FIGHTING FIRE
Sanders was in the office of the Jackpot Company looking over some
blue-prints when Joyce Crawford came in and inquired where her father
was.
"He went out with Bob Hart to the oil field this morning. Some trouble
with the casing."
"Thought Dad wasn't giving any of his time to oil these days," she said.
"He told me you and Bob were running the company."
"Every once in a while he takes an interest. I prod him up to go out and
look things over occasionally. He's president of the company, and I tell
him he ought to know what's going on. So to-day he's out there."
"Oh!" Miss Joyce, having learned what she had come in to find out, might
reasonably have departed. She declined a chair, said she must be going,
yet did not go. Her eyes appeared to study without seeing a field map on
the desk. "Dad told me something last night, Mr. Sanders. He said I might
pass it on to you and Bob, though it isn't to go farther. It's about that
ten thousand dollars he paid the bank when it called his loan. He got the
money from Buck Byington."
"Buck!" exclaimed the young man. He was thinking that the Buck he used to
know never had ten dollars saved, let alone ten thousand.
"I know," she explained. "That's it. The money wasn't his. He's executor
or something for the children of his dead brother. This money had come in
from the sale of a farm back in Iowa and he was waiting for an order of
the court for permission to invest it in a mortgage. When he heard Dad
was so desperately hard up for cash he let him have the money. He knew
Dad would pay it back, but it seems what he did was against the law, even
though Dad gave him his note and a chattel mortgage on some cattle which
Buck wasn't to record. Now it has been straightened out. That's why Dad
couldn't tell where he got the money. Buck would have been in trouble."
"I see."
"But now it's all right." Joyce changed the subject. There were teasing
pinpoints of mischief in her eyes. "My school physiology used to say that
sleep was restful. It builds up worn-out tissue and all. One of these
nights, when you can find time, give it a trial and see whether that's
true."
Dave laughed. The mother in this young woman would persistently out. "I
get plenty of sleep, Miss Joyce. Most people sleep too much."
"How much do you sleep?"
"Sometimes more, sometimes less. I average six or seven hours, maybe."
"Maybe," she scoffed.
"Hard work doesn't hurt men. Not when they're young and strong."
"I hear you're trying to work yourself to death, sir," the girl charged,
smiling.
"Not so bad as that." He answered her smile with another for no reason
except that the world was a sunshiny one when he looked at this trim and
dainty young woman. "The work gets fascinating. A fellow likes to get
things done. There's a satisfaction in turning out a full day and in
feeling you get results."
She nodded sagely, in a brisk, business-like way. "I know. Felt it myself
often, but we have to remember that there are other days and other people
to lend a hand. None of us can do it all. Dad thinks you overdo. So he
told me to ask you to supper for to-morrow night. Bob will be there too."
"I say thanks, Miss Joyce, to your father and his daughter."
"Which means you'll be with us to-morrow."
"I'll be with you."
But he was not. Even as he made the promise a shadow darkened the
doorsill and Bob Hart stepped into the office.
His first words were ominous, but before he spoke both of those looking
at him knew he was the bearer of bad news. There was in his boyish face
an unwonted gravity.
"Fire in the chaparral, Dave, and going strong."
Sanders spoke one word. "Where?"
"Started in Bear Cañon, but it's jumped out into the hills."
"The wind must be driving it down toward the Jackpot!"
"Yep. Like a scared rabbit. Crawford's trying to hold the mouth of the
cañon. He's got a man's job down there. Can't spare a soul to keep it
from scootin' over the hills."
Dave rose. "I'll gather a bunch of men and ride right out. On what side
of the cañon is the fire running?"
"East side. Stop at the wells and get tools. I got to rustle dynamite and
men. Be out soon as I can."
They spoke quietly, quickly, decisively, as men of action do in a crisis.
Joyce guessed the situation was a desperate one. "Is Dad in danger?" she
asked.
Hart answered. "No--not now, anyhow."
"What can I do to help?"
"We'll have hundreds of men in the field probably, if this fire has a
real start," Dave told her. "We'll need food and coffee--lots of it.
