Fire, page 10
Squatting easily on their hunkers, as only old woodsmen could do, they post-mortemed the fire. George had done a good enough job as fire-boss, even though he had only five years of experience on the Suffolk District. His Fire Control Assistant hadn’t done too good—lost his head, kind of. Should have had more McLeods, not so many axes. The Super—well, the Super stuck his nose in a little, but that’s what a Super was supposed to do, wasn’t it? The fire sure burned hot in that slash. Did you see that new weather-man? Young squirt. Might know all about weather-maps, but could he tell you when the breeze was going to shift from down-canyon to up?
Then, at last, two cigarettes burned down at the same time, and there was a pause. Bart felt weariness roll over him again, and suddenly he would rather be in bed even than be talking to his old friend Ben.
“Better be going,” he said.
Driving down the highway, Bart watched the ruby spot of Ben’s tail-light. It was clear and plain on the stretches, and winked out sharply at the curves, or when Ben’s car went over the top of a rise. But he saw it less and less often, and then not at all. That meant Ben was driving faster.
All right. Ben maybe wasn’t as tired. What time was it anyway? Eleven-thirty. They’d talked longer than he realized. But that was the way it always happened. Gosh, he was tired. Up early on Thursday, sweating on the fire-line all that afternoon and all night, one little cat-nap, doing a thousand things today, and here it was nearly Saturday.
Ahead, the highway streamed steadily at him through the brightness of the headlights. Now he was passing through the old Merriam’s Mill burn. Off from the edge of the road he saw the burned trees looming up in ugly desolation. Then suddenly he went in between solid walls of trees again, and knew that he had passed the burn.
Fighting sleep now, driving more slowly, he felt the road swing left and dip into the canyon. After what seemed a long time and too many curves, he came to the bottom, crossed the bridge, and at last drove through the empty street of Suffolk. Few lights were still on. Where the State highway turned left, he drove straight ahead and followed the narrower and bumpier road along the South Fork—his own river. Close to the water, with the down-canyon wind moving, the air was cooler than it had been on the ridge. The engine seemed to purr more smoothly, even though the road ran up-grade steadily. Below the road, to the right, he heard the deep murmur of the stream, and saw a vague whiteness as the water came down a chute between rocks.
Must be nearly midnight, he thought, glancing at the clock. Say, it really is just turning midnight, and here we …
SIXTH DAY
1
… are with Saturday morning already begun, and not in bed yet . . . cross the bridge above the glossy black of water in the deep pool . . . up-canyon again, swing . . . go on . . . rush of water on the left now… curves all the time . . . could be asleep and drive this …well, nearly am asleep . . . ah, swung that one a little wide, maybe . . . road streaming in like a fast river through the headlight-glare . . . LOOK OUT!
He was tramping hard on the brake. The tires whined, and the car swerved, and the two deer which had been streaming at him through the headlight-glare were bolting over the edge of the bank, their rumps bumping.
He drove more slowly after that, shaking himself occasionally, blinking, consciously holding himself alert. He was dead tired, and sleep was crowding in from all directions. He counted curves to keep awake.
The old moon swung into view through a gap in the canyon-rim, and swung out of view again. He passed the boundary into Barlow District, and—WHAT?—smoke-smell! Quick alarm brought him up sharply to the alert. He sniffed. No—faint and stale—just drift from the fire he had left.…
He rounded the last curve, and saw the single bright light in the yard at Barlow Ranger Station. He turned in at the Station, switched off the engine, and let the car coast quietly to a stop beneath the light, its tires crunching on the gravel. He yawned, and got out slowly, leaving the car there.
Inside the house, his wife called to him from bed:
“Can I get you something to eat?”
“No, thanks. I’ll get some of this soot and sweat off, and tumble in. I’m sleepy.”
The warm water of the shower was like a blessing, and then he lay between the sheets on his right side with his knees pulled up a little to relax.
“Ahh!” he breathed, half-aloud, and let the air out of his lungs.
