On the other side, Dickerson had cut his timber a year or two before, clear to the river. The fire would not burn far over his line. Whoever had done this dastardly act, Dickerson's property would not be damaged.
But Hiram lent no time to trouble. His work was cut out for him right here and now—and well he knew it!
He had brought the small axe with him, having caught it up from the doorstep. Now he used it to cut a green bough, and then ran with the latter down the hill and set upon the fire-line like a madman.
The smoke, spread here and there by puffs of rising wind, half choked him. It stung his eyes until they distilled water enough to blind him. He thrashed and fought in the fumes and the murk of it, stumbling and slipping, one moment half-knee deep in quick-springing flames, the next almost overpowered by the smudge that rose from the beaten mat of leaves and rubbish.
It was a lone fight. He had to do it all. There had been no time to rouse either the neighbors, or the rest of the family.
If he did not overcome these flames—and well he knew it—Mother Atterson would arise in the morning to see all her goodly timber scorched, perhaps ruined!
“I must beat it out—beat it out!” thought Hiram, and the repetition of the words thrummed an accompaniment upon the drums of his ears as he thrashed away with a madman's strength.
For no sane person would have tackled such a hopeless task. Before him the flames suddenly leaped six feet or more into the air. They overtopped him as they writhed through a clump of green-briars. The wind puffed the flame toward him, and his face was scorched by the heat.
He lost his eyebrows completely, and the hair was crisped along the front brim of his hat.
Then with a laughing crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a tall pine in lurid yellow.