Organize the women. Make meat sandwiches--hundreds of them. And send
out to the Jackpot dozens of coffee-pots. Your job is to keep the workers
well fed. Better send out bandages and salve, in case some get burnt."
Her eyes were shining. "I'll see to all that. Don't worry, boys. You
fight this fire, and we women will 'tend to feeding you."
Dave nodded and strode out of the room. During the fierce and dreadful
days that followed one memory more than once came to him in the fury of
the battle. It was a slim, straight girl looking at him, the call to
service stamped on her brave, uplifted face.
Sanders was on the road inside of twenty minutes, a group of horsemen
galloping at his heels. At the Jackpot locations the fire-fighters
equipped themselves with shovels, sacks, axes, and brush-hooks. The
party, still on horseback, rode up to the mouth of Bear Cañon. Through
the smoke the sun was blood-red. The air was heavy and heated.
From the fire line Crawford came to meet these new allies. "We're holdin'
her here. It's been nip an' tuck. Once I thought sure she'd break
through, but we beat out the blaze. I hadn't time to go look, but I
expect she's just a-r'arin' over the hills. I've had some teams and
scrapers taken up there, Dave. It's yore job. Go to it."
The old cattleman showed that he had been through a fight. His eyes were
red and inflamed, his face streaked with black, one arm of his shirt half
torn from the shoulder. But he wore the grim look of a man who has just
begun to set himself for a struggle.
The horsemen swung to the east and rode up to the mesa which lies between
Bear and Cattle Cañons. It was impossible to get near Bear, since the
imprisoned fury had burst from its walls and was sweeping the chaparral.
The line of fire was running along the level in an irregular, ragged
front, red tongues leaping ahead with short, furious rushes.
Even before he could spend time to determine the extent of the fire, Dave
selected his line of defense, a ridge of rocky, higher ground cutting
across from one gulch to the other. Here he set teams to work scraping
a fire-break, while men assisted with shovels and brush-hooks to clear
a wide path.
Dave swung still farther east and rode along the edge of Cattle Cañon.
Narrow and rock-lined, the gorge was like a boiler flue to suck the
flames down it. From where he sat he saw it caging with inconceivable
fury. The earth rift seemed to be roofed with flame. Great billows
of black smoke poured out laden with sparks and live coals carried by the
wind. It was plain at the first glance that the fire was bound to leap
from the cañon to the brush-covered hills beyond. His business now was
to hold the ridge he had chosen and fight back the flames to keep them
from pouring down upon the Jackpot property. Later the battle would have
to be fought to hold the line at San Jacinto Cañon and the hills running
down from it to the plains.
The surface fire on the hills licked up the brush, mesquite, and young
cedars with amazing rapidity. If his trail-break was built in time, Dave
meant to back-fire above it. Steve Russell was one of his party. Sanders
appointed him lieutenant and went over the ground with him to decide
exactly where the clearing should run, after which he galloped back to
the mouth of Bear.
"She's running wild on the hills and in Cattle Cañon," Dave told
Crawford. "She'll sure jump Cattle and reach San Jacinto. We've got to
hold the mouth of Cattle, build a trail between Bear and Cattle, another
between Cattle and San Jacinto, cork her up in San Jacinto, and keep her
from jumping to the hills beyond."
"Can we back-fire, do you reckon?"
"Not with the wind there is above, unless we have check-trails built
first. We need several hundred more men, and we need them right away. I
never saw such a fire before."
"Well, get yore trail built. Bob oughtta be out soon. I'll put him over
between Cattle and San Jacinto. Three-four men can hold her here now.
I'll move my outfit over to the mouth of Cattle."
The cattleman spoke crisply and decisively. He had been fighting fire for
six hours without a moment's rest, swallowing smoke-filled air, enduring
the blistering heat that poured steadily at them down the gorge. At least
two of his men were lying down completely exhausted, but he contemplated
another such desperate battle without turning a hair. All his days he had
been a good fighter, and it never occurred to him to quit now.
Sanders rode up as close to the west edge of Bear Cañon as he could
endure. In two or three places the flames had jumped the wall and were
trying to make headway in the scant underbrush of the rocky slope
that led to a hogback surmounted by a bare rimrock running to the summit.