Yet he did not go to sleep just then. The road kept streaming at him through the headlight-glare, and there was always just one more curve to swing around. He lay on his back and tossed a little, and turned over on his left side.
“She sure ripped through some of those nice little patches of reproduction. Why don’t I go to sleep? When I was younger—when, I mean, I didn’t worry so much, didn’t get so tired, let down faster. Say, I hate to see trees burn!”
But he had been carrying himself too long by nervous force, and that force could not relax quickly and let the body rest. He lay fitfully until after he had heard the clock in the hall strike one. Then at last he twitched a little all over, and suddenly it was as if something had hit him on the head.
2
The butt of the log, where the ant-nest had been, was a little mound of gray ashes. The middle of the log was also consumed, but its tip still burned quietly in the calm darkness of the early morning.
The conditions of the night were no more favorable than they had been on the preceding nights, but the fire itself had grown large and stronger. Now, instead of glowing faintly in dull red, it cast forth a strange and vivid pink. Its heat dried out the needles and twigs more quickly, and each one as it burned supplied more heat to ignite the next. The very lack of breeze allowed the heat to accumulate.
The fire had now advanced ten feet beyond the log, and burned on a front of thirty feet. Continually the pink glare was lighted up with little dancing yellow flames. The fire might still be said to creep, but now and then it seemed rather to take a little step forward, as a hotter burst of flame reached a few inches in advance and suddenly seized upon new fuel.
Within the already blackened area stood a foot-tall pine-seedling. The fire, eating through the fallen needles, had burned all around the tiny trunk, no thicker than a pencil. The thin bark was blackened, and had been heated past the boiling point of its inner layers. The needles had not actually taken fire, but had been desiccated and scorched. The seedling was fatally injured, if indeed it might not be called already dead.
Now along its upper edge the fire approached the clump of young trees, and the needles beneath another seedling began to glow. The heat of the nearing fire had already driven off the water from the needles of this seedling, and as the fire began to burn right beneath, the gums and resins vaporized. Mingling with the air, this vapor formed an almost explosive mixture. Suddenly as the heat grew more intense, the mixture ignited, and with a little hiss as of escaping air, a bright pyramid of flame rose to a height of two feet. The desiccated needles caught fire, and for five seconds the whole tree blazed; then the flames died down almost as quickly as they had flared up. The needles were all consumed, but for a few seconds more the tiny branch-tips glowed red hot, curling as they burned away. The tiny tree, too wet with sap to be entirely consumed, was left standing as a blackened skeleton.
By the aid of this sudden and intense flare-up the point of the fire had in a few seconds stepped forward another foot. Now it pressed upon the thicket of young trees, and flames began to shoot higher, crackling in the interlaced dry branches. In another minute the needles ignited, and the whole clump roared upward in a solid-looking pyramid of orange flame. A thick column of gray smoke ascended vertically, and stood high above the tree-tops, in the darkness.
3
Five-thirty? Do you think it’s five-thirty? Judith Godoy, still healthily sleepy, got an eye open, and from her tangle of blankets peered around the lookout—that comfortably familiar little universe, with the fire-finder fixed and certain in the middle, just the way the earth was before Copernicus upset things and made everyone uncomfortable. Well, by the wrist-watch it was 5:28—light enough now to look around and see something, that is, if the smoke from the Hart Creek Fire had cleared away.
She swept back the blankets, came up sitting on the edge of the bed in her pajamas, stuck her feet into her warm slippers, stood up to stretch and yawn, and looked out south. Yes, the smoke was gone, just as the Dispatcher had predicted. She swung around to the east—and her mouth fell open! The familiar universe suddenly tottered. She blinked.
There, far to the northeast over Reverse Ridge, light gray against the dark background of Howell Mountain, rose a hazy, pillar-like smudge that had never been there before.
She ran for the catwalk. Through the binoculars the smudge jumped closer. Looked like smoke, all right!
(Check now, don’t make a fool of yourself! Mist rising from the creek? Dust from sheep being driven? Someone’s campfire? Not likely, and can’t take the chance. Hurry before Horse Mountain catches it! God, maybe he has already!)
