush the first
feeble upstartings of the fire as it leaped here and there his barrier,
keeping a vigilant eye on every part of his defences.
"Well," drawled Charley Morton's voice behind him, "what you think
you're doing?"
"Corralling this fire, of course," Bob panted, dashing at a marauding
little flame.
"What for?" demanded Charley.
Bob looked up in sheer amazement.
"See that rock dike just up the hill behind you?" explained Morton.
"Well, our fire line already runs up to that on both sides. Fire
couldn't cross it. We expected this to burn."
Bob suddenly felt a little nauseated and dizzy from the heat and
violence of his exertions in this high altitude.
"Here's your canteen," Morton went on easily. "Take a swig. Better save
a little. Feel better? Let me give you a pointer: don't try to stop a
fire going up hill. Take it on top or just over the top. It burns slower
and it ain't so apt to jump."
"I know; I forgot," said Bob, feeling a trifle foolish.
"Never mind; you've learned something," said Morton comfortably. "Let's
go down below. There's fresh fire there; and it may have jumped past
Elliott."
They scrambled down. Elliott and Ware were found to be working
desperately in the face of the flames. The fire had not here jumped the
line, but it was burning with great ferocity up to the very edge of it.
If the rangers could for a half-hour prevent the heat from igniting the
growths across the defence, the main fire would have consumed its fuel
and died down to comparative safety. With faces averted, heads lowered,
handkerchiefs over their mouths, they continually beat down the new
little fires which as continually sprang into life again. Here the
antagonists were face to face across the narrow line. The rangers could
not give back an inch, for an inch of headway on the wrong side the path
would convert a kindling little blaze to a real fire. They stood up to
their work doggedly as best they might.
With entire understanding of the situation Charley motioned Bob to the
front.
"We'll hold her for a minute," he shouted to the others. "Drop back and
get a drink."
They fell back to seize eagerly their canteens. Bob gripped his handful
of green brush and set to work. For a minute he did not think it
possible to face the terrible heat. His garments were literally drenched
with sweat which immediately dried into steam. A fierce drain sucked at
his strength. He could hardly breathe, and could see only with
difficulty. After a moment Elliott and Ware, evidently somewhat
refreshed, again took hold.
How they stuck it out for that infernal half-hour Bob could not have
told, but stick it out they did. The flames gradually died down; the
heat grew less; the danger that the shrivelled brush on the wrong side
the fire line would be ignited by sheer heat, vanished. The four men
fell back. Their eyebrows and hair were singed; their skin blackened.
Bob's face felt sore, and as though it had been stretched. He took a
long pull at his canteen. For the moment he felt as though his energy
had all been drained away.
"Well, that was a good little scrap," observed Charley Morton
cheerfully. "I certainly do wish it was always night when a man had to
fight fire. In a hot sun it gets to be hard work."
Elliott rolled his eyes, curiously white like a minstrel's in his
blackened face, at Bob, but said nothing.
"We'll leave Elliott here to watch this a few minutes, and go down the
line," said Morton.
Bob lifted his canteen, and, to his surprise, found it empty.
"Why, I must have drunk a gallon!" he cried.
"It's dry work," said Morton.
They continued on down the fire line, pausing every once in a while to
rake and scrape leisurely at the heavy bark beneath some blazing stub.
The fierce, hard work was over. All along the fire line from the dome of
granite over the ridge down to Granite Creek the fire had consumed all
the light fuel on its own side the defence. No further danger was to be
apprehended in the breaking across. But everywhere through the now
darkening forest blazed the standing trees. A wind would fill the air
with brands; and even in the present dead calm those near the line were
a threat.
The men traversed the fire line from end to end a half-dozen times. Bob
became acquainted individually and minutely with each of the danger
spots. The new temporary features of country took on, from the effects
of vigilance and toil, the dignity of age and establishment. Anxiously
he widened the path here, kicked back glowing brands there, tried to
assure himself that in no possible manner could the seed of a new
conflagration find germination. After a long time he heard three shots
from up the mountain. This, he remarked, was a signal agreed upon. He
shouldered his blackened implements and commenced a laborious ascent.