This natural barrier would block the fire on the west, just as the
burnt-over area would protect the north. For the present at least the
fire-fighters could confine their efforts to the south and east, where
the spread of the blaze would involve the Jackpot. A shift in the wind
would change the situation, and if it came in time would probably save
the oil property.
Dave put his horse to a lope and rode back to the trench and trail his
men were building. He found a shovel and joined them.
From out of Cattle Cañon billows of smoke rolled across the hill and
settled into a black blanket above the men. This was acrid from the
resinous pitch of the pines. The wind caught the dark pall, drove it low,
and held it there till the workers could hardly breathe. The sun was
under entire eclipse behind the smoke screen.
The heat of the flames tortured Dave's face and hands, just as the
smoke-filled air inflamed his nostrils and throat. Coals of fire pelted
him from the river of flame, carried by the strong breeze blowing down.
From the cañons on either side of the workers came a steady roar of a
world afire. Occasionally, at some slight shift of the wind, the smoke
lifted and they could see the moving wall of fire bearing down upon them,
wedges of it far ahead of the main line.
The movements of the workers became automatic. The teams had to be
removed because the horses had become unmanageable under the torture of
the heat. When any one spoke it was in a hoarse whisper because of a
swollen larynx. Mechanically they dug, shoveled, grubbed, handkerchiefs
over their faces to protect from the furnace glow.
A deer with two fawns emerged from the smoke and flew past on the way to
safety. Mice, snakes, rabbits, birds, and other desert denizens appeared
in mad flight. They paid no attention whatever to their natural foe, man.
The terror of the red monster at their heels wholly obsessed them.
The fire-break was from fifteen to twenty feet wide. The men retreated
back of it, driven by the heat, and fought with wet sacks to hold the
enemy. A flash of lightning was hurled against Dave. It was a red-hot
limb of a pine, tossed out of the gorge by the stiff wind. He flung it
from him and tore the burning shirt from his chest. An agony of pain shot
through his shoulder, seared for half a foot by the blazing branch.
He had no time to attend to the burn then. The fire had leaped the
check-trail at a dozen points. With his men he tried to smother the
flames in the grass by using saddle blankets and gunnysacks, as well
as by shoveling sand upon it. Sometimes they cut down the smouldering
brush and flung it back across the break into the inferno on the other
side. Blinded and strangling from the smoke, the fire-fighters would make
short rushes into the clearer air, swallow a breath or two of it, and
plunge once more into the line to do battle with the foe.
For hours the desperate battle went on. Dave lost count of time. One
after another of his men retreated to rest. After a time they drifted
back to help make the defense good against the plunging fire devil.
Sanders alone refused to retire. His parched eyebrows were half gone.
His clothes hung about him in shredded rags. He was so exhausted that he
could hardly wield a flail. His legs dragged and his arms hung heavy. But
he would not give up even for an hour. Through the confused, shifting
darkness of the night he led his band, silhouetted on the ridge like
gnomes of the nether world, to attack after attack on the tireless,
creeping, plunging flames that leaped the trench in a hundred desperate
assaults, that howled and hissed and roared like ravenous beasts of prey.
Before the light of day broke he knew that he had won. His men had made
good the check-trail that held back the fire in the terrain between Bear
and Cattle Cañons. The fire, worn out and beaten, fell back for lack of
fuel upon which to feed.
Reinforcements came from town. Dave left the trail in charge of a deputy
and staggered down with his men to the camp that had been improvised
below. He sat down with them and swallowed coffee and ate sandwiches.
Steve Russell dressed his burn with salve and bandages sent out by Joyce.
"Me for the hay, Dave," the cowpuncher said when he had finished. He
stretched himself in a long, tired, luxurious yawn. "I've rid out a
blizzard and I've gathered cattle after a stampede till I 'most thought
I'd drop outa the saddle. But I give it to this here li'l' fire. It's
sure enough a stemwinder. I'm beat. So long, pardner."
Russell went off to roll himself up in his blanket.