She raced back, swung the alidade, lined up the crosshair through the peep-hole, and read the azimuth. Six-six-point-five! That settled it! Only one-point-five off where she had spotted the lightning-stroke, and might be smoke-drift to allow for.
Long-short-long. (Wait.) Long-short-long. (Listen. Why doesn’t Bart answer?) Long-short-long. (Look nervously to see if smoke is building up.) Long-short-long. (Horse Mountain not on the line anyway.) Long-short-long. (Forgot to fill out the little blank, have the bearing anyway.)
4
Long-short-long. (Up from the depth of sleep as through water from a deep dive.) Long-short-long. (Break surface into half-consciousness, swing out of bed, blunder across room.) Long-short-long. (Should have had that line switched to someone else last night—oh, they’d rout me out anyway!) Long-short—
He jerked off the receiver, and spoke sharply, wide awake by now:
“Hello! Barlow Station. Ranger Bartley speaking.”
“Bart, I got a smoke! This is Cerro Gordo speaking, I mean. I got a SMOKE at SIX-SIX-POINT-FIVE!”
“All right—that’s fine! Now, not too excited, Judith. Wait till I write that down. Six … six… point five. And the time is 5:31.”
“That’s right!”
“Vertical angle?”
“Oh, Bart, I forgot! I’ll check!”
“No, stay put. It’s behind Reverse, isn’t it? You couldn’t see the base of the smoke anyway. That lightning-stroke, you think?”
“Just a point and a half off where I had it spotted.”
“All right, now, Judith. Don’t get excited up there by yourself, but keep watching it. If you have to change the bearing or report something important, call back. Otherwise, stay off the line. Good-bye!”
In spite of all his calm advice, Bart was breathing a little quickly. It was the girl’s first fire, and he must be well beyond his first thousand—but even so! He breathed twice, and in the pause he heard the clatter in the kitchen as his wife pulled out the coffee-pot. Call Horse Mountain next—and then long-short-long again—and it was Horse Mountain.
“…Wish to report a smoke, bearing three-two-oh. Same bearing as lightning-stroke on Monday. Base of fire not in view. Inconsiderable drift of smoke eastward. Well beyond ridge north of North Fork of South Fork. Estimate distance at ten miles. Southeast slope of Howell Mountain. Most likely in Deerhound, Section 12, or—”
“Wait a minute—you’re not reporting Slugger’s campfire, are you?”
“Mr. O’Neill’s smoke is always very small, and is three points farther toward north,” said the voice with a tone of reproach at having been suspected of a crass error.
“O.K. That’s fine! Cerro Gordo has reported it already.”
“Oh!” said the voice with a quick shift to let-down disappointment. Then it went suddenly into a high sing-song: “Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke?” and then added matter-offactly, “Solomon’s Song, three-six.”
Bart clicked down the receiver, not knowing whether to be pleased or amused or irritated. The old guy on Horse Mountain was still a top-notch lookout, but getting daffier on religion all the time. Anyway, no time to worry about that just now.
He hurriedly got into slippers and his brown bathrobe, and started for the office. The loose slippers did not serve well for running, and as he scuttled across the hundred yards he looked like a middle-aged brown-robed monk trying not to be late for matins, his bald spot even serving as a good imitation of a tonsure. As he ran, he observed the sky—no great change in weather apparently. That meant bad enough, but not too bad.
In the control-room he flipped the radio-switch, and as he waited for the tubes to warm up, he turned to the wall-map with its push-pin for each lookout. Six-six-point-five for Cerro Gordo led out north-easterly, and three-two-oh for Horse Mountain, northwesterly. The threads crossed on the south slope of the ridge to the north of Onion Creek, but he would try to get another reading before he committed his crew.
He spoke into the microphone: “Z-17 calling Z-142…. Z-17 calling Z-142.… Come in, Z-142.… Come in, Z-142.…” He paused, hoping. Slugger O’Neill was not notable for brains, but any boss of an isolated crew should know enough to be standing by with his radio this time of morning.
