FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL
A carpenter working on the roof of a derrick for Jackpot Number Six
called down to his mates:
"Fire in the hills, looks like. I see smoke."
The contractor was an old-timer. He knew the danger of fire in the
chaparral at this season of the year.
"Run over to Number Four and tell Crawford," he said to his small son.
Crawford and Hart had just driven out from town.
"I'll shag up the tower and have a look," the younger man said.
He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to
long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an
expert at reading such news as the landscape had written on it.
"Fire in Bear Cañon!" he shouted down. "Quite a bit of smoke risin'."
"I'll ride right up and look it over," the cattleman called back. "Better
get a gang together to fight it, Bob. Hike up soon as you're ready."
Crawford borrowed without permission of the owner the nearest saddle
horse and put it to a lope. Five minutes might make all the difference
between a winning and a losing fight.
From the tower Hart descended swiftly. He gathered together all the
carpenters, drillers, enginemen, and tool dressers in the vicinity and
equipped them with shovels, picks, brush-hooks, saws, and axes. To each
one he gave also a gunnysack.
The foot party followed Crawford into the chaparral, making for the hills
that led to Bear Cañon. A wind was stirring, and as they topped a rise it
struck hot on their cheeks. A flake of ash fell on Bob's hand.
Crawford met them at the mouth of the cañon.
"She's rip-r'arin', Bob! Got too big a start to beat out. We'll clear a
fire-break where the gulch narrows just above here and do our fightin'
there."
The sparks of a thousand rockets, flung high by the wind, were swept down
the gulch toward them. Behind these came a curtain of black smoke.
The cattleman set his crew to work clearing a wide trail across the gorge
from wall to wall. The undergrowth was heavy, and the men attacked with
brush-hooks, shovels, and axes. One man, with a wet gunnysack, was
detailed to see that no flying sparks started a new blaze below the
safety zone. The shovelers and grubbers cleared the grass and roots off
to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the
lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the
furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped
forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches
were crackling like fireworks.
"I'll scout round over the hill and have a look above," Bob said. "We've
got to keep it from spreading out of the gulch."
"Take the horse," Crawford called to him.
One good thing was that the fire was coming down the cañon. A downhill
blaze moves less rapidly than one running up.
Runners of flame, crawling like snakes among the brush, struck out at the
fighters venomously and tried to leap the trench. The defenders flailed
at these with the wet gunnysacks.
The wind was stiffer now and the fury of the fire closer. The flames
roared down the cañon like a blast furnace. Driven back by the intense
heat, the men retreated across the break and clung to their line. Already
their lungs were sore from inhaling smoke and their throats were
inflamed. A pine, its pitchy trunk ablaze, crashed down across the
fire-trail and caught in the fork of a tree beyond. Instantly the foliage
leaped to red flame.
Crawford, axe in hand, began to chop the trunk and a big Swede swung an
axe powerfully on the opposite side. The rest of the crew continued to
beat down the fires that started below the break. The chips flew at each
rhythmic stroke of the keen blades. Presently the tree crashed down into
the trail that had been hewn. It served as a conductor, and along it
tongues of fire leaped into the brush beyond. Glowing branches, flung by
the wind and hurled from falling timber, buried themselves in the dry
undergrowth. Before one blaze was crushed half a dozen others started in
its place. Flails and gunnysacks beat these down and smothered them.
Bob galloped into the cañon and flung himself from the horse as he pulled
it up in its stride.
"She's jumpin' outa the gulch above. Too late to head her off. We better
get scrapers up and run a trail along the top o' the ridge, don't you
reckon?" he said.
"Yes, son," agreed Crawford. "We can just about hold her here. It'll be
hours before I can spare a man for the ridge. We got to get help in a
hurry. You ride to town and rustle men. Bring out plenty of dynamite
and gunnysacks. Lucky we got the tools out here we brought to build the
sump holes."
"Betcha! We'll need a lot o' grub, too."
The cattleman nodded agreement. "And coffee. Cayn't have too much coffee.
It's food and drink and helps keep the men awake."
"I'll remember."
"And for the love o' Heaven, don't forget canteens! Get every canteen in
town. Cayn't have my men runnin' around with their tongues hangin' out.
Better bring out a bunch of broncs to pack supplies around. It's goin' to
be one man-sized contract runnin' the commissary."
The cañon above them was by this time a sea of fire, the most terrifying
sight Bob had ever looked upon. Monster flames leaped at the walls of the
gulch, swept in an eyebeat over draws, attacked with a savage roar the
dry vegetation. The noise was like the crash of mountains meeting.
Thunder could scarce have made itself heard.
Rocks, loosened by the heat, tore down the steep incline of the walls,
sometimes singly, sometimes in slides. These hit the bed of the ravine
with the force of a cannon-ball. The workers had to keep a sharp lookout
for these.
A man near Bob was standing with his weight on the shovel he had been
using. Hart gave a shout of warning. At the same moment a large rock
struck the handle and snapped it off as though it had been kindling wood.
The man wrung his hands and almost wept with the pain.
A cottontail ran squealing past them, driven from its home by this new
and deadly enemy. Not far away a rattlesnake slid across the hot rocks.
Their common fear of man was lost in a greater and more immediate one.
Hart did not like to leave the battle-field. "Lemme stay here. You can
handle that end of the job better'n me, Mr. Crawford."
The old cattleman, his face streaked with black, looked at him from
bloodshot eyes. "Where do you get that notion I'll quit a job I've
started, son? You hit the trail. The sooner the quicker."
The young man wasted no more words. He swung to the saddle and rode for
town faster than he had ever traveled in all his hard-riding days.