That was a day long to be remembered in the Great Northwest. It is true
that the destruction of life and property at that time by no means
equaled the ruin wrought by the forest fires of August, 1910, but the
conflagration was serious in its final results for all that.
In August of the previous year half a hundred persons lost their lives
in the fierce fires which swept over portions of Idaho and Montana, and
more than six billion feet of lumber were destroyed. At that time wild
animals raced into the log houses of settlers in order to escape the
flames. In one instance, placed on record by a forester, a mountain lion
actually sought shelter under a bed.
In that case, too, the fire virtually held its ruthless way until it
burned itself out, as there were no trails, no telephones, no provisions
for the fire fighters. The men of the forest patrol were each guarding a
hundred thousand acres. In the more civilized countries of Europe, a
thousand acres is considered a large district for one man.
It was hot and close in the odd little valley on the mountain side.
There seemed a premonition of greater danger in the very air--the
lifeless air which seemed to dry the lungs beyond power of action. The
wind, coming over the blazing forests, struck hot upon the face and
scorched the lips, while the acrid smoke filled the eyes, the ears, the
nostrils.
It seemed to Ned that everything east of the Kootenai river must be on
fire. Now and then, drawn by some wayward current of air, the thick
smoke lifted in the little cup-like valley, and the cowering wild
animals could be seen, huddling together in the terror of the time, deer
no longer afraid of lion or bear, lion and bear forgetting to mark their
prey.
Finally, anxious to know the extent of the disaster, so far as it might
be judged by a personal view of the country west of the valley, Ned left
the boys in charge of the aeroplane and crept toward the rim of the cup.
Jimmie saw him leaving and started on after him, but Jack drew him back.
"Let him go alone, for once," Jack said, "he's only going to find out
where this menagerie of wild animals comes from."
Jimmie settled sullenly back by Jack's side, resolved to break away at
the first opportunity and follow the patrol leader.
When Ned gained the elevation he sought, the procession of wild animals
had come to an end, although birds, frightened and singed by the flames,
were calling from the sky. Everywhere rolled billows of smoke, blown on
ahead of the line of fire and in a measure concealing its fatal advance.
Now and then, however, a spurt of hot wind came over the burned waste
and lifted the curtain for an instant. Then the boy saw that the fire
was crawling up the slope, not racing as it had earlier in the day, but
moving steadily, sweeping the earth of the undergrowth, but leaving many
large trees.
The danger was decreasing there, but lower down the flames were
consuming everything in their path, eating down great trees and leaving
fiery, straggling columns to consume them to ashes. Ned thanked his
stars that the growths on the slope were not dense enough to foster such
a blaze as that which burned below.
It has been stated by those who know that ordinary care would have
prevented most of the devastating forest fires which have raged in the
Northwest. Experts claim that forests should be burned over under
careful supervision, every three or four years. This, they say, will
prevent the accumulation of inflammable material such as caused the
terrible losses of August, 1910.
Ned saw at once the expediency of the proposed remedy. He knew that
resinous spines, steeped in the drippings of pitch and turp from the
overhead branches, had lain many inches deep around the trunks of the
trees, beneath fallen boles, and at the roots of the undergrowth. This
accumulation made the extinguishing of forest fires impossible. He
understood that the government had virtually provided for what followed
by permitting this material to accumulate year after year.
It is declared by foresters and others who strove to check that wall of
fire that it advanced at the rate of a mile a minute between the
Kootenai river and the foothills. Below where Ned lay was a burning
furnace. It was so hot that he dare not lift his face a second time, and
so he moved back to the aeroplane, which he found still safe from the
flames, and the wild creatures crouching in the center of the valley.
"What are the prospects?" Frank asked, speaking with his lips close to
the ear of the patrol leader, for the roaring of the flames rendered
ordinary conversation difficult.
"There is safety here," Ned replied, "but everything to the west seems
to be burning."
"Gee!" Jimmie cried, looking Ned in the face, "how would you like to
meet a friend with a basket of ice?"
"Ice wouldn't last long here," Frank said.
"Not if I got hold of it!" Jimmie grunted.
As the line of fire came nearer to the top of the slope the air grew
hotter, the smoke denser and more stifling. Pat remembered that a pail
of water from a spring had been brought to the vicinity of the aeroplane
soon after Ned landed, and the boys wet their handkerchiefs and bound
them over their eyes and mouths.
As the heat increased the wild creatures crowding together ominously.
When a feeble beast was trampled by a stronger one, or when a rattler
struck at the leg of a bear or deer, there was a cry of pain and a quick
milling of the pack.
"If this doesn't end soon," Frank shouted to Ned through his
handkerchief, "there will be a stampede here. Then it will be all off
for us."
Ned looked around the little circle before replying. The boys certainly
looked like "white caps" with their sheeted faces.
"We'll have to wait and hope for the best," he said. "If the animals
come this way, we must stop them, so far as we are able, with our guns
and electric flashlights."
Presently night fell, and the wind quieted a little at the setting of
the sun. In a short time the clouds rolled away in sullen, threatening
groups, and the stars looked down on the forest tragedy. Later, there
would be moonlight.
"I wonder if all the world is burned, except just this mountain?" Jimmie
asked, taking the handkerchief from his face and wiping the smoke out of
his inflamed eyes. "It looks that way."
"There seems to be enough left to hold a lot of heat," Jack said. "I
don't believe it will ever be cool again."
"If we'd only saved that brigand steak!" wailed Jimmie.
With the half light and the cooler air there came a commotion in the
mass of forest creatures in the center of the valley. It was night now,
and they seemed to feel the mounting of their wild instincts to be up
and away on the hunt.