Suddenly he discovered that he was very tired, and that his legs were
weak and wobbly. Stubs and sticks protruded everywhere; stones rolled
from under his feet. Once on a steep shale, he fell and rolled ten feet
out of sheer weariness. In addition he was again very thirsty, and his
canteen empty. A chill gray of dawn was abroad; the smell of stale
burning hung in the air.
By the time he had staggered into camp the daylight had come. He glanced
about him wearily. Across a tiny ravine the horses dozed, tied each to a
short picket rope. Bob was already enough of a mountaineer to notice
that the feed was very scant. The camp itself had been made under a
dozen big yellow pines. A bright little fire flickered. About it stood
utensils from which the men were rather dispiritedly helping themselves.
Bob saw that the long pine needles had been scraped together to make
soft beds, over which the blankets had been spread. Amy herself, her
cheeks red, her eyes bright, was passing around tin cups of strong
coffee, and tin plates of food. Her horse, saddled and bridled, stood
nearby.
"Take a little of this," she urged Bob, "and then turn in."
Bob muttered his thanks. After swallowing the coffee, however, he felt
his energies reviving somewhat.
"How did you leave things at the lower end?" Morton was asking him.
"All out but two or three smouldering old stubs," replied Bob.
"Everything's safe."
"Nothing's safe," contradicted Morton. "By rights we ought to watch
every minute. But we got to get some rest in a long fight. It's the cool
of the morning and the fire burns low. Turn in and get all the sleep you
can. May need you later."
"I'm all in," acknowledged Bob, throwing back his blanket; "I'm willing
to say so."
"No more fire in mine," agreed young Elliott.
The other men said nothing, but fell to their beds. Only Charley Morton
rose a little stiffly to his feet.
"Aren't you going to turn in too, Charley?" asked the girl quickly.
"It's daylight now," explained the ranger, "and I can see to ride a
horse. I reckon I'd better ride down the line."
"I've thought of that," said Amy. "Of course, it wouldn't do to let the
fire take care of itself. See; I have Pronto saddled. I'll look over the
line, and if anything happens I'll wake you."
"You must be about dead," said Charley. "You've been up all night fixing
camp and cooking----"
"Up all night!" repeated Amy scornfully. "How long do you think it
takes me to make camp and cook a simple little breakfast?"
"But the country's almighty rough riding."
"On Pronto?"
"He's a good mountain pony," agreed Charley Morton; "California John
picked him out himself. All right. I do feel some tired."
This was about six o'clock. The men had slept but a little over an hour
when Amy scrambled over the rim of the dike and dropped from her horse.
"Charley!" she cried, shaking the ranger by the shoulder; "I'm sorry.
But there's fresh smoke about half-way down the mountain. There was
nothing left to burn fresh inside the fire line, was there? I thought
not."
Twenty minutes later all six were frantically digging, hoeing, chopping,
beating in a frenzy against the spread of the flames. In some manner the
fire had jumped the line. It might have been that early in the fight a
spark had lodged. As long as the darkness of night held down the
temperature, this spark merely smouldered. When, however, the rays of
the sun gathered heat, it had burst into flame.
This sun made all the difference in the world. Where, in the cool of the
night, the flames had crept slowly, now they leaped forward with a
fierce crackling; green brush that would ordinarily have resisted for a
long time, now sprang into fire at a touch. The conflagration spread
from a single point in all directions, running swiftly, roaring in a
sheet of fire, licking up all before it.
The work was fierce in its intensity. Bob, in common with the others,
had given up trying--or indeed caring--to protect himself. His clothes
smoked, his face smarted and burned, his skin burned and blistered. He
breathed the hot air in gasps. Strangely enough, he did not feel in the
least tired.
He did not need to be told what to do. The only possible defence was
across a rock outcrop. To right and left of him the other men were
working desperately to tear out the brush. He grubbed away trying to
clear the pine needles and little bushes that would carry the fire
through the rocks like so many powder fuses.
He had no time to see how the others were getting on; he worked on
faith. His own efforts were becoming successful. The fire, trying, one
after another, various leads through the rocks, ran out of fuel and
died. The infernal roaring furnace below, however, leaped ever to new
trial.
Then all at once Bob found himself temporarily out of the game. In
trying to roll a boulder out of the way, he caught his hand. A sharp,
lightning pain shot up his arm and into the middle of his chest. When he
had succeeded in extricating himself, he found that his middle finger
was squarely broken.