“Z-17 calling Z-142…. Z-17 calling Z-142.… Come in, Z-142…. Come in, Z-142.” He thought, half-panicky, of all the things that went wrong with radio-transmission. And then, so clear that he could recognize the bass tones of the voice, Slugger O’Neill spoke to him across twenty-five miles of canyons and ridges:
“Z-142 to Z-17…. Z-142 to Z-17.… Go ahead, Z-17…. Go ahead, Z-17.”
Bart dropped the formality:
“Say, Slugger, this is Bart. We’ve got a smoke somewhere over by Onion Creek. I say: somewhere over by Onion Creek. You’re the nearest crew. So get your men ready to hit it in a hurry. Get your men ready. You hear me?”
“I get yuh, Bart.”
“O.K.—Get ready and stand by on the radio. I want to get a third cross from Hamlin Point, and then I’ll be back with orders in a minute. Back with orders in a minute. Z-17 over and out.… Z-17 over and out.”
•
The youngsters were yelping around him: “What’s up, Slugger? . . . Who was it? …We got a fire?” They quieted as he straightened up from talking into the transmitter.
“Come on, you guys! We’re alerted! . . . One ax, three shovels, two McLeods…. Canteens all round…. Two K-rations apiece…. Radio…. Get set! I’m standing by for orders.”
The flurry of preparation hardly lasted a minute.
“Get the camp policed!” Slugger yelled from where he again crouched beside the radio, ear-phones in place: “Wet down the campfire!”
“Slugger, do we eat breakfast before we start?”
“We do not! But sling something together so we can eat on the trail.”
Then the radio squawked: “Z-17 calling…”
They hit the trail at 5:42, the shadows still deep and cool. The boys shouted back and forth eagerly. Going to a fire was like a holiday from the steady work of trail-maintenance. In spite of their nondescript clothing they looked like a band of primitive warriors, shovels and McLeods like weapons for hand-to-hand combat, as they strung out in single-file along the narrow trail. Slugger led the way, carrying the double-bitted ax, like the chieftain. They had about two miles to go, and with Slugger setting the pace it would be a lot like a two-mile run.
•
Once Bart had got the crew started in, he relaxed a little. There was still much to be done, but it did not need to be done in such a hurry. He checked the aerial photographs, just to be sure, although from long familiarity with the country he knew already that the fire was burning in heavy forest on a steep slope. He called his clerk-dispatcher, and told her to get dressed and take over the office. He called Cerro Gordo and Horse Mountain and Hamlin Point again, and found that the smoke was building up some, as you would expect. (Horse Mountain quoted Jeremiah.) He considered the chances, and decided that a crew of five eager boys with a driver for a crew-boss ought to hit the fire soon enough and hard enough to get it well corralled before the heat and rising wind of afternoon made it more dangerous. Given any kind of break, that is. That was the trouble—the break might go the other way.
He rose nervously, and shuffled across the floor in slippers. The fire was in such an isolated spot that he had no other crew he could throw at it in a hurry. And Slugger, though he had his points, was no strategist.
•
At that moment the fire which was causing so much commotion throughout Barlow District was actually, on the spot, still far from terrifying. Grown suddenly intense by its engulfing of the clump of saplings, it had made the most of some good puffs of down-canyon wind just before dawn, and had taken off at right angles to its previous direction of advance. On a front of only a few yards it had made a quick run of some fifty yards diagonally up-hill, burning duff, underbrush, and an occasional clump of young trees.
By this very activity, however, the fire had also worked against itself by sending up enough smoke to attract the attention of creatures whose racial experience, unlike that of the ants, included a familiarity with fire. Men did not merely stand and wave their arms; instead, they came swarming out with set purpose and weapons of offense.
As late as 5:53 a single active man with a shovel could have scraped away the duff from the front of the fire, and gradually extending his line could have contained the flames and let them burn themselves out. Since at that same time Slugger and his boys were little more than half-an-hour distant, anyone must have concluded that the fire was doomed. At that minute, however, one chance out of the millions possible contrived to change the situation considerably.