Dave envied him, but he could not do the same. His responsibilities were
not ended yet. He found his horse in the remuda, saddled, and rode over
to the entrance to Cattle Cañon.
Emerson Crawford was holding his ground, though barely holding it. He too
was grimy, fire-blackened, exhausted, but he was still fighting to throw
back the fire that swept down the cañon at him.
"How are things up above?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.
"Good. We held the check-line."
"Same here so far. It's been hell. Several of my boys fainted."
"I'll take charge awhile. You go and get some sleep," urged Sanders.
The cattleman shook his head. "No. See it through. Say, son, look who's
here!" His thumb hitched toward his right shoulder.
Dave looked down the line of blackened, grimy fire-fighters and his eye
fell on Shorty. He was still wearing chaps, but his Chihuahua hat had
succumbed long ago. Manifestly the man had been on the fighting line for
some hours.
"Doesn't he know about the reward?"
"Yes. He was hidin' in Malapi when the call came for men. Says he's no
quitter, whatever else he is. You bet he ain't. He's worth two of most
men at this work. Soon as we get through he'll be on the dodge again, I
reckon, unless Applegate gets him first. He's a good sport, anyhow. I'll
say that for him."
"I reckon I'm a bad citizen, sir, but I hope he makes his getaway before
Applegate shows up."
"Well, he's one tough scalawag, but I don't aim to give him away right
now. Shorty is a whole lot better proposition than Dug Doble."
Dave came back to the order of the day. "What do you want me to do now?"
The cattleman looked him over. "You damaged much?"
"No."
"Burnt in the shoulder, I see."
"Won't keep me from swinging a sack and bossing a gang."
"Wore out, I reckon?"
"I feel fine since breakfast--took two cups of strong coffee."
Again Crawford's eyes traveled over his ally. They saw a ragged, red-eyed
tramp, face and hands and arms blackened with char and grimed with smoke.
Outside, he was such a specimen of humanity as the police would have
arrested promptly on suspicion. But the shrewd eyes of the cattleman saw
more--a spirit indomitable that would drive the weary, tormented body
till it dropped in its tracks, a quality of leadership that was a trumpet
call to the men who served with him, a soul master of its infirmities.
His heart went out to the young fellow. Wherefore he grinned and gave him
another job. Strong men to-day were at a premium with Emerson Crawford.
"Ride over and see how Bob's comin' out. We'll make it here."
Sanders swung to the saddle and moved forward to the next fire front,
the one between Cattle and San Jacinto Cañons. Hart himself was not here.
There had come a call for help from the man in charge of the gang trying
to hold the fire in San Jacinto. He had answered that summons long before
daybreak and had not yet returned.
The situation on the Cattle-San Jacinto front was not encouraging. The
distance to be protected was nearly a mile. Part of the way was along a
ridge fairly easy to defend, but a good deal of it lay in lower land of
timber and heavy brush.
Dave rode along the front, studying the contour of the country and the
chance of defending it. His judgment was that it could not be done with
the men on hand. He was not sure that the line could be held even with
reinforcements. But there was nothing for it but to try. He sent a man to
Crawford, urging him to get help to him as soon as possible.
Then he took command of the crew already in the field, rearranged the men
so as to put the larger part of his force in the most dangerous locality,
and in default of a sack seized a spreading branch as a flail to beat out
fire in the high grass close to San Jacinto.
An hour later half a dozen straggling men reported for duty. Shorty was
one of them.
"The ol' man cayn't spare any more," the rustler explained. "He had to
hustle Steve and his gang outa their blankets to go help Bob Hart. They
say Hart's in a heluva bad way. The fire's jumped the trail-check and
is spreadin' over the country. He's runnin' another trail farther back."
It occurred to Dave that if the wind changed suddenly and heightened, it
would sweep a back-fire round him and cut off the retreat of his crew. He
sent a weary lad back to keep watch on it and report any change of
direction in that vicinity.
After which he forgot all about chances of danger from the rear. His
hands and mind were more than busy trying to drive back the snarling,
ravenous beast in front of him. He might have found time to take other
precautions if he had known that the exhausted boy sent to watch against
a back-fire had, with the coming of night, fallen asleep in a draw.