The Bent Twig

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Then in a flash the car had left the village and was rushing along the dusty highroad, the huge, ominous pillar of smoke growing nearer. The men stared up at it with sober faces. "Pretty hot fire!" said one uneasily.

They reached the place where the man had yelled to them—ten minutes exactly since they had left it. Molly turned the car into the steep sandy side-road which led up the mountain. The men shouted out in remonstrance, "Hey, lady! You can't git a car up there. We'll have to walk the rest of the way. They don't never take cars there."

"This one is going up," sang out Molly gallantly, almost gaily, opening the throttle to its fullest and going into second speed.

The sound of the laboring engine jarred loudly through all the still, hot woods; the car shook and trembled under the strain on it. Molly dropped into low. A cloud of evil-smelling blue gasoline smoke rose up from the exhaust behind, but the car continued to advance. Rising steadily, coughing and choking, up the cruelly steep grades, bumping heavily down over the great water-bars, smoking, rattling, quivering—the car continued to advance. A trickle of perspiration ran down Molly's cheeks. The floor was hot under their feet, the smell of hot oil pungent in their nostrils.

They were eight minutes from the main road now, and near the fire. Over the trail hung a cloud of smoke, and, as they turned a corner and came through this, they saw that they had arrived. Sylvia drew back and crooked her arm over her eyes. She had never seen a forest fire before. She came from the plain-country, where trees are almost sacred, and her first feeling was of terror. But then she dropped her arm and looked, and looked again at the glorious, awful sight which was to furnish her with nightmares for months to come.

The fire was roaring down one side of the road towards them, and away to the right was eating its furious, sulphurous way into the heart of the forest. They stopped a hundred feet short, but the blare of heat struck on their faces like a blow. Through the dense masses of smoke, terrifying glimpses of fierce, clean flame; a resinous dead stump burning like a torch; a great tree standing helpless like a martyr at the stake, suddenly transformed into a frenzied pillar of fire…. Along the front of this whirlpool of flame toiled, with despairing fury, four lean, powerful men. As they raised their blackened, desperate faces and saw the car there, actually there, incredibly there, black with its load of men, they gave a deep-throated shout of relief, though they did not for an instant stop the frantic plying of their picks and hoes. The nine men sprang out, their implements in their hands, and dispersed along the fighting-line.

Molly backed the car around, the rear wheels churning up the sand, and plunged down the hill into the smoke. Through the choking fumes of this, Sylvia shouted at her, "Molly! Molly! You're great!" She felt that she would always hear ringing in her ears that thrilling, hoarse shout of relief.

Molly shouted in answer, "I could scream, I'm so happy!" And as they plunged madly down the mountain road, she said: "Oh, Sylvia, you don't know—I never was any use before—never once—never! I got the first load of help there! How they shouted!"

At the junction of the side-road with the highway, a car was discharging a load of men with rakes and picks. "I took my car up!" screamed Molly, leaning from the steering wheel but not slackening speed as she tore past them.

The driver of the other car, a young man with the face of a fighting Celt, flushed at the challenge and, motioning the men back into the car, started up the sandy hill. Molly laughed aloud. "I never was so happy in my life!" she said again.