In its diagonal upslope advance before the down-canyon wind, the fire had at last reached the pine-cone which rested against the dead twig. Both cone and branch were soon blazing, and after a few minutes the twig, nearly burned through, broke at the point where the cone rested against it.
Then, at last, two cigarettes burned down at the same time, and there was a pause. Bart felt weariness roll over him again, and suddenly he would rather be in bed even than be talking to his old friend Ben.
“Better be going,” he said.
Driving down the highway, Bart watched the ruby spot of Ben’s tail-light. It was clear and plain on the stretches, and winked out sharply at the curves, or when Ben’s car went over the top of a rise. But he saw it less and less often, and then not at all. That meant Ben was driving faster.
All right. Ben maybe wasn’t as tired. What time was it anyway? Eleven-thirty. They’d talked longer than he realized. But that was the way it always happened. Gosh, he was tired. Up early on Thursday, sweating on the fire-line all that afternoon and all night, one little cat-nap, doing a thousand things today, and here it was nearly Saturday.
Ahead, the highway streamed steadily at him through the brightness of the headlights. Now he was passing through the old Merriam’s Mill burn. Off from the edge of the road he saw the burned trees looming up in ugly desolation. Then suddenly he went in between solid walls of trees again, and knew that he had passed the burn.
Fighting sleep now, driving more slowly, he felt the road swing left and dip into the canyon. After what seemed a long time and too many curves, he came to the bottom, crossed the bridge, and at last drove through the empty street of Suffolk. Few lights were still on. Where the State highway turned left, he drove straight ahead and followed the narrower and bumpier road along the South Fork—his own river. Close to the water, with the down-canyon wind moving, the air was cooler than it had been on the ridge. The engine seemed to purr more smoothly, even though the road ran up-grade steadily. Below the road, to the right, he heard the deep murmur of the stream, and saw a vague whiteness as the water came down a chute between rocks.
Must be nearly midnight, he thought, glancing at the clock. Say, it really is just turning midnight, and here we …
SIXTH DAY
1
… are with Saturday morning already begun, and not in bed yet . . . cross the bridge above the glossy black of water in the deep pool . . . up-canyon again, swing . . . go on . . . rush of water on the left now… curves all the time . . . could be asleep and drive this …well, nearly am asleep . . . ah, swung that one a little wide, maybe . . . road streaming in like a fast river through the headlight-glare . . . LOOK OUT!
He was tramping hard on the brake. The tires whined, and the car swerved, and the two deer which had been streaming at him through the headlight-glare were bolting over the edge of the bank, their rumps bumping.
He drove more slowly after that, shaking himself occasionally, blinking, consciously holding himself alert. He was dead tired, and sleep was crowding in from all directions. He counted curves to keep awake.
The old moon swung into view through a gap in the canyon-rim, and swung out of view again. He passed the boundary into Barlow District, and—WHAT?—smoke-smell! Quick alarm brought him up sharply to the alert. He sniffed. No—faint and stale—just drift from the fire he had left.…
He rounded the last curve, and saw the single bright light in the yard at Barlow Ranger Station. He turned in at the Station, switched off the engine, and let the car coast quietly to a stop beneath the light, its tires crunching on the gravel. He yawned, and got out slowly, leaving the car there.
Inside the house, his wife called to him from bed:
“Can I get you something to eat?”
“No, thanks. I’ll get some of this soot and sweat off, and tumble in. I’m sleepy.”
The warm water of the shower was like a blessing, and then he lay between the sheets on his right side with his knees pulled up a little to relax.
“Ahh!” he breathed, half-aloud, and let the air out of his lungs.
Yet he did not go to sleep just then. The road kept streaming at him through the headlight-glare, and there was always just one more curve to swing around. He lay on his back and tossed a little, and turned over on his left side.
“She sure ripped through some of those nice little patches of reproduction. Why don’t I go to sleep? When I was younger—when, I mean, I didn’t worry so much, didn’t get so tired, let down faster. Say, I hate to see trees burn!”
