The Land of Strong Men

by A. M. Chisholm

"Get all the horse blankets and wagon covers, soak 'em, and throw 'em up to me," he ordered. "I'm going up on the roof. Help me with the ladder."

A ladder hung on the north wall of the stable. Together they shot it up. Angus grabbed a coil of lash rope and a couple of lariats, and ran up the ladder. Making the rope fast to the top rung and taking the coil over his arm he crawled up the steep slope of the roof. As he put his head over the ridge smoke stung his eyes and bit at his lungs. The pitch was fairly bubbling from the old shakes on the southern exposure.

Behind him Gus staggered up the ladder with an armful of dripping horse blankets which he had soaked in the ditch. Angus ripped off a bit of loose lining and tied it over his nose and mouth. Then, taking the wet blankets on one arm and a turn of rope around the other, he drew a full breath of good air and went over the ridge into the smoke and flying red cinders.

Down close to the eaves he saw a little, blue flame start and die, and start again and live. He went down, his body at right angles to the pitch of the roof against the pull of the rope, and spread a dripping blanket on it. As he did so a big fluff of burning hay lit above him. He extinguished that. Little, creeping lizards of fire began to glow, and he beat them out and yelled for more blankets. The moisture was being sucked from his body, his eyes stabbed with pain and his lungs ached. Sparks clung to him and burned through to the skin, the heat of the roof struck through the soles of his moccasins. The little, creeping flames, starting everywhere, seemed personal enemies, and he beat upon them with wet blankets, and stamped upon them and croaked curses at them. Then Gus was beside him, a very welcome demon in his red garments, working like a maniac and swearing strange oaths. Together they kept the roof till the heat lessened, and the tongues and sheets of flame snapped no more in their faces, and blackened and gray ashes instead of red cinders powdered them, and where Angus' fine stack of bright hay had been was a red and glowing heap.

They came down from the roof and drank deeply from the running ditch, and the cold wind striking their overheated bodies through burnt and insufficient clothing, cut to the bone.

In the house, changing his burnt garments for warm clothes, Angus for the first time thought of his brother and looked into his room. The boy slept. He had known nothing of the fire.

"By Yimminy, dat kid sleep like a mudsill," Gus commented. "Ay holler at him when Ay go out, too."

"Let him sleep," Angus said. "Come on and get the horses into the stable again."

He spoke quietly, but there was bitter anger in his heart. It was bad enough that Turkey should lie in drunken slumber; but far worse than that he was the last person who had been near the stable and stack. Neither Angus nor Gus had been out of the house for five or six hours before the fire. As they put the horses back Angus found Turkey's mare's manger full of hay. Drunk or sober the boy would look after the animal's needs. But to get hay he had either to fork it down from the mow or get it from the stack. As the mow was dark, with a ladder to climb, there wasn't much doubt that he had got it from the latter. Then at the stack he had either dropped the butt of a cigarette or the end of a match. There was no doubt in Angus' mind as to the origin of the fire.

But as was his custom, he kept his thoughts to himself. He sent Gus to the house to get what sleep he could, and he remained on guard against chances from stray sparks.