“That’s one thing I mean to fight!” Ace squared his chin as the DeHaviland whisked them to their particular ridge, a table mountain, or butte, where half a dozen recruits had already been landed with tools and grub.
“Sure seems as if these fires had been set,” mused Long Lester, as Radcliffe bade them good-by,—for he had to be in a dozen places at once, that day.
“But who did it?” demanded Ace fiercely.
“No savvy dat kind feller,” said a Canadian half breed, who was just starting off with a pick. “’E’s bad feller, dat!”
“Sure is!” agreed Ace. “I don’t savvy him either,—any one who would deliberately burn—that!” with a wave of his arm toward the forested gorge, up which already rose a noticeable heat. The red tongues, racing through the spruce and cedar tops, shone through the smoke gloom, whence issued a distant roaring which was the wind created by the super-heated stretch of territory.
To the left, a gleaming-eyed cougar crept through the shadows, himself a shadow. To the right, a huge, furry looking shadow ran clumsily, flat-footedly. A tiny shadow hopped from almost under their feet, and above their heads flapped a small covey of lighter shadows. Writhing above the dark tops of the doomed trees rose the yellow-gray smoke that was their departing shades.
The faces of the fire-fighters were grimly blackened with smoke and grime, their shirts clung wet with perspiration to their swelling muscles, and their dry throats clacked when they tried to swallow.
“I’d sure like to find the fellow that started that!” muttered Ace.
CHAPTER V