But he had been carrying himself too long by nervous force, and that force could not relax quickly and let the body rest. He lay fitfully until after he had heard the clock in the hall strike one. Then at last he twitched a little all over, and suddenly it was as if something had hit him on the head.
2
The butt of the log, where the ant-nest had been, was a little mound of gray ashes. The middle of the log was also consumed, but its tip still burned quietly in the calm darkness of the early morning.
The conditions of the night were no more favorable than they had been on the preceding nights, but the fire itself had grown large and stronger. Now, instead of glowing faintly in dull red, it cast forth a strange and vivid pink. Its heat dried out the needles and twigs more quickly, and each one as it burned supplied more heat to ignite the next. The very lack of breeze allowed the heat to accumulate.
The fire had now advanced ten feet beyond the log, and burned on a front of thirty feet. Continually the pink glare was lighted up with little dancing yellow flames. The fire might still be said to creep, but now and then it seemed rather to take a little step forward, as a hotter burst of flame reached a few inches in advance and suddenly seized upon new fuel.
Within the already blackened area stood a foot-tall pine-seedling. The fire, eating through the fallen needles, had burned all around the tiny trunk, no thicker than a pencil. The thin bark was blackened, and had been heated past the boiling point of its inner layers. The needles had not actually taken fire, but had been desiccated and scorched. The seedling was fatally injured, if indeed it might not be called already dead.
Now along its upper edge the fire approached the clump of young trees, and the needles beneath another seedling began to glow. The heat of the nearing fire had already driven off the water from the needles of this seedling, and as the fire began to burn right beneath, the gums and resins vaporized. Mingling with the air, this vapor formed an almost explosive mixture. Suddenly as the heat grew more intense, the mixture ignited, and with a little hiss as of escaping air, a bright pyramid of flame rose to a height of two feet. The desiccated needles caught fire, and for five seconds the whole tree blazed; then the flames died down almost as quickly as they had flared up. The needles were all consumed, but for a few seconds more the tiny branch-tips glowed red hot, curling as they burned away. The tiny tree, too wet with sap to be entirely consumed, was left standing as a blackened skeleton.
By the aid of this sudden and intense flare-up the point of the fire had in a few seconds stepped forward another foot. Now it pressed upon the thicket of young trees, and flames began to shoot higher, crackling in the interlaced dry branches. In another minute the needles ignited, and the whole clump roared upward in a solid-looking pyramid of orange flame. A thick column of gray smoke ascended vertically, and stood high above the tree-tops, in the darkness.
3
Five-thirty? Do you think it’s five-thirty? Judith Godoy, still healthily sleepy, got an eye open, and from her tangle of blankets peered around the lookout—that comfortably familiar little universe, with the fire-finder fixed and certain in the middle, just the way the earth was before Copernicus upset things and made everyone uncomfortable. Well, by the wrist-watch it was 5:28—light enough now to look around and see something, that is, if the smoke from the Hart Creek Fire had cleared away.
She swept back the blankets, came up sitting on the edge of the bed in her pajamas, stuck her feet into her warm slippers, stood up to stretch and yawn, and looked out south. Yes, the smoke was gone, just as the Dispatcher had predicted. She swung around to the east—and her mouth fell open! The familiar universe suddenly tottered. She blinked.
There, far to the northeast over Reverse Ridge, light gray against the dark background of Howell Mountain, rose a hazy, pillar-like smudge that had never been there before.
She ran for the catwalk. Through the binoculars the smudge jumped closer. Looked like smoke, all right!
(Check now, don’t make a fool of yourself! Mist rising from the creek? Dust from sheep being driven? Someone’s campfire? Not likely, and can’t take the chance. Hurry before Horse Mountain catches it! God, maybe he has already!)
She raced back, swung the alidade, lined up the crosshair through the peep-hole, and read the azimuth. Six-six-point-five! That settled it! Only one-point-five off where she had spotted the lightning-stroke, and might be smoke-drift to allow for.
