A TERRIBLE BATTLE
“What shall we do about Darry?” cried Jessie, despairingly, as the Radio
Girls stood arm in arm before the door of the lodge watching the
terrifying progress of the fire. “If he has been imprisoned in the path
of that fire——”
“Please, don’t, Jess!” implored Amy, shrinking back as a breath of hot
wind fanned her face. “I can’t bear to think of my poor brother. If only
we could have found him before the fire started!”
“Don’t go on believing the very worst,” chided Nell, gently. “He may
have been imprisoned in that hut we saw in the swamp for all we know.”
“But the trail led away from it,” objected Amy.
“They may have doubled back on their tracks, just to elude pursuit,”
said Jessie, eagerly willing to grasp at the smallest hope.
“I wonder if swamp grass burns,” said Amy.
Before any one could respond, the hot breath of the fire enveloped them,
driving them toward the lake. The roar of the burning timber was
terrifyingly loud and the smoke rolled toward them in a dense black
cloud.
The girls put their hands before their smarting eyes and retreated still
farther toward the lake. Through blurred vision they saw Fol dash from
the lodge with Burd limping painfully after him.
They ran forward and intercepted the boys, demanding what they were
going to do.
“Fight the fire, of course,” replied Fol, pulling impatiently away from
their restraining hands. “I guess the rangers need every man they can
get.”
“But you, Burd! You aren’t fit to go,” protested Amy. “Your foot——”
“I have forgotten all about my foot,” retorted Burd, with a grimness
altogether new to him. “After the fire is over will be time enough to
remember it.”
“If you can go, so can we!” cried Jessie, her eyes suddenly blazing with
purpose.
“That’s the idea!” cried Amy and Nell, eagerly, and the boys paused for
a moment to regard them admiringly.
“You girls are the real stuff, all right,” said Burd, and Fol added:
“Come along, and maybe they will have a gunny sack or two to spare.”
The girls did not understand this reference, but they were soon to have
it explained to them. They battled their way through the increasingly
heavy smoke and the scorching heat to the first line of the
fire-fighters.
There men worked like fiends with the sweat streaming down their
soot-stained faces, bloodshot eyes strained and set and determined. They
worked with pick and shovel and hose and wet gunny sacks, chopping down
ruthlessly branches of trees that were in the path of the fire, digging
trenches in the earth to balk the darting flames, beating out with the
sodden sacks little creeping hungry streams of fire that wriggled
snakelike through the underbrush, the foreguard of fresh terror and
destruction.
It was to this last task that the girls found themselves assigned. The
forest rangers made no question of their presence there, merely taking
time from their own fierce labors to motion to the gunny sacks.
The girls needed no further permission or instruction. Fired by the
dauntless spirit of the men about them, stirred to fierce anger by the
relentless onrush of the fire, they felt themselves suddenly incapable
of fatigue or of fear.
Smoke burned their eyes, their throats were parched and dry. They tried
to swallow and found their tongues swollen to twice the normal size.
Still they fought on, laying their dry and scorched sacks upon a pile of
others and accepting new and sodden ones from the supply being
constantly rushed to the spot by the rangers.
In spite of all they could do they were losing, were being pushed back
slowly but steadily toward the water. The wind, gentle at first, was
increasing in volume. It looked as though the entire water front was
doomed to go.
“Look!” gasped Amy, hoarsely, grasping Jessie’s arm and pointing upward.
“The top branches of these trees have caught! We can’t fight it, up
there.”
The order was given and they retreated some twenty yards. The work was
to be done all over again, new trenches dug, new branches hacked away,
more fighting of those insidious ribbons of flame darting slyly through
the underbrush.
“Come on, Nell,” cried Jessie, hoarsely, brandishing her sack. “See
where the fire is spreading over there? Quick!”
Nell followed her, and together they beat out that fresh assault. They
rested for a moment, panting, only to rush to another spot where the
flames had gained a foothold.
They caught sight of the boys now and then, and their hearts swelled
with pride as they saw the look upon their faces and the gallant way
they fought shoulder to shoulder with the older men.
If Darry were only there, in his place, beside them! Oh, where was
Darry?
Once when they stopped to gain a breath they were surprised to see Miss
Alling rushing up to them. On her face was the determined expression
they had come to know so well.
“They need more men out here,” Miss Alling shouted. “And when it comes
to work I am as good as any man.” And as though to prove her words she
went to work with a will and a fresh new energy that further inspired
the tired girls.
Suddenly it seemed that they were gaining ground. The wind had shifted
and was bearing the flames backward over the charred and ravaged
territory.
The rangers closed in, working fiercely to make the most of this
advantage, striving to conquer the flames before the fickle wind could
change again.
Sacks hung limply from tired fingers, every nerve and muscle quivered
with fatigue. The girls rested, convinced that the battle was all but
won.
“Do I look as bad as I feel?” asked Amy, vainly trying to stretch her
cracked and parched lips into some semblance of a smile. “I can’t make
my muscles behave.”
“My eyes!” moaned Nell.
“You girls worked like Trojans!”
It was Burd’s voice, and they turned to find him regarding them with
bloodshot but approving eyes.
“Do you think the worst of it is over?” asked Jessie, looking out toward
the flames, which, unconquered, still roared upward.
“If the wind doesn’t change again we are safe enough,” said Burd. “The
fire won’t find much to feed on in the burned territory.”
“Oh, but look at that!” cried Amy, in sudden new terror. “It is coming
this way again. The wind has changed!”
A startled glance proved that she was right. The fickle wind swept the
flames again in their direction. The tongues of fire reached out
eagerly, lapping at the branches as though the temporary lull had merely
whetted its appetite.
“Girls, Burd, Fol—look over there!” almost screamed Jessie, as she
pointed toward the swamp. “That crowd of people!”
Like rats swarming from the hold of a burning ship, men and women were
pouring from the forest, running toward the lake. Between two rough and
bearded men was a tall familiar figure.
“Darry!” cried Jessie, in a tone that mounted above the roaring of the
fire. “It is Darry! Can’t you see?”