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For a long time Charley lay on his back, hardly conscious of anything. But
slowly the pure air revived him and his powers came back. He sat up, then
rose unsteadily to his feet. In a few moments he felt all right. He began
to look about him. The fire he had been fighting was extinguished. He
ascended an easily climbed tree and saw that the third fire in the valley
was also out. He knew that the fire fighters had gone on to the next
valley to subdue the blazes there. The wind was still no more than a
zephyr and he knew they would succeed. The forest was saved. A feeling of
great relief came to him.
He sat down and rested, thinking what he ought to do. He remembered what
the forester had said about the desirability of an immediate investigation
of incendiary fires. Here was his job.
He made his way to the blackened area where he had put out the first fire.
The space burned over was small. Charley stood and looked at it for some
moments, thinking the problem over. Then he walked slowly around the
burned area, examining it closely, but not stepping within the fire-line.
Then he wet a finger and held it aloft. Unmistakably the light breeze was
from the west. It had doubtless been blowing from that quarter all the
morning, though this particular fire had been extinguished when there was
hardly more than a suspicion of a breeze. The fire would have spread in an
elongated circle, or more exactly an oval. Charley tried to figure out the
exact starting point. He felt sure he could estimate it within a few
yards.
When he had decided about where the fire must have originated, he made his
way cautiously, a yard at a time, toward that point. He was careful not to
disturb the leaves any more than was necessary in putting down his feet.
Carefully he scrutinized every inch of the ground he covered. He was
looking for a mound of burned leaves or any other suspicious thing. But he
found none. Look where he would, the leaves seemed to have been disturbed
before the fire started.
Not far from the point selected by Charley as the probable place of the
fire's origin, the ground thrust up in a little, low shoulder, as though
there might be an outcropping ledge of rock there. Immediately around this
elevation the ground was clear of brush. No trees stood near. Charley paid
little attention to the mound until he noticed that it was hollowed out on
top. At the same time a piece of freshly dug earth caught his eye near by.
At least Charley judged it to be freshly dug, although it was blackened by
fire. He made his way very carefully to the little mound. Now he noticed
that the leaves about this mound had been raked together, for the ashes
lay thick in the hollow centre in the elevation.
Cautiously Charley began to scratch among the ashes at the edge of the
pile. His fingers encountered many rough chunks of earth, partly hardened
by fire. The rain, the frost, and the cold of winter would naturally have
broken those chunks down into loose soil. So Charley knew they could not
be very old. As he scratched more of them out of the leaves, he blew the
ashes from them and examined them critically. He could think of no
connection between these chunks of earth and the fire, yet something made
him scrutinize them closely.
All the time he was carefully digging the ashes away, and working toward
the centre of the pile. Suddenly he picked up a chunk that was quite
different from the crumbly earth masses he had been handling. This piece
was partly hardened and reddened. At once Charley saw it was clay.
Charley continued to scrape aside the ashes. He found more and more little
chunks of clay, while the hollow place in the centre of the mound proved
to be a square, small depression that must have been made with human
hands. Even before he had it cleared of ashes, Charley knew that. The
depression was much too rectangular to be natural. It was about eighteen
inches square and almost a foot deep. In the bottom of it were charred
ends of sticks and a little candle grease, buried under the mass of ashes.
When Charley had carefully scraped and blown out all the ashes possible,
he lay flat on his belly and examined the place minutely. Some person or
persons had dug a little square chamber, like a sunken box, right in the
shoulder of the mound. Charley decided that a candle had been placed in
the centre of the box-like excavation, leaves packed loosely about the
base of the candle, some fine, dry twigs stacked across the edges of the
excavation, and across the top of the hole other dry twigs had been
placed. Then the candle had been lighted, the open side of the excavation
closed with twigs thrust vertically into the clay, and leaves heaped over
and about the excavation.
As Charley examined the mound, he could not but admire the devilish
cunning exhibited in the construction of this fire box. The open space
about the mound would give full sweep to the morning breeze, and the box
was located in the windward shoulder of the little mound, exactly where
the breeze would hit it hardest. The piles of leaves heaped about the box
would spread the flames on all sides.
The candle grease in the bottom of the excavation, Charley had no doubt,
was the remains of one of his own candles, taken with the food supplies
from his cupboard. Nor did he doubt that the man who had taken it was
Lumley. He must have disappeared in the forest the moment Henry Collins
had told him what was afoot, for there could be no doubt Collins had
informed him. After the moon rose, so that he could see well, Lumley must
have come to the cabin, stolen food and candles, cautiously removed the
aerial and grounded the battery, and gone straight down the valley to set
his fires. If he could not get the money for the timber, or at least some
of it, quite evidently Lumley did not intend to allow any one else to have
it, not even the state.
In his own mind Charley had no doubt whatever that the incendiary was
Lumley, and that he had done exactly the things Charley pictured him as
doing. Even now he must be somewhere in the forest. But Charley felt
relieved when he realized that in all probability Lumley had no firearms.
He must have fled without taking time to equip himself. Also Charley
doubted if he would remain in the forest. The forester would be certain to
scour the woods for him, and Lumley could hardly hope to evade pursuit
indefinitely. He would probably make his way out of the forest at some
distant point and try to get away. Sooner or later, Charley felt sure, the
man would be captured and doubtless sent to prison for cheating the state.
It made Charley feel bad to think that he did not have enough direct
evidence to insure Lumley's conviction for arson as well.
An idea came to Charley. Blowing away the remaining dust and ashes,
Charley once more began an examination of the little excavation. Inch by
inch he scrutinized the surface of the pit. He found it partly baked.
Suddenly he gave a cry. He had found the distinct prints of some one's
fingers. On the second side of the excavation he found more prints, and
the third side yielded still others. Carefully Charley chopped out the
incriminating bits of clay. When he laid them side by side and examined
them under his microscope, he found they had been made, not by one person,
but by three. Apparently each side of the pit had been fashioned by a
different man.