Under the stars, one by one, they slunk away, bears and mountain lions
turning sullenly toward the lesser beasts, but still too terrified by
what they had passed through to feel the pangs of hunger. In half an
hour the menagerie had vanished, some to the mountain, some over the
slopes to the north and south. The boys drew long breaths of relief when
the shambling figure of the last bear disappeared.
Once Jack drew his gun on a fat old buck who seemed desirous of
investigating the aeroplane, but Ned saw the action and checked the
slaughter.
"Let him alone," he said. "He's lived through this hell on earth, so
give him one more chance."
The boys now began gathering up their scattered utensils, restaking the
tents, and preparing supper. Jimmie proposed another brigand steak, but
Pat insisted that he never wanted to get near enough to a fire to cook
again, so they made an indifferent meal of biscuit and tinned pork and
beans, not even going to the trouble to boil coffee.
While they were eating a gunshot came from the east, followed by the
challenge of a chanticleer.
"What do you know about that?" demanded Jimmie.
"I suppose," Jack complained, "that we've been eating a picked-up supper
within a few rods of a farmhouse, or cattle ranch!"
"You might pry open some of the rocks back there," Pat observed, with
sarcasm, "and see if you can find the house you speak of. It was a human
throat that crow came from."
"Sure it was!" cried Jimmie. "It was a Boy Scout call. Now just see me
get him to talking."
"What's a Rooster patrol chap doing here!" asked Jack. "I guess we are
all having bad dreams."
Jimmie did not reply. Instead he put his hands to his throat and in a
second a long snarling wolf cry came forth, rising into a shrill call,
as if summoning a pack at a distance.
"We'll see what he knows about that," the boy said.
As they listened the challenge of the chanticleer came once more. This
time Jack answered it with the growl of a black bear, which seemed to
Frank to be a great improvement on his practice stunts in the Black Bear
Patrol club rooms in New York.
This odd exchange of greetings kept up for some moments, and then the
figure of a boy of perhaps seventeen was seen in the uncertain light,
making slow progress down the mountain, a short distance to the north.
He carried a haversack on his shoulders and was dressed in the khaki
uniform of the Boy Scouts of America.
"He must be used to mountain work," Jack remarked, as the boy leaped
lightly from ledge to ledge and finally dropped into the valley. "I
couldn't do that, even in broad daylight, to save my life!"
The stranger now advanced to the group of boys and gave them the half
salute of the Boy Scouts, standing with right arm straight out from the
shoulder, palm outward, three fingers standing vertical, the thumb
crossing the palm to rest on the bent-in little finger. Ned replied with
the full salute, which is made with the hand in the same attitude, only
at the forehead.
"What does the badge say?" demanded Jimmie.
"Be prepared!" was the quick reply.
"For what?" was the next question.
"To assist those in distress."
"You're all right," Jimmie shouted. "What patrol?"
"Chanticleer, Denver," was the reply.
"That accounts for the way you lighted down from the mountain," laughed
Ned.
"I've got used to climbing in walking the streets of my home town,"
smiled the other. "Is Ned Nestor here?" he added. "My name is Ernest
Whipple; I'm looking for Mr. Ned Nestor."
"Here he is, the only good-looker in the bunch," Jack laughed, pushing
Ned forward. "What do you want of him?"
"My father is connected with the Secret Service at Washington," was the
reply, "and he posted me as to what was going on here. Said I might come
out and join the party, if Mr. Nestor would permit it. What do you say?"
Of course the son of a man connected with the Secret Service at
Washington--a man who undoubtedly knew all the plans of the men who had
sent Ned into the Northwest--was not to be ignored, but at the same time
Ernest would have been received into the party on the strength of his
own engaging personality, his own frank manner. From the very first
moment he was a favorite with all the boys.
"You're as welcome as the flowers of May!" Frank cried. "Been to
supper?"
"Last night!" grinned Ernest. "My haversack is empty--also my stomach. I
had to take to the mountain in order to keep out of the fire, and
couldn't connect with a grub stake."
"Then there are fires east of the divide?" asked Ned.
"Sure," was the reply, "although they are nothing like the ones over
here. The foresters are watching them, and there is little danger of
their getting a big start."
"Where did you find foresters?" asked Ned, wondering if the men who had
sneaked away from the cavern were not posing as foresters waiting to do
further mischief.
"They are in camp beyond the summit," was the reply. "They told me they
had patrols all through the lower levels."
Jack gave a description of the man who had visited the camp on the
plateau, and was not at all surprised when Ernest identified the fellow
as the apparent leader of the band of foresters he had passed on his way
west.
"I see that you don't believe the men are foresters," Ernest said,
looking into Ned's anxious face. "Well, to tell the truth, I doubt it
myself. I heard some talk there that set me thinking, after I got away.
There was a man there who had just arrived from San Francisco, they
said, and he was doing a good deal of kicking about something that had
been done, or hadn't been done. I don't know which."
"Can you describe the fellow?" asked Ned, a quick suspicion coming to
his mind.
"Of course I can," was the reply, and the remainder of the answer gave
an accurate word photograph of one Albert Lemon.
Ned was thinking fast. How had Lemon reached the eastern side of the
divide so quickly. He, himself, had traveled swiftly from San Francisco,
leaving soon after his exit from the bachelor apartment where the
strange and not entirely satisfactory interview had taken place. He had
left the man who claimed to be Albert Lemon half dazed and weakened from
the effects of opium--still weary from a long and exhausting journey, as
shown by his clothing, and yet the fellow had beaten him out in the race
to the mountains.
Why? Certainly not to take charge of the body of his unfortunate friend,
for the grave was not there, but in a little hollow away to the north
and near the lake. His business seemed to lie with the outlaws who had,
apparently, committed the crime. Why? Had the man been killed as the
result of a conspiracy between the two interests?
This point was worth looking into, for the motive for the deed might
also prove to be the motive for other crimes--among them the burning of
forests.