But just then Franklin came in with Sturgis.
“Pretty dry out that way,” he grinned, helping himself to an enormous
slab of bread and a big hunk of cheese.
“How far west does the main fire extend?” Sturgis asked.
“Within about forty rods of Deming Lake.”
“Deming Lake!” Sturgis almost shouted. “That means that it may get on to
section thirty-six.”
“Almost there now,” Franklin answered cheerfully. “We can stop it on
that row of lakes if it just don’t come around from the southeast on the
other side of them. That’s going to be the big trouble.”
“We’ve _got_ to stop it,” Sturgis gritted between his clenched teeth.
“If that fire ever gets into that young growth on thirty-six Professor
Roberts will never forgive me.”
“The only way you can do it,” Franklin assured him cheerfully, “is to
clean things up here tonight so that you won’t have to waste men on
patrol and fight her face to face down there in the morning.”
“I guess you’re right,” Sturgis assented, “and we’d better be getting at
it. You take the boys and start cleaning up from the south end of the
lake here and I’ll go see what Dan is doing with the fire across the
road.
“We’ve stopped the first rush now and there is no more danger tonight,
but the wind is a little southeast and if the fire gets around us to the
west and breaks away in the morning we’ll be worse off than we were
before and all our work wasted. Now we have to clean up the edges of
this fire for two miles. Bury the fire along the edges, cut down all the
stubs which may throw sparks, and throw back into the fire all burning
logs and rotten stuff.”
“Two miles,” Bill Price exclaimed, “and here I’ve been dreaming of home
and mother. Come on, boys, for every one that dies there’ll be one more
vacancy for the under classmen.”
They filed away around the lake and were soon scattered along the front
of the fire intent on their gruelling work. The wind had gone down and
the fire no longer ran readily, but it burned too fiercely to permit of
close approach and they were forced to resort to the slow, tiresome
process of trenching and allowing the fire to burn up to it. It was
comparatively easy to keep it from crossing. Then they were able to go
back and complete the cleaning up. As each man cleaned up the little
patch assigned to him he passed on to another ahead of the foremost man.
And so they worked one weary hour after another, slowly crawling along
that crooked line. It became so dark and the line of the fire was so
crooked that the boys had no idea where they were or where they were
going. Each man was practically isolated in the darkness. Occasionally
it happened a man toward the end of the line who had been delayed by
some refractory stubs found himself deserted and became completely lost,
unable to find the other workers.
At last at one o’clock they were allowed to rest and they fell asleep by
the campfire like one man. At three o’clock Sturgis called them again.
They had to be shaken individually, some even required repeated
applications, to bring them to their senses. Slowly they scrambled to
their feet, still half asleep, groaning with the aches and pains which
shot through their wracked bodies. They saw the men up and going
silently about the morning preparations, realized that they had been
favored with all the extra time there was for sleep, and choked down
their troubles in silence. No one seemed to have anything to say, not
even Bill Price, but it was the dogged silence of determination, not
sullenness. The meager breakfast was soon over for they were running
short of provisions, and they were ready to work once more.
“Are we working again or yet?” Bill asked musingly.
“Sorry I could not let you sleep longer, fellows,” Sturgis apologized,
“but we can cover rods now to the feet we can make when the sun gets up.
Dan will keep the men here to make breaks between the lakes and backfire
as soon as it’s dry enough. The rest of us will go down to the south end
of Josephine and see what we can do there. It’s a race for the north end
of Niowa and we must win.”
The wind was already on the rise. On the rise and from the east, the
worst possible direction. Sturgis placed his scattered line of workers,
urging them to greater efforts, and took the trail he had come down that
morning to rob Dan of two of his small force. They had already completed
their short breaks across the narrow necks and were waiting for an
opportunity to start the backfires.
“Can you do it with one man, Dan?” he panted. “It’s a race down to
Nimashi Lake, and every man counts there.”
“I can try it,” Dan answered simply.
With his two recruits Sturgis hurried south once more, harried the poor
weary workers to frenzied efforts and took up his own position at the
south end of the line. Already the wind had fanned the fire to a heat
that made close work impossible and they had to resort to the slow work
of trenching and backfiring. There were still two hundred yards to go.
Slowly the men began to come around from the rear to take up the new
positions in front, and the gap was narrowed. Even at that it looked as
though it would be impossible to head it at the lake, but at the last
minute five men came up from the rear, Scott among them, and under
Franklin’s lead fought the fire face to face. Clothes were burned and
eyebrows singed, but they fought desperately. They beat the fire out of
the last grass strip between the hill and the lake in one grand
triumphal rush.
For the time that fire was safe. The reaction on the overworked boys was
almost immediate. With one accord they lay down wherever they happened
to be and went to sleep. Sturgis looked at them enviously. He had worked
harder than they, and on considerably less sleep, but he knew that their
apparent victory over the fire could be turned to a complete defeat by
the passage of a single unwatched spark across that narrow fireguard.
Only a weary patrol of the entire fireline for the rest of the day would
make it safe.
He turned away with a weary sigh. “I guess it’s up to you and me and
Dan, Franklin, to patrol this thing. I never saw a better working bunch
of boys, but they are not used to it, and they are all in.”
“Well,” Franklin grinned, apparently as fresh as when he started, “the
fire’s almost all in, too, and I guess we three can handle it.”
They had just started to trail away northward over that weary stretch of
line, leaving the boys asleep where they were, when Professor Mertz, who
had gone home the night before, strode over the brow of the hill with a
big pack sack on his back.
“By George, Mertz,” Sturgis cried gratefully, “you’re the best-looking
man, with that pack on your back, that I’ve ever seen.”
“How’s the fire?” Professor Mertz asked anxiously.
“It’s all over but the shouting,” Sturgis assured him, “if we can just
keep awake long enough to patrol it for the rest of the day. It was
pretty hot down there by that lake, but the boys fought like good
fellows and stopped her. It can’t get by below.”
“Where are the boys?”
“Sound asleep right where they dug the last shovelful of dirt. They hit
the ground and were snoring before the dirt fell.”
“Pretty tough one for a starter,” chuckled the professor. “You fellows
look pretty tired yourselves. I brought five men down with me and put
them to patrolling above here. Guess they can handle it all now. Dan was
in a pretty tight hole back there.”
The strain relieved and the necessity for keeping at it removed, Sturgis
and Franklin sat down with a thud, and would probably have joined the
boys if the sight of the pack sack had not kept them awake. The
professor soon had the coffee boiling and the supplies spread out
temptingly. Getting the boys awake was a harder task, but the mention of
something to eat aroused even the most weary and they fell to with a
will.
It was agreed that the fresh men should be left to maintain the patrol
until six o’clock that night, and all the rest should go back to camp in
the wagon. It was a tired crew, but they kept their spirits buoyed up by
the feeling that they had won a great victory and made good. They tuned
up for the Lodge and sang lustily in answer to the cheers of the summer
boarders who turned out to see them go by. The songs heralded their
approach long before they reached the camp, and all the non-combatants
were out to welcome them. They presented a begrimed and bedraggled
spectacle, but they were supremely happy.
“Do I win that pop?” Sturgis called after them as they trailed away to
the bunkhouse.
“You sure do,” Bill Price shouted back, “and I’ll bet you another case
that I can sleep till tomorrow noon without waking up even to eat.”
Scott remembered how the fire swept roaring up that hill and dreamed all
night that he was fighting just such fires sweeping up the mountain
slopes of his own forest in New Hampshire. The fact that he might never
get that forest made them seem none the less real.