THE WORK OF THE FIRE
At Cranford began the road which the Camp Fire Girls were to follow
through Indian Notch, the gap between the two big mountains, Mount Grant
and Mount Sherman. Then they were to travel easily toward the seashore,
since the Manasquan Camp Fire, ever since it had been organized, had
spent a certain length of time each summer by the sea.
The Village of Cranford had been saved from the fire only by a shift of
the wind. The woods to the west and the north had been burning briskly
for several days, and every able-bodied man in the village had been out,
day and night, with little food and less rest, trying to turn off the
fire. In spite of all their efforts, however, they would have failed in
their task if the change in the weather had not come to their aid. As a
consequence, everyone in the village, naturally enough, was still
talking about the fire.
"It isn't often that a village in this part of the country has such a
narrow escape," said Eleanor, looking around. "See, girls, you can see
for yourselves how close they were to having to turn and run from the
fire."
"It looks as if some of the houses here had actually been on fire," said
Dolly, as they passed into the outskirts of the village.
"I expect they were. You see, the wind was very high just before the
shift came, and it would carry sparks and blazing branches. It's been a
very hot, dry summer, too, and so all the wooden houses were ready to
catch fire. The paint was dry and blistered. They probably had to watch
these houses very carefully, to be ready to put out a fire the minute it
started."
"It didn't look so bad from our side of the lake, though, did it?"
"The smoke hid the things that were really dangerous from us, but here
they could see all right. I'll bet that before another summer comes
around they'll be in a position to laugh at a fire."
"How do you mean? Is there anything they can do to protect
themselves--before a fire starts, I mean?"
"That's the time to protect themselves. When people wait until the fire
has actually begun to burn, it's almost impossible for them to check it.
It would have been this time, if the wind had blown for a few hours
longer the way it was doing when the fire started."
"But what can they do?"
"They can have a cleared space between the town and the forest, for one
thing, with a lot of brush growing there, if they want to keep that.
Then, if a fire starts, they can set the brush afire, and make a back
fire, so that the big fire will be checked by the little one. The fire
has to have something to feed on, you see, and if it comes to a cleared
space that's fairly wide, it can't get any further.
"Oh, a cleared space like that doesn't mean that the village could go
to sleep and feel safe! But it's a lot easier to fight the fire then.
All the men in town could line up, with beaters and plenty of water, and
as soon as sparks started a fire on their side of the clearing, they
could put it out before it could get beyond control."
"Oh, I see! And being able to see the fire as soon as it started, they
wouldn't have half so much trouble fighting it as if they had to be
after the really big blaze."
"Yes. The fire problem in places like this seems very dreadful, but when
the conditions are as good as they are here, with plenty of water, all
that's needed is a little forethought. It's different in some of the
lumber towns out west, because there the fires get such a terrific start
that they would jump any sort of a clearing, and the only thing to do
when a fire gets within a certain distance of a town is for the people
who live in the town to run."
Soon the road began to pass between desolate stretches of woods, where
the fire had raged at its hottest. Here the ground on each side of the
road was covered with smoking ashes, and blackened stumps stood up from
the barren, burnt ground.
"It looks like a big graveyard, with those stumps for headstones," said
Dolly, with a shudder.
"It is a little like that," said Eleanor, with a sigh. "But if you came
here next year you wouldn't know the place. All that ash will fertilize
the ground, and it will all be green. The stumps will still be there,
but a great new growth will be beginning to push out. Of course it will
be years and years before it's real forest again, but nature isn't dead,
though it looks so. There's life underneath all that waste and
desolation, and it will soon spring up again."
"I hope we'll get out of this burned country soon," said Dolly. "I think
it's as gloomy and depressing as it can be. I'd like to have seen this
road before the fire--it must have been beautiful."
"It certainly was, Dolly. And all this won't last for many miles. We
really ought to stop pretty soon to eat our dinner. What do you say,
girls? Would you like to wait, and press on until we come to a more
cheerful spot, where the trees aren't all burnt?"
"Yes, oh, yes!" cried Margery Burton. "I think that would be ever so
much nicer! Suppose we are a little hungry before we get our dinner? We
can stand that for once."
"I think we'll enjoy our meal more. So we'll keep on, then, if the rest
of you feel the same way."
Not a voice dissented from that proposition, either. Dolly was not the
only one who was saddened by the picture of desolation through which
they were passing. The road, of course, was deep in dust and ashes, and
the air, still filled with the smoke that rose from the smouldering
woods, was heavy and pungent, so that eyes were watery, and there was a
good deal of coughing and sneezing.
"It's a lucky thing there weren't any houses along here, isn't it?"
said Margery. "I don't see how they could possibly have been saved, do
you, Miss Eleanor?"
"There's no way that they could have saved them, unless, perhaps, by
having a lot of city fire engines, and keeping them completely covered
with water on all sides while the fire was burning. They call that a
water blanket, but of course there's no way that they could manage that
up here."
"What do you suppose started this fire, Miss Eleanor?"
"No one will ever know. Perhaps someone was walking in the woods, and
threw a lighted cigar or cigarette in a pile of dry leaves. Perhaps some
party of campers left their camp without being sure that their fire was
out."
"Just think of it--that all the trouble could be started by a little
thing like that! It makes you realize what a good thing it is that we
have to be careful never to leave a single spark behind when we're
leaving a fire, doesn't it?"
"Yes. It's a dreadful thing that people should be so careless with
fire. Fire, and the heat we get from it, is responsible for the whole
progress of the race. It was the discovery that fire could be used by
man that was back of every invention that has ever been made."
"That's why it's the symbol of the Camp Fire, isn't it?"
"Yes. And in this country people ought to think more of fire than they
do. We lose more by fire every year than any other country in the world,
because we're so terribly careless."