Long-short-long. (Wait.) Long-short-long. (Listen. Why doesn’t Bart answer?) Long-short-long. (Look nervously to see if smoke is building up.) Long-short-long. (Horse Mountain not on the line anyway.) Long-short-long. (Forgot to fill out the little blank, have the bearing anyway.)
4
Long-short-long. (Up from the depth of sleep as through water from a deep dive.) Long-short-long. (Break surface into half-consciousness, swing out of bed, blunder across room.) Long-short-long. (Should have had that line switched to someone else last night—oh, they’d rout me out anyway!) Long-short—
He jerked off the receiver, and spoke sharply, wide awake by now:
“Hello! Barlow Station. Ranger Bartley speaking.”
“Bart, I got a smoke! This is Cerro Gordo speaking, I mean. I got a SMOKE at SIX-SIX-POINT-FIVE!”
“All right—that’s fine! Now, not too excited, Judith. Wait till I write that down. Six … six… point five. And the time is 5:31.”
“That’s right!”
“Vertical angle?”
“Oh, Bart, I forgot! I’ll check!”
“No, stay put. It’s behind Reverse, isn’t it? You couldn’t see the base of the smoke anyway. That lightning-stroke, you think?”
“Just a point and a half off where I had it spotted.”
“All right, now, Judith. Don’t get excited up there by yourself, but keep watching it. If you have to change the bearing or report something important, call back. Otherwise, stay off the line. Good-bye!”
In spite of all his calm advice, Bart was breathing a little quickly. It was the girl’s first fire, and he must be well beyond his first thousand—but even so! He breathed twice, and in the pause he heard the clatter in the kitchen as his wife pulled out the coffee-pot. Call Horse Mountain next—and then long-short-long again—and it was Horse Mountain.
“…Wish to report a smoke, bearing three-two-oh. Same bearing as lightning-stroke on Monday. Base of fire not in view. Inconsiderable drift of smoke eastward. Well beyond ridge north of North Fork of South Fork. Estimate distance at ten miles. Southeast slope of Howell Mountain. Most likely in Deerhound, Section 12, or—”
“Wait a minute—you’re not reporting Slugger’s campfire, are you?”
“Mr. O’Neill’s smoke is always very small, and is three points farther toward north,” said the voice with a tone of reproach at having been suspected of a crass error.
“O.K. That’s fine! Cerro Gordo has reported it already.”
“Oh!” said the voice with a quick shift to let-down disappointment. Then it went suddenly into a high sing-song: “Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke?” and then added matter-offactly, “Solomon’s Song, three-six.”
Bart clicked down the receiver, not knowing whether to be pleased or amused or irritated. The old guy on Horse Mountain was still a top-notch lookout, but getting daffier on religion all the time. Anyway, no time to worry about that just now.
He hurriedly got into slippers and his brown bathrobe, and started for the office. The loose slippers did not serve well for running, and as he scuttled across the hundred yards he looked like a middle-aged brown-robed monk trying not to be late for matins, his bald spot even serving as a good imitation of a tonsure. As he ran, he observed the sky—no great change in weather apparently. That meant bad enough, but not too bad.
In the control-room he flipped the radio-switch, and as he waited for the tubes to warm up, he turned to the wall-map with its push-pin for each lookout. Six-six-point-five for Cerro Gordo led out north-easterly, and three-two-oh for Horse Mountain, northwesterly. The threads crossed on the south slope of the ridge to the north of Onion Creek, but he would try to get another reading before he committed his crew.
He spoke into the microphone: “Z-17 calling Z-142…. Z-17 calling Z-142.… Come in, Z-142.… Come in, Z-142.…” He paused, hoping. Slugger O’Neill was not notable for brains, but any boss of an isolated crew should know enough to be standing by with his radio this time of morning.
“Z-17 calling Z-142…. Z-17 calling Z-142.… Come in, Z-142…. Come in, Z-142.” He thought, half-panicky, of all the things that went wrong with radio-transmission. And then, so clear that he could recognize the bass tones of the voice, Slugger O’Neill spoke to him across twenty-five miles of canyons and ridges:
“Z-142 to Z-17…. Z-142 to Z-17.… Go ahead, Z-17…. Go ahead, Z-17.”
