Fire of retribution

He heard the old man’s voice and knew he was all right
For a man who never flew before to step from an airplane into space thousands of feet above the earth—that takes nerve! Yet old Beth knew that was the only slim chance for his fire-trapped logging crew
By LAURENCE DONOVAN
“Slow timed fire bombs started the blaze—we run onto one of them that hadn’t exploded! Whoever done it knew a cross-fire would trap th’ men at the camp—”
Old Beth’s gaunt face worked with a grim tightening around his lips.
“Reckon you boys could fly ’round the fire ’fore it hits th’ camp. I ain’t ever been up in a plane, but I’ve heard you could drop a man anywhere with one of them parachutes—I’ll take a chance. We gotta put an intake valve on that engine, load th’ men an’ make a run for it down th’ mountain.”
Nick Mims, fire patrol pilot, demurred at first, not because he lacked the guts to go, but orders were orders.
According to the old logger, Beth, his camp high on Round Top mountain was cut off by the fire from all the trails leading down. And once the flames sweeping up the slopes had reached the camp, there was no escape.
“But, Nick, we gotta do it.”
Five or six times during old Beth’s recital, Jack Singer, mechanic and relief pilot, had reiterated this. In the back of young Singer’s mind was the thought of his wife, Nellie. She was camping with friends in the Priest Lake vicinity. Last year there had been a bad fire there, too. Supposing Nellie were trapped? Jack kept thinking of that.
“We gotta do it,” he affirmed, impatiently.
“Yeh,” agreed Nick at last, reluctantly. “An’ if we crash, it’s curtains for our jobs—if we get out.”