FIRE
Everywhere men were working, driving themselves and others
mercilessly. A hundred yards back of the fire some were digging a
ditch while others hacked madly with hatchets at outstretching
branches of trees.
Close to the fire line men fought grimly, resolutely beating at
creeping tendrils of flame with the wet sacks, eyes bloodshot and
wild in blackened faces, burned hands returning again and again to
the attack.
Reinforcements were continually arriving, as well as fresh sacks and
shovels from the ranger station. The Radio Boys, arming themselves
with some of these, made their way as close as possible to the fire
line.
One man, whose hands had been very seriously burned and who still
refused to leave his post was carried off by two of his comrades,
shouting and protesting wildly. The boys filled in the gap.
The smoke stung their eyes torturingly, flying particles of burning
wood and leaves seared their flesh and the sweat poured from them.
They only worked the harder.
“It’s this danged wind!” groaned a man next to them, stopping for a
moment to wipe his tear-filled, smarting eyes on the sleeve of his
shirt. “If it’d stop we might have a chance——” He paused, sniffed
the air inquiringly while the expression of his face slowly changed.
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” he said softly. “If it ain’t!”
It was then the boys noticed what in the fever of the fight they had
overlooked, that the wind seemed indeed to have blown itself out. At
least there was a lull.
The flames which, driven by the gale, had bent and writhed and
twisted toward them, now darted straight upward.
“If we can keep it from reaching the gully,” the man beside them
continued, “there’s a chance we can beat it.”
“What gully?” asked Bob, dashing the sweat from his eyes so he might
see more plainly. “What do you mean?”
The man jerked a grimy thumb over his shoulder.
“Over there, son,” he said, as he fell to work with redoubled
energy, “there’s a narrow little gully between the two mountains. If
the fire reaches that there will be no stopping it. There’s a wind
that sweeps through that place that will carry the flames ahead
faster than we can beat ’em out. That means the blaze will have us
surrounded.”
Surrounded! The phrase repeated itself over and over in the thoughts
of the boys as they were gradually forced backward and upward by the
advance of the flames.
True, the wind had stopped, but the fire had gained such tremendous
headway that even now it would require all their energy to defeat
it. But could they defeat it? That was the question.
Surrounded! Why, that meant—but it was impossible! They must
concentrate all their force, all their men at the mouth of that
gully. The fire must be checked.
Bob, starting back for a fresh sack, looked upward, and there,
hovering directly over his head, was a sight that thrilled him.
Like two great birds with outstretched wings hovering over the scene
of terror were the airplanes, the “eyes” of the Government rangers.
Bob well knew that the men up there were keeping the ether humming
with reports, messages, orders, between the station and the ships
themselves.
What was Payne Bentley thinking up there? Did he see victory or did
he fear defeat? Did he, like the ranger who had worked beside him,
see the danger in that narrow gully?
He did not have to wait long for an answer to that. As he took a wet
sack and threw his dry, scorched one upon the ground he saw that men
were being rushed to one point and that point the outermost edge of
the blaze where it reached hungry fingers toward the gully. Bob
gazed up, almost in awe, at the hovering planes.
“He’ll do it,” he exulted. “He’ll beat that blaze if anybody can.”
It did not take Bob very long to see that he had exulted too soon.
Despite the heroic efforts of the men who fought to stem the tide of
destruction, the fire crept steadily, relentlessly forward, forcing
the workers foot by foot, inch by inch back toward the gully.
Side by side with the men, never faltering, though their lungs felt
near to bursting and their smarting eyes tormented them, fought the
Radio Boys.
Only once did Jimmy, naturally feeling the strain of it more than
the other boys, fall back to get his breath. But not five minutes
had passed before he was with them again, gallantly taking up the
task where he had left it.
And all for nothing! The fire, feeding on the dry and crackling
timber made brittle by weeks of drought, rushed onward like a
destroying fiend, seeming to gather headway as it came.
Faster and faster the men retreated before it, back, back, back to
the last line of retreat—a deep trench dug at the very mouth of the
gully. If they were driven past that——
And they were driven past it, fighting for the last inch, gasping,
struggling, sweating—down in the trench—on the other side—hacking
frantically at branches, felling them to save them from the worse
destruction of the fire.
No use! What could men avail against a force like this, a force
mocking at their puny efforts, sweeping on, on——
It had leapt across the trench, caught the first draft from the
treacherous gully, with a roar like a roar of a maddened bull it
started up the mountainside, driving men before it, threatening to
wind its deadly robes about them even as they ran——
“Back, back!” was shouted hoarsely from parched throats. “More
trenches—more sacks—more—more——”
Choking, stumbling, gasping, the boys ran with the rest.
“Our radio!” cried Bob, in a rasping voice that he himself did not
know. “We’ll have to get the set out of danger! Then we can come
back!”
The boys nodded and turned their stumbling steps in the direction of
the lodge. Blindly they made their way through heavy underbrush and
over fallen trees, one thought uppermost in their minds—to get their
radio set to a place of safety while there was yet time.
They had gone a considerable distance before they were out of reach
of the flying embers of the fire, before they found relief from the
suffocating smoke of it.
Then they paused for a moment, exhausted, and sank down upon the
ground. They brushed the hair back from their hot faces, wiped the
perspiration from their eyes and stared at each other. So begrimed
were they, so soot-blackened and altogether disreputable, that it
would have been hard to recognize them as the same boys that had
left the lodge so short a time before.
Herb grinned with something of his old, unquenchable humor.
“I guess our own families wouldn’t be able to recognize us now,” he
said. “We sure are some mussed up.”
“And we’re liable to be more so before we get through,” said Bob,
getting stiffly to his feet. “Better keep going, fellows,” he said.
“There’s a lot of work to be done yet.”
They started on again, knowing by the sound of the fire behind them
that it was still gaining alarming headway.
“Lucky that wind quit just as it did,” panted Jimmy, his breath
coming in short, labored gasps. “If the gale had lasted much longer
it would have been all up with us, I guess.”
“If only we can check the fire before it has us surrounded we may
have a chance,” said Bob. “But if that fire line meets——”
He left the sentence unfinished, and as they came in sight of the
lodge he made a dash for it, flinging open the door. The boys worked
feverishly, striving to do an hour’s work in a few minutes.
The set must be dismantled and carried to a place of at least
comparative safety. The lodge was no place for it at all. It was
directly in the path of the flames and there was every probability
that the little house would have to go with all its contents.
It was characteristic of the boys that it never entered their heads
to try to save anything but their beloved outfit. Millions of
dollars’ worth of timber was endangered, to say nothing of men’s
lives, and their one thought was to rescue the radio set and get
back to the fight.
It was a nightmare that they would never afterward forget, pulling
at bolts and wires with burned and trembling fingers. Everything
seemed unfamiliar, unreal, to them, the very apparatus itself seemed
to fight their frantic efforts to save it. They had moments of
thinking they must give up in despair.
But they worked doggedly on and finally accomplished what they had
set out to do. The radio was dismantled and ready for moving.
“But where shall we take it too?” asked Jimmy, helplessly. “There’s
no place——”
“Down by the lake,” Bob broke in quickly. “That’s the safest spot
just now. Later, if we have to, we can come back for it.”
So down to the shores of the lake they bore the apparatus, then
turned and, once more, ran in the direction of the fire.
“If this timber burns up,” panted Joe, as the thickened smoke in the
air told them they were getting close to the blaze, “it will be an
awful loss to Doctor Dale and the Old First Church.”
A few moments more, and they plunged again into the thick of the
fight.