"What is that there, ahead of us, in the road?" asked Bessie, suddenly.
They had just come to a bend in the road, and about a hundred yards away
a group of people stood in the road.
Eleanor looked grave. She shaded her eyes with her hand, and stared
ahead of her.
"Oh," she cried, "what a shame! I remember now. There was a farm house
there! I'm afraid we were wrong when we spoke of there being no houses
in the path of this fire!"
They pressed on steadily, and, as they approached the group forlorn,
distressed and unhappy, they saw that their fears were only too well
grounded. The people in the road were staring, with drawn faces, at a
scene of ruin and desolation that far outdid the burnt wastes beside the
road, since what they were looking at represented human work and the
toil of hands.
The foundations of a farm house were plainly to be seen, the cellar
filled with the charred wood of the house itself, and in what had
evidently been the yard there were heaps of ashes that showed where the
barns and other buildings had stood.
In the road, staring dully at the girls as they came up, were two women
and a boy about seventeen years old, as well as several young children.
Eleanor looked at them pityingly, and then spoke to the older of the two
women.
"You seem to be in great trouble," she said. "Is this your house?"
"It was!" said the woman, bitterly. "You can see what's left of it!
What are you--picnickers? Be off with you! Don't come around here
gloating over the misfortunes of hard working people!"
"How can you think we'd do that?" said Eleanor, with tears in her eyes.
"We can see that things look very bad for you. Have you any place to
go--any home?"
"You can see it!" said the woman, ungraciously.
Eleanor looked at her and at the ruined farm for a minute very
thoughtfully. Then she made up her mind.
"Well, if you've got to start all over again," she said, "you are going
to need a lot of help, and I don't see why we can't be the first to help
you! Girls, we won't go any further now. We'll stay here and help these
poor people to get started!"
"What can people like you do to help us?" asked the woman, scornfully.
"This isn't a joke--'t ain't like a quiltin' party!"
"Just you watch us, and see if we can't help," said Eleanor, sturdily.
"We're not as useless as we look, I can tell you that! And the first
thing we're going to do is to cook a fine dinner, and you are all going
to sit right down on the ground and help us eat it. You'll be glad of a
meal you don't have to cook yourselves, I'm sure. Where is your well, or
your spring for drinking water? Show us that, and we'll do the rest!"
Only half convinced of Eleanor's really friendly intentions, the woman
sullenly pointed out the well, and in a few moments Eleanor had set the
girls to work.
"The poor things!" she said to Margery, sympathetically. "What they need
most of all is courage to pick up again, now that everything seems to
have come to an end for them, and make a new start. And I can't imagine
anything harder than that!"
"Why, it's dreadful!" said Margery. "She seems to have lost all
ambition--to be ready to let things go."
"That's just the worst of it," said Eleanor. "And it's in making them
see that there's still hope and cheer and good friendship in the world
that we can help them most. I do think we can be of some practical use
to them, too, but the main thing is to brace them up, and make them want
to be busy helping themselves. It would be so easy for me to give them
the money to start over again or I could get my friends to come in with
me, and make up the money, if I couldn't do it all myself."
"But they ought to do it for themselves, you mean?"
"Yes. They'll really be ever so much better off in the long run if it's
managed that way. Often and often, in the city, I've heard the people
who work in the charity organizations tell about families that were
quite ruined because they were helped too much."
"I can see how that would be," said Margery. "They would get into the
habit of thinking they couldn't do anything for themselves--that they
could turn to someone else whenever they got into trouble."
"Yes. You see these poor people are in the most awful sort of trouble
now. They're discouraged and hopeless. Well, the thing to do is to make
them understand that they can rise superior to their troubles, that they
can build a new home on the ashes of their old one."
"Oh, I think it will be splendid if we can help them to do that!"
"They'll feel better, physically, as soon as they have had a good
dinner, Margery. Often and often people don't think enough about that.
It's when people feel worst that they ought to be fed best. It's
impossible to be cheerful on an empty stomach. When people are well
nourished their troubles never seem so great. They look on the bright
side and they tell themselves that maybe things aren't as bad as they
look."
"How can we help them otherwise, though?"
"Oh, we'll fix up a place where they can sleep to-night, for one thing.
And we'll help them to start clearing away all the rubbish. They've got
to have a new house, of course, and they can't even start work on that
until all this wreckage is cleared away."
"I wonder if they didn't save some of their animals--their cows and
horses," said Bessie. "It seems to me they might have been able to do
that."
"I hope so, Bessie. But we'll find out when we have dinner. I didn't
want to bother them with a lot of questions at first. Look, they seem to
be a little brighter already."
The children of the family were already much brighter. It was natural
enough for them to respond more quickly than their elders to the
stimulus of the presence of these kind and helpful strangers, and they
were running around, talking to the girls who were preparing dinner, and
trying to find some way in which they could help.
And their mother began to forget herself and her troubles, and to watch
them with brightening eyes. When she saw that the girls seemed to be
fond of her children and to be anxious to make them happy, the maternal
instinct in her responded, and was grateful.
"Oh, we're going to be able to bring a lot of cheer and new happiness to
these poor people," said Eleanor, confidently. "And it will be splendid,
won't it, girls? Could anything be better fun than doing good this way?
It's something we'll always be able to remember, and look back at
happily. And the strange part of it is that, no matter how much we do
for them, we'll be doing more for ourselves."
"Isn't it fine that we've got those blankets?" said Dolly. "If we camp
out here to-night they'll be very useful."
"They certainly will. And we shall camp here, though not in tents. Later
on this afternoon, we'll have to fix up some sort of shelter. But that
will be easy. I'll show you how to do it when the time comes. Now we
want to hurry with the dinner--that's the main thing, because I think
everyone is hungry."