Bart dropped the formality:
“Say, Slugger, this is Bart. We’ve got a smoke somewhere over by Onion Creek. I say: somewhere over by Onion Creek. You’re the nearest crew. So get your men ready to hit it in a hurry. Get your men ready. You hear me?”
“I get yuh, Bart.”
“O.K.—Get ready and stand by on the radio. I want to get a third cross from Hamlin Point, and then I’ll be back with orders in a minute. Back with orders in a minute. Z-17 over and out.… Z-17 over and out.”
•
The youngsters were yelping around him: “What’s up, Slugger? . . . Who was it? …We got a fire?” They quieted as he straightened up from talking into the transmitter.
“Come on, you guys! We’re alerted! . . . One ax, three shovels, two McLeods…. Canteens all round…. Two K-rations apiece…. Radio…. Get set! I’m standing by for orders.”
The flurry of preparation hardly lasted a minute.
“Get the camp policed!” Slugger yelled from where he again crouched beside the radio, ear-phones in place: “Wet down the campfire!”
“Slugger, do we eat breakfast before we start?”
“We do not! But sling something together so we can eat on the trail.”
Then the radio squawked: “Z-17 calling…”
They hit the trail at 5:42, the shadows still deep and cool. The boys shouted back and forth eagerly. Going to a fire was like a holiday from the steady work of trail-maintenance. In spite of their nondescript clothing they looked like a band of primitive warriors, shovels and McLeods like weapons for hand-to-hand combat, as they strung out in single-file along the narrow trail. Slugger led the way, carrying the double-bitted ax, like the chieftain. They had about two miles to go, and with Slugger setting the pace it would be a lot like a two-mile run.
•
Once Bart had got the crew started in, he relaxed a little. There was still much to be done, but it did not need to be done in such a hurry. He checked the aerial photographs, just to be sure, although from long familiarity with the country he knew already that the fire was burning in heavy forest on a steep slope. He called his clerk-dispatcher, and told her to get dressed and take over the office. He called Cerro Gordo and Horse Mountain and Hamlin Point again, and found that the smoke was building up some, as you would expect. (Horse Mountain quoted Jeremiah.) He considered the chances, and decided that a crew of five eager boys with a driver for a crew-boss ought to hit the fire soon enough and hard enough to get it well corralled before the heat and rising wind of afternoon made it more dangerous. Given any kind of break, that is. That was the trouble—the break might go the other way.
He rose nervously, and shuffled across the floor in slippers. The fire was in such an isolated spot that he had no other crew he could throw at it in a hurry. And Slugger, though he had his points, was no strategist.
•
At that moment the fire which was causing so much commotion throughout Barlow District was actually, on the spot, still far from terrifying. Grown suddenly intense by its engulfing of the clump of saplings, it had made the most of some good puffs of down-canyon wind just before dawn, and had taken off at right angles to its previous direction of advance. On a front of only a few yards it had made a quick run of some fifty yards diagonally up-hill, burning duff, underbrush, and an occasional clump of young trees.
By this very activity, however, the fire had also worked against itself by sending up enough smoke to attract the attention of creatures whose racial experience, unlike that of the ants, included a familiarity with fire. Men did not merely stand and wave their arms; instead, they came swarming out with set purpose and weapons of offense.
As late as 5:53 a single active man with a shovel could have scraped away the duff from the front of the fire, and gradually extending his line could have contained the flames and let them burn themselves out. Since at that same time Slugger and his boys were little more than half-an-hour distant, anyone must have concluded that the fire was doomed. At that minute, however, one chance out of the millions possible contrived to change the situation considerably.
In its diagonal upslope advance before the down-canyon wind, the fire had at last reached the pine-cone which rested against the dead twig. Both cone and branch were soon blazing, and after a few minutes the twig, nearly burned through, broke at the point where the cone rested against it.
